Monday, December 04, 2017

IM(not so)HP[residential]O


Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States:

“I feel badly for General Flynn. I feel very badly,” Trump told reporters. “He’s led a very strong life and I feel very badly, John. I will say this, Hillary Clinton lied many times to the FBI and nothing happened to her. General Flynn lied and they destroyed his life. Hillary Clinton, on the Forth of July weekend, went to the FBI, not under oath, it was the most incredible thing anyone has ever seen. She lied many times. Nothing happened to her. Flynn lied and it’s like, they ruined his life. It’s very unfair.”

There was no proof of Clinton lying to the FBI and the comments from Trump are only his personal opinion on the matter.

And that's it; it's just Trump expressing an opinion, right John Dowd?

“President cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under [the Constitution’s Article II] and has every right to express his view of any case,” Dowd argued.

So, you know, Trump is just sayin'.  It's not like his opinion has more potential to turn into government action than any regular Joe's opinion, is it?  I mean, if we went around holding the President responsible for what he said, what kind of world would this be?

Journalists, on the other hand.....
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Revising History is Fun!




Funny, Flynn's lies to the FBI don't seem to have come up:

There was an 18-day gap between the heads up from former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates regarding Flynn's activities with the Russians and his removal by the White House.

"(White House counsel Don) McGahn came back to me and did not sound like an emergency," Trump said of Yates' information about Flynn.

"This man (Flynn) has served for many years, he's a general, he's a — in my opinion — a very good person. I believe that it would be very unfair to hear from somebody who we don't even know and immediately run out and fire a general."

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer has previously expressed skepticism about Yates' motives in giving her initial heads up about Flynn to the White House. On Tuesday, Spicer praised the "due process" of the White House in the lead up to Flynn's dismissal and dismissed Yates as "someone who is not exactly a supporter of the president's agenda."

"You have someone who you have to wonder whether — why they are telling you something," Spicer added.

Yates testified Monday to the Senate Judiciary subcommittee that she told the White House that Flynn could be "blackmailed by the Russians" because he had misled Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with Kremlin diplomats.

"We were concerned that the American people had been misled about the underlying conduct and what General Flynn had done," she said.

Trump also told Holt that he was not aware of Flynn's payments from the Russian and Turkish governments, but wondered if maybe former President Barack Obama did.

"Obama perhaps knew because [Flynn] had clearance from the Obama administration," Trump told NBC News. "And his clear — and this is something they never want to report — he had clearance from the Obama administration. The highest clearance you can have."

While Flynn's clearance was continued by the Obama administration, he was also fired by the prior administration from his post as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014.Obama also warned Trump against hiring Flynn less than 48 hours after the November election, three former Obama administration officials have told NBC News.

On Wednesday, the Senate Intelligence Committee subpoenaed Flynn — the first time they've used that subpoena power since the joint inquiry into the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, according to a Senate historian. The Senate Intelligence Committee also subpoenaed documents from Flynn after he declined to provide them if he wasn't offered immunity. 
NTodd reminded me of this.  By the way, the full interview transcript, if you can follow it, is here.  It includes gems like this brave attempt to square a circle:

HOLT: But when you put out tweets it's a total hoax. It's a taxpayer charade. And you're looking for a new FBI director, are you not sending that person a message to lay off?

TRUMP: No, I'm not doing that. I think that we have to get back to work. But I want to find out -- I want to get to the bottom.

If Russia hacked -- if Russia did anything having to do with our election, I want to know about it.

HOLT: Well, there's already -- there's already intelligence from virtually every intelligence agency that yes, that happened (ph).

TRUMP: I'll tell you this. If Russia or anybody else is trying to interfere with our elections, I think it's a horrible thing and I want to get to the bottom of it. And I want to make sure it will never, ever happen.

But he fired Comey because the Russia interference story is fake:

TRUMP: They -- he made a recommendation. He's highly respected. Very good guy, very smart guy.

And the Democrats like him. The Republicans like him.

He had made a recommendation. But regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire Comey knowing there was no good time to do it

And in fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself -- I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story. It's an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should've won.

And the reason they should've won it is the electoral college is almost impossible for a Republican to win. It's very hard because you start off at such a disadvantage. So, everybody was thinking they should've won the election. This was an excuse for having lost an election.
So you see, he fired Comey because he won the election; and the story of Russia's involvement is fake, but he wants to get to the bottom of it, although there isn't one, because it's fake, and he fired Comey because it was fake, and he wants to make sure it will never happen again if it did, which it didn't; because the whole story is fake.

And he didn't fire Flynn because Sally Yates said he should, because that didn't sound like an emergency.  He fired Flynn because Flynn lied to the FBI, which nobody else knew about until the plea deal was announced last week.

See?

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Sunday, December 03, 2017

Ooops.




President Trump asked the FBI to drop its probe into former national security adviser Michael Flynn and urged then-FBI Director James B. Comey instead to pursue reporters in leak cases, according to associates of Comey who have seen private notes he wrote recounting the conversation.

According to the notes written by Comey following a February meeting with the president, Trump brought up the counterintelligence investigation into Flynn and urged Comey to drop the probe in the wake of the national security adviser’s resignation.

The conversation between Trump and Comey took place after a national security meeting. The president asked to speak privately to the FBI director, and the others left the room, according to the Comey associates, who, like other officials, spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to reveal internal discussions.

“I hope you can let this go,’’ Trump said, according to the Comey notes, which were described by the associates. Comey’s written account of the meeting is two pages long and highly detailed, the associates said.
Comey also testified to this under oath, before Congress.   Notes made at the time of the event are usually pretty persuasive evidence.  Notes confirmed by sworn testimony, are very solid evidence.

Trump tweets.  The best thing that's done for him so far is provide solid evidence for an obstruction of justice charge.
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Saturday, December 02, 2017

Because I'll want to return to this someday



On a bleak second day in December, a ray of sunshine bursts the clouds:

Yup, that is what you think it is:

So, is Trump really that stupid?
“UPDATE: The Post is now reporting that the tweet was authored by Trump’s personal lawyer, John Dowd, according to two people familiar with the situation,” said a note added some time after the article was published at 4:30 p.m. Saturday. “The fact that Dowd authored the tweet could limit its salience to the investigation, but the White House still hasn’t publicly corrected anything.”
Well, clearly they think we are.
Trump isn't through, either:
And it's not really any kind of a defense, unless the lawyer hacked Trump's Twitter account:

Or maybe the lawyer just wrote the text of the tweet:
No, that doesn't work, either:
Just to be clear, how bad is this?
And of course, Trump still insists he should be in charge of all decisions judicial and otherwise:

Fortunately, Eric Tucker is happy to explain this to us:

In the meantime, don't neglect to ask what Jeff Sessions is up to:

Which leads to this observation:
So, yeah, here we are, in an alternative universe of unabashed corruption, where the President is an ignorant clown and the AG of the United States is a corrupt politician.  Or December 2, 2017; whichever you prefer.

UPDATE:  How much are they paying this guy?

John Dowd, an attorney for President Donald Trump, is claiming that he wrote the president’s tweet on Saturday in which he said he fired ex-national security adviser Michael Flynn for lying to Vice President Mike Pence and to the FBI. “He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!” Trump wrote in part of Flynn, who has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. Dowd told ABC News that he wrote the tweet and that it was “sloppy.” 

Still doesn't make any difference; as Ted Lieu pointed out (above), Trump has tacitly accepted these words as his own, and having done so, they are now.  Same thing if your lawyer makes a stupid plea on your behalf in court, and you tell the court "Yeah, I agree with that."
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Money Talks


Trump voters expected him to drain the swamp.  Instead he installed a diving board, built a new pool house, and set out more chairs for everyone to lounge in.

The big money donors demanded the GOP pass a tax bill or else, and so the GOP did.  There's no other reason for it.  Opinion polls don't matter, optics don't matter, letters, e-mails, phone calls don't matter:  none of that matters if you can't get the $$$$ to run for office.  Representatives in the House start the first day of their new job looking for money, and spend several hours a day at that quest every day thereafter, or they don't get re-elected.  Period.  Senators don't have to be quite so desperate, but who thinks they ignore donors until they are four years in?  Money talks.  End of discussion.

Is this tax bill a disaster for the country?  Who in the Congress cares?  It serves the true masters, and it keeps the money flowing so incumbents can win re-election.  Who is to blame for this?  Us.  The rubes.  We're all rubes.  We're rubes because we re-elect incumbents, even though incumbents suck and everybody should face term limits except our guy, who's a-okay.  We're rubes because we thought thought the system would save us and everybody else would elect Hillary Clinton so we elected a GOP Congress.  Balance, donchaknow?  Checks and balances, ain't it?  Didn't work out that way, and it turns out the GOP isn't interested in governance at all; just in keeping their jobs.  There was no legislative process, no regular order, no review of what the bill contained:  just lots of flimsy promises and notes scribbled in margins in pencil and in the end we were no longer discussing what our office holders really are, we were just negotiating price.  And in that game, we the people don't hold the checkbook; but we sure respond to what that checkbook buys.

We are the sovereign.  This is a democracy.   Look in the mirror, because we did this to ourselves.

Hope it was worth it, all the "economic anxiety" and "angry white man" resentment.  Because this is what it produces.

Now they're on to Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security.  Will they gut that?  Paul Ryan sure wants to.  Who is gonna stop him?
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Friday, December 01, 2017

Does his elevator go to the top floor?


Damn straight, Limey beeyotch!

Apparently this is "elevating the conversation:"

Britain First has spent the past 24 hours celebrating Trump’s endorsement of their hard-right propaganda. Fransen posted a video addressed to the president describing “how delighted I am that, as the leader of the free world you took the time out to retweet three of my videos on Twitter today.”

The group had previously struggled to garner mainstream-media coverage of their video stunts, which include mosque “invasions” and “Christian patrols” during which uniformed thugs carrying white crosses attempt to intimidate minority citizens.

On Wednesday, Trump catapulted Fransen and the group’s leader Paul Golding, who is also a convicted criminal, into the global conversation.
It certainly raised a conversation in the British House of Commons:

The speaker of the House of Commons granted an urgent question in the chamber following Trump’s Twitterstorm, which included an attack on the British prime minister, who had described his promotion of Islamophobia videos as “wrong.”

Stephen Doughty, a Labour MP, called for Trump’s invitation for a state visit to Britain to be rescinded.

“This is the president of the United States sharing, with millions, inflammatory and divisive content, deliberately posted to sow hatred and division by… a convicted criminal who is facing further charges, who represents a vile fascist organization seeking to spread hatred and violence in person and online. By sharing it, he is either a racist, incompetent, or unthinking—or all three.”
Don't they understand he's only sharing it with his "base"?  How else is he going to "elevate the conversation" if he doesn't share information with his base via Twitter?  And all American punditry agrees Trump's base are the most important people in the world!

Well, at least there's agreement across the pond and in the White House that the President doesn't read what he re-tweets:

Lord Hain, a Labour politician, said in the House of Lords that he assumed Trump “only tweets messages he has thought carefully about and agrees with.”

This elicited laughter in the chamber, but he continued by saying Trump was therefore endorsing a “Nazi group with a vicious record of attacks, racism, Islamophobia, and anti-Semitism.”

“Surely there can be no question of a state visit until at least he has expressed some remorse about this,” he said.

.....

“One of the advantages of having such a special relationship with the United States is when a friend tells you you’ve done something dreadfully wrong, you tend to listen,” said Peter Bone. “And wouldn’t the world be a better place if the prime minister could persuade the president of the United States to delete his Twitter account?”

Home Secretary Amber Rudd, who was representing the government during the debate, signaled her agreement. “It’s interesting to note [the] advice regarding Twitter accounts—I’m sure many of us might share his view.”

Another Conservative MP suggested that the deletion of the account should not be left to the whim of the president.

Tim Loughton said if Twitter was “genuine in its commitment to fight hate crime online,” it should “have no hesitance in taking down the Twitter account of the First Citizen of the U.S. as it would any other citizen of the world who peddles such hate crime.”

London Mayor Sadiq Khan said May “should be using any influence she and her government claim to have with the president” to ask that he “delete these tweets and to apologize to the British people.”

Despite Trump’s attack on the prime minister overnight, Rudd repeated the line from Downing Street saying that the U.K. had been “very clear” that Trump was “wrong” to retweet the videos. “We will continue to speak freely and frankly when it takes place,” she said.

Diane Abbott, one of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s closest allies, said Trump had offended the entire nation.

What part of "elevating the conversation" do these Brits not understand?

“On the question of the online activities of the 45th president, does the home secretary accept that the fact [he] chose to retweet material from Britain First is not just offensive to British people of Muslim heritage, it’s not just offensive to British people of black and minority ethnic heritage, it is offensive to all decent British people? It is also an attack on the values of this country.”

Her Labour colleague Yvette Cooper said Britain should rethink the state-visit invitation as the government must not “simply roll out a red carpet and give a platform for the president of the United States” to “sow discord in our communities.”

“We know that he... will keep doing this and keep spreading extremism.”

Is "extremism" Brit-speak for....oh, I can't do it anymore.....
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Thursday, November 30, 2017

It's so easy to cast some blame

You can't go home again.  Either.

Apparently one should never find out one's heroes are human beings:

But there were always reasons to suspect that Keillor’s folksy persona wasn’t a true portrait of the man: the unseemly lawsuit against his neighbor, the messy personal life. In interviews, he often comes off as aloof and awkward. A profile last year in the New York Times ended with the radio host breezing past the reporter after a show without acknowledging her, or even seeming to recognize her. “He is certainly the strangest person I know,” the writer Roger Angell, his one-time editor, said in that piece. “I don’t think he’s necessarily a happy man.”

I'm not sure I ever thought of Mr. Keillor as a "happy man."  I'm not sure I think of myself that way. Should I be scrubbed from the public record?  And if that isn't reason enough to think he's guilty of horrible crimes which have yet to be defined by anyone (except Keillor, and who can trust him, amirite?), what about his performance, what about the reason why he's famous?

Even before this week, it has never been terribly hard to come up with reasons to complain about Keillor: his heavy sighing directly into the microphone, his uneven singing voice, his promotion of casserole-bland culture. He’s the epitome of “a white, male, liberal, literary Midwesterner,” as one exasperated critic put it. Underneath his steadfast liberalism, though, was a fundamentally conservative streak. In a notorious 2007 column for Salon, he kvetched that gay marriage would be annoyingly complicated, producing “a whole new string of hyphenated relatives…Bruce and Kevin’s in-laws and Bruce’s ex, Mark, and Mark’s current partner, and I suppose we’ll get used to it.” (Keillor himself has been married three times.)

See?  He's white, male, liberal, midwestern, and married 3 times.  Besides, he sighs!  How can you defend a guy like that?

Now critics are combing through Keillor’s voluminous archives for signs of casual misogyny. They surely won’t be hard to find. His 1997 novel Wobegon Boy includes a scene in which the hero, a Lutheran guy who works in public radio, is unjustly accused of sexual harassment for telling an off-color joke. Just this week, when Keillor must have known trouble was looming, he published a column in the Washington Post titled “Al Franken should resign? That’s absurd.” The column has been understandably lambasted online, but in typical Keillor form, it’s actually rather hard to tell if he’s making the point he seems to be making, or gently skewering it.

If I recall 1997 correctly, "sexual harassment" was still barely a legal concept, much less an accepted form of attack on public figures.  Maybe we should re-read Mr. Keillor's last column (no, really) for WaPo.

Keillor’s shtick was nostalgia, so I hope it’s appropriate to indulge on some on the eve of his fall from grace. He was a masterful storyteller and stylist, a booster of great musical talents, and a compelling performer, heavy breathing and all. Who knows what else he might be—we’ll surely find out. Lake Wobegon never existed, but it will still hurt to watch it burn to the ground.

Who's providing the matches and kerosene?
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...the more they remain the same


Roy Moore:

 In a sermon-like speech from the pulpit of the Magnolia Springs Baptist Church, Moore warned his supporters of a “conspiracy” against him concocted by forces seeking to derail his political career. All in one go, he then blamed “liberals, lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgenders, and socialists” for the allegations against him. “They’re the Washington establishment... who don’t want to lose their power,” he said. Several women have come forward to accuse the Republican candidate of pursuing them sexually when they were underage, with one accuser saying she was 14 at the time of an alleged incident. Moore has denied the claims and on Wednesday described them as “false” and “malicious” attacks.

Which I'm sure can be explained by another analysis of his "evangelical supporters" and still more Biblical proof-texting.  Because what ordinary American would support a person who makes such an argument, amirite?  Is this part of the "hermeneutics of disgust" whereby evangelical supporters of Moore stand by him despite the allegations against him?  Is this another example of "part of a long history of complicated sexual politics in the Christian world"?  Is this further proof that:  "The allegations are being read by Moore supporters through a lens shaped by the courtship-purity movement promoted by the Biblical Patriarchy and Quiverfull movements widely influential in Christian homeschooling circles"?

Maybe it's just "economic insecurity."

Or is this another situation where Occam's Razor tells us voters in Alabama like a narrative that pits "us" against "them," and "them" are people they think populate a mythical place called "Washington," because frankly the attitude expressed by Moore is only different in tone and vehemence from what my father described as the attitude of people in Dallas, Texas during the Great Depression toward major government programs like the WPA ("We Piddle Around").

The more things change.....
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....but not forgotten

Seems a bit harsh....

This inspires me:

Carter is the co-host of BadChristian, a terrific podcast where three Christian guys (Carter, Toby Morrell, and Joey Svendsen) navigate the world of the modern American church, which has come to stand in for a whole bunch of movements — especially political ones — that have turned it into yet another cudgel in the culture wars between the right and left.

To play cranky old fart and point out there is no such thing as "the modern American church."  There are congregations, most as peculiar and prickly as families; there are denominations, some of which control some of what those congregations get up to, most of which who don't, and this notion:

As someone who’s recently gotten more involved in his local church, I wanted to talk with Carter about how Christians can get away from the kinds of behavior that have given them such a bad reputation.

For Carter, it’s all about relationships before dogma. He explains:

The only way past that is ... total acceptance. You could use the word grace from the Christian tradition, but I’m going to translate it as acceptance — like a radical acceptance of other people. I mean that on a big level, but really just on an individual level.

I would parallel that to my relationship with my wife. When I was dating my wife, she didn’t have the same faith that I did, and that bothered me. I wanted to be involved with her, and I wanted to get married to her, and I wanted to move forward with her, but I wasn’t willing to do that until she cleaned up her act or started thinking the right way or gotten right, in my view. And that was horrible and abusive and bad and ineffective and counterproductive and wrong.

It took years and years of nonsense that I thought was her fault, but it was always my fault, looking back on it. ... She comes from a family that’s less stable and some trauma in her background, and she always felt fundamentally unaccepted as a person. So you can only imagine how some asshole like me treating her that way would further the problem and cause other reactions.

It was only in spite of me when I understood the damage that I’d done — which is actually a spiritual communication to me that helped my eyes to be opened to what I was actually doing in that relationship —- that I could accept her without an agenda. And then it was, like, “Whoa. That just worked.” When I accepted her for who she was, she felt the security of that acceptance from me, and everything else fell into place.

That could apply to anything, even to groups. If you want to talk about LGBT people in church, or any time a Christian gets around somebody and they start trying to befriend a “sinner,” it stinks, it smells. You know there’s an agenda behind it. You know it’s a temporary acceptance until you can eventually “get right.” The agenda is there, and everybody knows it, and everybody smells it. It doesn’t work.

Real grace, I think the way the gospel really is or the way Jesus would really be, you wouldn’t feel or smell that agenda, where I’ll invite my “sinner” neighbors over tonight and show them that I “love” them, but they know they only have a certain amount of time before they have to convert and that will end. They know that they’re a project for you. That stinks. That smells, and everybody’s wise.

Real relationships have to be without agenda.

Is a truly lovely idea I learned all about in seminary, and went forth into the world ready to apply to every church I pastored.  Aside from my personal foibles and limitations, this is the single largest outside reason I don't preach in a church today.  Seeing what the problem is, and fixing the problem, are two very different things.  I'm all for "real relationships" being "without agenda."  Now start with your presumption that people want you to tell them that, that they want you to set them straight, that all they need is to hear it from you, or see you model it, or listen to you preach it, and the scales will fall from their eyes and they will agree with you and accept your theology (which is what it is) and follow you.

Don't apply it to groups.  Apply it to you.  It's the only way it works.  Don't think of the church as a thing.  Don't think of people as things.  We all do it; it's the easiest reflex in human society, because we are all fundamentally self-centered, we all have trouble imagining the other as other, and not just an extension of self.  Work on that.  It's a lifelong effort.  It's the work of Christianity, of being first of all by being servant of all.  The servant doesn't direct the master.  The servant doesn't set the master straight.  The servant doesn't tell the master what "real grace" is; because all of that puts the servant above the master.

It's a hard truth; but it's really the only way the church can "overcome its bad reputation."  And maybe you start that larger project by not thinking of "the church" as "the church."  Because, really, even among the Roman Catholics or the Orthodox, there is no such thing.  Hard to change what isn't there.  Harder still to change people who aren't you.

Work on you, by serving them.  "Real relationships have to be without agenda," after all.
Posted by at 1 comment:

Nothing to see here!


Here we go again.

Maggie Haberman:

In the midst of a week featuring the president attacking the media, retweeting anti-Muslim videos, suggesting that Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough killed an intern, and calling using an anti-Native American slur at an event honoring Native Americans,  Times reporter Maggie Haberman told CNN Wednesday that Trump bizarre actions have “markedly accelerated (and are) seeming a little unmoored.”

“Something is unleashed with him lately,” the White House correspondent said. “I don’t know what is causing it. I don’t know how to describe it.”

A CNN panel:

“I’ve picked up bits and snippets of this, but I want to ask you to share your reporting on the president’s adherence to a set of facts that are not at all related to the truth,” Wallace requested of Washington Post White House reporter Ashley Parker.

“This president has always been prone to conspiracy theories,” Parker noted. “Throughout his entire life he’s always, to put it in charitable terms, been a salesman, a marketer — presented the rosiest reality and chosen his own set of alternative facts and lived at times in an alternate reality.”

“Eli, the word I heard from White House whisperers…is that he increasingly projects a delusional version of himself to himself and to his twitter followers, this is someone staring in the mirror of his own most rabid fans and feeding them only what he thinks they will believe without acknowledging that it’s moving further and further away from reality,” Wallace revealed. “Do you have any reporting that suggests there is anyone on this White House staff who is interested in offering the president a reality check?”

“It’s very difficult. I’ve heard the word delusional from some folks as well,” Wall Street Journal White House correspondent Eli Stokols replied. “John Kelly came in and changed some things in the White House, but he has not changed Donald Trump’s behavior — his compulsion to grab his phone or retweet things. And he really hasn’t tried.”

“He’s tweeting these things to 43 million people and there is a sort of authoritarian aspect to a president who so brazenly takes issue with objective truth, who disputes things that are clear and obvious to the public and has staffers out there saying — basically backing him up and saying you don’t know what’s true, we’re disputing that reality,” Stokols continued. “It’s one of the darker aspects of this administration, and I think we’re seeing it every day.”

“The other thing that I picked up today was that there is pretty grave concern that by re-upping Birtherism in the face and wake of all these — we played a tape of about a minute and a half of just this blatantly racially divisive statements and he retweeted three anti-Muslim videos today,” Wallace noted. “The dye is now cast, he is advancing and advocating racism in this country.”

“This is someone who has always had a shaky relationship with the truth,” Associated Press White House reporter Jonathan Lemire responded. “Trump Tower, just a few blocks from here, he has lied about how tall it is. He says it’s ten stories higher than it is.”

“This is someone whose whole political career was born on the bocks of Birtherism, a lie, a racist lie,” Lemire noted. “And here he is in the office with the gravity of the White House behind him and still perpetrating in this, including these tweets this morning with these — retweeting from an Islamophobic website, tweets so inflammatory they were denounced by Theresa May and endorsed by David Duke.”

“Good Lord,” Wallace concluded.

The ghost writer of The Art of the Deal:

“What does it mean when Donald Trump says the thing that he apologized for and admitted he said, was maybe a hoax?” Melber asked.

“That he is decompensating. That’s a psychiatric term, but what it means in simple terms is he is losing his grip on reality,” Schartz suggested. “His reality testing is really poor and I believe that’s exactly what’s going on.”

“You have known him for quite some time,” Melber noted. “When you see Donald Trump today, when you see what he’s saying that is false, is it about what you saw then or do you see a change?”

“There is a pretty dramatic change. He is more limited in his vocabulary, he is further from, as I said, this connection to what is factual and real. He is more impulsive, he is more reactive,” Schwartz observed. “This is a guy in deep trouble.”

“We need to be really bringing in psychiatrists because this is a man who is deeply mentally ill and literally, I know that two different people from the White House — or at least saying they they were from the White House and it turned out to be a White House number — who have called somebody I know in the last several weeks to say, ‘we are deeply concerned about his mental health.'”

“Wait a minute,” Melber interrupted. “You’re saying you have knowledge of people calling from a White House line raising that question? Why would they do that? How do you know?

“I know because I know the person that they called and this is a person who I absolutely trust, who has great integrity,” Schwartz answered.

“I believe there are people who are concerned,” Schwartz concluded. “Most of them, I think, are hostages to a cult leader. When you watch Sarah Huckabee Sanders, you really feel as if you’re watching somebody who is being brainwashed, or has been brainwashed.”

“I believe what is causing his decompensation at this level is his belief that they are going to get him on Russia,” Schwartz suggested. “And I think Trump is terrified of that. So he is both striking out and he is deflecting, he is in a survival state.”

“I’ve said this before, he is in a state of fight or flight,” Schwartz concluded. “You lose the capacity to reflect and think rationally and logically and you simply lash out and react in an attempt to defend yourself. What he is defending against is an inner sense of emptiness.”

And don't forget our "special relationship" with:

“British people overwhelmingly reject the prejudiced rhetoric of the far right which is the antithesis of the values that this country represents – decency, tolerance and respect,” a Downing Street spokesman told the BBC. “It is wrong for the president to have done this.”

Predictably, Trump lashed out at Prime Minister Theresa May, telling her, “don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine,” Trump claimed.

Yet in his haste to defend getting caught spreading fascist propaganda, Trump inadvertently tweeted his reply at somebody other than the Prime Minister.
Madness?  No!  It's all strategery!

According to this source close to the White House, apparently President Trump, ever since that day when he finally acknowledged that Barack Obama was born in the United States, was questioning and has questioned since then, the politics of that decision—meaning that he feels he would have done better the November election last year had he just stood his ground and insisted that Barack Obama was not born in the United States,” Acosta said.

“He feels he would have performed even better in the polls had he stayed with that position,” the CNN reporter added.

Acosta called the detail “a remarkable insight into his mind,” noting that while some analysts have described Trump as “perhaps … kind of losing it,” it’s in fact “more tactical, that the president believes in citing some of these racially-tinged conversations around the country because he feels they help him politically.”

“This development that the president believed back then it was just the wrong political move to acknowledge that Obama was born in the United States goes to that theory,” Acosta said.

Sure it is.....

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Making graven images

I dunno; looks like a graven image to me....

Roy Moore loves the Ten Commandments; and it has been noted more than once, even by your humble host, that it's curious he's not more enamored of the Beatitudes.  But since he seems to be more interested in the Hebrew Scriptures (Moore would call them the "Old Testament"), it's odd he's not more interested in Deuteronomy, somewhere just past the "Ten Commandments" passage:

These shall stand upon mount Gerizim to bless the people, when ye are come over Jordan; Simeon, and Levi, and Judah, and Issachar, and Joseph, and Benjamin:
13 And these shall stand upon mount Ebal to curse; Reuben, Gad, and Asher, and Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali.
14 And the Levites shall speak, and say unto all the men of Israel with a loud voice,
15 Cursed be the man that maketh any graven or molten image, an abomination unto the LORD, the work of the hands of the craftsman, and putteth it in a secret place. And all the people shall answer and say, Amen.
16 Cursed be he that setteth light by his father or his mother. And all the people shall say, Amen.
17 Cursed be he that removeth his neighbour’s landmark. And all the people shall say, Amen.
18 Cursed be he that maketh the blind to wander out of the way. And all the people shall say, Amen.
19 Cursed be he that perverteth the judgment of the stranger, fatherless, and widow. And all the people shall say, Amen.
20 Cursed be he that lieth with his father’s wife; because he uncovereth his father’s skirt. And all the people shall say, Amen.
21 Cursed be he that lieth with any manner of beast. And all the people shall say, Amen.
22 Cursed be he that lieth with his sister, the daughter of his father, or the daughter of his mother. And all the people shall say, Amen.
23 Cursed be he that lieth with his mother in law. And all the people shall say, Amen.
24 Cursed be he that smiteth his neighbour secretly. And all the people shall say, Amen.
25 Cursed be he that taketh reward to slay an innocent person. And all the people shall say, Amen.
26 Cursed be he that confirmeth not all the words of this law to do them. And all the people shall say, Amen

Deuteronomy 27:13-26.

There are some curses there he could surely get behind, like the curse against bestiality, or lying with your father's wife (not the Oedipal crime, mind you, in a society where a man might have many wives).  Note that "crime" is against the father, not the wife; but there is a protection against lying with your own sister (incest) or what we today would call half-brothers or sisters (or even step-brothers, as the law provided for widows to become the wives of brothers of the deceased husband).  It's verses 18 and 19 I'm particularly interested in, though, because those are the concerns least likely to be raised by someone like Roy Moore.  This is the KJV; since I don't read Hebrew, I looked at the Revised English Bible for a bit more clarity:

'A curse on anyone who misdirects a blind man'; the people must all say, 'Amen.'

'A curse on anyone who withholds justice from the alien, the fatherless, and the widow,': and the people must all say, 'Amen.'

Now put that up against, say, Luke's version of the Beatitudes (Luke's gospel includes the curses that Matthew leaves out):

Congratulations, you poor!
God's domain belongs to you!

Congratulations, you hungry!
You will have a feast.

Congratulations, you who weep now!
You will laugh.

I've addressed the issue of this translation of the Greek makarios here, if you're interested.

The curses in Deuteronomy are part of a ritual, and are concerned with matters other than just what we would call "social justice."  They are directed to a congregation, a gathering, a synagogue, an ekklesia.   They are first directives, and then the blessing for following those directives.  The ritual ends where Luke's Beatitudes begin:

1 And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments which I command thee this day, that the LORD thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth:

2 And all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God.

3 Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the field.

4 Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep.

5 Blessed shall be thy basket and thy store.

6 Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out.

Jesus is talking to a different crowd than those addressed by the Deuteronomists (scholars consider the writers a school, not an individual).  But that's another story.  For our purposes, the comparison between these scriptures is enough, and it points away from the Ten Commandments as the touchstone and bulwark upon which a fortress is built against evil and error.  In fact, that kind of attitude is one the prophets would denounce as evil and error, because they would identify it as idolatry.  Simply following the words of the law is not the same thing as "hearken[ing] unto the voice of the LORD thy God."  Not unless you think God stopped speaking shortly after those ten rules were written down.  Certainly the Deuteronomist didn't think so.  It's easy to make an idol of those 10 rules, much harder to make an idol out of the Beatitudes in Luke, especially since they continue with these words:

Damn you rich!
You already have your consolation!

Damn you who are well-fed now!
You will know hunger.

Damn you who laugh now!
You will learn to weep and grieve.

Those words attack what we usually think of as the sources of idolatry, but they don't attack wealth and full larders and happiness; in fact, they don't really attack at all.  They point out it won't always be this way:  food runs out, money runs away, all the laughter dies in sorrow; and that is of a piece with the congratulations to the poor, the hungry, the weeping:  this, too, shall pass.  There is a time to every purpose under heaven, but expecting one condition to be permanent and static, wealth or poverty, happiness or sorrow, hunger or satiation, is vanity and striving after emptiness.  The Ten Commandments, used as they usually are as the summation of the law and the basis for ordering society and morality, are abused in a manner it is hard to do with the Beatitudes.  Luke's version, especially, are in keeping with the Magnificat of Mary:  the powerful will be toppled, the powerless raised up.  But that's more a vision of Isaiah's highway for God, also prefigured in Luke's story of John the Baptist (the most complete story in the four gospels):  mountains lowered, valleys raised, so the path of the Lord is straight and visible to all.  In Luke's gospel that vision becomes the foundation for social justice, where the first of all is last and servant of all, and the race is to the bottom, to be the servant of all, not to the top; because when you're number one, the only way to go is down.  You have had your compensation, you will know hunger, you will learn to weep and grieve.

If Roy Moore had heeded those lessons, rather than wrapped his arms around stone tablets he conceived to be all he needed of the Law (of Moses, and the law itself), he might have learned humility and have lived a much more valuable life, life into the ages.  He might have made human beings of others, and a human being of himself.  As it stands now, having made an idol of the Law, he has also made an idol of himself.

I'm not sure that's going to be much consolation.
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Wednesday, November 29, 2017

What we have come to.....

Really?

WaPo:

After we published this column, Minnesota Public Radio announced it was terminating its contracts with Garrison Keillor due to "allegations of his inappropriate behavior with an individual who worked for him."  The Post takes these allegations seriously and is seeking more information about them."

What happened?  Well actually, nobody knows:

Keillor told The Associated Press of his firing in an email. In a follow-up statement, he said he was fired over “a story that I think is more interesting and more complicated than the version MPR heard.” He didn’t give details of the allegation.

“It’s some sort of poetic irony to be knocked off the air by a story, having told so many of them myself, but I’m 75 and don’t have any interest in arguing about this. And I cannot in conscience bring danger to a great organization I’ve worked hard for since 1969,” Keillor said.

“A person could not hope for more than what I was given,” he said.

Minnesota Public Radio confirmed Keillor had been fired, saying it received a single allegation of “inappropriate behavior” and doesn’t know of any other similar allegations. MPR said it was notified of the allegation last month and that it stemmed from Keillor’s conduct when he was responsible for producing “A Prairie Home Companion.”
And what was the column to which this editorial note was appended? An opinion piece that opens with this quote:

"It's slippery ground, in general, to judge past actions by present standards and with a benefit of hindsight that is, morally, highly questionable."
And goes on to discuss, among other prominent persons, the President of the United States (we only have one at a time), and Sen. Al Franken.  Of the proposed (or demanded) resignation of Sen. Franken Mr. Keillor has this to say:

This is pure absurdity, and the atrocity it leads to is a code of public deadliness.  No kidding. 
No word yet on whether any of the editors of the Washington Post have been required to review the definition of "irony," and consider how it applies here.  But considering Mr. Keillor is not accused of the sins of Adolf Hitler, or even of David Duke, much less Donald Trump, it seems a bit disturbing that his words, which only come to Sen. Franken's situation in the final paragraphs, should be deemed so guilty by association with the allegation against Mr. Keillor, that the WaPo editorial board must wash its hands of them even as it leaves them available on-line and in print.

What's next?

*Now we do:

In an email to the Star Tribune Wednesday, Keillor said, “I put my hand on a woman’s bare back. I meant to pat her back after she told me about her unhappiness and her shirt was open and my hand went up it about six inches. She recoiled. I apologized. I sent her an email of apology later and she replied that she had forgiven me and not to think about it. We were friends. We continued to be friendly right up until her lawyer called.”

Keillor even managed a joke of sorts: “Getting fired is a real distinction in broadcasting and I’ve waited fifty years for the honor. All of my heroes got fired. I only wish it could’ve been for something more heroic.”

Then he turned more serious: “Anyone who ever was around my show can tell you that I was the least physically affectionate person in the building. Actors hug, musicians hug, people were embracing every Saturday night left and right, and I stood off in the corner like a stone statue.

“If I had a dollar for every woman who asked to take a selfie with me and who slipped an arm around me and let it drift down below the beltline, I’d have at least a hundred dollars. So this is poetic irony of a high order. But I’m just fine. I had a good long run and am grateful for it and for everything else.”

And I don't know if this is meant to be snark or in the same mode as the WaPo editorial note, but it's out there:


The MPR statement says, in part:

Last month, MPR was notified of the allegations which relate to Mr. Keillor's conduct while he was responsible for the production of A Prairie Home Companion (APHC). MPR President Jon McTaggart immediately informed the MPR Board Chair, and a special Board committee was appointed to provide oversight and ongoing counsel.

In addition, MPR retained an outside law firm to conduct an independent investigation of the allegations. Based on what we currently know, there are no similar allegations involving other staff. 

And there's already speculation like this:

Considering Keillor’s immense popularity among public radio diehards, this dramatic break suggests that the allegations against Keillor are severe.
Because sure, there's no hysteria in the entertainment industry right now, or in any NPR-related entity whatsoever.

And MPR scrubbing all PHC programs from broadcast and renaming the show currently on the air is not ironic in light of Keillor's WaPo column mostly about renaming things because we no longer like the people they are named for.  No matter; punishment must be meted out so we can all feel good about ourselves again.  Well, so some of us can.  Because, as Slate said, in a line of argument that only underlines the WaPo column's argument:

Keillor once brought up the scourge of sexual harassment in an odd address at the National Press Club in 1994. “We should be careful…not to make the world so fine and good that you and I can’t enjoy living in it,” he said. “A world in which there is no sexual harassment at all is a world in which there will not be any flirtation.” He made the same joke in his 2006 book, Homegrown Democrat. Keillor has not yet indicated whether the “interesting” and “complicated” situation that led to his firing involved flirtation, sexual harassment, or both.

There's a cartoon of Lucy handing Snoopy her balloon to keep safe while she goes inside for lunch.  Snoopy clamps it in his jaws, falls asleep sitting up, yawns, and releases it into the wild blue yonder.  The last panel shows Snoopy walking down the railroad tracks in the moonlight, his bindlestiff on his shoulder, thinking:  "Make one mistake and you pay for it the rest of your life."

A world that is long on punishment and resentment and short on forgiveness and self-examination ("let he who is without sin....") is not a world I want to live in; though for the most part, I have to.

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Representing our nation to the world very poorly



Yeah, about that:

I don't think Trump is going to retweet that one.
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As a Prism Bends Light....


For a long time I harbored the secret hope that "No, he's really not; he just plays one on TeeVee."  (No, not a bigot, he is and has always been a bigot.  I mean an idiot completely detached from reality and going down.)

But he is, he really is:

Despite his public acknowledgment of the recording’s authenticity in the final days of the presidential campaign — and his hasty videotaped apology under pressure from his advisers — Mr. Trump as president-elect began raising the prospect with allies that it may not have been him on the tape after all.

Most of Mr. Trump’s aides ignored his changing story. But in January, shortly before his inauguration, Mr. Trump told a Republican senator that he wanted to investigate the recording that had him boasting about grabbing women’s genitals.

“We don’t think that was my voice,” Mr. Trump told the senator, according to a person familiar with the conversation. Since then, Mr. Trump has continued to suggest that the tape that nearly upended his campaign was not actually him, according to three people close to the president.

A)  Another baseless claim from FoxNews.  B)  These are the people he is now in charge of; does he not understand that?  C)  Why does he trust crazy conspiracy theories over the best intelligence gathering and analyzing organizations on the planet?


“This investigation’s going to be over with pretty soon,” Trump’s told friends at his Golf Club and Mar-a-Lago, adding his “brilliant” lawyers have assured him of a rapid conclusion to Mueller’s probe.

And he still hates Barack Obama, and wants to erase him from history:

In recent months, they say, Mr. Trump has used closed-door conversations to question the authenticity of President Barack Obama’s birth certificate. He has also repeatedly claimed that he lost the popular vote last year because of widespread voter fraud, according to advisers and lawmakers.

Many Republican lawmakers — not wanting to undermine the party’s fragile negotiations over a much-sought tax overhaul — declined to talk on the record about Mr. Trump’s pattern of plunging into what one senator called “his rabbit holes.” But the president’s success last year has also left some in his party in awe of his achievement and uneasy about angering his base of supporters.

It isn't, as Sen. Jeff Flake is quoted as saying, that we all need to agree on common facts.   It's that Donald Trump doesn't even have a passing relationship with reality.  Speaking of reality, about that "base of supporters":

Mr. Trump’s friends did not bother denying that the president was creating an alternative version of events. One Republican lawmaker, who asked not to be identified, said that Mr. Trump’s false statements had become familiar to people over time. The president continues to boast of winning districts that he did not in fact win, the lawmaker said, and of receiving 52 percent of the women’s vote, even though exit polls show that 42 percent of women supported him.

The man has the lowest approval rating in Presidential history.  He's more unpopular than prickly heat.  He has the political acumen of a carnival barker.  He has no accomplishment to his name after 11 months in office.  He says he's popular and he has a "base" that supports him, but he also says Barack Obama was born in Kenya and aliens stole his electoral landslide.  After elections earlier this month, what "base" does this man have?  He's political poison, and the only reason he still has political power is that his own party will never impeach him and he can't be forced from office for another 3 years.  What is the powerful cabal he commands, and when will it rise up for him and do his bidding?

Or he theirs?

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Tuesday, November 28, 2017

The Woeful American Ignorance of Biblical Studies

Dom Crossan is a religious man, a one-time (or would be, I honestly don't know which) Catholic priest.  My seminary professors, some ordained ministers, some merely laity, were uniformly believers, if not uniform in their Christian beliefs.  And yet:

There also is a lot of slippage between claims that the Bible is enormously influential (which is indisputable) and that the stories it tells are fundamentally true (a claim disputed not just by atheists, agnostics, secular scholars and scientists, but also by billions of adherents of the world’s other religions). Every resource of museum design and careful argumentation has been mustered to sweep up these unrelated ideas in one, big, overwhelming package.

Granted I'm taking this out of context, and the rest of the review of the museum is worth reading (if WaPo will let you in; sometimes I can get there, sometimes I can't.  YMMV).  But I suspect my seminary professors, religious scholars all, as is Crossan, would disagree with the claim that the stories of the Bible are "fundamentally true."  At least "true" in the sense clearly meant by the Museum of the Bible:

But both the traditional and immersive exhibitions start with unstated assumptions: that the Bible is the most important book in the world, that there is concrete archaeological evidence to explain its origins, that it has been transmitted through the ages with remarkable accuracy, and that it is fundamentally a blessing to mankind.

Debates about the meaning of the Bible are confronted openly and without bias, so long as they don’t undermine those assumptions. 
I wouldn't say that there is concrete evidence to explain all the origins of the Bible (more of the evidence is textual than not, which is the problem for many non-scholars), nor that it's been "transmitted through the ages with remarkable accuracy."  I mean, how do we know, especially as we have no original manuscripts from the hands of Paul (or actually his amanuensis; writing was a menial skill for centuries, as was (to some extent still is) typing), or "Luke" or "John" or "Moses," for that matter.  And while it's part of the Torah, Deuteronomy was definitely written after the Exile, not before (the name, from the Greek, means "second law," what lawyers would call a "second restatement" of the law), so it can't be from the hand of Moses, as tradition says it is.  Besides, we don't know how many versions of the books of the Bible existed before the canon was set, and a perusal of any Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament will reveal dozens of footnotes per page listing variant readings from several manuscripts for almost every word in any text you choose to examine. "Remarkable accuracy" is really a matter of consensus over which word to use in what sentence; and then there's the question of translation.

As for being "fundamentally a blessing to mankind," first I'd go with "humankind" (all those lessons in inclusive language!), but secondly I don't put any kind of magic power in the Bible to be, itself, a blessing.  That's a very peculiarly Protestant point of view, and not one shared by all Protestants or denominations.  The Bible is like the scrolls of the Torah, to my way of thinking:  not to be handled lightly or irreverently, nor shared with those who are not of the community.  Which is not to say hidden away, either, but it is not to be left in hotel rooms in hopes the "magic" of the book will reach the heart of the reader.  Without a community to interpret it it's more likely to sow confusion than enlightenment; then again, without an English class or two, who would tackle Moby Dick today, or Eliot's "The Waste Land," or even Yeats' "The Second Coming," yet what do you miss without someone to help you interpret what you read there?  But that flaw is baked into the design of the Museum, it's not a fault of the WaPo critic.

The claims of the Museum are not the claims of all Christians in the world, nor of all Christians in America; and the claims made by Dom Crossan or the Jesus Seminar (one of my seminary professors was a member; and yes I'm dating myself now) are not heresies held by no one but atheists and agnostics (I have no doubt there are several Christians who would consider me a member of both classes).  I have a dream that one day all people in America will understand the rich complexity of Christianity in America, and not automatically assume we are all either "nones" or unqualified supporters of what the Museum of the Bible means to represent about Christianity.

A guy can dream, can't he?
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The Fart of the Deal

So:

"Given that the president doesn’t see a deal between Democrats and the White House, we believe the best path forward is to continue negotiating with our Republican counterparts in Congress instead," Pelosi and Schumer said in a joint statement.

"If the President, who already said earlier this year that ‘our country needs a good shutdown,’ isn’t interested in addressing the difficult year end agenda, we’ll work with those Republicans who are, as we did in April," the Democratic leaders continued. "We look forward to continuing to work in good faith, as we have been for the last month, with our Republican colleagues in Congress to do just that.”
He still doesn't understand he's not the only party in these matters, does he?  And as for that tax issue, that's not working out too well, either.  Seems some GOP Senators understand what's the matter with Kansas:

As the Senate races toward a vote Thursday or Friday on a 250-plus page bill to overhaul the American tax code, with no hearings and without a complete analysis of the bill’s impact, a cadre of Republican senators say they’re working “feverishly” on a last-minute rewrite. Skeptical of the wild economic growth GOP leadership promises will make up for all the revenue lost in the legislation, the change they’re seeking would create a “backstop” or “trigger” mechanism to undo some of the deepest tax cuts in the bill after several years if that magic economic growth doesn’t materialize.
NPR reported this morning at least 6 Senators are unlikely to vote for the tax bill right now.  I'm sure these provisions will salve their concerns.
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How Can You Drain the Swamp When You're Turning It Into a Cesspool?

He can't even honor some WWII veterans

“The name ["Pocahontas"] becomes a derogatory racial reference when used as an insult,” the Alliance of Colonial Era Tribes’ general secretary said in a statement Monday. “American Indian names, whether they be historic or contemporary, are not meant to be used as insults. To do so is to reduce them to racial slurs.”

Yeah, but what do they know?

“I think what most people find offensive is Sen. Warren lying about her heritage to advance her career,” Sanders said, referring to Warren’s claim — first brought up in 2012 by then-political opponent Scott Brown — that according to unproven family stories, she had Native American heritage.

“She said it was a racial slur,” ABC News’ Jonathan Karl pressed. “What is your response to that?”

“I think that’s a ridiculous response.”

“Why is it appropriate for the President to use a racial slur in any context?” NBC’s Kristen Welker asked.

“I don’t believe that it is appropriate for him to make a racial slur,” Sanders said, “Or anybody else.”

“A lot of people feel as though this is a racial slur,” Welker said.

“Like I said, I don’t think that it is, and I don’t think that was — certainly not the President’s intent,” Sanders said.

Because really, isn't the President's intent all that ever really matters?  He can't be a racist if he doesn't intend to be, amirite?

Besides, the real problem is not that Trump brought this up for no reason whatsoever while receiving the Navajo Code Talkers in front of a portrait of Andrew "Trail of Tears" Jackson,* but that Sen. Warren ever mentioned family stories that she has Native American heritage (which is an appropriate subject of mockery by the President on all occasions, somehow).

“Why is it appropriate for the president to use a racial slur in any context?” NBC News’ Kristen Welker asked.

“I don’t think that it is appropriate for him to use a racial slur, or anyone else,” Sanders replied, before adding, “I think Senator Warren was offensive when she lied about something to advance her career. I don’t know why no one is asking about that question and why that isn’t constantly covered.”

It would certainly distract from what Trump said, which was clearly a distraction from what Trump tweeted over the weekend, and from Roy Moore, and from global warming and the failing tax reform bill.  And anything else you were distracted from, like simple human decency.

*Which, it turns out, was one of the first things Trump did upon taking office:  have the portrait of Jackson hung in the Oval Office.  Clueless or venal, does it really make a difference at this point?

And while I'm adding footnotes, I have to include this conversation on CNN last night:

“How can Sarah Sanders stand there at the podium and say, ‘Oh it’s not a slur, the president doesn’t mean it as a slur,’” host Don Lemon asked, referring to Trump’s comments at a Native American World War II veteran tribute in the Oval Office on Monday, and Sanders’ subsequent claim it was not a racial attack on Warren.

“Don, the reason she does that is because her job is contingent on her being a serial, congenital liar in defense of Donald Trump’s latest outrages,” Wilson opined. “She probably has some tiny, shriveled husk left in her soul where she realizes this is the wrong thing to do, but she does it anyway because otherwise they’ll replace her.”

Trump defender Mike Shields countered that every press secretary “advocates on behalf of the president,” but Wilson buying it.

“Few presidents go out and sling racial overt code words like that,” Wilson replied. “Few presidents go out and crap on the dignity and legacy of people like these code talkers, these heroic veterans, and then send their press secretary out to answer questions in a way that isn’t saying, ‘Wow, the president regrets what he said today, he truly wishes he had not said that.’”

“Instead she goes out and tries to bury people in an avalanche of horsesh*t every day, because this is her job,” Wilson continued. “I get that’s her job. The White House press secretary has to defend the indefensible. In very few other cases in our modern history, has the press secretary had to go out and defend someone who is slinging stuff that is demonstrably racially charged.”

Shields tried to argue that Barack Obama’s press secretary lied when he told reporters, “If you want your doctor, you can keep your doctor.”

“Yeah, but how racial was that?” Wilson asked. “There’s a difference in arguing and advocating for policy, and going out and defending–

“Don, you asked, ‘What’s going on here, what’s going on in the country?’” Shields said, cutting Wilson off. “We just had the best Black Friday and Cyber Monday that we’ve had in 20 years, the economy is booming.”

Wilson visibly rolled his eyes at Shields’ remark.

“What does that have to do with calling someone a racial slur?” Lemon asked.

“It makes racism totally cool then?” Wilson chimed in.
"It's money that matters!/In the U.S.A!" (Sorry, Mr. Newman)

And then Eric had to chime in:

It just gets better.....

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Christmas is coming/you can't put a price tag on that


I'm going to wallow in nostalgia here, because it's my blog and I can do what I want to.  These pictures are from an article about a book, Mid-Century Christmas.  I start with that one because we had those ornaments in my house.  We had the Shiny Brite round ones, and also the weird shapes:  one looked vaguely like a cluster of grapes, most like shapes not found in nature, some vaguely "space age" and "stream lined," but still pretty much the size of those balls above.

They were soon "old-fashioned" and replaced with handmade ornaments and dated ornaments and simply less shiny ornaments.  We also had some much larger round glass ornaments, deep blue, that went on the aluminum tree we put up for a short time:


That's not exactly the tree we had, but close enough.  It had a color wheel, too, which was supposed to change the color of the tree.  That worked better in concept than in reality.  The branches shot up at sharp angles and the color wheel (a flood light with a disc divided into quarters and primary colors for each quarter, which rotated slowly in front of the light) sat on the floor, throwing light up onto the bottoms of the branches, not at all dousing the whole tree in light, not even in a dark room.  We hung the huge blue balls on that tree, and turned on the color wheel, and it was....well, it was "modern."  I thought one year about hanging the tree from the ceiling, but the branches would have to have been glued into the pole that held them, and my father never would have tolerated my attempts at a mounting in the ceiling for the tree's base.  The tree lasted a few years, then was relegated to the attic in perpetuity (where all the larger Christmas ornaments dwelt 11 months of the year), and long before I could get my own house and take it, the aluminum tree was given away, along with all the glass Christmas ornaments.  By that time, of course, they were so out of style they were back in style, so too late.

Now I have to content myself with the 8mm movies my father made at Christmas, silent stuff with bad lighting (I still remember the light bar, a row of 4 flood lights which threatened to set the curtains on fire with their glaring heat and blinding brilliance.  We were always squinting on Christmas morning, according to the official record.)  I can't watch them, though, because I no longer have a projector nor have I paid to convert them to DVD, and now that I think of it, I'm not even sure where they are anymore.

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be.
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