Month: December 2019

Trump bows to Putin. Republicans bow to Trump.
by Tom Sullivan

Sad. Since Donald Trump’s tweets became a national phenomenon, the word Trump uses frequently to put down his enemies has been appropriated by the president’s critics to mock his behavior and his policies. Critics might instead deploy a more descriptive word that cuts deeper: weak.

Trump seeks the approval of the world’s strongmen to fill a desperate need for the strength he lacks. Powdered rhinoceros horn is hard to come by these days.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, in particular, is Trump’s avatar of strength. Trump is loathe to offend him and overeager to please. Trump practically licks his hand when the two meet.

Reporters see Putin’s influence behind Trump’s conspiracy theories about Ukraine that got him impeached this week. It is clear by now what Putin suggests Trump accepts as true.

The Washington Post reported Thursday evening that Trump repeatedly told senior aides that Ukraine had worked to keep him from winning in 2016. Trump’s insistence led many (who spoke to the Post anonymously) to think “Putin himself helped spur the idea of Ukraine’s culpability,” the Post reported:

One former senior White House official said Trump even stated so explicitly at one point, saying he knew Ukraine was the real culprit because “Putin told me.”

Yeah, that’s disturbing. Just not disturbing enough for the sycophants with which Trump surrounds himself to do anything about.

One man's opinion, but if the president of the United States told *me* that he was basing his foreign policy on disinformation from Vladimir Putin, I'd shout my head off the very first minute, damn the consequences – not wait 30 months and then tell a reporter on background— David Frum (@davidfrum) December 20, 2019

Philip Bump Friday evening examined the timeline of the Trump-Putin communications for which we have record compared to the timeline of Russian 2016 interference Trump still disputes. There were “a total of 20 phone calls or one-on-one meetings from the day he won the election until this July.” Trump’s infamous call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky occurred July 25. By Dec. 18, the U.S. House had impeached Trump for it.

What’s missing from Bump’s timeline is where Paul Manafort fits into it. Manafort officially became Trump’s campaign manager on March 29, 2016, but Manafort was a presence in Republican political circles long before than. The two had interactions and mutual acquaintances going back decades. Manafort’s involvement in Ukraine goes back to 2004. Manafort reportedly began working for Russian aluminum billionaire Oleg Deripaska in 2006, a man with close ties to Putin. Manafort mounted an effort for Deripaska to “influence politics, business dealings and news coverage inside the United States, Europe and former Soviet republics to benefit President Vladimir Putin’s government.”

Manafort now sits in prison convicted of tax and bank fraud.

There are a long list of things we still do not know about Trump’s call for investigations of the Bidens and Ukraine, David Graham writes in The Atlantic. What Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani is doing in Ukraine and where his indicted associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman (and their paymaster, Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash) fit into the Trump saga remains to be unpacked. Not to mention what culpability Trump administration players bear.

We are where we are and Trump is where he is because for all his bluster and bullying, Trump is a seriously damaged human being. Feral in his instincts, a slave to his impulses, perpetually insecure, morally lost and confused, and for all his fame, pathologically needy. The illusion of strength he projects “strongly” impresses the weak-minded. But their approval is junk food to him. What he craves is acceptance by those with real power and the will to wield it. Men like Vladimir Putin. Men as “profoundly immoral” as he is.

More disturbing is what the transformation of the Republican Party into the Party of Trump reveals. On Wednesday, House Republicans accepted comments from officials from “the third most corrupt nation on earth” (Rep. Andy Barr of Kentucky) over the sworn testimony before Congress of dedicated, career U.S. public servants the way Trump in Helsinki accepted Putin’s denial Russia interference over the sworn testimony of career U.S. public servants who work for him. For all the patriotic affectation, for all the chest-thumping bluster about God and country, Republicans subjugated themselves to Trump as easily as Trump bends to Putin’s will. Trump bows to Putin. Republicans bow to Trump. White evangelicals first among them.

What the House debate revealed this week is how far a large percentage of Americans who fancy themselves stalwart heirs of the nation’s founders have moved towards restoring the monarchy, or worse.

I hope you will continue to check in here at Hullabaloo as we sort all this out during this tumultuous time. I don’t think it’s ever been more important to stick together.


You can count on us to keep an eye on this unfolding drama seven days a week even when you find it too stressful to do it yourselves.  If you have he means to help support this blog for another year, I would be very grateful.


Again, thank you so much for reading and supporting my work all these years. It means the world to me. — digby

Getting rid of Trump is only the beginning

I watched the debate last night and had the odd feeling that I was watching a documentary from another time. People were standing up on a stage talking about serious issues with intelligence and empathy. After the events of this week, I felt just a little bit unbalanced by it. It just seemed so weirdly normal.


I had to stop and ask myself what normal is anymore. We’ve become so inured to daily freakshow I fear that informed people talking about policy are the weirdos now. It certainly seemed a bit surreal, at least until I adjusted and started listening and it felt like a comfortable old pair of shoes I hadn’t worn in a while. It was frankly, a relief. They were fine.

Democratic primaries are my least favorite part of politics even though I know they are important and I respect the process. But this time, in particular, I just can’t get too invested in a particular outcome. I greatly admire Elizabeth Warren and I’ll be thrilled if she wins but I made a promise to myself that I would keep an open mind about everyone in the race and try to be enthusiastic about whoever comes out on top. So, watching these debates is a sort of academic exercise.

I am struck with what a monumental job any of them will be facing if they defeat Trump. It’s much more than the aspirational progressive policy agenda, as big as that is. Climate change and income inequality alone are massive problems that simply cannot wait if we are to survive. But he or she is also going to have to rebuild some kind of trust in the institutions of government and reform it from the bottom up. It will take years of effort by the whole party.

Trump has exposed more than the decadence and emptiness of the GOP. He’s exposed the weaknesses in our democracy and those weaknesses are going to be just sitting there waiting for further exploitation unless we take on an agenda of serious political reform.

I don’t have the answers to all that. It’s a gigantic undertaking with hundreds of moving parts. And it’s not as if the other side is going to disappear. (I doubt that they will take losing this presidency with grace and dignity, if you know what I mean.) I don’t know if the Democratic party is up to the task but it’s what we have to work with.

Whoever wins the nomination is going to need all hands on deck to beat Trump and then stay engaged for the hard work it’s going to take to create a new and better country.  I might take a few weeks to recoup.  But after that, I’m game.

How about you? 

It’s Holiday Fundraising time. If you’re of a mind to support the kind of independent media we provide here, informed by nearly two decades of daily observation and analysis, you can do so at the links below or at the address on the column on the left.


Again, thank you so much for reading and supporting my work all these years. It means the world to me. — d

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

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Friday Night Soother — Christmas edition

I just love those little guys.

Searching for some footage of beautiful, adorable creatures to feature in this post every week is one of the greatest pleasures I have as a blogger. It is my therapy at the end of every long week. I hope some of you enjoy coming across these animal stories in your internet travels as well.

It’s Holiday Fundraising time. If you’re of a mind to kick in a few pennies to keep the light on, I’d appreciate it.

Again, thank you so much for reading and supporting my work all these years. It means the world to me. — d

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

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A Free Pass Masquerading As Objectivity

by tristero

There’s something really screwy at the NY Times.  Trump and his cronies are desperate to project total unity. But with the publication of the Christianity Today editorial blasting Trump’s morals, that wall, at least among evangelicals, has started to show cracks. So how does the Times write up that astonishing (and wonderful) news?

The headline states, “Evangelical Leaders Close Ranks With Trump After Scathing Editorial.” But the article itself contradicts the headline by directly quoting an “evangelical leader” — and by no stretch of the imagination, a liberal or a secularist— who did not close ranks with Trump:

Peter Wehner, a Christian columnist and author who worked as a speechwriter for President George W. Bush, said that Mr. Trump’s most outspoken defenders had created a misleading impression that evangelical Christians universally embrace the president. 

“They speak as if they define the movement,” he said. “And a lot of people who aren’t familiar with evangelical Christianity see this and say, ‘Well, they must be representing all Christians.’” 

“That’s the significance of what Christianity Today did,” Mr. Wehner added. “They stood up and they said no. That’s not right. We can’t continue with this charade, this moral freak show anymore.”

Yes, Trump and his christianist goons have bludgeoned most of his evangelical opponents into a surly silence. But the story, the news, is that that silence is starting to fall apart, not that his henchmen are still pledging loyalty.

But also, the article goes easy on Trump. Very easy. Check this out:

For the past three years, conservative American politics, and white evangelical Christianity along with it, has realigned steadily and forcefully around Mr. Trump and his coalition. Much like the “Never Trump” voices within the Republican Party, evangelical detractors have receded into the background during the three years Mr. Trump has been president. 

Their absence from the national conversation was partly why the editorial was so jolting. But it was also a reminder that the evangelical movement is not monolithic and includes people who may appreciate some of the president’s actions, like the appointment of conservative judges, but are repelled by his inflammatory rhetoric on issues like race and immigration.

This description, while harsh, is still treating Donald Trump with kid gloves. It’s not that the Times needs to eviscerate Trump. They simply need to be objective. For example:

My guess is that if the Times bothered to talk to the many evangelical Christians who have been dissed into silence,* they’d learn they are repelled by far more than his racism and xenophobic rhetoric (although that is more than enough). They also care about what he does.

For starters, they are repelled by his disgusting adulterous behavior, his vindictiveness, his lies, his incarcerating children in cages, his mockery of people with disabilities, his disrespect for military heroes, and his flouting of every single standard of moral decency, including every Christian standard of morality.

*I know at least one very devout Christian who is terrified to speak out against Trump to nearly everyone s/he knows. I don’t travel in evangelical circles but s/he has struck me over the years, as more than representative of the others I’ve met. I’m certain there are many more conservative Christians who are appalled at Trumpism.

Swing-state Republicans, are you listening?

I mentioned earlier that the Washington Post-ABC poll shows a large majority in favor of the Senate calling witnesses in the impeachment trial. This new Morning Consult-Politico poll shows the same thing (although the majority is smaller.)

The Dec. 19-20 poll found overall support for Trump’s removal was largely unchanged since before the House’s vote, with 51 percent of voters approving of the move and 42 percent disapproving. Roughly the same share of voters approve (52 percent) and disapprove (43 percent) of Trump’s impeachment in the House, numbers that were statistically unchanged from a Dec. 14-15 poll.

The new survey, which has a margin of error of 3 percentage points, also found most voters appear to be siding with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has called on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to allow the chamber to issue subpoenas for four current and former Trump administration officials who did not appear when they were asked to testify during the House’s impeachment inquiry.

Fifty-four percent of voters said the Senate should call additional witnesses, while 27 percent said that was unnecessary because the relevant testimony and evidence has already been revealed. Most Democrats and about half of independents want more testimony, while GOP voters are split.

He gave her this leverage when he did this:

McConnell shouldn’t have said any of that. It was totally unnecessary. If he had kept his mouth shut he might have been able to finesse this and get his vulnerable Senators out of this jam.

He fucked up.

It’s Holiday Fundraising time. If you’re of a mind to support the kind of independent media we provide here, informed by nearly two decades of daily observation and analysis, you can do so at the links below or at the address on the column on the left.


Again, thank you so much for reading and supporting my work all these years. It means the world to me. — d

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

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Trump is squirming, desperate for his Big Exoneration Show

by digby

Heh:

Publicly, President Donald Trump has deferred to a Senate Republican plan to hold an impeachment trial with as few surprises — and witnesses — as possible.

But privately, Trump is still harboring a desire to create a flashy, testimony-filled trial, fueled by a belief that such an approach would vindicate him and embarrass Democrats, according to six people familiar with the situation, including three who have spoken with the president.

Even though it seems unlikely that Trump will get his way, the president is still hearing from outside allies who are urging him to push for long-shot witnesses like Joe Biden’s son Hunter, impeachment leader Rep. Adam Schiff, even the anonymous whistleblower whose complaint sparked the impeachment probe. Trump leaves Friday for a two-week stay at his Mar-a-Lago resort in South Florida, where he’s expected to talk regularly — both in person and on the phone — with supporters and friends who back a more expansive Senate trial, the people familiar with the situation said.

“We don’t want a quick technical acquittal but complete exoneration,” said an outside adviser who speaks to the president.

Trump’s desire to fight — a constant inclination — is at odds with Senate Republican leaders, who are working to convince him that a quick trial with no witnesses will suffice. Even some White House aides have been trying to explain the benefits of a speedy, no-frills process. In interviews, though, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell insists he is working in lockstep with the White House on shaping the impeachment trial.

“There’s a family feud under the water between what Trump and McConnell think is the best strategy,” said Dan Eberhart, a major Republican donor and CEO of the drilling services company Canary, LLC.

Pelosi is torturing him. And it’s not impossible that he will blow up and demand that McConnell gives him what he wants.

As it happens, what he wants and the Democrats want is pretty much the same thing. If they call Joe Biden he’ll have everyone in the country watching. If they call Hunter, they’re going to have to Rudy and frankly, even though Hunter is a dud, he’s nothing to the seven kinds of crazy Rudy would bring to the party.

Whatever eventually happens, I’m going to enjoy Trump’s discomfort over the holidays. Yes, it’s schadenfreude but no one deserves it more than him.

It’s Holiday Fundraising time. If you’re of a mind to support the kind of independent media we provide here, informed by nearly two decades of daily observation and analysis, you can do so at the links below or at the address on the column on the left.


Again, thank you so much for reading and supporting my work all these years. It means the world to me. — digby

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

The president’s personal lawyer, ladies and gentlemen… what a guy

by digby

As I pointed out earlier, Lindsey Graham is out there desperately signaling for Rudy to STFU. And for good reason. He’s losing it. And he was already pretty far gone:

President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani has accused the Democrats of trying to have him arrested and executed over his role in the president’s Ukraine strategy.

Giuliani has become a central figure in Trump’s impeachment, having allegedly fronted the president’s parallel Ukraine program, bypassing and even co-opting State Department officials in his efforts to bolster Trump’s personal political fortunes.

Once the president’s main attack dog, Giuliani has recently avoided speaking publicly on the ongoing effort to remove Trump from office over his alleged abuses of power regarding Ukraine.

But at a Turning Point USA event in West Palm Beach on Thursday, Giuliani told conservative students that he and the president are being unfairly victimized.

“This coup and this impeachment is about…taking our Constitution and tearing it up,” Giuliani said, according to the Sun Sentinel. “It’s illegal, it’s immoral, and it’s unconstitutional,” he added, CBS 12 News reported.

“There is no such high crime or misdemeanor called abuse of power. They made it up!” he claimed.

“I saw for America today, and for some time, has had a double standard,” Giuliani told the student crowd, according to The Palm Beach Post. “A Republican leader is treated differently than a Democratic leader.” He added, “The biggest obstruction of Congress is Nancy Pelosi.”

Giuliani rejected all suggestions of his own wrongdoing. “I assure you I have never committed a crime,” he said. Regardless, he claimed that the Democrats ” want to put [Attorney General Bill] Barr in prison, and they want to execute me.”

“I have been a prosecutor all my life,” Giuliani added. “You can go read about the people I put in prison…I am being investigated by the office that I ran and probably was the most successful United States attorney in the last hundred years. They are very jealous of that.”

Trump also wanted the government to investigate a conspiracy theory alleging that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that meddled in the 2016 election. In exchange, Trump supposedly offered to release hundreds of millions of dollars in frozen military aid.

On Thursday, Guiliani repeated the debunked allegations against the Bidens and the Ukraine meddling conspiracy theory.

The former New York mayor claimed there are “five witnesses, three tapes, 35 documents” showing Biden’s guilt. “I could prosecute that case in three weeks and if I didn’t get a conviction I’d resign from practicing law. He’s so guilty it’s ridiculous.”

“It’s outrageous. It’s un-American,” he said of Biden not facing prosecution. “And until we fix that we do not have equal justice under the law.”

Giuliani is also linked to two Soviet-born Americans—Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman—who are accused of funnelling foreign money into U.S. elections. Parnas and Fruman are believed to have attended meetings with Giuliani and former Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin.

Shokin—who was thought to be soft on prosecuting political corruption—was fired from his position in 2016 at the urging of the then Vice President Biden and U.S. allies.

Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham are obviously very worried that something very bad about Ukraine is going to come down before they get the chance to sweep the impeachment under the rug, putting their vulnerable senators in a terrible bind.

This story is live and they can’t get Rudy to keep his mouth shut.

Stay tuned.

It’s Holiday Fundraising time. If you’re of a mind to support the kind of independent media we provide here, informed by nearly two decades of daily observation and analysis, you can do so at the links below or at the address on the column on the left.


Again, thank you so much for reading and supporting my work all these years. It means the world to me. — digby

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

Thanks Be To God

by tristero

 An editorial from Christianity Today,

The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents. That is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral…

To the many evangelicals who continue to support Mr. Trump in spite of his blackened moral record, we might say this: Remember who you are and whom you serve. Consider how your justification of Mr. Trump influences your witness to your Lord and Savior. Consider what an unbelieving world will say if you continue to brush off Mr. Trump’s immoral words and behavior in the cause of political expediency. If we don’t reverse course now, will anyone take anything we say about justice and righteousness with any seriousness for decades to come? 

Nope. Unless they immediately renounce their delusional obsession with Trump, no one should take anything an American evangelical says seriously about justice and righteousness ever again.

By the way,  Christianity Today is not, by any stretch of the imagination, even a “centrist” publication, as it’s been described by an incredibly lazy mainstream press. It was founded by the preacher Billy Graham who was a close friend of Richard Nixon’s. They shared anti-semitic un-pleasantries back in the day. That’s not centrism in my book.

In other words, that even Christianity Today is calling for Trump’s removal is a sign of (1) how utterly unhinged from mainstream political discourse the rest of the evangelical movement has become; and (2) perhaps a hopeful portent that finally evangelicals are waking up to the strategic stupidity of supporting a president who is a moral disaster.

It’s Holiday Fundraising time. If you’re of a mind to support the kind of independent media we provide here, informed by nearly two decades of daily observation and analysis, you can do so at the links below or at the address on the column on the left.


Again, thank you so much for reading and supporting my work all these years. It means the world to me. — digby

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

What is Pelosi up to anyway?

For all the hand-wringing I and many others have done over the past couple of months over the House leadership’s impeachment strategy, its implementation went very smoothly. Traditionally, Democrats have always had a rather large contingent of right-leaning members who inevitably cause trouble in these partisan battles. At the very least I would have expected some public hemming and hawing from showboaters, if only for the camera time it would have given them.

None of that happened this week, at least not by the Democrats. (The Republicans behaved like boorish adolescents through much of it, whining, bullying and yelling. That’s just how they are.) Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard voted “present” for reasons nobody really understands, so the only Democrats to break ranks were the last of the old-time Blue Dogs, Rep. Collin Peterson of Minnesota and the party-switching Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, who appeared with Donald Trump at the White House on Thursday and literally declared his “undying support” for the president.

Considering how conservative and buttoned-up Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been about this whole thing — keeping the charges narrowly focused on Ukraine, and resisting every attempt to include Robert Mueller’s material or the emoluments violations in the impeachment inquiry — it came as something of a shock on Wednesday night when she abruptly announced that she would not name House managers for a trial or send the articles of impeachment to the Senate until she knew how that body planned to proceed.

It was an unexpectedly bold power play, upending what Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his lieutenants had hoped to turn into a dull, perfunctory affair in order to spare their vulnerable swing-state Republican incumbents as much damage as possible. They know that holding a real trial with witnesses could be disastrous, and they have been fighting both the Democratic leadership and the White House on that point.

Democrats believe that questioning more witnesses to the events over which the president has been impeached is necessary to fully try their case. And they have the American people behind them.

A poll released Tuesday by ABC News and The Washington Post found that about 7 in 10 Americans think the administration officials should be able to testify. In an example of bipartisan agreement, 79% of Democrats, 64% of Republicans and 72% of independents agree that Trump should allow them to appear in a Senate trial in the likely event that the House votes to impeach him.

This is not one of those lopsided issues. Even the vast majority of Republicans want to see these witnesses. Those vulnerable senators are going to have to explain why they don’t think they are necessary.

Trump also wants to stage a full trial because he believes that what he did was perfect and wants “total exoneration” on TV. I have speculated before that McConnell and Sen. Lindsey Graham, chair of the Judiciary Committee, may have been massaging him with the promise of a big show investigation after the trial is over, where they’ll call Rudy Giuliani and Hunter Biden and the CrowdStrike guy and anyone else he wants to air out his Ukraine conspiracy theory for the whole world to see. (Who knows if they would actually go through with it. )

But one thing is clear. McConnell thought he had the president all settled down and ready to accept a quick and dirty trial, and now Pelosi has gotten him all riled up again. He started tweeting out his usual ignorance of the law and the Constitution immediately, undoubtedly misinformed by someone on Fox News:

I got Impeached last night without one Republican vote being cast with the Do Nothing Dems on their continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt in American history. Now the Do Nothing Party want to Do Nothing with the Articles & not deliver them to the Senate, but it’s Senate’s call!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 19, 2019

It is not the Senate’s call. There are opinions being floated all over the place as to whether Pelosi is wise to do this and whether or not the process requires her to transmit articles of impeachment to the Senate. Martin Longman at the Washington Monthly helpfully explains the process, which is actually vague in a number of ways. But it seems clear that the decision about when to send articles to the Senate lies with the House.

In any case, that is what Pelosi doing, and there’s really no process by which to litigate that point. The real question is why. I suspect the answer she has given is certainly part of it: She wants to know what the rules of a Senate trial will be before she puts together a team to prosecute the case. That’s not unreasonable. But mostly this is leverage to get McConnell to allow witnesses to appear, specifically the ones that Minority Leader Chuck Schumer proposed last week. These are people who can corroborate the witnesses we heard from in the hearings because they were in the room with President Trump and followed his orders. You can see why McConnell does not want them to appear. But Pelosi has that huge majority of public opinion behind her.

McConnell and the rest of the GOP leadership have another reason they want to get this over with as soon as possible. I have mentioned earlier that Republican senators might want to think twice about voting to exonerate Trump, given the ongoing suspect behavior of Rudy Giuliani and this week’s revelations about his accomplice and/or client Lev Parnas — now under indictment in New York — reportedly receiving large sums of money from Russia. The last thing they want is for this stuff to rise to the surface while the House sits on articles of impeachment.

Republicans are clearly worried about all this. Graham told CNN on Thursday:

I don’t know what Rudy’s got, but I’m going to send him a letter. If you’re going to go on national television and tell the country that you’ve found evidence of a cover-up, then I hope you know what you’re talking about. I like Rudy a lot but we’re going to have to watch what we say. If he comes, you gotta be willing to ask questions about your conduct … it’s just not good for the country to make these accusations on cable television without them being tested.

I don’t know about you, but that sounded to me like a message for Rudy to keep his mouth shut.

To add to these worries the Washington Post published a big scoop on Thursday evening in which several former senior White House officials say that Trump got this Ukraine conspiracy theory about the 2016 election directly from Vladimir Putin during their private meetings. Putin himself expressed support for Trump in his time of need, and it’s really not a good look.

WATCH: Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin seemed to use Republican talking points in Moscow Thursday, dismissing the impeachment of Pres. Trump as “far-fetched” and calling Democrats’ allegations against him “made up” https://t.co/DOYAXj3Jo9 pic.twitter.com/Xql5V99V9N

— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) December 19, 2019

It’s unlikely Pelosi will hold on to the articles of impeachment very long. But while she does, McConnell will be on pins and needles and Trump is likely to lose patience and start demanding his big exoneration pageant. Who knows what other Ukrainian and Russian shoes are going to drop in the meantime? It looks like 2020 is going to start off with a bang.

I hope you will continue to check in here at Hullabaloo as we sort all this out during this tumultuous time. I don’t think it’s ever been more important to stick together.


You can count on us to keep an eye on this unfolding drama seven days a week even when you find it too stressful to do it yourselves.  If you have he means to help support this blog for another year, I would be very grateful.


Again, thank you so much for reading and supporting my work all these years. It means the world to me. — d

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“A Nice School Shooting” — And Then It Gets Worse. And Even Worse.

by tristero

There doesn’t seem to be a bottom to the rightwing. Or to how far the mainstream press will go to attempt to normalize them. This would have seemed to be as low as it could get:

The conservative married couple’s afternoon talk show on KNUS in Denver had been going for a half-hour on Tuesday when the husband made a remark that alarmed his wife, stunned their listeners — and soon cost them their jobs. 

“All right, Chuck Bonniwell, Julie Hayden here, a little after 1:30, talking about the never-ending impeachment of Donald Trump,” Mr. Bonniwell said on the air. “Yeah, you wish for a nice school shooting to interrupt the monopoly—”

Well, openly wishing for a “nice school shooting” got them yanked from the air, like pronto.

Good, right? Nope.The station still had to fill up that air time. So who did they pick?

On Thursday, to replace the canceled “Chuck and Julie Show,” KNUS began airing a show hosted by Sebastian Gorka…

This is Sebastian Gorka:

A group with alleged historical links to Nazi Germany has told NBC News it was “proud” when President Donald Trump’s deputy assistant wore its medal. 

Controversy has swirled around Sebastian Gorka, one of Trump’s top counterterrorism advisers, ever since he attended the president’s Jan. 20 Inaugural Ball wearing the honorary medal of Hungarian nationalist organization Vitezi Rend…

… members of the organization were likely complicit in the murder of some of the hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews toward the end of World War II. 

That’s right. The radio station replaced a guy who was yearning for “a nice school shooting” with a man who, in the White House, wore medals linked to a Nazi-aligned group implicated in the murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews.

And then it gets even worse. Because this is how the NY Times described Sebastian Gorka:

On Thursday, to replace the canceled “Chuck and Julie Show,” KNUS began airing a show hosted by Sebastian Gorka, a hard-line conservative who was briefly an adviser to Mr. Trump before being forced out in August 2017.

The Times thinks Sebastian Gorka is “a hard-line conservative?” Are they out of their minds?

A “hard-line conservative” is to Sebastian Gorka as rotted shark is to dog poop. Yes, rotted shark is utterly revolting, but eating dog shit can kill you.

It’s Holiday Fundraising time. If you’re of a mind to support the kind of independent media we provide here, informed by nearly two decades of daily observation and analysis, you can do so at the links below or at the address on the column on the left.

Happy Hollandaise everyone!

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