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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When beautiful children of God can help your poll numbers.

I was going to post the images I am linking later on with this post as a caption, but they are way too graphic. I am not cool with just posting the images of little dead children to highlight a blog post. If you are cool with looking at them you can look here.

Anyway, that was the horrific bombing  at Ghouta , when al-Assad proved to the world that he was a depraved maniac to be mentioned in the same breath with some of history's most evil dictators. He slaughtered  hundreds of his own people in a inhuman and sadistic way, and some folks in America were losing their minds because president Obama did not bomb the Syrian leader into another dimension.

Obama's red line problem was born around the same time. Although, let's not forget, republicans in congress would not authorize the bombings and missile strikes that he wanted to carry out.)

Still, do you know who wasn't losing his mind about bombing Syria? Donald trump. The man who is now our president---- even after that horrific event at Ghouta, implored then president Obama to stay out of Syria.  In fact, a series of tweets are now coming back to haunt him after his road to Damascus moment, when he decided to launch almost sixty missiles to take out a few (out of commission) planes.

"Obama must now start focusing on OUR COUNTRY, jobs, healthcare and all of our many problems. Forget Syria and make America great again!"

"Don't attack Syria - an attack that will bring nothing but trouble for the U.S. Focus on making our country strong and great again!"

Donald, there were "beautiful little babies" dying back in 2013 as well.

 But I get it,  these babies are dying when your poll numbers are in the mid-thirties, and you need  distraction from your Russia problem.

You have been in show business long enough to know that nothing gets the American people's attention like a few bright shiny missiles going off into the night.

"...Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians. Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many. Even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror."

No they shouldn't. And the deaths of those children "of God" should never be used to score political points.

"Donald Trump & Mediocrity Of Privilege"

The following opinion piece was written for News One by Joshua Adams.

"Over the last year, it’s been astonishing to see how the bar for basic decorum has been lowered for U.S. President Donald Trump.

Every time Trump––or anyone from his administration for that matter––tweets, I think about how different the reaction would be if any other elected official had peddled the same blatant lies and half-truths that we’ve seen during his brief tenure. What would we hear from vehement right-wing Republicans and ardent “we need to move away from identity politics” liberals?

Consider the following questions: What would Republicans say if, well, President Barack Obama had spent an inordinate amount of his time tweeting? Or if he and Democrats demanded that Ex-Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a U.S. citizen whose parents emigrated to the U.S. from India, show his birth certificate?

What would be the reaction if Russians had hacked Republican National Committee computers and engaged in covert political propaganda to––at the most––help Hillary Clinton win, and––at the least––discredit Trump?

What if, say, after Clinton had won, she and her husband ex-President Bill Clinton were cordial toward Russian President Vladimir Putin?

What would the Fox News headline be if Obama had said, “I like people who weren’t captured” about Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain?

Or, wait, imagine a Black congressman asking on national TV, what “sub group” has contributed more to civilization than Black people, à la Republican Iowa Rep. Steve King?

What if pundits in the “liberal” media asserted that we need to call Dylann Roof a “radical white Christian extremist,” and that to avoid doing so was “political correctness?”

If Obama, like Trump, had been caught bragging on camera that he sexually assaulted women (while he was married to Michelle), how many Black folks, let alone Whites, would jump to frame it as “locker-room talk?” Would we support Obama before and after a host of women had accused him of groping them?

What if incoming First Lady Michelle Obama had plagiarized a speech by outgoing First Lady Laura Bush like Melania Trump? What would be the mainstream reaction if First Lady Obama fake-smiled and grimaced while standing behind President Obama?

Would voters call Fox News “biased” if it cited something straight from Bernie Sanders’ mouth? Then how would Fox react if Sanders tweeted, “Dishonest Faux News!”?

What if Hillary won, and bragged about her historic win, even though she lost the popular vote by almost 3 million votes? What if Hillary won on a campaign pledge that purportedly championed the working class, and then appointed nothing but millionaires and billionaires to her cabinet? What if her first act as president made it harder for middle-class homeowners to own property?

How would Republicans, who obstructed President Obama to an unprecedented degree for eight straight years, react to even minimal opposition to President Trump, let alone a Democratic House member yelling “You lie!” at him during a speech or a governor wagging a finger in his face?

Building Walls To Hide Mediocrity

I raise these questions to show that bias is part of the human condition. It reifies many assumed binaries––good and evil, weak and strong, right and wrong, winners and losers. But there is much more at work in terms of the leaps and stretches taken to redeem Trump’s inadequacies. Republicans, but also Democrats, are allowing the standards and practices of American politics to devolve in ways in which we can’t afford.

There are a host of cultural structures and strictures that compelled the election results that goes beyond mere “economic anxiety,” anti-elitism, or anti-political correctness. When it comes to oppression, critics tend to think in terms of racism, patriarchy, homophobia, classism, Islamophobia, xenophobia, and other structures. But maybe those walls are meant to hide the fact that the emperor, indeed, has no clothes.

A culture that says men are superior to women affords men certain privileges that women are not privy to, including equal pay. As a result, men can outstrip women in achievements, despite their mediocrity. This is a general probability, not a truism, that may explain why Hillary Clinton was held to a different standard than Trump.

And for all of these “isms,” the more people wield the power that socially constructed superiority affords them, the more mediocre they are allowed to be, the harder they will fight to maintain artificial constructs and walls. Writer and scholar Ta-Nehisi Coates said it best:

“To be president, [Obama] had to be scholarly, intelligent, president of the Harvard Law Review, the product of some of our greatest educational institutions, capable of talking to two different worlds … Donald Trump had to be rich and White.”

Obama had to be excellent in virtually every aspect of his presidential campaigns, particularly in 2008, and appeal to the widest, most diverse base as possible. There are several reasons Clinton lost the presidential election––beyond emailgate or her “basket of deplorables” comment. She was one of––if not the most conventionally “qualified”––presidential candidates in American history, but she did not appeal to enough White Americans.

The Truth About Identity Politics

To become the nation’s 45th President, Trump appealed categorically to White people, and peripherally to everyone else.

But there were social forces much bigger than Clinton, ones that she could not account for, and ones that Trump benefited from. One of them is how deeply race is embedded in U.S. politics, and ways in which it can be manipulated in order to win.

We try to avoid it, but regardless of race, class, gender, political ideology, religion, citizenship status, etc., scores of Americans believe in one incredibly powerful logical fallacy: progress for people of color, especially Black people, is achieved by taking something from White people.

That base assumption is central to an array of discourse and stereotypes––welfare recipients, ”job stealing immigrants,” affirmative action, what people think of when they hear diversity, which immigrants should be denigrated, why, and for how long. That is the rocky foundation on which Americans stand anytime race and politics inhabit the same space.

To be clear, I don’t think any reasonable person could dismiss the fact that to win, Trump tapped into the zeitgeist of the 21st century––economic anxiety.

But it’s dangerous to overlook the identity politics embedded in our democracy, especially ones that allowed such a (relative to historical and common standards) demonstratively unqualified person to become president. It’s why the logic of “deserving” and “undeserving” working class exists in the first place. It’s why the rationale about why poor White Americans are poor versus, let’s say, why poor Black or Latino Americans are poor, is different, even when they share the same economic reality.

It’s why Americans who grow up in the most diverse neighborhoods in coastal cities are said to live in “liberal bubbles,” while millions who have never seen a Muslim are “heartland Americans.” It’s why folks can vote for politicians who promise to diminish globalization’s effect in their town, even though the same politicians know for a fact that, due to outsourcing and automation, certain jobs simply do not exist anymore.

It’s why millions can believe our country is perpetually exceptional, express fiery outrage when minorities express anything less than jingoistic love of country, and in the next moment, galvanize around the idea that America “doesn’t win anymore” and needs to be made great “again.”
Mediocrity vs. Hypocrisy

Though all of these are contradictions, I am deliberately using the term “mediocrity” instead of “hypocrisy” because part of what fuels mediocrity is ignoring the fact that standards are applied differently to different groups. It’s one thing to acknowledge contradiction. It’s another thing to not see it as such. It is committing to a bias so fervently that it turns objectivity into a concession.

Trump is our President. And though he comes from a world of reality TV, this is the reality for the next four to eight years. But the logic used to justify his words and actions are diametrically opposed to the standards we set for the majority of this country, politicians or not. Forfeiting those standards should not be a badge of honor, or sign of solidarity. It’s merely a power-grab; posturing and positioning within the new order of the things. In the midst of Black History Month, it’s bitterly ironic that we are shedding light on the exceptional Hidden Figures of America as we watch the beginning of an “alternative facts” presidency.

How low can the bar go?" [Source]

*Pic from cnn.com

CAPTION SATURDAY.

*

 I need a caption for this pic.

Example:

 Trump: "How about that one in the blue dress? 

O'Reilly: "Naw, forget about her, she works at  FOX."

*Pic courtesy of viveremilano.biz

"The fog of war."

I love that tweet from Marcy McGowan. It describes, perfectly, the hypocrisy of one Donald J. trump.

And it's not only Mr. trump, there are quite a few right wing politicians and pundits who now all of a sudden believe that dropping bombs on countries without authorization from congress is a good thing. What a difference an election makes.

Anyway, I wish the press and some in the main stream media would stop acting like this was some huge military victory. I am sorry, all I can think about is Grenada in 1983. Y'all remember how Ronnie played us like a fiddle back then? And I can't help but think that trump is trying to do the same thing now. I mean damn near 60 tomahawk missiles to destroy six planes? As Chris Carter would say: "Come on, maaan".

Obama took out Osama bin Laden from the White House; trump took out some planes and a few buildings from a gold club.  

Anyway, now that trump has started his own personal war, let's hope that it doesn't go the way of his health care plan, or, for that matter, one of his many  failed ventures.  Because contrary to what he would like us all to believe, he has been taking more L's than W's for quite awhile now.








     
  

War games?

"Until the philosophy which hold one race superior
And another Inferior Is finally And permanently Discredited And abandoned -
Everywhere is war -Me say war."

~Bob Marley~ [From a speech by Haile Selassie to the United Nations in 1963]    

There is BREAKING NEWS all over the cable networks tonight, and all the talking heads are talking about some type of military action  being imminent in Syria.  Our president was so anguished and upset at the thought of little babies being gassed to death that it made him change his mind about Syria and its despicable and murderous leader.

This is all kind of ironic, since it's probably the words from his secretary of state and his administration's position on Syria that emboldened al-Assad to act in such a manner in the first place.

So now we are being told that "all options are on the table", and that the president will act decisively to punish the Syrian leader and his troops. We will see.

Our leader has found his humanitarian side, and he does not believe that the world can just stand by and watch innocent children being killed by the use of chemical (or any other type) weapons. Of course what would also be considered acting in a  humanitarian way would be to allow some of those Syrian refugees into our country. But sadly, we all know how our president feels about refugees.

I saw trump stumbling through the press conference with the King of Jordan by his side, and you could tell that he wanted us to believe that he was being sincere and genuinely felt for the victims of the attack. I wasn't buying it. I think the man is incapable of feeling anything for anyone other that himself.

"I think what Assad did is terrible. I think what happened in Syria is one of the truly egregious crimes. It shouldn't have happened. It shouldn't be allowed to happen..... "I think what happened in Syria is a disgrace to humanity. He's there, and I guess he's running things, so something should happen."'

"Something should happen",  but we are all just afraid of what that "something" might be.  

OPEN THREAD WEDNESDAY.

 Sup field hands? There is a lot happening here in America and the world, and so I need your thoughts on a few things:

Now that Donald trump has drawn multiple lines on the al-Assad regime, what exactly will he do? Especially since just months ago he was saying that we should leave al-Assad alone. He said the attack on children yesterday had a "horrible " effect on him, but how al-Assad treated his people in the past didn't seem to have an effect on him at all.

And what do you think about our president supporting a man who has been accused of work place sexual harassment?

There are other things going on as well, like the guy with an even uglier haircut than our own president testing ballistic missiles on a regular basis, and the dems filibustering of the Neil M. Gorsuch nomination.  

Thoughts?  

Calling Colin Powell.

   You have to give it to trump, at least he is consistent. He can always be counted on to do or say something really stupid and that leaves us all scratching our heads.

The man is faced with a humanitarian crisis in the Middle East, and what does he do? He blames his predecessor and issues a statement blaming him for the gassing of innocent civilians. He doesn't
strongly condemn or blame the animals who committed this heinous act, he blames the former president.  *shakes head*

This is a truly pathetic move by the gang who can't shoot straight. Now I wonder if former president Obama will continue biting his tongue or if he will finally break his silence,.

Mr. trump and his team better right the ship and fast. Just moments before I started writing this post, the North Koreans launched another ballistic missile. This is a dangerous world we live in, and you can't bullshit your way out of a crisis the way you bullshitted millions of unsuspecting Americans into voting for you. This is the real world. 

The moon will be blue tonight, because I actually agree with Glen Beck about trump's  nepotism jones. This is not normal. He is sending his son in-law all over the world like he is Henry freaking   Kissinger, and we all know that he knows nothing about negotiating with world leaders on the world stage.

"Senior adviser to the U.S. president. Peace envoy in the Middle East. Top adviser on relations with Canada, China and Mexico. Head of White House bureaucratic "innovation." Why not add emissary to Iraq to the list?

It can be hard to keep track of all the sensitive jobs Jared Kushner has been given by his father-in-law, President Donald Trump. His latest mission involved a surprise visit to Baghdad, where the 36-year-old flew with the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in a covert trip to meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.

Last week, Kushner, who is married to the president's eldest daughter, Ivanka, was named to head a new White House "innovation" task force to fix the way government runs by using private-sector methods.

Together with the Iraq deployment, experts on governance say, Kushner's sphere of influence has ballooned into something so vast that it could eclipse other portfolios in the Trump administration. It's already among the most complicated, said Mark Peterson, who chairs the department of public policy at UCLA's Luskin School of Public Affairs." [Source]


It's actually not that "complicated", he is his son-in- law.

*Pic courtesy of yahoo.com

The no shame zone.

Even if you dislike the folks at FOX and what they represent, you have to respect their business model. For years they would show more legs than news, much to the delight of their old white male viewers in red states. Now, though, it seems that the gig is up.

It turns out that not all the women in the FOX fun house were pleased with how they were being treated. And, as a result, the head hog was forced out. Sadly, he might not have been alone in the FOX skirt chase Olympics. 

FOX recently paid over 13 million to make sexual harassment claims go away in order to keep their star talking head on the air.

But apparently not all of his accusers wanted money, and so there was no settlement to silence at least one of the accusers.

"Wendy Walsh, a former guest commentator on “The O’Reilly Factor” and adjunct professor of psychology, appeared with her attorney Lisa Bloom on Monday to call for an independent investigation of the culture at Fox News in light of claims of sexual harassment against anchor Bill O’Reilly.

Walsh, at a press conference in Bloom’s Woodland Hills, Calif., offices, claims that early in 2013, after she had started weekly appearances on “The O’Reilly Factor,” she met O’Reilly at his invitation for dinner at the Hotel Bel Air in Los Angeles, and talked of her prospects for getting hired as a paid contributor. She said she later refused his invite to his suite. After that, she said, O’Reilly was “hostile” to her and, in May, her weekly segments were put on hold.

Walsh said O’Reilly’s “job offer disappeared the moment I refused to accompany him to his hotel suite. His friendliness to me vanished the moment I rebuffed him.”

Walsh’s account was among those detailed in a New York Times report of multiple settlements totaling $13 million paid after sexual harassment claims against O’Reilly." [Source]

I can't blame Ms. Walsh for not wanting to go with Billo to his hotel room. I mean money can only go so far. If these stories are true, Billo and the old white men at FOX are truly despicable human beings.  

Good for Mercedes Benz for pulling ads from his program. It would be nice if more advertiser's followed their lead, but I won't hold my breath.

*Pic from crooksandliars.com

An editorial for the ages.

 The Los Angeles Times is not known to as a left leaning newspaper. They tend to be to the right of other leading papers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post.

So today, when I read their editorial about Donald trump (see below), I thought to myself that it had to be a belated April Fools' Day joke. 

"It was no secret during the campaign that Donald Trump was a narcissist and a demagogue who used fear and dishonesty to appeal to the worst in American voters. The Times called him unprepared and unsuited for the job he was seeking, and said his election would be a “catastrophe.”

Still, nothing prepared us for the magnitude of this train wreck. Like millions of other Americans, we clung to a slim hope that the new president would turn out to be all noise and bluster, or that the people around him in the White House would act as a check on his worst instincts, or that he would be sobered and transformed by the awesome responsibilities of office.

Instead, seventy-some days in — and with about 1,400 to go before his term is completed — it is increasingly clear that those hopes were misplaced.

In a matter of weeks, President Trump has taken dozens of real-life steps that, if they are not reversed, will rip families apart, foul rivers and pollute the air, intensify the calamitous effects of climate change and profoundly weaken the system of American public education for all.

His attempt to de-insure millions of people who had finally received healthcare coverage and, along the way, enact a massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich has been put on hold for the moment. But he is proceeding with his efforts to defang the government’s regulatory agencies and bloat the Pentagon’s budget even as he supposedly retreats from the global stage.

These are immensely dangerous developments which threaten to weaken this country’s moral standing in the world, imperil the planet and reverse years of slow but steady gains by marginalized or impoverished Americans. But, chilling as they are, these radically wrongheaded policy choices are not, in fact, the most frightening aspect of the Trump presidency.

What is most worrisome about Trump is Trump himself. He is a man so unpredictable, so reckless, so petulant, so full of blind self-regard, so untethered to reality that it is impossible to know where his presidency will lead or how much damage he will do to our nation. His obsession with his own fame, wealth and success, his determination to vanquish enemies real and imagined, his craving for adulation — these traits were, of course, at the very heart of his scorched-earth outsider campaign; indeed, some of them helped get him elected. But in a real presidency in which he wields unimaginable power, they are nothing short of disastrous.........Whether it is the easily disprovable boasts about the size of his inauguration crowd or his unsubstantiated assertion that Barack Obama bugged Trump Tower, the new president regularly muddies the waters of fact and fiction. It’s difficult to know whether he actually can’t distinguish the real from the unreal — or whether he intentionally conflates the two to befuddle voters, deflect criticism and undermine the very idea of objective truth. Whatever the explanation, he is encouraging Americans to reject facts, to disrespect science, documents, nonpartisanship and the mainstream media — and instead to simply take positions on the basis of ideology and preconceived notions. This is a recipe for a divided country in which differences grow deeper and rational compromise becomes impossible." [Read more]

Ouch!

I guess it's safe to say that the LA Times, like the rest of us, has had enough.

And this is the first of a four part series, folks. I can't wait for the rest.

*Pic from motherjones.com

CAPTION SATURDAY.

I need a caption for this pic.


*Pic from cnn.com