TRUE BLUE REPORT: Blue Ribbon Winners—Vice Adm. Harward, Melissa McCarthy and intel whistleblowers

by TrueBlueMajority for Black Star Resistance

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Saturday, Feb. 18, 2017 Saturday, Feb. 18, 2017 at 8:58:43pm PST

On Saturdays, the True Blue Report “Blue Ribbon” will be awarded to an individual or group with the most successful, dramatic, or encouraging act of resistance in the previous week.

I will choose some winners in the body of the diary and also accept nominations for others in the comments.

As Charlie Pierce put it:

when a retired flag officer declines a job offer from the president* that would put him at the top of the national security apparatus, he's had a good, long look into Bedlam and has declined to sign on.

Harward said publicly he turned down the job because of family concerns.

Privately he made a more colorful reference to not wanting a sandwich with the same basic ingredient as Miss Minnie’s pie.

As rumor has it, Harward (reasonably) wanted his own national security leadership team, and was uncomfortable with the idea of dealing with political interference from Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, and the I’m-so-unqualified-that-only-Fakes-News-watchers-know-who-I-am K. T. McFarland.

So the first Blue Ribbon of the week goes to retired Vice Admiral Robert S. Harward, Jr. Once the first highly respected person of of integrity says the Emperor has no clothes, it leads the way for others to show the same courage.

It also sends exactly the signal we want to #persuadables who have give a lot of weight to men of military judgment and helps them see that the #finetunedmachine is a lie.

A no-name acting NSA director is in place, but apparently the DJT administration has no official replacement candidate in mind. It is DJTcrazy to expect that anyone worthy of the job will agree to ride with the unnecessary weight of the Bannon, Miller, and McFarland saddlebags, so this position may be vacant for a while.

I can add nothing to the lavish praise that has already been laid at the high heeled feet of Melissa McCarthy.

Her first turn as Scary Spice was outstanding because of the shock value, and the second one proved the first one wasn’t a fluke.

The brilliant performances speak for themselves:

YouTube Video

^_*

In all seriousness, this is political satire at the Tina Fey level. Fey did more to shape the popular opinion of Sarah Palin than all the fact based pundits on all the cable news shows combined.

It is impossible to recover from this kind of mockery, especially in an administration where women, women of a certain size, and women of a certain age, are considered less than full human beings. To be taken down a notch or ten by someone like McCarthy hurts much much more for those reasons, and scuttlebutt says that DJT was particularly upset that Spicer was caricatured by a female actor.

This is targeted humiliation that hits DJT right in his most vulnerable place. In my opinion, the only reason DJT has not replaced Spicer is that no one else wants the job (see Miss Minnie’s pie above).

Comedy as a means of defining political opponents is one of the best tools in the Blue Team arsenal because the Red Team has no ability to defend against it or respond in kind.

A big beautiful blue ribbon goes to Melissa McCarthy, who should just make room on her mantle for the Emmy right now.

Last but not least, the anonymous leakers/whistleblowers who let the world know that Flynn had in fact negotiated with the Russians while Obama was still president had a hard decision to make.

To confirm for the world that the conversation between Flynn and the Russian ambassador was being taped, and that other members of the DJT campaign were in frequent communication with Russian officials, probably compromised some sources of information they would have preferred to keep secret. But pieces are sacrificed in every game of chesss, so they decided the future of the country and the importance of informing the public of the truth required a certain amount of sacrifice.

Since DJT does not trust them, belittles them, and rejects their professionalism at every turn, they fought back the only way they could, and reminded him at the same time that he’d better not frak with them, because they have the ability to expose him in ways he is completely unfamiliar with.

It has infuriated DJT and may have the side effect of getting hearings on Capitol Hill that, once begun, may reveal more than those clamoring for the hearings bargained for. Who will be the Alexander Butterfield who, in answering a question designed to elicit a specific answer, ends up giving away much more than intended?

Blue ribbons all around for the leakers, whistleblowers, rogue staffers, and other anonymous sources who are going to eat this administration up from the inside. DJT may rant and rave but, because they know exactly how the system works, they have more power than he does, and he has no power to stop them.

End as we started, with Pierce:

The president*'s managed to alienate the intelligence community and he's on his way to alienating the military all the way up to flag rank.

Alienating the military and the intelligence community is not the sign of a presidency that is working. That combined with teh gawdawful press conference may even be persuading Republicons that this sinking ship should be abandoned, and that their future in leadership is on the line as more and more people join the anti-DJT ranks. We already outnumber them, and this week we added a lot more folks to our side. 2018 can’t get here fast enough.