Harshing your mellow since 2004.
I’ve been depressed and unproductive for the past couple of years, but these days I’m starting to feel better. My Christmas song this year, I hope, reflects this.
Of course, it’s a song that is beyond my ability, which has become an unwritten rule for The revision99 Holiday Recording Pageant. This year the song I’m trying to do that I can’t really do justice to is “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).”
Thinking About John Lennon
Four-hour memorial tribute to John Lennon this morning on “Breakfast With The Beatles,” the 38th anniversary of his death. Listening, I found myself wondering what John might have done if he’d lived as long as I have.
Call me crazy, but when the president of the United States announces that he could shoot somebody on 5th Avenue and not lose any supporters; when he refers to Nazis chanting “Jews will not replace us” as “very fine people;” when he’s OK with a Republican congressman assaulting a reporter; when he says that business deals in Saudi Arabia take precedence over the life of a journalist; and when he calls the press “the enemy of the people,” should we be surprised when one or more of his crackpot fans decides it’s acceptable behavior to mail bombs to prominent members of the “enemy” party, namely the Democrats?
Continue reading “Trump Shocked That Followers Are Violent”
I reached adulthood in the late 1960s, and looking around the political environment in those days, I thought the country was firmly set in the ways of fairness, honesty, compassion and unity. Before I was born, rich guy Franklin Roosevelt had reached “down” across the class barrier to offer federal support to regular folks during the Great Depression. Harry Truman had desegregated the Army. Social Security, which had been attacked by conservatives since its inception, had matured into a popular, successful program no longer questioned by the majority of Americans. When I was still a kid the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act were passed. Medicare was passed. The war in Vietnam was ended more or less by popular declamation. In the years to come the Supreme Court would hold that women had a right to control their own bodies, police couldn’t beat confessions out of suspects, and gay couples could marry if they wanted to. We were imperfect, but we were generous. We sought justice.
Continue reading “The Kavanaugh Affair”
The Supreme Court was specifically designed to be a non-partisan institution. That’s what the lifetime appointment was intended to accomplish. Justices wouldn’t have to answer to those in the political wings of government who put them on the court . Their only agenda would be to measure the law against the Constitution, and rule on cases based on whether the legislation in question adheres to the intent of our founding document.
Continue reading “Brett Kavanaugh Will Be Confirmed”
Last Friday the New York Times ran a story suggesting that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had attempted to remove Donald Trump from office by secretly recording a conversation with the president and then getting Mike Pence, half the members of Trump’s cabinet, and two-thirds of both houses of Congress to invoke the 25th Amendment (unfit to serve) and throw him out. Rosenstein has emphatically denied the allegation (given to the Times by a source they decline to name), but frankly I think if there is anyone in the administration who doesn’t want to remove Trump, someone should check to see if that person might be unfit.
Continue reading “Who Will Replace Rod Rosenstein?”
When Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s identity was leaked and she decided she had to come forward with her story about Brett Kavanaugh trying to rape her when they were both in high school, everyone in Washington knew she’d have to be treated carefully. Mainly, they understood that they would have to act as if they believed her, and they would have to pretend to respect her as a woman, and not go down the Anita Hill road like they did in 1991. Mainly, this meant somehow stopping the president from tweeting something insulting or demeaning at her.
Continue reading “Donald Gets His Trump On”Robert Costa (of the Washington Post and Washington Week) interviewed Bob Woodward (famously of the Washington Post)…
…on Friday night. They talked for a half hour, preempting Costa’s usual panel discussion in favor of an in-depth look at Woodward’s book, his methods, his concern and — sort of — his conclusions.
Donald Trump is a circus act and his presidency is little more than absurdist theater.
Source: Brett Kavanaugh’s Dangerous Right-Wing Judicial Activism
Yes, he is damaging our environment. Yes, he is enabling racists and fascists at all levels of society. Yes, he is making the U.S. look ridiculous on the world stage. Yes, his ignorance is dangerous.These situations represent real harm to our system and our people, but the destruction can be reversed, maybe in as little as a decade. So I have decided it’s better for my mental health to mock him rather than let his childish tantrums and incoherent tweeting and his obvious self-dealing raise my blood pressure.
But tomorrow is a different thing: Brett Kavanaugh starts his Senate hearing to be confirmed as a Supreme Court justice, and his presence on the Court will be something Americans will have to live with for perhaps 40 years, and for another 40 after he’s gone the decisions in which he takes part will continue to haunt the nation.
Well, who could have seen this coming? After “firing” Omarosa Manigault-Newman three times on his old game show, then hiring her for real as a “senior advisor” before canning her one last time, here she comes with a tell-all book about her year in the White House, and she’s apparently armed with a suitcase full of recordings that she made on the sneak while she worked there. Maybe Donald should have fired her personally, instead of having John Kelly do it in the Situation Room, because what he’s got on his hands now is, well, a Situation. At least he could have offered her hush money on the spot, instead of having his daughter-in-law Lara do it — apparently too late. Continue reading “Revenge of the Dog”