Paul Revere by Cyrus Dallin, North End, Boston

~~~

~~~

Wednesday, May 31, 2017

The Far Right's FAKE Outrage

UPDATE:

During an off-camera news conference on Wednesday, Press Secretary Sean Spicer was asked about discrepancy. 

 “Obviously [Griffin’s] conduct has been widely condemned, and it’s not a partisan thing to say joking about violence toward the president is unacceptable,” a reporter said. “But on that note, I wanted to ask about Ted Nugent, who joked multiple times about assassinating President Barack Obama, who said Hillary Clinton should be hanged. He was invited to the White House for dinner by President Trump. Do you believe that was appropriate? And if Trump is offended by this incident, why was he not bothered by all of Mr. Nugent’s comments?” 

 Spicer had no answers. 

I have an answer: 

The right wingers have no problem with images of violence or degradation so long as those images are directed at Democrats. Period. 



MAY 31, 2017 POST:


A right wing troll came to P.E. and wanted to know WHERE IS YOUR OUTRAGE OVER WHAT KATHY GRIFFIN DID?!!!!!!1111!!!

I don't like what she did. IMO it wasn't funny, it wasn't making a statement. It was WRONG!

But the right wing troll forgets that the man Griffin made a joke -- a "locker room joke?" -- over is the same man who for five long unfunny years questioned President Obama's citizenship and his legitimacy as president. 

That wasn't funny either.

Also things that weren't funny during President Obama's administration were the photos of him with a noose around his neck; the photos of Mr. Obama being burned in effigy; the photos of his wife and children portrayed as apes; the name calling; calling Mrs. Obama a man; and even right wing bloggers condoning their commenters' call for assassinating President Obama. 

The hate mongers on the right made this sort of sickening "joke" acceptable; and now that certain elements on the left are mimicking what they did for the 8 years President Obama was in office, they're angry.  

Really?

Below are just a few of the images the right wingers thought were perfectly acceptable to send around in emails and on the internet when Mr. Obama was president. No right winger came running to my blog screeching about any of them. 

So which is more OUTRAGEOUS? Burning an effigy of Mr. Obama while it hangs from a noose? Or Kathy Griffin imitating Perseus holding the head of Medusa? 

No one spoke up for the past 8 years when people publicized tasteless demonstrations of hatred toward Mr. Obama, so the right tacitly accepted it all. 

Really:
















Ted Nugent was recently warmly welcomed to Trump's White House as an honored guest.


TED NUGENT:

“We need to ride into that battlefield and chop their [the Obama administration’s] heads off in November,” 

Nugent said at the time. He added, “If Barack Obama becomes the next president in November, again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.” 

 Trump addressed Nugent’s comments directly. But rather than saying the musician should be “ashamed” of himself, as he said of Griffin, Trump declared that Nugent demonstrated “the anger people have towards” then–President Obama, even if his “figure of speech” was a bit “unfortunate.” 


Really.

Wednesday is Trump COVFEFE! Day




Donald Trump’s Weird Typo Becomes The Hot New Word Everyone Is Using













If you have a  that lasts more than 4 hours, please see this doctor:











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Tuesday, May 30, 2017

Here's What The Germans Think of Our Unpopular Bungler of a Preznit

Don't look for any agreement from the suckers who voted for this national disaster. President Donald Russia is now lawyering up because of his Trump-Russia scandals. 

We're only 4 months into President Russia's national embarrassment of a presidency and we already have scandal fatigue.




Check out Infidel753's blog post on the Brits mocking Trump.



And it's not just the Brits and Germans who mock Trump or think he's a menace to the world: 







Donald Trump Is a Menace to the World:


Opinion:    A Danger to the World 

It's Time to Get Rid of Donald Trump

Donald Trump has transformed the United States into a laughing stock and he is a danger to the world. He must be removed from the White House before things get even worse.

 © DER SPIEGEL

A DER SPIEGEL
Editorial by Klaus Brinkbäumer



Donald Trump is not fit to be president of the United States. He does not possess the requisite intellect and does not understand the significance of the office he holds nor the tasks associated with it. He doesn't read. He doesn't bother to peruse important files and intelligence reports and knows little about the issues that he has identified as his priorities. His decisions are capricious and they are delivered in the form of tyrannical decrees.


He is a man free of morals. As has been demonstrated hundreds of times, he is a liar, a racist and a cheat. I feel ashamed to use these words, as sharp and loud as they are. But if they apply to anyone, they apply to Trump. And one of the media's tasks is to continue telling things as they are: Trump has to be removed from the White House. Quickly. He is a danger to the world.


Trump is a miserable politician. He fired the FBI director simply because he could. James Comey had gotten under his skin with his investigation into Trump's confidants. Comey had also refused to swear loyalty and fealty to Trump and to abandon the investigation. He had to go.



Witnessing an American Tragedy 

 Trump is also a miserable boss. His people invent excuses for him and lie on his behalf because they have to, but then Trump wakes up and posts tweets that contradict what they have said. He doesn't care that his spokesman, his secretary of state and his national security adviser had just denied that the president had handed Russia (of all countries) sensitive intelligence gleaned from Israel (of all countries). Trump tweeted: Yes, yes, I did, because I can. I'm president after all.




Monday, May 29, 2017

Denis Hale Johnson: July 1, 1945 -- May 24, 2017


One of my favorite writers.

Denis Hale Johnson was an American writer best known for his short story collection Jesus' Son and his novel Tree of Smoke, which won the National Book Award for Fiction. He also wrote plays, poetry, journalism, and non-fiction.


“The White Fires of Venus” — Denis Johnson


“The White Fires of Venus” by Denis Johnson
We mourn this senseless planet of regret,
droughts, rust, rain, cadavers
that can’t tell us, but I promise
you one day the white fires
of Venus shall rage: the dead,
feeling that power, shall be lifted, and each
of us will have his resurrected one to tell him,
“Greetings. You will recover
or die. The simple cure
for everything is to destroy
all the stethoscopes that will transmit
silence occasionally. The remedy for loneliness
is in learning to admit
solitude as one admits
the bayonet: gracefully,
now that already
it pierces the heart.
Living one: you move among many
dancers and don’t know which
you are the shadow of;
you want to kiss your own face in the mirror
but do not approach,
knowing you must not touch one
like that. Living
one, while Venus flares
O set the cereal afire,
O the refrigerator harboring things
that live on into death unchanged.”
They know all about us on Andromeda,
they peek at us, they see us
in this world illumined and pasteled
phonily like a bus station,
they are with us when the streets fall down fraught
with laundromats and each of us
closes himself in his small
San Francisco without recourse.
They see you with your face of fingerprints
carrying your instructions in gloved hands
trying to touch things, and know you
for one despairing, trying to touch the curtains,
trying to get your reflection mired in alarm tape
past the window of this then that dark
closed business establishment.
The Andromedans hear your voice like distant amusement park music
converged on by ambulance sirens
and they understand everything.
They’re on your side. They forgive you.
I want to turn for a moment to those my heart loves,
who are as diamonds to the Andromedans,
who shimmer for them, lovely and useless, like diamonds:
namely, those who take their meals at soda fountains,
their expressions lodged among the drugs
and sunglasses, each gazing down too long
into the coffee as though from a ruined balcony.
O Andromedans they don’t know what to do
with themselves and so they sit there
until they go home where they lie down
until they get up, and you beyond the light years know
that if sleeping is dying, then waking
is birth, and a life
is many lives. I love them because they know how
to manipulate change
in the pockets musically, these whose faces the seasons
never give a kiss, these
who are always courteous to the faces
of presumptions, the presuming streets,
the hotels, the presumption of rain in the streets.
I’m telling you it’s cold inside the body that is not the body,
lonesome behind the face
that is certainly not the face
of the person one meant to become.

Memorial Day




MEMORIAL DAY 2017

Boston Common




Ivanka Trump tweets out suggestion for "celebrating" Memorial Day: 

 MAKE CHAMPAGNE POPSICLES! 

 Read the answers to her stupid tweet suggestion here.




Friday, May 26, 2017

"A Danger to the World"


I've never seen anything like this in my lifetime.



Europe's largest economy and American ally, Germany:


Donald Trump has transformed the United States into a laughing stock and he is a danger to the world. He must be removed from the White House before things get even worse. © DER SPIEGEL

A DER SPIEGEL Editorial by Klaus Brinkbäumer





Donald Trump is not fit to be president of the United States.

He does not possess the requisite intellect and does not understand the significance of the office he holds nor the tasks associated with it. He doesn't read. He doesn't bother to peruse important files and intelligence reports and knows little about the issues that he has identified as his priorities. His decisions are capricious and they are delivered in the form of tyrannical decrees. He is a man free of morals. As has been demonstrated hundreds of times, he is a liar, a racist and a cheat. I feel ashamed to use these words, as sharp and loud as they are. But if they apply to anyone, they apply to Trump. And one of the media's tasks is to continue telling things as they are:

Trump has to be removed from the White House. Quickly. He is a danger to the world. 

Daily Kos:  They say Trump simply has to be removed and break down how the Americans can and should make it happen. Even they know Republicans are spineless and do not respect the rule of law:



Der Spiegel cont.:

The first is Trump's resignation, which won't happen.

The second is that Republicans in the House and Senate support impeachment, which would be justified by the president's proven obstruction of justice, but won't happen because of the Republicans' thirst for power, which they won't willingly give up.

The third possible solution is the invocation of the 25th Amendment, which would require the cabinet to declare Trump unfit to discharge the powers of the presidency. That isn't particularly likely either.

Fourth: The Democrats get ready to fight and win back majorities in the House and Senate in midterm elections, which are 18 months away, before they then pursue option two, impeachment.

Fifth: the international community wakes up and finds a way to circumvent the White House and free itself of its dependence on the U.S. Unlike the preceding four options, the fifth doesn't directly solve the Trump problem, but it is nevertheless necessary - and possible.

"The Conservative Mind Has Become Diseased" - Michael Gerson


The Gooper candidate for US Representative for Montana, Gianforte, who physically assaulted a journalist, has won the election, and Goopers are celebrating the win.

Michael Gerson, former GWB conservative speechwriter, gives us a perfect explanation for why a political party would celebrate the election of a pusillanimous thug -- "the conservative mind has become diseased."

That's as good an observation as there is to explain the bizarre behavior that would turn normally mentally healthy people into cheering mobs when they hear news of a thug's election to the US House of Representatives. 

Conservatives' current enthusiasm for brutish behavior can be directly traced to the reality teevee host who now plays at being POTUS.  While campaigning for the presidency, Comrade Trump whipped his followers into frenzies by telling them that the media are "the enemy of the American people." Comrade Trump's simple-minded followers lapped up his demagoguery and reveled in being degraded by his swinish antics.

The election of Gianforte of Montana is merely the consequence of conservatives' inability to resist something "uniquely horrible" in American politics -- Donald Trump.


Here's Gerson to tell us the sad story of the diseased conservative mind:





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

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

 The basic, human questions are simple. How could conservative media figures not have felt — felt in their hearts and bones — the God-awful ickiness of it? How did the genes of generosity and simple humanity get turned off? Is this insensibility the risk of prolonged exposure to our radioactive political culture? If so, all of us should stand back a moment and tend to the health of our revulsion.”







Wilson asks a question. My answer is:  "Yes, today's conservatives are past the rule of law and are nothing more than conscienceless cheering mobs, sick to their core.




6/ Are you so past the rule of law, and lack so much confidence in your ideas that this is where you take political satisfaction?

Thursday, May 25, 2017

THE SHOVE SEEN 'ROUND THE WORLD



The GOP's president, Donald "Russia" Trump doing what he does best: Being a narcissistic jerk.


Watch him shove Montenegro Prime Minister Dusko Markovic aside and push his way into the front row so that the cameras can be on him.

Donnie Russia is an international embarrassment:


















 Watch our allies laugh and whisper as Trump reveals he still has no idea how NATO works


Donald Trump's America

Remember this:








Accepting Trump's thuggery leads to this:






GOP THUG, GREG GIANFORTE




From Daily Kos:

The eyewitness accounts of Greg Gianforte’s violent assault of Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs continue to paint an increasingly unsettling picture.

From Alicia Acuna, who witnessed the event, along with Fox News field producer Faith Mangan and photographer Keith Railey: During that conversation, another man — who we now know is Ben Jacobs of The Guardian — walked into the room with a voice recorder, put it up to Gianforte's face and began asking if him if he had a response to the newly released Congressional Budget Office report on the American Health Care Act.

Gianforte told him he would get to him later. Jacobs persisted with his question. Gianforte told him to talk to his press guy, Shane Scanlon.

 At that point, Gianforte grabbed Jacobs by the neck with both hands and slammed him into the ground behind him.

Faith, Keith and I watched in disbelief as Gianforte then began punching the man, as he moved on top the reporter and began yelling something to the effect of "I'm sick and tired of this!" Jacobs scrambled to his knees and said something about his glasses being broken. He asked Faith, Keith and myself for our names. In shock, we did not answer. He then said he wanted the police called and went to leave. Gianforte looked at the three of us and repeatedly apologized. At that point, I told him and Scanlon, who was now present, that we needed a moment. The men then left.



NY Times: "If convicted, [the candidate] faces up to a $500 fine, or six months in jail, or both."

Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Tuesday, May 23, 2017

A Tale of Two Presidents








Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair:

 The word “trump” formerly was a verb used in polite bridge and whist circles. Trump, the man, is now up there with Hercules and Sisyphus with his own branded adjective. I’m not completely sure what it stands for. But when it finally settles into the lexicon, I’m certain that it will be a disconcerting combination of petulant, preening, ignorant, shameless, vulgar, paranoid, vainglorious, reckless, imperious, impulsive, unhinged, callous, corrosive, narcissistic, intemperate, juvenile, disloyal, venal, chaotic, squalid—what have I forgotten? Oh, yes!—and just mind-numbingly, epically incompetent.




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Manchester, England

A lot of people are sharing this quote after the heartbreak in Manchester. It's also the 50th anniversary of Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. 1/ pic.twitter.com/zDnTrTcJ8v







View image on Twitter
Via Daily Kos

Monday, May 22, 2017

Israelis put out an ad mockingTrump


Just ask his supporters, they'll tell you Trump's respected around the world, more than President Obama was. Except we never saw anything like this mocking Obama:

Israeli ad spoofs Trump after speech



Another Great Moment for America!



The President Just Told a Room Full of Israelis That He "Just Got Back From the Middle East"

Are we tired of so much winning yet?

How unpopular is DJT?




Trump is unpopular. It’s still too early for post-Comey fallout polls, but right now his approval rating is at just under 40 percent. He got 46 percent of the popular vote last November. That means he’s lost 13 percent of his voters. If he gets down to the mid-30s, he will have lost around a quarter of his own voters — who were, remember, a minority to begin with.








LORD DAMPNUT






[Trump's] latest approval ratings are lower than they have been since the inauguration. 

His disapproval now stands at 56%, per a Reuters poll. 


Remember when Donald Trump said that his presidency would make everyone tired of winning? 

He was right. Even he‘s tired of it, which is saying something. 

His disapproval now stands at 56%, per a Reuters poll.  

The May 14-18 opinion poll found that 38 percent of adults approved of Trump while 56 percent disapproved. 

The remaining 6 percent had “mixed feelings.”





Republican Party unfavorability rate is near 60%. 


Higher unfavorability than the Democrats.