Peter David's Blog, page 14

The Republicans are winning…at least in Ohio

Ohio developed the kind of vote-purging scheme that makes GOP schemers all tingly. If you’re an Ohio voter and don’t vote for an election, they send you a postcard to make sure you’re still there, haven’t moved, and are alive. If you assume this card to be junk mail and toss it in the way that most people do, bam. When you show up at the next election, guess what? You’ll discover your name has been stricken from the voting rolls.

This is considered a dream law because it targets all the folks that Republicans hate because they typically vote Democrat: Students, the poor, Blacks and Hispanics.

The Ohio courts ruled in a case that that was illegal, so naturally it worked its way up to the Supreme Court. And thanks to the idiot that Trump installed (rather than the guy that the GOP prevented Obama from getting in) the SCOTUS voted 5-4 that the law was just fine. The dissenting judges saw this for what it was, but the conservative majority happily embraced it.

You can absolutely bet that with this new ruling in effect, Republican states will very likely produce their own versions of Ohio’s ban. This could potentially lock up a GOP presidential win in 2020 unless every damned Democrat who decided to sit out the 2016 election makes damned sure that they are still registered.

PAD

Freak Out Friday – June 8, 2018

This has been a rather chilling week for Trump idiocy as he has finally said what we all thought: He thinks he’s above the law.

Let’s bury that lead and move on to other things.

1). A true disaster. Trump met with FEMA to discuss US preparedness for disaster relief. We have had solid proof, of course, that our endeavors in such areas are a spectacular mess. Puerto Rico’s spiraling death toll since the hurricane hit it, and the continued disheveled state of the island with American aid ranging from minimal to non-existent, should have been the main focus of the meeting. Instead, according to the Washington Post who obtained tapes of the meeting, “President Trump had a lot else on his mind, turning the closed-door discussion into soliloquies on his prowess in negotiating airplane deals, his popularity, the effectiveness of his political endorsements, the Republican Party’s fortunes, the vagaries of Defense Department purchasing guidelines, his dislike of magnetized launch equipment on aircraft carriers, his unending love of coal and his breezy optimism about his planned Singapore summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.” So basically they covered everything except what they should have been talking about.

2). Breezy optimism. It’s a major concern that all Trump is is breezily optimistic since he is doing absolutely nothing to prepare for an admittedly impressive nuclear summit. The fact that it’s happening at all, considering that the two leaders involved are both maniacal dickheads, is astounding. The fact that Trump is not the slightest bit prepped for it is alarming. I did more prep work for debating Todd McFarlane than Trump has done for this summit. When asked about how much he is doing to get ready for it, he gave one of his classic self-contradictory statements: “I think I’m very well prepared. I don’t think I have to prepare very much.” The fact that this idiot has actually had an uptick in his popularity is nothing short of horrifying.

3). Well, that was unexpected…, no wait. Totally expected. The run up to the G7 meeting in Canada has been busy enough as Trump trades idiotic tweets with Macron and Trudeau and announces he will depart on Saturday before meetings about trivial subjects such as energy, the environment and the oceans. But it gets better. Remember that it used to be the G8 before Russia was evicted four years ago due to its annexing Crimea. Trump, however, speaks with Putin quite frequently, presumably getting orders. And Putin apparently commanded Trump to get them back into the G7. What concessions would Moscow make to achieve this reinstatement? Let’s check. Hmm. Let’s see. The answer is: Nothing. The other countries are supposed to invite them back, despite the fact that they interfered in our election, despite the fact that it now turns out they helped Brexit to occur. They should now be put back in a position of power in the world. Two words come to mind: Screw and that. But that’s Trump’s position, and it now seems as if it’s good that he’s leaving early because they might just kill him if he stayed longer.

Meanwhile Trump continues to assail Canada, the country with which we have traditionally had the best relations between any two bordering countries in the history of the world. He continues to claim that Canada has violated NAFTA over the prices of dairy products…which is naturally wrong as you can find here. He even claimed in a phone call that Canada burned the White House during the war of 1812. No; that was the British, you schmuck.

4). Philadelphia freedom. . The winners of the Super Bowl traditionally go to visit the White House. In this case, a number of team members said they were going to pass. Can’t blame them, really. This ostensible show of disrespect so infuriated the needs-to-be-loved Trump that he publicly disinvited the team. But his psyche couldn’t allow him to admit that it was because they hurt his widdle feelings. So instead he claimed that it was because they disrespected the flag by kneeling. Putting aside all the idiocy involved in that debate, it is worth pointing out that exactly NONE of the Eagles knelt during the anthem. Zero. Zilch. They decided they didn’t want to join in on the protest and stood the entire time. So Trump decided to keep the team out of the White House for an utterly fabricated reason when the real reason was that he felt they disrespected him. Now if that’s what he wants to do–keep them away because he felt they dissed him–fine. Say that. The fact that he couldn’t admit his personal weakness and had to falsely claim they were dissing the flag is just the latest symbol of his weakness and stupidity.

5). Pardon me?. The Founding Fathers created checks and balances in the government for a reason. They had rebelled against a country that was ruled by a king, and they wanted to make sure that the American president would not rise to that level of dictatorship.

All of which Trump threw out the window when he asserted that he could likely pardon himself of any crimes that Mueller charged him with. But he quickly added that he shouldn’t have to because he didn’t do anything wrong.

In a rare instance of both sides of the aisle in Congress acting in tandem, both GOP and Dems asserted that the President was wrong. That as per assertions made during the Nixon era, no man can be a judge in his own case. And that if he ever did try to pardon himself, that would immediately trigger an impeachment hearing.

Considering all the shit that Trump has done to which the GOP has turned a blind eye–things that they would have gone after Obama with in a heartbeat–it’s nice to know there’s something that would present a final straw for the GOP, which has remained relentlessly silent during all of Trump’s idiocy and incompetence. So far they’ve acted purely as enablers, voluntarily giving up their Constitutional right to ride herd on the executive branch. It would be nice to see them doing their jobs for once.

Did he do anything right? Yes. He finally pardoned Alice Marie Johnson, the great grandmother who was serving a life sentence for a first-time, non-violent cocaine arrest. Except I suppose the problem is that every time he pardons someone now, it seems as if he’s floating a trial balloon for pardoning himself.

PAD

Freak Out Friday – June 1, 2018

Well, pretty much one thing has dominated the news this week: Roseanne Barr’s idiocy.

1). Stupidity, Barr none. I don’t have to go into detail about her racist tweet, except to say that when you compare a black person to a monkey, that’s Racism 101. It doesn’t get any more down to earth racist than that. Yet that was the action she took, without thinking at all about the blowback her comments would have against her cast and crew. Two hundred people are out of work because she had to make a tweet.

Keep in mind that there was nothing to be accomplished by this. Twitter is useful for one thing only: getting word out about stuff you want to promote. You don’t get paid for it. You just use it to accomplish stuff, and the number of people who have accomplished damage with it is rising. Trump is effectively committing career suicide with it, yet still he has managed not to have it be fatal, and Barr apparently thought that she was likewise impervious. She was not.

And no, this is not a First Amendment issue. If she’d been arrested, yes. But ABC is a private company and they can do whatever they want. And if Barr signed a contract with a morals clause, which she probably did, then it’s game over.

So since this space focuses on Trump, we should examine how he reacted. After all, he did call her to congratulate her on her show’s ratings because ratings are all he understands. And Barr is both a loud Trump supporter and embracer of all the insane conspiracy theories you’ve ever heard. So how did he react to her racist tweet?

He didn’t.

What he did react to was the fact that he has been lampooned on ABC and no apology has been forthcoming “to President Donald J. Trump.” Because he is once again referring to himself in the third person, like a modern day Ming the Merciless. Trump once again missed a golden opportunity to try and prove he isn’t a racist. Why did he miss it? Well, because he’s a racist. Ultimately you really couldn’t have expected anything else.

For all we know, he’ll offer Barr a job in the White House.

Meanwhile he continues to demand that ABC issue an apology. Fine. I think ABC should say, “We are sorry Donald Trump is president.”

2). Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself.. According to the Washington Post, Trump has made false or misleading statements over 3000 times in his first five hundred days, including thirty five whoppers at his recent rally alone. His most major recent one is that he flat out said he did not fire James Comey over Russia, even though he told Lester Holt of NBC he did exactly that not two days after the firing. It becomes increasingly obvious why his people don’t want him testifying before Robert Mueller. It is not simply a certainty that he will lie under oath; it’s just a matter of how much. And considering perjury is a flat out reason for impeachment as we well know, the only question will be whether the GOP will justify it on Trump’s behalf even though they used it to go after Clinton. Why are we even wondering? Of course they will justify it.

3). Pardon me.. Trump’s pardon train continues as he pardons Dinesh D’Souza, a right wing conservative jackass who made an anti-Obama documentary and, oh yes, pled guilty in 2014 to making illegal campaign contributions. While Trump loudly decries the non-existent false voters who cost him the popular election, apparently he has no trouble with voter interference if it’s from a far right winger who did it on behalf of a Republican candidate. Really no surprise there.

Who did he NOT pardon? Alice Marie Johnson, a Black great grandmother who Kim Kardashian brought to his attention. In 1996 she was sentenced to serve life in prison for a non-violent first offense drug crime. That’s insane. But she is Black and it happened in Tennessee, so what else would you expect? She continues to rot in prison for a clear overreaction to her crime and Trump did nothing to set her free. If he revisits it in the future and releases her, that will fall into the “Did he do anything right?” category. Let’s see him do one thing to prove he’s not a racist.

Did he do anything right?. Amazingly, he did. (Yes, Luigi, I knew about this.). On Wednesday he signed into law a bill that would enable experimental medicines to be used on terminal patients. Although Democrats assert that it will falsely raise hopes, and the Koch Brothers support it–which alone should be something to cause alarm–I honestly do not see the harm in this. They’re terminal. What in the world do they have to lose?

PAD

What do people want?

I just came back from seeing “Solo” and yes, I’ll be writing a Cowboy Pete on my Patreon account, so either bitch about that or sign up as you see fit.

But there is a broader thing I’m still puzzling about:

What the hell do people want from movies these days?

I mean, I heard about “Solo” was dark both in the initial plot and visually: how you couldn’t see anything. That the only actor worth seeing was Donald Glover as Lando. That Alden Ehrenreich either didn’t have the acting chops to play Han or (and this is my favorite) he didn’t look enough like Harrison Ford. For those people, the only thing that would have worked would have been to have Harrison Ford in the role and his looks digitally transformed to 1977.

I heard that the film was purely by the numbers, entirely rote, unoriginal. Indeed, the most positive thing I heard was that it was much better than “The Last Jedi”…which people slammed because they declared that it was far too original in its thinking because they hadn’t been able to get past the part where Luke chucked the lightsaber and walked away.

So those were my expectations.

And what I saw instead was a perfectly entertaining summer movie. Well directed, well lit, well acted, with some great relationships, twists and turns, and a couple of very unexpected cameos.

You want overly dark, relentlessly depressing films? Go check out “Blade Runner 2049.” Check out “Batman vs. Superman” and some lengthy parts of “Justice League.” But “Solo” was perfectly entertaining. A nice, old style turn-off-your-brain-and-enjoy summer film like, well, like “Star Wars” was before it became Chapter IV and launched a franchise. In fact, we’ve become so jaded that I think we should realize that if “Solo” came out in 1977 it would have been THE movie to see.

People seem to be obsessing over the fact that the budget was around $250 million. Guys, I still remember when the headline of the hour was that “Terminator II” was, oh my God, over $100 million. What an insane amount of money to spend on a movie!! Then people saw it and came away saying, “Totally worth it.” People have become so jaded that they ignore the fact that nearly every frame of this film has some sort of special effects in it. Yes, I know that backstage problems wound up in the budget becoming inflated. And if it means this film isn’t as profitable as others, you know what? Disney can cover the loss with pocket change from the two billion dollars that “Avengers: Infinity War” is going to bring in.

To anyone who is going to skip “Solo” because of negative reviews: Screw them. And for those that say that the pans are correct and the film is nowhere near as good as the original, allow me to share a few comments:

“Star Wars” is somewhat grounded by a malfunctioning script and hopelessly infantile dialogue…

–New York Daily News

The only way that ‘Star Wars’ could have been interesting was through its visual imagination and special effects. Both are unexceptional. …

–The New Republic

Strip ‘Star Wars’ of its often striking images and its highfalutin scientific jargon, and you get a story, characters, and dialogue of overwhelming banality, without even a “future” cast to them.

–New York Magazine

There’s no breather in the picture, no lyricism; the only attempt at beauty is in the double sunset. It’s enjoyable on its own terms, but it’s exhausting, too: like taking a pack of kids to the circus … It’s an epic without a dream.

–The New Yorker

That, friends, are some of the reviews that Episode IV received. Did it get positive ones as well? Yes, it did. But ultimately I think this is one of those instances where you should go see it for yourself.

PAD

My wedding anniversary

Seventeen years ago today, I married Kathleen O’Shea.

You should understand that when my first marriage broke apart, I thought that was going to be it for me. I would never find a woman to love me again. My three daughters would eventually move out and I would be left alone to live out the remainder of my life.

Kathleen changed all that. She gave me a new life to live for. A new child to raise. An entirely new world in which to live. Not a day has gone by where I regretted the promises I made seventeen years ago to love her for the rest of my life.

I could not survive without her.

Thank you for being with me all this time.

PAD

Freak Out Friday – May 25, 2018

I apologize to anyone in the other three time zones for the lateness of this posting. I am currently out at the Phoenix Comic Fest and it’s still Friday here. I hope no one will be too cranky, especially considering the new amount of idiocy currently happening as a result of the #FAKEPOTUS.

1) Half an hour later it’s like you’ll want to be spied on again. Back in 2016 the Chinese telecom company ZTE was forbidden to do business in the US for a period of seven years. It seemed that its equipment was not exactly according to Hoyle, allowing them to spy on the phones’ users and therefore have espionage roots in the US. To the shock of no one since it’s impossible for Trump to shock anyone anymore, he is working with ZTE to enable them to come back to America and, presumably, start spying again. This knowledge prompted the Senate to actually agree on something for once: This is bad and Trump should not be allowed to do it. Trump will naturally ignore the Senate and try to steamroll it through. Chuck Schumer declared, “We all know that China is involved in stealing our intellectual property. There is no better way to do it than through ZTE, and we’re going to let them be here, and slap them on the wrist with a fine? That’s a dereliction of our duty here in the Congress, and it’s the president’s duty to protect us.” It’s almost kind of sweet to think that after over a year of Trump’s endless bullshit that Schumer still believes Trump is interested in protecting anyone except himself.

2) It’s on/It’s off/It’s On/God knows. Remember how astounded everyone was that Trump actually seemed ready to sit down with North Korea for peace talks? His mindless followers even began stumping for the Nobel Peace Prize even though nothing had been actually accomplished by Trump. South Korea, yes, Trump, not so much. And then think about how utterly unsurprised everyone was when Trump dropkicked the entire meeting while of course blaming Kim Jong un. Well, apparently someone convinced Trump that he’d be scratching his Nobel Prize chances if the meeting went away. So now he’s turned around and stated that he’s still open to a meeting which he himself scratched, and whether or not it happens is ostensibly in Kim’s hands even though Trump was the one who cancelled it. Part of me is wondering if this is going to turn into an espionage film in which Trump and Kim get together and then masked men come sweeping in, kidnap them both, and holds them for ransom with the demand being to replace both of them. I’d watch that.

3) Gee, I thought he loved unions. Trump signed three executive orders (you remember, the things he always slammed Obama for using) that are designed to make life much harder for civil service workers. The government said that it was for making “better use” of taxpayer dollars. The American Federation of Government Employees disagreed, stating, “President Trump is attempting to silence the voice of veterans, law enforcement officers, and other frontline federal workers through a series of executive orders intended to strip federal employees of their decades-old right to representation at the worksite.” So, y’know, that’s going well.

4) She couldn’t have told us this, oh TWO YEARS AGO?!? 60 Minutes reporter Lesley Stahl stated that back when she was interviewing Trump after he’d won the GOP nomination, she asked him off camera why he kept going on and on about “fake news.” It was old hat, and he must have known that. Trump’s reply was perfect: “You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you.” He flat out admitted it, and Stahl kept that to herself until recently when she was being interviewed by PBS’s Judy Woodruff. It didn’t occur to her to try and get him to say that on camera? All that’ll happen now is that people who dislike him will say, “Of course that’s why” and all his supporters will say, “Lesley Stahl is lying.”

5) Stephen King is back! Remember when Trump blocked Stephen King and others from following him on Twitter? Here’s the thing: his Twitter feed is a government account. And there’s a rumor that the government is not allowed to restrict others from speaking. What’s the thing called again…? Oh, right. The First amendment. That’s part of the Constitution that Trump swore to uphold. Judge Naomi Buchwald stated that Trump’s blocking people violated the First amendment. The thing is, she didn’t order Trump to remove the blocking because she simply assumed that one she said what was what, Trump would take care of it himself. Yeah. Good luck with that.

Did he do anything right? Thanks to Matt Adler for pointing this out to me. Trump, after getting a phone call from Sylvester Stallone, pardoned Jack Johnson. Johnson, a legendary figure in boxing who inspired the play and film “The Great White Hope,” was ostensibly found guilty of violating the Mann Act when what he was really convicted of was becoming a boxing champion while being black. People have been asking presidents for decades to pardon him, but none did. But Trump did so. So ostensibly good on him for that.

Here’s the problem: If Trump had been around in 1913, he would have been one of the ones who actively condemned Johnson. Why do I say that? The most obvious reason is because how he has relentlessly and racially gone after black football players who knelt during the Star Spangled Banner. Trump’s relentless bashing of black players prompted the NFL to unanimously declare that players must stand during the anthem or face sizable financial punishments. You know that they did it to shut Trump up as his bashing was unquestionably having an effect on the game’s profitability. So, you know, good for Jack Johnson and good on Trump for doing something that was genuinely good. But I think it has far less to do with Johnson and far more to do with Trump (a) trying to fool us into thinking he’s not a racist, and (b) doing something that Obama had failed to do. So…yay?

Me, I think that the NFL football players, during the anthem, should criss cross their arms in the “Wakanda Forever” salute. Let them try to legislate against THAT.

PAD

Am I the only one…?

Who didn’t give the slightest damn about the royal wedding?

PAD

Freak Out Friday – May 18, 2017

Remember the old days where weeks could go by and you wouldn’t hear about the President saying or doing something insulting or stupid? I miss those days.

Now you may think that you know Trump is dumb.

1). How dumb is he? Well, Bill Gates was actually able to describe it recently in citing several of Trump’s huge idiocies. For one thing, it turned out that Trump did not know the difference between H.I.V. and H.P.V. He had no idea that the former is an S.T.D. that is the gateway to A.I.D.s, and the latter results in genital warts and sometimes cervical cancer. Furthermore, he floated past Bill Gates the prospect of opening up a government study of whether vaccinations are responsible for autism, a claim that was initially launched by a single idiot “doctor” which was thoroughly debunked by medical experts.

Remember when presidents were smart? Even fictional ones: Josiah Bartlett was proud of his intelligence and never failed to show it off at any opportunity. Could you imagine Trump engaging in a trivia-off with anyone?

2). Gutting Planned Parenthood Again. The Senate still refuses to accept the simple fact that Planned Parenthood does not use government money for abortions. They tried to cut all government funding for PP with this year’s budget and failed, mostly thanks to Democrats taking a hard line against it. Well, Trump may well have found a way to accomplish what the Senate could not. He wants to resuscitate a Reagan-era rule that prohibits abortions from being performed at any organization that received government funding. Not only that, but Planned Parenthood would not be able to counsel any woman who has an unwanted pregnancy, nor would they be allowed to provide referrals to someone who could provide abortion. This will severely limit the opportunities that women–especially low-income women–will have to receive any manner of useful counseling.

I’d say “incredible” but it’s really not. That’s the problem with Trump. Every day he is doing something that will hurt the most helpless people, and we’re starting to become inured to it.

3). I am not an animal! Remember how Hitler and his people referred to Jews as “animals.” Remember when slave owners felt their slaves weren’t human? Well, Trump picked up on that same dehumanizing description of his favor group to hate, Immigrants. He sat there and declared that people coming into the country are “animals.” His exact words. We know he’s a bigot, we know he’s a racist, but it’s just astounding to hear him quote the sentiments of Nazis and slave owners.

4). When is he going to realize he’s being an idiot? I have never heard of a president who is so utterly at war with his own intelligence agencies. Recently he declared, without a shred of proof, that the FBI had placed spies into his election campaign “for political purposes.” That claim is right up there with his baseless assertions that Obama eavesdropped on things that were said at Trump Tower. I mean, I know the old saying that just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that people AREN’T out to get you, but this is insane. And we are forced to only one conclusion: Trump knows all the shit that he’s been involved with and is certain that people are spying him while he’s doing it. These are not the claims and actions of an innocent man.

5). Yeah, we weren’t expecting that. . Trump’s shot at winning the Nobel Prize is rapidly deteriorating as Kim Jong un now claims that the supposed meeting won’t be happening because the US and South Korea are engaged in military tests. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but what ELSE did they think Kim would do? Why should he give up his attempts to make nuclear weapons if he believes that he might be attacked by South Korea and the US? Plus he can’t stand John Bolton. Who could blame him? No right thinking person can stand John Bolton.

Did he do anything right? Nope.

PAD

Freak Out Friday – May 11, 2018

Been a busy week.

1). You can’t fake this stuff.. After complaining about “fake news” for two years, Trump has actually finally defined it.

Declaring that the “fake news” is “working overtime,” Trump went on to tweet, “Just reported that, despite the tremendous success we are having with the economy & all things else, 91% of the Network News about me is negative (Fake).”

So now we understand the disconnect. To the rest of the world, “fake” means fabricated. False. Untrue. A lie. You remember a lie: the thing that comes out of Trump’s mouth whenever it’s open. But to Trump, “fake” means something that is critical of him. You see, Trump is so star spangled awesome that any critique, complaint, or negative observation of him cannot possibly be true, because no sane person would see anything wrong with him.

To any reasonable person, that is of course complete bullshit. People get criticized constantly: by news media, on social media, by spouses or loved ones, teachers, bosses, friends and enemies alike. And they respond to it in a variety of ways: by considering the criticism, apologizing, trying to make amends, ignoring it, even doubling down (which is the typical hard right strategy.) But I can’t recall anyone flat out stating that any criticism of him at any point across the board is flat out untrue. That’s nuts.

And that’s Trump.

2). Iran away. Trump has been assiduously stating that the Iran anti-nuke deal was “the worst” ever made and that Iran was cheating on it. Curiously, our allies asserted that Iran was remaining faithful to it. These were the same allies who asserted that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, which George W. ignored and launched a war that cost the lives of 4500 Americans and one million Iraqis before we found out that, no, he had no WMDs. So that worked out well.

But because, as the saying goes, those who do not listen to the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it, Trump has just taken the first step into destabilizing the Middle East even further (admittedly it’s not all that stable now) by terminating America’s adherence to the Iranian deal. Because a month before you go into a meeting with a North Korean dictator to make a deal, that’s exactly the message you want to send: That you can’t be trusted to keep a deal that your country makes. You’d think that a man who allegedly wrote a book called “Art of the Deal” would know that you should never break a deal. Which, actually, he has been quoted on previous occasions: you don’t break a deal. You’re sending a message that your word can’t be trusted.

Trump can come up with all the BS excuses he wants, but it’s painfully obvious why he broke the deal: Because it was something that Obama had done. Trump, like any demented racist, is determined to shatter every single accomplishment of his predecessor. He wants to create his ideal America, one where Obama was never president because, look, nothing he ever allegedly did lasted. This is the same dick who keeps blaming the Democrats for HIS demolishing of DACA. If he could find a way to remove Obama’s and Michelle’s portraits from the White House, he would do so in a heartbeat.

In the meantime, Israel has taken encouragement from this dumbass move and is currently exchanging missiles with Iran. We could wind up seeing a full blown war between Iran and Israel with nuclear missiles flying. All because Trump has taken away the main incentive for Iran to refrain from developing nuclear weapons.

3). Get rid of your poor, your tired…. A new plan to hurt immigrants has doctors and hospitals extremely concerned. The potential new policy calls for the following: If any legal immigrant holding a visa uses Medicare, food stamps, Obamacare or a number of other government policies, then their application for a green card can be denied. But what if your child was born here, meaning they’re American citizens? Doesn’t matter: it could still cause the parents to have their green card refused. The concern is that immigrants will starve or not seek medical care lest their green card becomes lost to them. Which of course the government knows, so hey: gets rid of immigrants, right? It’s all good.

Bastards.

4). Meanwhile in Cohen Land…. It turns out that Michael Cohen created a shell company, Essential Consultants LLC, which seemed to have one reason for existing: to sell access to Trump. It’s unclear if Trump knew about it at the time or not, but he knows about it now and he is extremely not happy with Cohen. It also seems to have bridged the gap between Stormy Daniels on the one hand and Russia on the other because companies with Russian ties have been “hiring” Essential Consultants. Which means Mueller’s playhouse has constructed a second floor.

Did he do anything right?. Somewhat, but he managed to get that wrong, too. Kim Jong un decided to free three prisoners in advance of meeting with Trump. Trump had been stating that he was working to do what Obama had failed to do and get the three of them released, even though only one of them had been taken while Obama was president and the other two were taken under Trump’s reign. Furthermore, it’s obvious that Kim is taking advantage of Trump’s idiocy by using the opportunity to present himself to the world as a wise, considered leader rather than the homicidal dictator we all know him to be. While idiot supporters are claiming that Trump should receive the Nobel prize, that’s absurd. Trump is a dictatorial bully, and the ONLY reason Korea is getting its act together is because they’re proving that they are collectively wiser than the idiot in chief. And then when he flew to welcome the returnees, he insanely speculated on how good the ratings they were getting were at 3 AM. When is he going to realize that ratings are NOT something the freaking president should be concerned about?

I’m betting never.

PAD

Freak Out Friday – May the Fourth Be With You, 2018

When the book (or books) are written about Trump’s relatively short lived and failed presidency, this past week will be regarded as one of the major seven days that contributed to its downfall. And it will be referred to as:

CALL OF RUDY

1). Rudy Giuliani is quite simply insane. Since coming aboard Trump’s ever changing (retiring, quitting…can’t remember if he fired any of them) legal team, Giuliani has done nothing but damage. Apparently the only person in the country who didn’t see Trump’s comments some time back on Air Force One in which he flat out denied knowing anything about the $130K given to Stormy Daniels, Rudy sat on Sean Hannity’s program and flat out contradicted his client. Hannity must have been in shock, because Rudy brought it up out of nowhere and told the entire country that his boss was lying.

Now understand: It’s not like we didn’t know that. Of course he lied. He’s Donald Trump and his lips were moving, so that’s how we knew. But it is surprising to see one of his own staff calling him out on it, and it is flat out shocking when it’s one of his lawyers.

So now Trump and company are spending the day trying to walk back everything Guiliani said. While I’m quite sure that will provide solace to his dwindling number of hardcore backers, anyone who has enough brain power to rub two pennies together is going to know that Rudy, in fact, told the truth because it contradicted Trump who is (see above) an avid and regular liar. “He’ll get his facts straight” we are told by the absolute king of getting things wrong.

Part of me wants to see a remake of the film “Liar Liar” except instead the wish is made by his 12 year old son Barron. I mean, the film writes itself. Anyone want to produce it? Write to me, give me money and I’ll bang out the script in two weeks.

Even Rudy is trying to reword his flat-out statements into much more involved, occasionally incomprehensible statements. Despite the fact that he himself pointed out the timing of the October 15 payment was to make sure the news didn’t leak right around the election, he is now contending the payment would have been made whether or not the election was happening. He went on to state, “references to timing were not describing my understanding of the President’s knowledge, but instead, my understanding of these matters.” I had to read that three times before I comprehended, and it doesn’t matter in any case because Trump’s “understanding” is beside the point. It’s Michael Cohen’s understanding that’s pivotal: he’s the one who made a payment that could be considered an election donation that was a mere $127,500 over the lawful maximum a single person can contribute. A charge that, once again we have to say, if it was President Hillary Clinton who’d had an affair with a porn star and her attorney paid her lover $130K right before the election, the GOP would have articles of impeachment already drawn up. Both the GOP and certain members of the religious right have forfeited their right to ever criticize anyone for any moral lapse ever.



2). Remember how everyone trashed Michelle Wolf for saying that Sarah Sanders lied? Well, Sarah’s had a hell of a week as well. Reporters were VERY quick to remind her that, back in March, she had assured everyone in the room that the President knew nothing about the $130K. Her source? Trump himself. He had told her that, point blank, face to face. So when Rudy blew that assertion to hell and gone, Sanders basically was forced to tell the truth: “We give the very best information we have at the time.” So she essentially threw her boss under the bus. She didn’t say, “Well, I was lying back in March when I said I got it from the President.” She didn’t say, “Clearly I misunderstood him.” She just admitted that the very best information she was able to get at the time was an out and out lie that she believed and unknowingly passed on to reporters.

For some reason I keep envisioning her husband asking her at the end of the day how it went, and this is her reply.

Is there anything he did right? Well, his base probably loved it: He went to Texas to address the NRA Conference, a meeting that every President after Reagan has avoided. But Trump, who only a few months ago promised the students that he was unafraid to stand up to the NRA, was brought in to tell them what nice guys and patriots they were, and joked about such hilarious topics as John Kerry breaking his leg. What a funny guy.

PAD