Thought For The Day

MANIAC ACCOMPLISHED

March 21, 2019

The Less Bad Old Days

According to George Conway, “He lies even when it makes no sense to lie.  As one of his lawyers once told me, Trump couldn’t be allowed to talk to Mueller because ‘he’d lie his ass off.’”

Donald Chrump lies for two main reasons. 1) He is a mentally deranged, sociopath with neither discernment of or interest in what might be true, and 2) Telling the truth about anything would unquestionably and immediately land him in jail.
Remember when were completely outraged that George W. Bush and seven of his administration’s top officials made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001? 

Chrump does that in a few days. 

And, there is only one of him. 

And he is only "functional" for four to five hours a day.

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Not One Bear Voted For Chrump

Are You Smarter Than the Average Bear?

March 18, 2019

As Republican’ts, now under the (probably lift-augmented) boot of their malignant mob boss Donald Chrump, continue their greed-driven assault on the environment, others persist in their fight to hold back the forces of filth.  While many Democrats attempt to bring America a Green New Deal, Republican’ts continue their relentless pursuit of total environmental destruction.

In 2017 Chrump and former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke – who left office under an ominous cumulonimbus cloud of 18 investigations – perpetrated the largest public lands protection rollback in modern American history. They ignored sovereign tribes’ claims of sacred lands, public opinion, and jeopardized the health and lives of local communities.

Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT) told reporters that for those who live in the west, the ideas in the Green New Deal “are tantamount to genocide.” Bishop added, “That may be an overstatement, but not by a whole lot.”  Bishop, second only to Mike Pence as the whitest person in America explained his credibility saying, “I’m an ethnic.”

Rob Bishop – so ethnic you have to wear sunglasses to view him 

If Only it Was the Other Kind of Club

The cover story of the latest Sierra Club magazine, “Animals are Smarter Than You Think,” provided yet more evidence rebutting the idea that only humans have what we call intelligence.  Sure, we are the only ones capable of creating massive pollution and other forms of environmental destruction sufficient to eradicate our very presence on this otherwise finely tuned, beautiful planet, but other species have their own gifts and skills.

According to the article, “This research highlights an intriguing possibility: Could it be that much of North America is populated by hundreds of thousands of exceptionally intelligent nonhuman beings?”  This would be very fortunate as the number of even basically intelligent human beings appears to be dwindling.

Magazines often release multiple versions of covers for special issues.  Sierra Club (or someone) made two versions of their latest issue.

 

The original cover, aimed at the environmentally friendly population

Special edition cover aimed at Chrump supporters

In August 2018, following Sweden’s hottest summer ever, that country’s 15 year-old Greta Thunberg protested at the parliament to get politicians to act on climate crisis.  Thunberg’s solo protest was the catalyst for the Youth Climate Strike movement.  Following Thunberg’s lead, the movement comprises young people skipping school in favor of putting their bodies where their mouths are.  Brings to mind another great fighter for social change:

“There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it — that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!”

Mario Savio -  University of California, Berkeley Dec 2, 1964

Thunberg’s solo protest saw her sitting quietly on the cobblestones outside parliament in central Stockholm every day for two weeks instead of going to school.  The Swedish teen said school was a waste of time, “What am I going to learn in school? Facts don’t matter anymore, politicians aren’t listening to the scientists, so why should I learn?” 

Outside the parliament building Thunberg handed out leaflets saying, “I am doing this because you adults are shitting on my future.”  She stated, “I am doing this because nobody else is doing anything. It is my moral responsibility to do what I can.  I want the politicians to prioritize the climate question, focus on the climate and treat it like a crisis.”

SCHOOL STRIKE THE CLIMATE: Greta Thunberg, starting good trouble

Greta Thunberg’s TED Talk Dec 12, 2018

Greta Thunberg has been nominated for the Nobel peace prize, on the eve of the Youth Climate Strike’s biggest single day of global action yet, which ultimately brought young people to some 1700 locations in more than 100 countries on March 15th.

 

I. Mangrey replacing.  The kids are alright.  Whew.

Thought For The Day

Former Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks

The Company He Creeps

March 16, 2019

In case you are not keeping score…

Chrump praises Putin above anyone else in the entire world.  He believes Putin over the entire U.S. intelligence community.

Chrump believes Kim Jong Un is a strong leader with whom he is “in love.”  All the while, Kim continues to pursue nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to Chrump’s front door.

And of course, he is fond of Philippine strongman/lunatic Rodrigo Duterte and his alter-ego Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil.  Three diseased peas in a moldy pod.

Chrump assured us there were “very fine people on both sides” of the white nationalist/anti-white nationalist side following the hate-filled, anti-Semitic, deadly Charlottesville save-the-Confederate-statues-or-die protest in 2017. Chrump's behavior before and since has made it clear he does not respect both sides, and has made clear which side he prefers.

Der Furor recently voiced more authoritarian threats against those who dare get in his way, “You know, the left plays a tougher game, it’s very funny, I actually think that the people on the right are tougher, but they don’t play it tougher.  Okay?  I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump – I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough – until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.”  One sick, dangerous sociopath.

Chrump, on the heels of the New Zealand mosque massacres, clearly perpetrated by a white supremacist who praised Chrump in his manifesto, was asked if he was, “Do you see today white nationalism as a rising threat around the world?”  unsurprisingly, our Nationalist-in-chief replied, “I don’t really. I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems.”  Pot…kettle…yada, yada, yada.

Of course Chrump doesn’t see any threat from white nationalists.  If he did that, he would risk losing a large chunk of his base.  Without the haters, all our Anti-Semite/Islamophobe-in-chief has are the poorly educated, Lindsey Graham and basket of deplorable Congressmen like Steve King, Matt Gaetz and Devin Nunes.  Even Mitch McConell thinks Chrump is an idiot, but just like Vladimir Putin, finds Chrump a useful idiot.

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The Ideas of March

Hmmmm…peachment

March 15, 2019

I admit to being a bit peeved when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters, “I’m not for impeachment unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country.  And he’s just not worth it.”

Divides the country?  There are certainly reasons to demur on the idea of impeachment – at this particular moment in time – but dividing the country?  Don’t you think it’s a bit late to worry about that?  The country was arguably less divided in 1860. 

Having spent one of my formative years glued to the Watergate hearings and subsequent departure of the vile, corrupt Richard “Yes He Was So A Crook” Nixon under threat of imminent impeachment, the Constitutional remedy for removing such virulent toxins from our political system has always held a special place in my heart.

I’ve still got it…the shirt, that is

Pelosi is uniquely qualified, and has proven more than a match for the Toxic Orange Gas Cloud Chrump (It is rumored that Chrump wears an adult diaper whenever he has to be in a room with Pelosi.), so I will suspend judgment for now on the wisdom of putting the spotlight on her impeachment stance for now.  I suppose the fact that Mitch McConnell – the Old-Age Mutant Fascist Turtle – will never allow his Party-Über-Alles Republican’t minions in the Senate to complete the impeachment process, makes the point fairly moot. 

Mitch McConnell –Old-Age Mutant Fascist Turtle

Nixon was able to hold onto power (though not his mind) for as long as he did because it was not until Republican’ts believed that their own jobs were imperiled by the albatross they previously nurtured and fattened up, that they determined they were getting fucked by their own Dick.  And that has got to hurt.  As continues to this day, Republican’ts did not give a shit about the country they “served,” only their own asses.

In the awful chance that El Chrumpo finds enough single-digit IQ voters (Remember, he loves the poorly educated.) to ooze him into a second term, it would be good to have some fresh impeachment cobbler ready to squish into his nauseatingly-dyed kisser.

At least Pelosi left the door open for “something so compelling and overwhelming” that might dictate a change in sentiment.  She is going to need a bigger door.

I am still hoping that Chrump will end up impeaching himself with his own petard.  He seems intent on destroying himself.  If only those who love him would get out of his way.

I. Mangrey recalling.

With Undue Respect

Even a Little Is Much Too Much

March 11, 2019

Most reality TV personalities have a finite shelf life.  Once their time on the show ends, most of them disappear back into the general populace.  Most are thankfully never heard from again.  Some of them find a way to stay in the public eye.  All of them stop being reality show participants.  All of them save one. 

The main character created for the reality show The Apprentice has become a combination of Frankenstein’s monster and The Fly.  Borne of an experiment gone terribly wrong, the star of The Apprentice continues to walk (more of less) among us long after the show ceased to air.  The show’s main character, New York real estate tycoon buffoon and living caricature of a business executive Donald Chrump, was conceived as a parody, a fake, a roadmap of how not to run a business, but audiences decided he was a hero.  When first approached about the project, Chrump told the show’s producer that reality television “was for the bottom-feeders of society.”  That was before Chrump realized, and declared publicly that he “loves the poorly educated.”  And they of course, love him…even though he actually does not love them, and was simply talking out of his ass as usual.

The Apprentice and its even dumber sequel ended, as the character wore thin and ratings, which dropped significantly each season, were poised to fall into the toilet.  Unfortunately, the character continued to live his life of baseless arrogance, malignant narcissism, staggering buffoonery and consistent failure as though he was still on the set.  All of that has continued unabated and undiluted to this day.  And his schtick is wearing ever thinner.  Sadly, so much of this country is unable to distinguish between artifice and reality that this fiendish brute is now living in the White House, and called by many “president.” 

STFU – you’ll be glad you did

Donald Chrump continues to pretend he knows what he is doing while acting like a mob boss and doing his best to drive this country into an abyss, all the while focused on, above all else, increasing his fake fortune.

The media and members of Congress need to stop carefully criticizing Chrump by saying ‘with all due respect.’  There is no respect due this guy.  Respect is earned, not bestowed by strange women in ponds distributing swords, nor by the Electoral College.  It matters not what position he holds.  He himself has made that abundantly clear.  Chrump remains the same ignorant, racist, sexist conman that descended that golden escalator in 2015.  And that guy was the same ignorant, racist, sexist conman born into a family of ignorant, racist, probably sexist con-family seventy-some years ago.

Remember when people kept hoping and/or saying that Chrump would pivot, that he would stop being such an ignorant, racist, sexist conman, that he would grow into the job?  Well, do ya punk?  Notice how no one has said this in a very long time?  Everyone has finally, completely given up on any kind of pivot.  Chrump saw to that.  He has not budged one orange inch.  And neither has his “hair.”  He should get less respect than Rodney Dangerfield.  He deserves less respect than puss.

Why would anyone respect this guy?  No one actually does.

I. Mangrey (dis)respecting.

International Nasty Women’s Day

Cherchez Les Femmes

March 8, 2019

Chrump called Hillary a “nasty woman,” Samantha Bee and others brought it on

The massive Blue Wave of 2018 got a fraction of the press that was heaped on the semi-psycho Tea Party mistake of 2010.  The Blue Wave was much bigger than was the Tea Party ripple, not to mention it brought tremendous diversity and binders full of women into the House of Representatives.  Many of these women came ready to rumble.  Perhaps none more so than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Women do not always get the appreciation they deserve.  Only six countries currently give women and men equal rights according to a major report from the World Bank.  That is unquestionably pathetic, but is an increase from zero a decade ago.  The six countries are Belgium, Denmark, France, Latvia, Luxembourg and Sweden.  The United States did not make the top 50, scoring 83.75.  SAD.

Before there was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez there was Elizabeth Warren (and of course many before her).  Each of these women took Washington by storm during the current decade.  They won their respective first elections decisively, swore their oaths to the Constitution, took their places in Congress and refusing to act like the freshmen they were, went right to work kicking ass and taking names – in Ocasio-Cortez’s case she literally took names after asking Michael Cohen, “Who else knows that the president did this?” as a follow-up to “To your knowledge, did the president ever provide inflated assets to an insurance company?”  Right wing assholes are wise to attack her relentlessly, though it be to no avail.  They are afraid of her.  And they should be.  She will be kicking their asses for a long, long time to come.

Elizabeth Warren was re-elected in 2018.  She has put up with chauvinism, snark and childish disrespect from the highest levels.  As malignant Mitch McConnell misogynistically moaned two years ago, “She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.” 

Warren just might persist her way to unseating Donald Chrump and/or Mike Pence, of whom Warren recently said, “I’m sorry. I followed Pence’s history on LGBTQ Americans, and I don’t think that is a decent position.”  Asked if she agreed with Joe Biden calling Pence a decent guy, Warren answered, “No.”

If you’d like a refresher course on Elizabeth Warren, here is our take from 2013…

 

My Queen Elizabeth

Warrenton, DC

July 25, 2013

I’m not usually one to gush over royalty, but I’m afraid I just can’t help myself. Maybe it’s all this fuss about the royal baby. I hope he’ll be able to find some strange woman lying in a pond distributing swords or pull the sword from the stone or whatever it is they do over there to elect their king. Anyway, I never paid much attention before, but I have watched several videos of the Queen since the beginning of this year. She looks much younger than I expected, but I guess it’s all that easy living and adulation keeping her so vibrant. Every time I see her I am simply in awe of her command of history and all the nuances of her particular milieu. Perhaps you have seen an exchange or two she's had with some of the commoners.

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) 

Okay, I feel a little silly here. Apparently, this is not in fact the Queen or a queen or even a princess. This is freshman senator - now the senior senator from the great state of Massachusetts - Elizabeth Warren. She has simply taken the capitol by storm. Considering she’s a freshman senator, she takes no prisoners, no excuses and no shit from anyone. People worried she would just end up frustrated and cowed by all the pathetic losers we know as the United States Senate. Truly a more worthless governmental body has never existed. More cadaver than body if you ask me. Mostly a bunch of white guys whose brains died years ago, but whose bodies keep shuffling along the halls of Congress and Fux News.

God Save The Clean

Elizabeth Warren joined the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1987 and became a tenured professor. She began teaching at Harvard Law School in 1992, as a visiting professor, and took a permanent position in 1995. Warren said of her history of voting as a Republican for many years, "I was a Republican because I thought that those were the people who best supported markets." In 1995 she began to vote Democratic, but she says that she has voted for both parties because she believes that neither party should dominate. Warren served as chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in 2008. She later served as Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under President Barack Obama. Then of course Obama threw her under the bus because it was too much trouble to go to bat for her when it came to crunch time.

Bankers and Wall Street thieves are scared to death of Elizabeth Warren. She knows more about what they do than they do. She’s smarter and tougher than most of them. She took their bright shining whore star - Scott Brown - and turned him into roadkill. She soundly defeated Self-Loving-Scotty after serving the partial term he won in a special election to fill the seat of Ted Kennedy - crushing him by over 7%. Brown is now a loser talking head for right wing media with almost as broad an appeal as Sarah Palin.

The economic inequality in this country is simply disgraceful. Dis. Grace. Ful. Elizabeth Warren gets it as much as anyone in the Senate. And while over the entire membership of the Senate this is an exceedingly low bar, there are a select few in that festering corpse august body that are and always have been steadfast in their support for actual Americans...you know, the 99%.

Elizabeth Warren is the real deal. She has long been determined to protect We The People from the banks and corporations that ru(i)n the government. She’s not shy and she’s not wasting any time trying to get things done. Keep an eye on Elizabeth and help her when you can. And tell everyone you know - they’ve got a friend in DC.

I. Mangrey and I (still) approve this message.

The Red, White and Ewwwwwww

She’s a Groped Old Flag

March 7, 2019

“I want to write a song called,
Please Mr. President, Go Back Up That Escalator.”
Dick Cavett March 5, 2019

Sixty-four percent of respondents to a recent Quinnipiac poll agreed that Chrump committed a crime prior to taking office, compared to 24 percent who do not and 13 percent who said they didn’t know.  Eighty-nine percent of Democrats and 33 percent of Republican’ts were in the yes camp. Forty-five percent said they believed Chrump had committed crimes while in office, while 43 percent disagreed.

Who could have predicted that Donald Chrump would turn out to be such an unmitigated disaster?  He seemed like such a nice guy and a very stable genius during the campaign.  Now it seems he can't tell the difference between Old Glory and Ivanka.  Most disingenuous politicians are content to merely hug the flag figuratively, but not whacky Uncle Donald.  He goes up there drooling and grinding our nation’s (co-opted by right wing jingoists) symbol for real.   

If a flag could burn itself, this one surely would
Betsy Ross is throwing up in her grave

As Chrump told Sean Hannity, “If it wasn’t a flag, perhaps I’d be fucking it.”  To most Americans Chrump’s unwanted advances on the American flag is nauseating and scary.  To his mindless minions it is just something else to applaud.  They do not even really see it, they just know their Dear Leader is doing something and that means applaud.  They would probably applaud if Chrump invited Ivanka up on the stage and grabbed her by the pussy.  You know he wants to.  He came pretty close at the nominating convention in the summer of 2016.

Ewwwww

According to a new report from CNN, Chrump pressured both ex-Chief of Staff John Kelly and ex-White House Counsel Don McGahn to give his daughter and top adviser Ivanka Trump a security clearance.  When neither of them agreed to his anti-security/pro-nepotism idiocy, the report says, Der Furor simply granting the clearance himself.  “I would never interfere with security clearances, as I told you before.  I never said to give Ivanka a security clearance.  I told Kelly to give the flag a clearance.  I love the flag.  There’s pictures to prove it.  No one loves the flag more than me.  I am making the flag great again and I think the flag should know many, many secrets.  I have nothing to do with Ivanka.  I haven’t even talked to her since I became president, which I did very bigly by the way.  Greatest victory since the very amazing Andrew Johnson, maybe bigger, certainly better.”

Chrump pockets check from Putin to keep talking

 I. Mangrey recovering.  Not really.

Thought For The Day

Go Cheney Yourself

March 4, 2019

There’s an old expression in Tennessee I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee, that when someone makes a significant unforced error, he is said to have “shot himself in the foot.” 

When Der Furor stood in the Rose Garden and lied about his national emergency, he simultaneously made it clear that there was, in fact, no emergency whatsoever, adding to his soon-to-be-found-illegal-decree, “I could do the wall over a longer period of time. I didn’t need to do this (true). But I’d rather do it much faster. And I don’t have to do it for the election (lie).  I’ve already done a lot of wall for the election (lie). 2020. And the only reason we’re up here talking about this is because of the election (huh?) – because they want to try to win an election, which it looks like they’re not going to be able to do (lie).”   Sorry you had to see that.  It hurts to read it, but not nearly as much as seeing and/or hearing him say it.

If Chrump left any doubt as to the urgency of his fake emergency, as soon as he finished contradicting himself, he flew off to Mor-on-Lago for his umpteenth golf vacation. 

Chrump did not shoot himself in the foot, he shot himself right in the face.  This will be known heretofore as a Cheney Selfie.

Maybe he was aiming for his foot while it was in his mouth

This has been your Paying Attention Thought For The Day.

You're welcome.

What is your thought for the day?

Two For the Goad

I Am a Big Fan

March 1, 2019

“Why do people think that Trump has surrounded himself with a lawyer goon squad for 40 years?  Whether it’s Roy Cohn or Michael Cohen.  The company Trump has kept includes the American mafia, the Russian mafia, arms traders, pedophiles, money launderers, and other people involved in white collar crime.  When you surround yourself with those sorts of people, engaged in those sorts of actions, your lawyers will be very aggressive.  They do things like put out an NDA for basically anyone Trump comes in contact with because they know he’s been a consistent scumbag.”
                                      Sarah Kendzior, January 20, 2018

If you are not aware of journalist, author and scholar on authoritarian states Sarah Kendzior, she can always be counted on for astute observation, and some of the best words, like “…Michael Cohen, this sort of mobster-multi-tasker who's just another one of these Slime coated barnacles stuck on the bottom of this Teflon-Titanic we call the Trump administration.” 

Sarah K, laying some serious schmuck-down on our putz of a prezident

 

More recently Kendzior observed, “Trump may have been in trouble. A great way to get out of trouble is if you're the president of the United States and you can pack the courts, you can purge agencies, you can rewrite the laws so you can be immune from prosecution, as well as filling your own autocratic objectives and partnering with autocrats around the world which is what he's done. This is a transnational crime syndicate masquerading as government.” 

I love that kind of talk. 

Another not-so-happy camper is Elie Mystal, who is always animated, clearly annoyed for some reason, and never pulls any punches.  Mystal recently included this tidbit during a segment on MSNBC, “SDNY (Southern District of New York) is going to be part of Donald Trump 's life for the rest of his natural life. SDNY is coming at Trump like syphilis. It's gonna make him crazy, and it's never going away.” 

Mystal, bringin’ the pain to our painful prezident

Many people are already saying that Chrump may be in the throes of syphilis since, 1) he is known to have avoided using condoms while having sex with porn stars, among others, and 2) he currently seems to be in the throes of dementia and does not seem to know where he is or what he is saying most of the time, and 3) seriously, forget what is happening inside his head, what the fuck is going on atop his head?

Nonetheless, Elie Mystal has a way with words.

I. Mangrey relaying.  Donald Chrump – the syphilis of presidents.