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I Hope You Liked 2016…
Posted on: February 13, 2019
Lyndon LaRouche has died. Does anyone care? I honestly have no opinion on the man; he was way before my time, certainly before my time in the US. I see many on the Alt-Left, like the insufferable bore Matt Bruenig, mourning his passing. This sentence from LaRouche’s Wiki page explains why: “LaRouche’s critics have said that he had “fascistic tendencies”, took positions on the far right, and created disinformation.”
Of actual relevance to the world, the 2020 election is in full swing. Republicans have Trump. No serious contender will challenge him. Jeff Flake once made some noises that resembled the desire to run, but he did the most Flake thing ever: flaked out. The Democratic field, on the other hand, is filling up with a big slate of Big Names who will be competing for dollars and attention: Harris, Gillibrand, Warren, Klobuchar, Booker. And, inevitably, Biden, Sharrod Brown, Bernie. NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio has suggested he’s exploring a Presidential run. (He shouldn’t bother. NYC barely likes him.) Bloomberg is still contemplating, though my guess is he will ultimately decide not to run. That nut-job from Hawaii will probably end up being Green Party candidate. Pelosi-foe Seth Moulton says he’s considering a run also; yeah, LOL, ok Seth, you do you. Am I missing anybody? I’m sure I must be.
The campaign so far is off to a predictable start. Kirsten Gillibrand has already had her first scandal: “But her fried chicken-gate!” At a campaign stop fried chicken was served. Gillibrand first reached for a fork and knife. Upon seeing others dig in with their hands, she queried out loud if she should do the same and then proceeded to eat like everyone else. This is a scandal now. NY Times reporters like Jonathan Martin snarkily wondered if Gillibrand has ever eaten fried chicken before. Gillibrand is no longer authentic and nobody can ever take her seriously. Eating fried chicken with fork and knife is unheard- of and will likely sink her’s chances. Elizabeth Warren is on her 2nd year of “But her heritage!” scandal. Mark my words, this scandal will not go away until Warren drops out of the race. The media will not let it die. It’s too important to keep litigating it because Trump will keep saying racist things. That’s why the media won’t let it die. They want Trump to keep saying racist things so they can make money covering it.
Meanwhile in Trumplandia, at his most recent rally in El Paso, a Trumpkin attacked a BBC cameraman after Trump led his latest “fake news” chant. Let’s be honest, it won’t change how Trump talks and it won’t change how the media continues to cover Trump: with rose-colored glasses. The political media wants Trump to win. It means sales and clicks and ratings. They will roast Democrats like they always do and shrug off Trump’s insanity. Gird your loins, Widdershins. I hope you liked the 2016 campaign because we’re about to get another like it, if not worse. The train has left the station and it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
Lazy Weekend: Brrrrrrrrrrr
Posted on: January 19, 2019
Happy Sunday Widdershins!
It sounds like winter is finally here! It’s a few months late, but climate change isn’t a problem. In NYC we are promised an arctic chill with temperature supposedly dropping to below 0. We’ll see if that actually comes true. I’m always skeptical about the weather – and everything else.
I know Fredster is also getting some bad storms. How is it around the rest of the country where you are? Is it Winter or July? You have to tell us using music!
And since this is an open thread, post any other music you want, but you have to tell us about your weather using some of your favorite songs.
Lazy Weekend: Hope
Posted on: January 6, 2019
- In: lazy weekend | Music | Uncategorized
- 128 Comments
Happy Sunday Widdershins!
We made it all the way to January 6th!! The good news is: Democrats are now in charge of the House and Nancy Pelosi is in charge of the Democrats of the House. Trump is livid. It hasn’t been all smooth sailing. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was busted having danced in college on video! And Michigan Rep Rashida Tlaib was busted calling Trump a “motherfucker” in a bar. Republicans are flipping out! Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy – whom Trump called “Steve” in a Rose Garden ceremony – said GOP has written a resolution CONDEMNING such outrageous behavior. As someone on Twitter said, though: GOP might want to pace themselves. If they think a young woman in college dancing a tribute to “The Breakfast Club” and a grown woman cursing in a bar is scandalous, what are they going to do when the subpoenas start flying? They might choke themselves to death on their pearls.
Oh and both Seth Moulton and Tim Ryan voted for Nancy Pelosi to be Speaker. So, take that! Remember how we were all rooting for Connor Lamb to win? He voted against Pelosi.
Anyway, just a tiny shred of optimism is setting in as Democrats announce plans to question Kirstjen Nielsen, whom I have dubbed “The Hyena of ICE”, on what the hell’s been happening on the border. They announced their intention of looking into Trump’s profiting off of the Presidency. They want Wilbur Ross on the carpet. So…we’ll have some entertainment, at least.
So – hope and optimism is our musical theme for today! What are some of your favorite tunes that give you hope?
This is an open thread.
It has been 189 years since You Know Who became president*. There seems to finally be some sort of progress in the Bob Mueller investigation: the Michael Cohen indictments suggest some serious hanky panky and directly implicate Trump. Mueller wouldn’t have mentioned any of that – and Cohen wouldn’t be pleading guilty – if there wasn’t some serious evidence. It is also safe to assume that Mueller didn’t show his entire hand in those filings. But we have no idea what Mueller has or doesn’t have. More importantly – we can’t predict what will happen when he finally reveals the information. We can presume the entire GOP will stand behind Trump. Just look at how they are reacting to the revelations that Trump used campaign money to pay off porn stars:
Orrin Hatch: “I don’t think he was involved in crimes, but even then, you know, you can make anything a crime und the current laws; if you want to you can blow it way out of proportion, you can do a lot of things… President Trump before he became President, that’s another world. Since he’s become President this economy has charged ahead… And I think we ought to judge him on that basis, other than trying to drum up things from the past that may or may not be true.”
Chuck Grassley: “They based it on what a liar says, so it hurts the credibility of it.”
John Kennedy: “Well, let me say this about Mister Cohen: Jesus loves him, but everybody else thinks he’s an idiot. I think most Americans think he’s a sleazoid grifter. I can’t imagine basing any kind of prosecution on the word of Mister Cohen. Do I support violations of the campaign finance act if that indeed happened? Of course not. But the President says it was a private transaction, and it would appear to me that the only evidence is coming from Mister Cohen, whose credibility can be questioned. Duh.”
Do you remember how Hatch and Grassley opposed the impeachment of Bill Clinton for lying about an extramarital affair that came to light during an investigation into a 1970’s land deal? Oh wait a minute, they wanted Bill Clinton impeached and removed from office… Their inconsistency seems odd! But it does tell us that GOP will never ever ever ever turn on Trump. I keep seeing pundits claim that some miraculous event will finally make GOP turn: it’s been 3 years of that and we have seen zero cracks in the facade. The GOP will never turn on Trump. Ever. It’s not because he’s blackmailing them. It’s because they fully support everything he does and stands for. They want more of that. They will support a more extreme candidate next. I remember at CPAC shortly after the election, Kellyanne Conway declared from the stage that when CPAC ends, the GOP will be Trump’s party: she was right about that. GOP and Trump crawled out of the same womb.
One issue that is not only far from being resolved, we have seen no attempt to even try to figure out what happened, is the issue of FBI NY office and the role they played in the 2016 election. Charles Pierce points to a section of Comey’s most recent testimony to the House where he finally explicitly states that the reason he decided to go public with his letter was the leaking of the FBI NY office and his inability to stop them.
“I was concerned that there appeared to be in the media a number of stories that might have been based on communications reporters or nonreporters like Rudy Giuliani were having with people in the New York field office. In particular, in I want to say mid October, maybe a little bit later, Mr. Giuliani was making statements that appeared to be based on his knowledge of workings inside the FBI New York. And then my recollection is there were other stories that were in the same ballpark that gave me a general concern that we may have a leak problem — unauthorized disclosure problem out of New York, and so I asked that it be investigated.”
In a previous testimony I recall Comey said there was an attempt to look into his matter when he was still FBI director, but that investigation seems to have died. Certainly no news has come out that references it in any way. I am surprised (not really!) that no media outlet has pursued this story in any meaningful way. There is a Pulitzer out there for an investigative journalist that digs into this; it doesn’t appear as if anyone is interested though.
This is an open thread!
Lazy Sunday: Tomorrow…
Posted on: December 2, 2018
- In: Music | Uncategorized
- 33 Comments
Happy Sunday Widdershins!
The HOLIDAYS are upon us. Christmas music has been terrorizing us all in stores for months, but now as we enter December and Hanukkah in full swing, it’ll be Christmas and New Year before we know it. What will 2019 bring? Who even knows. But we can try to guess through music! The songs are all about the future. Tomorrow. And the tomorrow after that.
This is an open thread!
Are We There Yet?
Posted on: November 4, 2018
Happy Sunday Widdershins!
Did you remember to turn the clocks back one hour? Most clocks will do it automatically. But your microwave probably needs adjusting!
So Tuesday is the big day. I wish it was Tuesday already because it’s nerve-wrecking and OMG is it over yet?! So as we anxiously await for election day and then the results, let’s share some of our favorite songs about anticipation and waiting.
November 6, 2018
Posted on: November 1, 2018
We are less than a week away from the midterms. November 6, 2018 will be a red-letter day for America. History will be written with that day as the dividing line. What America was before 11/6/18 and what it will become after. It is impossible to really know what will happen. Predicting the outcome is an exercise in futility. We thought we knew what would happen on 11/8/16 and the electorate disappointed. Will the Blue Wave of the special elections become a tsunami of the midterms? Or will it subside and resemble only a small tide? Nobody can predict. Will people actually leave their homes and vote? Who knows. There are still an extraordinary amount of people who don’t plan to vote. New Yorker just had an article about some young people who don’t plan to vote because reasons. There are voters who still don’t feel inspired by anyone. And there are voters who just don’t think it’s a big deal. Will these people vote when it counts? Who knows… We can hope that someone, a friend, will make them see the light on the issue.
There is also the question of Trump voters: will they vote? Some argue that believing that everything on the news is Fake News makes them ignorant of the imminent blue wave. That may be true… but it’s also true that Trump and the entire GOP – now openly, proudly a party of Nazis, racists, anti-Semites, homophobes – are using every dirty trick in the book to steal the election: everything from purging voter rolls to shutting down voting stations so people can’t vote to sending out wrong voting information to leaving Democratic candidates off the ballot. We’ve seen all these things play out in real time and it terrifies me to say that I’ve seen very little reaction from Democrats. ACLU does what it can to file lawsuits, but the Democratic party leaders are mostly silent, letting the candidates – the vast majority of whom are new at this – find their own way. In North Dakota Republicans – after saying Native Americans must have IDs with an address they don’t have on reservations – are now rejecting ballots because the color of the ink is “wrong.” Election is being openly stolen in Georgia and the Democratic party – and the media – are looking at it as helpless spectators.
And we also don’t know what will happen on November 7th. Whether Democrats manage to win anything or if Republicans hold on to all of their power. What will Trump do? I think we can safely assume that if Democrats win the House – Trump will try to declare the election invalid. He is already floating ideas of rigging by Democrats. We know the GOP will back Trump 100%. What will Democrats do when that happens? I am not hopeful. If Republicans hold on to all of their power – things will go off the rails in a different way. GOP and Trump will declare a mandate and I really think that will be our last election. I am sorry to be this negative. I just want to make sure we are all prepared for November 7th. Because I think November 7th is going to be very bad, no matter how the vote goes.
Do you think I’m off my rocker?
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