Things are getting weird.

There has been some weird stuff going on the last couple of days.






First of all, the New York Times - The NEW YORK TIMES!-- ran a column asking their readers to say something positive about Trump. Seriously:

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Sunday Review

By MICHAEL KINSLEY

April 29, 2017

Opinion | Say Something Nice About Donald Trump

The establishment press has been vicious about Donald Trump. He’s portrayed, day after day, as a narcissist, personally obnoxious, with a policy agenda to match. He deserves most of this criticism.

If, as you acknowledge, he deserves this criticism, how is the press being "vicious?"
And tRump is a personally obnoxious narcissist. Pointing this out doesn't really count as criticism, let alone vicious criticism. I mean, it wouldn't be particularly vicious to point out that he is a racist, a failed businessman, and a conman who has bragged about committing sexual assault. If all they're doing is pointing out that he's obnoxious, I'd say they're letting him off pretty easy.
Also, I can't really recall any instances of the "establishment press" even doing that. I do remember much of the media spending the campaign season fluffing him like a gay-for-pay pornstar, but maybe I missed something.

But does he deserve all of it? Does he never do anything right? Say anything wise? Are all his schemes to reform this agency and abolish that regulation utterly misguided? Can “President Trump’s America” really be compared to Vladimir Putin’s Russia?

Well, to be fair, no, his America can't really compare to Putin's Russia. Mainly because Il Douche has only been in office about 20 weeks, and Putin is just a lot better at doing, um, everything really.

Surely, if there is a “party line” among the establishment media in the United States, it is anti-Trump, not pro. That doesn’t make it wrong. In fact, it’s largely right. But the venom, the obsession, the knife-twisting are hard to understand.

   SERIOUSLY?

You don't get why someone would have a visceral reaction tn unhinged, juvenile narcissist who has brought neo-Nazis into the goddamm White House and wants to take away people's ability to see a doctor? You seriously don't understand why people might feel venomously towards someone who wants to deport millions of our friends and neighbors while turning refugees away at the border? What's not to understand?

It must be partly a matter of bad timing. Mr. Trump came along just as the mainstream media, especially newspapers, were trying to come to terms with the internet. Hoary concepts like “objectivity” and “balance” were giving way. This was a good thing, believe it or not. Reporters no longer had to pretend that after spending weeks or months on a story, they had emerged with no opinion about it. The word “I” could now be used to refer to oneself, rather than “a reporter.” Mr. Trump, already dislikable, became the first test case of the new mind-set.

WHAT?!?!?!? Like we haven't had an entire cable "news" network and nearly all of talk radio dedicated to trashing the last two Democratic presidents? You think the Obamas and the Clintons have been treated "objectively" and with "balance" by the FOX-Limbaugh-WSJ matrix? What rock have you been living under?

But yeah, obviously bad timing. If only the internet hadn't been invented, the American public would welcome an incompetent, childish sociopath who sees the presidency as just another long con. Oh, we'd have welcomed him with open arms! We'd have strewn flowers in his path while singing songs of praise about his shady ties to Russia, his use of the office to enrich himself, and his encouragement of violence against his detractors.

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, though, and even Donald Trump can’t be wrong all the time.

With that in mind, we’re looking for a few positive words about the president, and we’re asking for your help. This is not about Trump the family man. It’s not another forum for debating the issues. It is a place to point out positive things Mr. Trump has said or done from the viewpoint of The New York Times and its readers.

Um, okay. Let's see. . . As far as we know, he has never acted on his sexual attraction to his daughter.
Um. . . he hasn't nuked anyone yet.
And, uh, he hasn't ridiculed a disabled person for a while now.
And I'm out of ideas.

Anyway, the column goes on a bit but I've already spent too much time on it. I will leave you, though with the last sentence of the column: We’ll be revisiting this theme regularly in Sunday Review.

Yeah, because this is gold! You want to milk this theme for all it's worth!


Another weird thing

On Tuesday, Dan Scavino, the White House director of social media, celebrated the six-month anniversary of the election by tweeting a screen grab of the late night phone call in which Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton called to concede to Republican candidate Donald Trump. Scavino promised to share video of the conversation, which he said came via a Nov. 9 phone call at 2:30 a.m. from longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin to Trump’s then-campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway.

"I have on video & will share that in the near future."

 

What would be the point of that? Why would anyone want to hear a recording of a concession call. Does he think that this will embarrass Hillary Clinton? Probably. That is exactly the type of petty, spiteful petulance we've come to expect from this administration. You would think if anything, they'd want to try and embarrass any potential 2020 opponents, or maybe someone in the House or Senate who is opposing his agenda, but no. Hillary had the temerity to run against him, he "won" and her4 face must be rubbed in it at any opportunity. 

The best part is, he's not releasing it now. He's waiting. Like this recording is some sort of Ace up his sleeve. Like when the Russia/Comey?Flynn news gets bad enough, they'll be able to whip this out for some sort of positive publicity. Because, like a schoolyard bully, he thinks that humiliating someone else makes him look stronger.

And maybe the weirdest thing yet:

Trump to send senator a letter asserting no business connections to Russia

 

Okay, so apparently Lindsey Graham has gotten the vapors over all this Trump-Russia stuff going on and he does declay-uh that we all ought to have just a tiny little ol' peek at Trump's business dealings, bless his heart.

Trump's response?

Spicer said Trump has "charged a leading law firm in Washington, D.C." with preparing a certified letter to Graham saying he has "no connections" to Russia.

Okay, why a law firm? If you want to say "I have no connection to Russia," that's something you can do in 140 characters. Then you just send it here:

Lindsey GrahamVerified account

@LindseyGrahamSC

The official Twitter feed for United States Senator Lindsey Graham.

I know you're capable of that. You do this all day long when you're supposed to be presidenting.
And what is the point of this letter. Do you think that just saying "I'm not beholden to Putin" (or as you so eloquently put it, "No puppet. No puppet.") isn't going to convince the wily Graham, but a letter! On legal firm letterhead! There's no way he could not believe that!
Oh, and be sure to make a point of sending it certified so he can't pretend like he didn't get it. It's not like you could have someone walk a mile tp the Capitol building and fucking hand it to him or something.

Yessirree, things are getting weird. There are strange things happening every day in DC

Ass of the Day - Nominee # 2

Labrador: ‘Nobody dies because they don’t have access to health care’

Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/article149013339.html#storylink=cpy

How? How do you even come up with a statement like that? It's like saying water is not wet.

Maybe there's some context? Something that would make this statement make some kind of sense?

After a woman suggested that the lack of health care was essentially asking people to die, Labrador had a controversial answer at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston.
“That line is so indefensible,” Labrador said. “Nobody dies because they don’t have access to health care.”

Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/article149013339.html#storylink=cpy

Nope, no context!

An email to Labrador’s press secretary late Friday for comment did not receive an immediate response.

Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/article149013339.html#storylink=cpy

No kidding! How could his press secretary possibly come up with a defense for that statement? When he heard Labrador's remark, I assume he reacted like this:

  

Ass of the day - Nominee #1

Marsha Blackburn: 'As A Woman' Hillary Clinton's Lack Of 'Graciousness' To Trump Is Disappointing

 

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) suggested on Sunday that former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton had a responsibility because of her gender to "model graciousness" after losing to President Donald Trump.

 Why I do declare, as a fine Southern belle myself, it gives me the vapors to see such unladylike conduct! You can certainly see her Yankee roots showin'!

 "I think as a woman who is in elected office, it is disappointing to me," Blackburn complained. "Hillary Clinton has the opportunity to role model graciousness. But she is choosing to live and stew in bitterness. And to blame somebody else."

 Oh, that's interesting. You know, the last time a Presidential election didn't go your way, you co-sponsored a bill to try to de-legitimize and/or humiliate the new POTUS by demanding his birth certificate. You know, "Graciousness!"

"Throughout my career, I've seen over and over again, eventually you say, 'This didn't work' or 'I didn't win' or 'I am sorry.' And you move on. You accept things. You own it. You move on. And she is missing a great opportunity by not doing that."
"Listen to her, it's always somebody else's fault," Blackburn said. "Listen to her, another day for the election and she would have won."

Hmm, funny you should say that. You're backing a President who, after he WON an election, can not stop whining about how he should also have won the popular vote so there must have been "illegal votes" cast. Like 3 million of them. This guy is being a sore loser about a contest he WON! And you have the balls to complain that HRC isn't being a gracious enough loser? So it's only women who have to have good losing etiquette?

How long was I gone? What year is it? Are there flying cars now?

I could have sworn I was gone less than a week. How is there this much shit to look back on?


All this stuff happened while I was gone?

GOP Rep. Says Those With Pre-Existing Conditions Don't Live Right

By Karoli Kuns

 “My understanding is that it will allow insurance companies to require people who have higher health care costs to contribute more to the insurance pool,” Brooks said. “That helps offset all these costs, thereby reducing the cost to those people who lead good lives, they’re healthy, they’ve done the things to keep their bodies healthy. And right now those are the people—who’ve done things the right way—that are seeing their costs skyrocketing.”

 Like how dare you expect to pay the same as someone who has been living right when you've been ruining your life with booze and cigarettes or being born with type-I juvenile diabetes or sickle-cell anemia  or MS or whatever. Actually, let me re-phrase that. Mo Brooks is a sick disgusting excuse for a human being and I defy anyone to sink lower than him in the healthcare debate.

Well, be careful what I wish for, I guess!

Sorry Jimmy Kimmel: your sad story doesn't obligate me or anybody else to pay for somebody else's health care.

— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) May 2, 2017

Yes, that's right. After TV host Jimmy Kimmel went on the air and talked about his infant son's near-death experience and came up with the radical leftist notion that babies shouldn't be allowed to die just because their parents are poor, that was former Congressman and current deadbeat dad Joe Walsh's response.

Naturally, he got a lot of well-deserved shit for that Tweet and, being completely despicable, vile and utterly devoid of human decency, he of course doubled down.

Health care is complicated. Health care is bankrupting America. But instead of thinking thru all of that, we'd rather cry with @jimmykimmel.

— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) May 2, 2017

Because if you really want to appeal to today's modern conservative, going after a man whose newborn son is clinging to life in a hospital is really the way to go. That's not even sarcasm, that's actually good advice if you want to follow the Joe Walsh career path.

I'll say it: For a people no longer capable of logic & reason, it's perfect that a late night comedian just decided our health care policy.

— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) May 2, 2017

I like @Elise_Jordan, but nobody is ok with dead babies.

Health care is complicated & it's bankrupting America. https://t.co/zH3c8uNnNX

— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) May 3, 2017

Except that you clearly are. You can't say "I ain't gonna pay for that baby to stay alive" and then say "I am not okay with dead babies." You can't get $100,000 behind on child support and have to be sued by your ex-wife and then say "No one is okay with deadbeat dads." You. You are okay with them. You are a deadbeat dad. You are someone who is willing to let babies die rather than have any of your tax dollars help save them. You can't have it both ways you loathsome vermin.


Also while I was gone Cheeto Mussolini tried to talk about American history.  About which he knows next to nothing. To be fair, he did seem to realize that Andrew Jackson was a person who lived and that the Civil War was a thing that happened. Other than that. . .

President Trump Doesn't Seem To Know Why The Civil War Happened

Tom Namako

BuzzFeed News Reporter

Here's the transcript:

Okay, but all the transcripts leave out the best part. He begins by talking about how people are supposedly comparing him to Andrew Jackson without realizing that that is NOT a flattering comparison. It's like on an old episode of American Idol when Simon told a kid "that was abysmal" and the kid answers "oh, thank you very much!" and then Simon has to explain to him "no, that's not a compliment."  Anyway, he's talking about Andrew Jackson when the interviewer mentions that Jackson's wife had died. Trump says "his wife died? His wife died! They destroyed his wife and she died" as if this reporter wasn't the very person who had just told him this literally 2 seconds ago. He turns it around as if this is something he's telling her! It's so shameless!

And then he talks about "no one asks the question 'why was there a Civil War,'" as if this wasn't discussed in every American history class in every high school, middle school and junior high in America. I will promise you, if you walk into any university with a decent history department, there are entire classes offered in the causes of the Civil War. But in his world, he's the only one who has ever pondered this question!

Also, Andrew Jackson was a lot of things, but no one ever accused him of having a "big heart." He was an enslaver, and he was responsible for the "Trail of Tears" because he was pretty much a psychotically racist piece of shit. But a hell of a swashbuckler, I'll give him that! Oh, and also not alive for the Civil War, but you probably knew that already.


Also, at some point in my absence, it became illegal to laugh?

A Code Pink Protester Laughs Over a Trump Nominee and Is Convicted

By CHRISTOPHER MELEMAY 3, 2017

A jury on Wednesday convicted three Code Pink activists on charges related to a protest at the confirmation hearing of Jeff Sessions for attorney general — including a Virginia woman who said all she did was break out in laughter.

Each of the three protesters faces up to 12 months in jail, $2,000 in fines, or both, depending on the outcome of a June 21 sentencing hearing.

For laughing. Okay, there's got to be more to this story, right?

It was early in the hearing when Senator Richard Shelby, Republican of Alabama, said that Mr. Sessions’s record of “treating all Americans equally under the law is clear and well-documented,” Ariel Gold, the campaign director of Code Pink, said on Wednesday.

Ms. Fairooz said that, on hearing that, she let out a giggle.

“I just couldn’t hold it,” she said on Wednesday. “It was spontaneous. It was an immediate rejection of what I considered an outright lie or pure ignorance.”

She said when officers came over, she expected to be warned or told to shush and was surprised to be taken into custody.

Well, that's her side of the story. I'm guessing maybe the cops have a different version in which she also committed a crime of some sort, right?

Prosecutors described her actions differently.

Aha! I thought so.

Ms. Fairooz had “let out a loud burst of laughter, followed by a second louder burst of laughter,” the U.S. attorney’s office said in the filing.

Um. . .  but. . . . but it's still just laughing. That can't possibly be illegal. How long was I gone?

The police then tried to “quietly escort” Ms. Fairooz from the room, but she “grew loud and more disruptive, eventually halting the confirmation hearing,” the court papers argued.

Disruptive? If someone disrupts a hearing, aren't they generally just escorted out? What country is this?
So what was she even convicted of? What could possibly have been illegal in her actions?

Ms. Fairooz was found guilty of the two charges she faced: one of disorderly and disruptive conduct and a charge of parading or demonstrating on Capitol grounds, according to her lawyer, Samuel A. Bogash.

 Oh, right. I forgot it's illegal to demonstrate on Capitol grounds without dressing like Paul Revere and holding a misspelt sign.



 Oh, and this story makes me wonder if maybe we haven't gone backwards in time:

President Donald Trump will reportedly be appointing not one but two vocal abortion opponents to the Department of Health and Human Services. 

According to Politico, Teresa Manning — a law professor and anti-choice, anti-contraception activist — will be named deputy assistant secretary in the Office of Population Affairs, which delegates Title X funds to family planning initiatives.

Okay, well that;s no surprise. Of course he's going to appoint anti-choice persons to HHS. But this is where it gets baboon-ass crazy:

 
In a 2003 interview with WBUR Boston, Manning had this to say about contraception in general:

Contraception doesn't work. Its efficacy is very low, especially when you consider over years, which you know a lot of contraception health advocates want — to start women in their adolescent years when they're extremely fertile, incidentally, and continue for 10, 20, 30 years. Over that span of time, the prospect that contraception would always prevent the conception of a child is preposterous.

I can't tell if she actually believes that utter nonsense or if she is just bald-faced lying because she opposes all non-reproductive sex.

I mean, there are studies, right? There have to be. How do you not spend a few minutes in the library, do a Lexis/Nexis search or whatever it's called, and look up a few studies in reputable medical journals?  Instead of just saying "contraception preventing pregnancy? Multiple times? Pfft! Unlikely!"
Oh, right. In our new world, the scientific journals have all been set ablaze in a bonfire on which to burn witches. Or women who understand science. Well, same thing, really!

Well, at least one thing hasn't changed. Major newspapers in America are still doing bs stories where they go find some idiotic Trump voters who (surprise, surprise!) still like Trump! NEWS!

Sunday Review

News Analysis

These Guys Really Like Trump

“When Joe first told me about Trump, I said no, that guy’s a bragger,” Mr. Paslow said. “Then I started listening to him, and I noticed, he’s a billionaire.

Oh for fuck sake. That's the one thing -- the ONE THING-- that everyone knows about Drimpf. Everyone knows that he allegedly is an alleged billionaire. This was something you "noticed" during the campaign? You "noticed" that he's a billionaire? (allegedly) That's the only goddamm thing he ever talks about!

If somebody comes along and says, ‘President Trump, I want to keep my plant in China and I want to close my plant here, here’s $50 million,’ he says, ‘I don’t need your money, mister.’ ”

Okay, first of all, yes he does. He does need the money, because he's (allegedly) not really a billionaire. That's why he licenses his names to cheap con games like Trump University or various shady land development deals. He's not that rich (allegedly). Second, no one needs to bribe the President to keep their factory in China or close their factory here. There are no laws against either of those things. In fact, our recent spate of "free trade" deals seems to encourage that sort of activity.

Mr. Trump came striding into this bleak landscape and offered them hope. He pledged to the crowd that he would bring back the oil and gas industry the very first day he was in office. “Unbelievably, that is exactly what we wanted to hear!” Mr. Paslow said. 

Oh my God! A man running for President came to your town and said exactly what you wanted to hear? Unbelievable! I mean, what are the odds?  What are the odds that a candidate would come into Western Pennsylvania and make vague, unkeepable promises to bring back coal jobs? Serendipity!

And they say journalism is dead!