Monday, January 23, 2017

thank you kellyanne. and to you, too, sean spicer.

I wrote a couple of days ago that I couldn't wait for Kellyanne "Con Artist" Conway to show her perpetually smiling face on the TV feed.  I was really hoping that I'd see more of her patented deliveries of assorted praises for crooked, lyin', little Donald.  I realize that picking on her for sporting that heinous RW&B overcoat on Inauguration was almost as lame as her wearing the damn thing. Thank the Lord that she didn't disappoint me for too long.

She showed up on Sunday's Meet the Press where she sparred with Chuck Todd over the difference between facts and "alternative facts".  If you don't know already, you can probably guess which of those she was touting.  I'll hand it to her, though.  She almost managed to keep that phony pasted-on smile in place after Chuck Todd suggested that she was full of it.  She's like that inflatable clown which keeps popping back up after taking one square to the jaw.  And the smiles are damn similar.

I saw her again today, back in the national spotlight even if she was relegated to a spot on the sidelines for Sean (of the Brain Dead) Spicer's second attempt to conduct an orderly meeting with the press corps.  His first shot came on Saturday and, even if Kellyanne gave him high marks for his "alternative facts" on MTP, most reviews were less than positive.  Loaded to the gills with direct orders from the throne, Sean blasted the media for doing its job.  I'll be interested to see how often this nonsense is going to show up.

Mr. Spicer did better today in his first official press briefing.  Saturday must have been his first official tongue lashing.  But he sank to the depths of the truly pathetic when he tried to justify CLL Donald's psychotic preoccupation with his bloated sense of self worth.  Spicer took the press to task again, if more gently, for depressing little Donald with its reporting.  How can that constant barrage of negativity help but make The Boss a wee bit defensive?  Can't you people try to say something nice once in awhile?

This poor Donald BS is advanced in deference to the feelings of the most obnoxious, arrogant, rude, crude, overblown, dismissive, bullying blowhard in American public life.  Why can't you just be nicer to him?  This is very close in it's pathetic quotient to Kellyanne's wondering aloud why people can't just ignore little Donald's boorish behavior and trashy mouth and propensity for putting people down and instead detect the goodness of his heart.  Jeez.  Wonder why?

As I write, we're on the eve of Day 5 of the Trump regime.  I hope that the next 1,400+ won't be any more toxic than than the first 4.  Somehow, though, I'll be surprised if that's how it all plays out.  I sense that the worst is yet to come.

Saturday, January 21, 2017

Lies, damned lies and statistics. Or attendance estimates.

I haven't seen Rachel Maddow on MSNBC since earlier in the week.  I hope that crooked, lyin', little Donald's thought police haven't snatched her off a network sound stage and clapped her in jail for her outspoken questioning of most of the gibberish coming out of the Trump fantasy camp.  I also hope that I'll see her again soon in her usual weeknight time slot but, if not, the last words I saw her broadcast have already proved prophetic.

Her comment went something along the line of, "No matter what the actual inauguration attendance figure turns out to be, Trump will lie about it."  I guess you can't go too far wrong if you predict that little Donald will lie about something (anything) so I don't know if Rachel really deserves all that much credit.  But it's been entertaining to see the way her prediction has come to life.

I'll admit that I don't know if little Donald has actually lied himself or if he sent one of his lackeys out, fully laden with lies, to lie for him by proxy.  The lackey in the spotlight is Sean (of the Brain Dead) Spicer who, as the Trump Press Secretary, is going to get lots of opportunities for lying by proxy.  But this one was pretty good.  He blasted the assembled White House press corps for deliberate lies about the size of the Friday Inaugural crowd.  He spouted a hodge-podge of garbled District of Columbia mass transit ridership data and a sketchy story (since debunked) about a light-colored ground cover which, according to him, proved that the Trump Coronation attendance was the largest ever.  Period.

I feel a little sorry for Sean Spicer.  It looks pretty clear that he was provided with marching orders that would set him up to look almost as petty and mean-spirited as his boss.  Ouch.  Day Two of the Trump reign and gas has been liberally applied to the already smoldering feud between the big cheese and the press.  I don't want to accuse Trump of being too chickenshit to confront the pressroom crowd himself.  After all, he had a full day to race through and he got his digs in against the media in his address to a crowd of CIA operatives at the Agency's Langley headquarters.  Something about the press including some of the most dishonest people around.  Coming from little Donald, words of high praise indeed.  Spicer did cast Trump as a victim of the Democratic Senators' delaying tactics, thereby cheating Trump of the presence of his CIA Director nominee at Langley.  Waaah, waaah, waaah.

Press briefings during the Viet Nam and Iraq wars earned the nicknames of The Four O'Clock Follies and The Five O'Clock Follies, respectively.  Beleaguered military mouthpieces were subjected to open scorn and ridicule from reporters over the briefings' exaggerated and inflated claims of just how well those two wars were going.  Hmmmm.  Exaggeration and inflation.  Sound like anyone we know?  I'm going to urge Spicer and the rest of his flacks to avoid regularly scheduling their future press briefings at either four or five in the afternoon.  And certainly not on Fridays either.  No need to make it easy for the enemy press to harness the power of alliteration.  The briefings' contents alone will make them plenty easy enough targets.

Away we go.  I think that even an untrained hack like me should be able to find plenty of juicy material from the Trump Gang to fill up a daily report.  I can't wait to try my hand on the comings and goings of Kellyanne Conway.  Such as, wasn't that coat she wore to the inauguration just about the most ridiculous thing you've ever seen?  The only place I can see that as appropriate would be the Philadelphia Phillies' bullpen in April.  God help us all.

Friday, January 20, 2017

The Emperor's got himself some new clothes. And don't you dare say otherwise.

I'd committed myself to paying zero attention to any and all media coverage of today's Coronation...oops...Inauguration.  And I told Ms Susan as much: no TV watching while that cockroach was on camera.  I did pretty well but Susan buckled with the line, "I wanna see what he has to say."  She watched and I caught only the opening lines of his monologue in which he thanked the assembled formers and the 28.5 % of eligible American voters (give or take) who voted for him and the citizens of the world (even, presumably, Mexicans and radical Islamic terrorists) for their roles in his ascension to his Imperial Throne.  I was a little disappointed that he didn't single out the Russian electorate.  After all, those comrades hadn't gotten to vote for him even though they had to bear some amount of deprivation while Putin was pouring state resources into the Trump campaign.  Oh well, the Russians have always been long-suffering.

I couldn't help but see some clips from the body of his address during the evening newscasts.  It was vintage Trump stump rhetoric: one and two syllable words delivered in that strident slo-mo whine of his.  So much for getting presidential and unifying.  I'm sure that his supporters lapped it up even as it's becoming more and more obvious that he has no intention or even the wherewithal to implement the sweeping measures he's been promising up to the eve of the election and beyond.  My question (well, one of my many questions) is: How long is it going to take for those supporters to realize that they've been gulled yet again?  And not by a politician this time but by a reality TV game show host and serial bankruptcy filer.  Go effin' figure.

This is a guy who'd rather tell lie after lie than a simple truth.  This is the guy whose tax returns we're never gonna see.  This is the guy who's never gonna lock Hillary up.  This is the guy who's never gonna sue each and every one of those women who came forward to put some meat on the bones of his self-admitted sexual assault exploits.  This is the guy who's never gonna build that wall though that will relieve him of trying to track down the President of Mexico to collect a check for construction costs.  Heaven alone knows what he's gonna try and do about deporting undocumented aliens and banning Muslims from entry to the country.  This is the guy who's promised to cut taxes while beefing up our military and strengthening law enforcement and balancing the budget.  I'll give him credit for following up on one of his promises.  He's nominated a passel of unqualified and uninformed lackeys to head various branches of the federal government.

My other question (among those many) is: when do we get to start talking openly and publicly about the mental state and stability of this walking, talking doofus with bad hair and an extra long tie?  OK, OK.  Make that really bad hair.  Do we have to wait until this phony starts rolling around on the floors of the White House and chewing on the carpets?  How soon does the shrink on retainer get a crack at the new inhabitant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?  Even with the specter of Mike Spence hovering in the shadows, I'd love to know that something is being done to reel crooked, lyin', little Donald down from the clouds of his megalomania.  Don't we all deserve that?