Every time tRump commits another public atrocity, affront or act of arrogance we tend to say he’s reached a new low. That’s just not true. tRump hit bottom long ago. Now he just adds to his already extensive list of crimes against the nation (and the world). I want him to survive long enough to face the full weight karma has stored up to knock him down with. Some of his enablers are being indicted and that is a very good thing. I hope to see the pace of those indictments increase in the coming weeks. And I hope and believe the moral arc of history is snapping back right into the smug faces of the pretend Christians who epitomize the perversion of their faith in pursuit of power. Whenever I hear someone jumping through metaphysical hoops to justify support of tRumpist policies as articulated by Stephen Miller, I am more than appalled. More than disgusted. More than enraged. Words fail.
I use my anger to fuel my resistance. Others of us use their love, their sense of justice, their faith or their humanity to power their resistance. No matter what we use as motivation or how we choose to resist, we are all in this together. Our immediate goal is to take the country away from the currently governing corrupt minority and begin to repair the damage they have done. There is no simple recipe for success. When corporate media insists on promoting a tale of internecine warfare run amok in the resistance, we need to push back against those claims. We don’t have to agree about everything. We are a coalition of ideas, rather than a monolithic bloc of rigidly aligned dittoheads. Our differences are minor when confronted with the reality of the agenda of the kakistocracy. RESIST. VOTE. INDICT and IMPEACH. IMPRISON.
The Government Reopens and Stone Is Indicted.
The news coverage has been constant since Friday. That one-two punch has pretty much knocked everything else out of the spotlight. We are intoxicated by the calamity and reveling in the disarray the GrOPers created for themselves. I’d like to sound a note of caution here. I’m not willing to relax until we hammer the last nail into the coffin of populist bigotry. tRump is very much a symptom of a deeper issue with a far to large part of our population. As long as there are large groups of people willing to overlook children in cages, whoeveraphobia (aka divisive rhetoric), an island in ruin, foreign interference, income inequality, incessant and blatant lies and all the signs of incipient authoritarian rule then we have work left to do. It’s all about hearts and minds and we don’t get to make spurious claims about revealed wisdom or preordained fate. We have to win on the merits and we have to do it with understanding. It’s not an easy prescription. I think we are up to it.
Seth Meyers did a great job of summarizing what happened last Friday.
Now that Madame Speaker owns tRump, do you think she can send him somewhere for a timeout because of his damaging tantrum? I’m thinking Guantanamo?
Add Steve Martin to the list of SNL’s cold open guest impersonators. He rocked it as Stone.
Has anyone checked the odds of when the next indictments can be expected? Carter Page is my guess for who goes next. I think the end will be near when Don Jr is indicted. Does anyone else have a guess as to who will replace Stone the the barrel? A correct guess will win a poor imitation of Carl Kasell’s voice on their answering machine.
Let’s Make tRump Fulfill a Campaign Promise
Forget the wall. There’s another campaign promise tRump should be forced to honor. He should voluntarily release his tax returns. Or maybe we could get someone to make him to make him do it.
CNN: Here's why House Democrats are going to go after Trump's taxes -- and soon
A
new Washington Post/ABC News poll seems to suggest a clear next fight for Democrats to pick: a legislative attempt to force Trump to release at least some of his past tax returns.
Six in 10 said House Democrats should seek "to obtain and release Trump's tax returns." Just 35% of those polled said Democrats should not exert legislative powers to get their hands on Trump's tax returns.
And while there is clear partisan polarization in these numbers (80% of Democrats want Congress to force the release of the returns but 25% of Republicans say the same), a clear majority of unaffiliated voters (63% of independents) want House Democrats to do what they can to get Trump's tax history too.
In purely political terms: This is a fight worth having for Democrats.
Regarding that Threatened Emergency Declaration
TheAtlantic: Trump Is Destroying His Own Case for a National Emergency
It has now been more than three weeks since President Donald Trump first began his public flirtation with declaring a national emergency as a way of getting funding to build a wall on the southern border. At first he seemed intent on declaring an emergency immediately. Within days, though, he began saying that he was in no hurry to pull that trigger. On Friday, even as he abruptly caved and allowed the government to reopen for three weeks without wall funding, he again threatened to declare an emergency—but only if Congress doesn’t give him what he wants.
Trump no doubt thinks he looks more reasonable if he gives Congress plenty of time to act before declaring an emergency. He might also think that Congress’s repeated failure to provide funds shows the need for emergency action. The truth is the exact opposite. By giving Congress time to definitively establish its unwillingness to fund the border wall, Trump is both taking away any legitimate justification for emergency action and proving his intent to subvert the constitutional balance of powers.
Breaking News (Sort of)
The crack staff here at NNNE Research has been investigating tRump’s claims of Clinton contacts with Russian agents during the 2016 campaign.
Well, it turns out that Hillary did meet with a notorious Russian agent three times during September and October of 2016 in the run up to the election. In her defense, all the meeting were public and she did refer to her contact as Putin’s Puppet in the final meeting. Many members of the news media attended all of those meetings. But, they have chosen not to focus on outing that Russian agent and thus proving tRump’s claims of Hillary’s direct contact with Putin’s primary agent in the US.
Two More tRump Tell-Alls Out This Week
Is there anyone who has ever left the tRump White House that doesn’t feel the need to talk smack about him? Even when they are trying to defend him, tRump comes off like an utter nincompoop. About those “best people” he was bringing into his administration… I’m still waiting.
Wonkette: Stephen Miller Is Really F*cked Up. No, We Mean REALLY F*CKED UP
It's not that we think the new book Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House, written by former Trump idiot staffer Cliff Sims, is going to teach us totally new things about Donald Trump or the cohort of poop-goblins who surround him in the White House. He's mostly confirming things we already know. For instance, we already knew Kellyanne Conway was a two-faced hell person before we read the book excerpt last week about how Kellyanne Conway is a two-faced hell person. It's more that we are just in love with how vivid Sims's accounts are, which makes sense, because according to a new article about Sims's book in The Atlantic, in advance of its Tuesday release, the dude fucking took notes on literally every encounter he had during his time in the Trump administration, to the point that it creeped other folks out.
USAToday: 'I fired Flynn. It’s over': Trump thought firing solved 'Russia thing,' Christie writes
According to the Times, one scene in the book describes a lunch Christie had with Trump and Kushner on Feb. 14, 2017, the day after Flynn was fired, for lying about his contacts with then-Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
"This Russia thing is all over now, because I fired Flynn," Trump said, according to Christie, who wrote that he laughed in response to the president's remark.
Climate Change Is Still an Issue
Mother Jones: A Carbon Tax Back From the Dead? Stranger Things Have Happened.
The politics of taxing carbon is trickier than ever, but that didn’t stop a group of lawmakers from reviving a carbon tax bill like a zombie from the grave.
The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act was brought to life again last Thursday in the House of Representatives by the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus. Originally introduced in November and later in the Senate, it marked the first bipartisan climate bill entertained by Congress in a decade. And then it languished. Now it’s back and ready to take a bite out of your brains—er, I mean, gas-guzzling habits.
As with most bipartisan legislation, there are compromises at hand. “It has something for everyone to love and something for everyone to hate,” said Mark Reynolds, executive director of the Citizens’ Climate Lobby, a group backing the legislation.
Denial of science just plain pisses me off. I hope it pisses you off as well. Here’s a little bit of sensible inspiration from Operatico Politico
Short Takes
tRump wants his rivals to see him as a cross between Winston Churchill and Attila the Hun. Most of us see him as diaper droppings with bad hair.
Donald tRump is an invitation to and celebration of mediocrity.
Donald tRump invites vulgarity because he is such a vulgar creature. His idea of taking the high road is to accuse others of his own failings.
All of our current Donald problems could have been solved a long time ago; if only his mother had been more competent with the spermicidal jelly.
There’s a new tRump biopic due out soon. It’s called the Dumbening.
tRump is clearly and man of substance. Unfortunately, the substance is horse manure.
Someone has finally braved the lickspittle brigade to obtain and uncontaminated (at least by other people) sample of Two Scoops’ DNA. Analysis shows 15% orangeatan, 3% racoon, 60% cesspit squeezings, 22% quivering jelly and 110% incompetent, woman hating, homophobic, racist bigot.
The insect on the tRump family crest has been identified as a dung beetle.
Required Dog Picture
She’s on a time out because she ate half of my favorite pair of shoes. She may return next week.
Today’s Puzzle
I’m told that GNR readers are now expecting a Tuesday puzzle. As a shameless slave to public opinion, I’ve worked diligently to create a puzzle that would be challenging for Republicans and fairly easy for the rest of us. The first person to submit the correct answer in the comments will win absolutely nothing (except, of course, praise from anyone who was unable to solve the puzzle).
Finale
We’ll ask Jerry to play us out again with some help from David Grisman.
Disclaimer: The rumors that tRump is actually a Russian citizen and holder of the Order of Putin medal with the triple pee cluster have not been substantiated by any actual investigation.