Sean's bad day.

        I like to joke that "I have never had a bad day in my life". I mean just waking up every day means that you have already had a good day, right? 

But even I have to admit that some of my days have been worse than others.

There was the time (while still a teenager) that I took a date to a fancy restaurant thinking that I had enough to pay for the meal, only to realize, after we were seated at the table and looking at our menus, that I couldn't even afford one of the appetizers.

Other days come to mind. Like that Sunday in 2005 when I watched #5 puke over himself in the fourth quarter costing my Birds their first ever Super Bowl.

Still, those days are nothing like the day that Sean Spicer had today.

"The White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, set off an intense backlash on Tuesday when he suggested that President Bashar al-Assad of Syria was guilty of acts worse than Hitler and asserted that Hitler had not used chemical weapons, ignoring the use of gas chambers at concentration camps during the Holocaust. Mr. Spicer later apologized.

During his daily briefing for reporters, Mr. Spicer was defending President Trump’s decision to order a missile strike on Syria by trying to lend gravity to the actions of Mr. Assad. American officials accuse the Syrian president of using sarin gas, a lethal chemical weapon, in an attack on a rebel-held area of Idlib Province last week that killed dozens, many of them children.

 

But in misconstruing the facts of the Holocaust — Nazi Germany’s brutally efficient, carefully orchestrated extermination of six million Jews and others — Mr. Spicer instead drew a torrent of criticism and added to the perception that the Trump White House lacks sensitivity and has a tenuous grasp of history.

 

“We didn’t use chemical weapons in World War II,” Mr. Spicer said. “You know, you had someone as despicable as Hitler who didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons.”

 

He continued, “So you have to, if you are Russia, ask yourself: Is this a country and a regime that you want to align yourself with?”' [Source]

 

Huh???

 

Dude it's Passover! Stop it!

 

Four corrections and an apology later did not make Spicer's comments any less outrageous  and controversial.

 

But this is part of a bigger pattern with this administration and those on the right. This normalization of all things Nazi . It's actually kind of scary if you think about it, and this might actually explain Spicer's outrageous statement. It just didn't seem that out of the main stream to him to make such a declaration about Hitler.   

 

If I were to take a poll and ask who had a worse week between Pepsi, United, or Sean Spicer, who would you choose?  Personally, I would have to go with Sean. United and Pepsi are corporations and they will bounce back. Folks who like to drink Pepsi products will keep drinking them, and United is one of the airlines with a monopoly in this country. They will take a PR hit, but they will ride it out. Folks won't stop flying.  

 

Sean, on the other hand, is a terrible spokesperson working for a terrible president, who-- you heard it here first-- will soon be out of a job. 

 

"I was obviously trying to make a point about the heinous acts that Assad had made against his own people last week, using chemical weapons and gas. Frankly, I mistakenly made an inappropriate and insensitive reference to the Holocaust, for which there is no comparison," Spicer said. "And for that I apologize. It was a mistake to do that."

 

Shake it off, Sean. Tomorrow is another day. For your sake I just hope that our president isn't tweeting tonight. 

 

*Pic from cnn.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Nasty women" versus the " liar- in- chief. "

I suppose that if I happened to be standing in Comrade trump's shoes I would be upset as well. I mean the day after his coronation  he had to watch over 4 million people (mostly women) all over the world take to the streets to denounce his presidency and what it stood for.

Of course it didn't not take long for Mr. Thin Skin to bite. In what was an unprecedented move, he sent out his press secretary to denounce a tweet from a New York Times reporter which was retweeted by some news outlets. His problem with it wasn't that it undermined national security, or that it might trouble our economic standing in the world, his problem with it was that it dd not put him in a better light. To him, it diminished the size of the crowds of his inauguration and thus put a little shade on what should have been his shining moment.  By showing actual pictures to prove that there were less people at his inauguration than Obama's in 2009,  the reporter drew the ire of Herr trump, who spent the rest of the day pouting and using the bully pulpit to put down the apparent diss.

There he was at the CIA headquarters, standing in front of a wall that serves as a memorial to all the people who died while serving their country in covert operations all over the world, and all he could do was speak about himself in the third person, and brag, once again, about how popular he was and how evil the press was being to him. That was a sickening display of self-aggrandizement. Throw in the fact that he told not one, but two blatant lies in doing so, and you can see why all those people took to the streets yesterday to protest his presidency.  

If you were living in Germany in 1933,  this has to all seem so familiar to you. Hitler promised not to threaten the Reichstag,  the German President, the Churches and the States, and, as a result, he was granted emergency powers via the enabling act. We all see now how that turned out.

He did it all by de-legitimizing the press, and mobilizing the German people into a nationalistic fervor, And he did it with slick propaganda  (I see you Kellyanne Goebbels) , and well meaning Germans who sat on the sidelines until it was too late.  

“I can only say that I am with you 1,000 percent. And the reason you’re my first stop—” Trump said before dramatically changing direction, “— is that as you know I have a running war with the media. They are among the most dishonest human beings on earth. Right? And they sort of made it sound like I have this feud with the intelligence community.” 

That's a lie! 

"Trump drew laughs from the crowd when he described reporters as "the most dishonest human beings" and claimed he'd drawn as many as 1.5 million people to his inauguration despite official estimates closer to 200,000 and repeated images of empty standing spaces. A few miles away, at the White House, Trump aides were soon setting up pictures of the crowd inside the press briefing room."

Another lie!

If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.” ~Hitler~

At least he has the "frequency" part down pat.

Who says that trump doesn't read? I bet he has a copy of Mein Kampf on that big gold desk of his.


*Pic from theatlanctic.com


 

Mr. Trump's America.

  Congrats to Donald trump for winning Nevada last night.

It now seems that he is clearly on his way to becoming the republican nominee to be president of these divided states of America.

Seven years of unadulterated hatred for the man in the White House has gotten the republicans this mountebank to emerge as their leader. It couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch.

I have heard the constant refrain of, I don't support everything trump says, but I like the way he shoots from the hip, and I think he will shake up Washington.  He might in fact do those things, but you can't separate who trump is and what he represents from supporting his policies and the influence that he will have on the political class. 

The following article sums it up perfectly:

"Let's take a page from Donald Trump's book and ignore political correctness for a moment: If you support Trump, you support his sexist, bigoted and racist views.

There are no ifs, ands or buts about it. And this is especially true for GOP party leaders, elected officials and even community leaders.

 

Some have said things such as, "I don't like Trump's history of demeaning women, but I think he will be good for the economy." Sorry, you don't get a pass because you like one of his policy proposals. It's akin to saying, "I supported Hitler for his tax plan." And no, I'm absolutely not comparing Trump to Hitler. But Anne Frank's 86-year-old stepsister, Eva Schloss, who survived Auschwitz, did just that a few weeks ago, telling Newsweek that Trump "is acting like another Hitler by inciting racism."  So when elected officials such as South Carolina Lt. Gov. Henry McMaster or Republican New Jersey state Sen. Mike Doherty -- shockingly a person from my home state -- endorse Trump, we need to ask them why. Do they support resolving disagreements with women by publicly referring to them as "fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals"? Because Trump does.

 

And what about the other elected officials who have endorsed Trump such as Arizona Treasurer Jeff DeWit, Rhode Island state Rep. Joseph A. Trillo or Iowa state Sen. Brad Zaun. What moved them to endorse Trump?

 

Could it be these elected officials admire the way Trump stoked the flames of hate toward Latinos? His labeling of Mexicans as "rapists"?

 

Maybe they admire the way Trump bullied and mocked not one but two disabled reporters: Serge Kovaleski and Charles Krauthammer -- Trump despicably ridiculed Krauthammer, a man paralyzed from the waist down, as "a guy that can't buy a pair of pants."

Do these officials admire Trump's call to tread on the rights of American Muslims using warrantless surveillance? Perhaps they enjoyed his race-baiting story -- lacking in any factual basis -- that "thousands" of Muslims were cheering in New Jersey on 9/11 to celebrate the attacks on the World Trade Center?

 

Or perhaps these Republican officials are drawn to Trump for defending violence against those who dared to disagree with him at campaign rallies. The most alarming incident came in November at a Trump rally in Birmingham, Alabama, when a Black Lives Matter protester interrupted the candidate. The GOP front-runner called on the crowd to get the man out of there. His supporters then beat up the man, reportedly calling the black protester "the N-word" and a "monkey." Shockingly the next day Trump defended those actions, saying, "Maybe he should have been roughed up."

 

And Monday night, Trump again invoked violence in stifling dissent at a rally, telling the crowd as a protester was being thrown out: "The guards are being very gentle with him. I'd like to punch him in the face, I'll tell you that."

 

We must assume that those who endorse Trump know this history, given that the media have widely covered it. We must also assume they are not just endorsing Trump's policy positions but his disturbing sexist and bigoted history as well.

 

The same goes for people such as former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who recently proclaimed he would vote for Trump if he wins the GOP nomination because he feels compelled to back his party's nominee. Sorry, you don't get a free pass by saying you are in essence "following orders" by voting for the Republican nomination. You have a choice.

 

That's exactly why well-known conservative Erick Erickson wrote an article Monday titled simply, "I Will Not Vote For Donald Trump. Ever." Erickson, who I have vehemently disagreed with in the past, has offered a profile in courage knowing Trump's minions and even fellow conservatives will attack him.

 

Erickson first calls out Trump as a "liberal masquerading as a conservative." He writes that he simply can't support a candidate who "preys on nationalistic, tribal tendencies and has an army of white supremacists online as his loudest cheerleaders." That is one of several good reasons that no good person should support Trump.

 

GOP party leaders, elected officials and community leaders must realize that if they endorse Trump, the rest of us will be forced to assume they are just as bigoted and hateful as he is. " [Source]

 

Think about that for a minute. Erick Erickson, of all people, will not support trump because of his bigotry and the bigots who support him. 

 

That's scary stuff. 

 

This might all be too late, though, because I am afraid the genie has already left the bottle.

 

As America we must now prepare ourselves for the very real possibility that Donald trump could be her next president.  

 

Calling the Mandeville, Jamaica  Parish office now to make sure that my taxes are caught up.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

Will "hillbilly paranoia" doom the GOP?

Take it away Drew Magary.

"A few weeks back, I was watching a documentary about the Ku Klux Klan, because I will watch pretty much anything that’s about the KKK, serial killers, or Hitler. And the reason that the KKK eventually faded out of the American mainstream was not only because they were a legitimate terrorist organization, but because they were so needlessly VISIBLE. People in the KKK quickly realized that there wasn’t much advantage to parading around in hoods and inviting massive public scrutiny when they could simply wear plain clothes, spend the rest of their lives being quietly racist, and get away with it. And so the KKK became a punchline while real racism took on a subtler but no less effective guise, a guise that lingers to this day.

Donald Trump is not a subtle man. The only surprising thing about Donald Trump’s announcement yesterday—in which he demanded a magical anti-Muslim forcefield established around the American border—is that he didn’t make the announcement months ago. After all, keeping out dirty FURRINERS, or even Americans who kinda LOOK like dirty FURRINERS—has long been the centerpiece of Trump’s campaign platform. This is not a man who disguises his intentions, and that has earned him a fervent and devoted following from Americans who pride themselves on being just as blunt about their beliefs as he is…“We need to get the Muslims out of the country, before they start killing our families!”

 

Make no mistake: There’s a fairly sizable portion of the American electorate that supports that take, and you can go a long way in this country by courting them, in subtle ways if you prefer. Donald Trump isn’t stupid. He knows that keeping American citizens out of the country solely for their religious beliefs is neither Constitutional nor practical. But he knows what works. He knows there’s a solid voting bloc out there cheering him on to up the stakes every successive week, and they won’t desert him. He’s only gonna get crazier from here.

 

And you know what? I’m still rooting for him to win the nomination. I’m rooting for his candidacy like I used to root for mass chaos in college football's Bowl Championship Series. I want him to sweep the primaries and make a porn star his veep and get a primo convention slot that results in mass chaos and lots of urgent backstage maneuvering to kick him out of the party. I don’t want him to branch off and run as an independent. I want him to be VISIBLE. I want him to be the standard bearer. Filthy rich GOP donors know that a Trump nomination would essentially doom their party, and that’s exactly what those fuckers deserve, now and forever.

 

Because if you think the prospect of Trump’s leadership is terrifying, I have bad news for you: You already have MANY elected leaders who are just as bad, if not fucking worse. Like Texas congressman Louis Gohmert. Or New York loony toon Peter King. Or any number of Tea Party members who have won by exploiting the same kind of hillbilly paranoia that Trump is currently whipping into a froth. Trump’s great sin is that he is so terribly PUBLIC with his courtship, while the rest of GOP has quietly dined out on these people for ages now.

 

It’s way past due for this scam to be blown wide open. This is the braying, gullible 20 percent of the American population that has stonewalled a great deal of our progress and DESERVES to be left behind, in the dust. In a lot of Trump thinkpieces (like mine!), you’ll see writers attribute the Trump phenomenon to anger. “Say what you will, these people are angry!” And today, more than ever, I could give half a shit about that anger. Are you angry America isn’t what it used to be? EAT SHIT. I don’t care that you’re mad it’s not 1951. I don't care that an immigrant coder stole your job at the wagon factory. I don’t care that your only solution for your plight is to SEETHE about it. I don’t care that your American ideal is booting out half the population while arming yourselves to the teeth. The sooner you people die off and have your political influence quashed, the better. You deserve to have your political movement burst into flames in front of a live television audience. You deserve to blindly follow your idiot pied piper into oblivion."

[More]

 

Go on and drop the mic young fellow.

 

Can you say brokered convention boys and girls? *fingers crossed*

 

*Pic from newsweek.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

Protecting their children from the evil government by any means necessary.

I

would like to start this post by giving a shout out to my dear sister who just got back home to Seattle from a trip to the motherland. I wish I could have been there with her. Needless to say that she was overwhelmed by the experience.

She is the smartest of the two Bennett children (Doctor, Fulbright Scholar), she sings like an Angel, and she plays a mean piano to boot. 
  
Sis, I am glad that you made it home in one piece, and I can’t wait to see the pictures.

So anyway, the NRA Convention is still in full effect down in Houston, and  it’s obvious that the family that shoots together stays together in the mind of the [right] wingnut. In between comparing government leaders to Hitler and calling for armed resistance, there were 11 year old kids salivating over AR-15 rifles and members as young as three soaking it all in. (BTW, I am still wondering why child endangerment charges weren't brought against that family in Kentucky. I am starting to think that Rikyrah was on to something when it comes to these Southern prosecutors.)

"Politics were in the air in Houston but not on the mind of Samuel Willie, 11, who was eying a black AR-15 — the same type of weapon Adam Lanza used Dec. 14 in the Newtown, Conn., school massacre that killed 20 children and six adults. “I want an AR-15 and a M1911,” said Samuel, of Nederland, Texas. “I like how they look.”

Andrew Dietz let fly at the convention air-gun range. The 10-year-old from Gainseville, Texas, received a rifle for Christmas last year and said the firearm makes him feel safe. “If something tries to attack me,” he said, “I can get it out.”'

Riiight. I hear ya there little fella. But who will save your mommy and daddy when you decide to blow their brains out because they cut your cell phone privileges?

Honestly, you would think that these clowns in the NRA would spend most of their time at the convention talking about (and teaching) gun safety  instead of trying to demagogue the issue. If they did, maybe we wouldn't have so many stories like the following:

"A Colorado Springs man shot himself Saturday while cleaning spilled soda off of his pistol, Colorado Springs police said.

The 24-year-old man was sitting in his vehicle near 1500 Meadow Peak View when he spilled the drink on his gun, police said. After wiping the gun down, he attempted to reinsert the magazine and accidentally fired the weapon." [Source]

Or this, and this, and this....I could go on, but I think you get the point.

Sadly, I think it's safe to say that the wingnuts will kill themselves and their own family members with their beloved guns before the evil government does.

*Pics from The New York Daily News.

 

 

 

One flew over the GOP nest.

"Freedom isn't to do whatever you want to do, it's to do what you ought to do" ..."

Huh? I told you all that Ricky [I should be in a] Sanitarium is crazy, but you wouldn't listen.

Folks, make no mistake, A Rick [I should be in a] Sanitarium presidency would be scary for A-merry-ca.

I know all about Rick [I should be in a] Sanitarium, I am from Pistolvania. He was one of our Senators here before we decided to throw his ass out by 16 percentage points. Now that he has a national stage the rest of A-merry-ca is finding out about the guy as well.

Comparing O to Hitler. Wanting to do away with federal AND state involvement with education. (Yes, Ricky would prefer if all the children in A-merry-ca were home schooled like his own. Shhhh, let's not mention the fact that he stole money from the people of Pistolvania while doing it.)Wanting to do away with pre-natal care for pregnant women, and calling the religion of the president of these divided states "phony." Wow! This all makes him declaring contraception harmful to women seem like the norm. I will give Ricky credit; he is doubling down on crazy.

"The idea that the federal government should be running schools, frankly much less that the state government should be running schools, is anachronistic. It goes back to the time of industrialization of America when people came off the farms where they did home-school or have the little neighborhood school, and into these big factories, so we built equal factories called public schools. And while those factories as we all know in Ohio and Pennsylvania have fundamentally changed, the factory school has not."

"Anachronistic" Rick? Oh the irony. Folks, believe me, if there is anything that belongs in another time it's Rick [I should be in a] Sanitarium.

"There's nothing - there's no gift, no Christmas gift, that could be given better than Rick Santorum to the Democrats,"

I know that they don't believe me, but I want to say this to my republican friends in all sincerity: If Donald Trump believes that the guy heading for the nomination of your party is unelectable, just what do you think a normal person in A-merry-ca is thinking about him? Think about it.