Green Eagle

“GREAT job in Puerto Rico”- Donald Trump Just lie about it.   I mean, what other approach would you have expected Trump to take?  Just let the people suffer and die without food, power, communication to the outside world, medical care or any other thing needed to sustain life, and then lie about it, confident after the thousand lies he has already told about everything under the sun, that the miserable, hateful white subhumans who make up a big enough voting bloc to keep him where he is will never admit the truth to themselves, and go on proclaiming him to be the greatest President of all time. And with the mainstream press basically uninterested in stripping things down to reality, he will get away with it.  Just like we still hear them shouting that Bush won the Iraq war, Reagan tamed the deficit and Obama was a Communist Muslim traitor, ten or fifteen or fifty years from now, people will still be proclaiming that Trump was a hero when the hurr...

A tale I have wanted to tell for some time now, so here goes: Since long before the United States became a country, there has been a theme to Western settlement in America: that each generation, economically, socially, culturally, would be a little bit more than the ones that have passed.  In the end, this was the most fundamental part of the American dream; the thing on which all the rest depended. And it worked pretty damned well, too, despite the millions of you-know-who that were trampled in the process, and the others who were left out; it led within a couple centuries of our independence to our being the economic powerhouse of the world, and the breeding ground of the conditions that led to a thriving middle class.  It led to a place where just about anyone had at least a fair chance of a decent life, and a better one for their kids. It worked pretty well until...well, let's just say the time that can be marked by the election of Ronald Reagan, a greedy, racist ric...

While the American people, and certainly the American press, are engrossed in the world-shaking issue of whether a black man has a right to kneel down in public, here is a bit of news that is essentially absent here, concerning a place that virtually no Americans have ever heard of, Mount Agung, in Indonesia. Mount Agung is a volcano, one of ninety or so active volcanoes in Indonesia.  It hasn't erupted since the sixties, when it killed about 1500 people. Well, it looks like another major eruption there is imminent.  Here's a chart of seismic activity at Mount Agung over the last few weeks: Not a comforting trend. There were about 800 earthquakes yesterday, and so far today the rate is continuing, with the strongest one to date, at 4.2, occurring this morning.  What is equally worrying is that the quakes are coming at shallower and shallower depths.  These quakes are caused by magma moving up in the earth's crust, so it is pretty obvious what that means. ...

For our President.  While the three and a half million U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are without hope of electricity, water, food or any other necessity to survive, this is how Trump spent the weekend:  He made ten tweets attacking black football players, and not a single one showing a shred of concern for these people. Well, he sure made up for that today.  Here are a few tweets from our leader: "Texas & Florida are doing great but Puerto Rico, which was already suffering from broken infrastructure & massive debt, is in deep trouble..   ...It's old electrical grid, which was in terrible shape, was devastated. Much of the Island was destroyed, with billions of dollars....   ...owed to Wall Street and the banks which, sadly, must be dealt with" Yes, you read that right.  For the first time in the history of the United States, the President responded to a natural disaster which is causing massive suffering, by atta...

As far as I know, you have not broken any law when you kneel during the National Anthem, but this is indeed breaking the law: "18 U.S. code section 227   (a) Whoever, being a covered government person, with the intent to influence, solely on the basis of partisan political affiliation, an employment decision or employment practice of any private entity—   (1) takes or withholds, or offers or threatens to take or withhold, an official act, or (2) influences, or offers or threatens to influence, the official act of another,   shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than 15 years, or both, and may be disqualified from holding any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States. (b) In this section, the term “covered government person” means—   (1) a Senator or Representative in, or a Delegate or Resident Commissioner to, the Congress;   (2) an employee of either House of Congress; or   (3) the President, Vice Pres...

Donald Trump, of course, and by extension the monstrous cadre- monstrous in both its numbers and its attitudes- that supports him. Most of us know the deep problem the National Football League is in, due to the discovery that a majority of its players are emerging from the sport with severe brain damage, leading to violence, loss of self control and early death.  Even fans of football who have a shred of decency are deeply disturbed by this situation, leading to a steep decline in interest in the sport. Well, not Donald Trump.  Here's a statement he made in a speech delivered during the campaign: "At a rally in Lakeville, Florida, during the Presidential campaign, Trump aroused the crowd by insisting that the N.F.L., which has hardly gone to great lengths to protect its players, was “ruining the game” by inflicting penalties on players who, say, hit the quarterback too late. “See, we don’t go by these new and very much softer N.F.L. rules. Concussion? Oh! Oh! ‘Got a li...

The absolutely inevitable news, featuring a right wing mass gathering that has now received months of publicity in both the wingnut and mainstream media: "Organizers of a week-long far-right festival planned for the University of California, Berkeley called off the event on Saturday, less than 24 hours before it was due to start and amid suggestions the event may have been little more than a student stunt.    Lucian Wintrich, of the rightwing site Gateway Pundit and a scheduled speaker, told the Guardian organizers knew as long as a week ago the event could not proceed.   “The entire thing is a complete disaster and unfortunately makes us all look very unprofessional,” he said." Although no more "unprofessional" than every one of the literally dozens of these purported events that I have tracked here.  It's not without a cost, however, to somebody: "The cancellation of Free Speech Week, which had been due to feature rightwing provocateur Milo Yia...

Well, here is an account from the mainstream press, from a pathetic tool named Lisa Mascaro in the Los Angeles Times yesterday, which is nothing but an attempt to cover up the hateful criminality and corruption of the Republicans' "tax reform" proposals, which are perfectly well known to Lisa and everyone else who pay attention to the situation. I'll intersperse Lisa's comments with my own, and as is my habit in Wingnut Wrapup, I will not dignify this pack of deliberate distortions with a link.  You can find it easily enough if you want to. "They have a blueprint and principles. They’ve held countless strategy sessions for what could be the biggest tax overhaul in decades..." Principles?  Lisa and every other damned person in the mainstream press knows that the only principle involved here is the Republicans selling themselves to their rich backers with massive amounts of money stolen from the rest of us, in return for their backers continuing to ...

We can wait practically a whole year before we have to hear about the War on Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Yeah, an occasional exception to my having abandoned Wingnut Wrapup, just to remind people of how these losers are all still out there, making a living out of lying to the rubes and then charging them money for the pleasure. Jonah Goldberg, Town Hall:  "Only One of Two New Health Care Proposals Qualifies as 'Extreme' And guess what, people?  It isn't the plan that cuts tens of millions of people off from health care in order to fund a multi trillion dollar giveaway to a few rich sociopaths, it's the one that gives health care to everyone, just like every other modern industrial nation on earth. Bet that surprised you. "And yet, to listen to Democrats and many of the journalists who love them, you'd think it was the Republican proposal that's extreme. "In reality, Graham-Cassidy is the opposite of moderate," New York Times columnist Paul Krugman pronounced. "It contains, in exaggerated and almost caricature form, all the elements t...

His chief of staff reacts: Well, there you go. In a way, you have to admire Melania for sitting there stone faced, and not running from the room shreiking.

While the American people are captivated by the spectacle of the President of the United States displaying to the world a fantasy in which he violently assaults a candidate that he cheated out of her position, the following is happening in the Republican controlled Congress, which I will allow to be described by a piece at Daily Kos, as I am just too sick about all of this to rewrite it in my own words: "In order to get the bill through, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell intends to cut off all debate, prevent any amendments, and refuse any discussion. It’s a combination that has never been used before. It’s a genuinely unprecedented shutdown of the Senate. In addition to a process that’s ripping up the Senate rules ... There have been no public hearings. There is no CBO score. The total amount of discussion will be limited to two minutes, with no amendments, no other votes. But you can’t say there will be no hearings, because there is going to be a heari...

Or this: The Mother of All Rallies!!!  Promoted by Republicans for at least two months, this event took place in Washington D.C. today.  Didn't hear about it?  Well, here's some of the advance material: "MOAR Mother Of All Rallies Patriot Unification Gathering-The Woodstock of American Rallies America First patriot rally in support of American values, American culture, American traditions, and of course President Donald Trump. Our goal is to rally 1 million patriots to Washington DC to send a shock-wave message to the world that they have to go through us to take this country or change its culture." ONE MILLION PATRIOTS!  Well, as is the inevitable outcome of right wing marches, they fell a little short of their predictions. Here is a photo used in their promotional material: Actually, I think this is from the inauguration of Barack Obama, where there were actually a million plus attendees.  Here is a photo of the actual crowd at today's event: ...

While most of us have been preoccupied with lesser things, let me note that the Cleveland Indians won their 22nd game in a row yesterday, setting a new American League record.  They are now only four games behind the all time record of the New York Giants, set in 1916, of 26 games without a loss, although that streak was interrupted by a tie game resulting from a rainout. Yay, Tribe.  Go for five more, and break a hundred year old record. I can remember not that long ago when the Indians were the laughingstock of professional baseball.  Not any more, I guess.

Many people may, by now, heard of Facebook allowing its very powerful apparatus to be used by Aryan Supremacists to recruit followers: "Want to market Nazi memorabilia, or recruit marchers for a far-right rally? Facebook’s self-service ad-buying platform had the right audience for you.  Until this week, when we asked Facebook about it, the world’s largest social network enabled advertisers to direct their pitches to the news feeds of almost 2,300 people who expressed interest in the topics of “Jew hater,” “How to burn jews,” or, “History of ‘why jews ruin the world.’ Nice, huh?  And Facebook's explanation for that? "After we contacted Facebook, it removed the anti-Semitic categories — which were created by an algorithm rather than by people" Well, that's great- we now, apparently, have anti-Semitic machines.  I guess we are supposed to forget that these "algorithms" i.e. software, were created by people who apparently didn't care if th...

Even when they try to tell the truth they can't help lying.   Case in point today, the ol' Maverick, for some reason granted a space on national TV to maunder on about global warming, which he claims to believe in: "Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) says he has no idea why his GOP colleagues deny basic climate science...   (Jake) Tapper... asks McCain why, with a few exceptions, the Republican party, “the president, the governor of Florida, et cetera, act as if it’s not real, even though the overwhelming scientific consensus is that it’s real and it’s man made?”   “I don’t know because I can’t divine their motives,” McCain said." He doesn't know their motives. Well, he knows their motives perfectly well, as does any other rational person:  They are corrupt criminals who have taken bribes to lie about climate change.  Can't be admitting that, though

After Donald Trump made his deal to sabotage House Republican leadership, the press has been full of the most arrant nonsense about his turning to the center, or becoming Presidential, or other such rubbish.  You would think that by now, there would be nobody left that had any illusion that Trump would ever make a move that was not both self-serving and piggish.  But here the pundits are again, falling for his crap, or at least pretending to.  You'd think that it would be obvious that Trump is not siding with the Democrats; he is siding against the Republican leadership in the house, in the person of one Paul Ryan.   Here's a little from a post at Daily Kos: "Trump is not happy with Paul Ryan, and he doesn't care who knows it...As much as popular vote loser Donald Trump likes to tweet his feud with Mitch McConnell, it's the other Republican leader—House Speaker Paul Ryan—that he really seems to have it in for. First we saw reports that Steve Bannon—banned from ...

From the normally totally perceptive Digby , I am afraid: "I frankly don’t understand why people are still wondering if there was collusion during the campaign." Digby, none of these people you are referring to are "wondering if there was collusion during the campaign."  They all know perfectly well that there was collusion- massive, treasonous collusion, as proven beyond a shadow of a doubt through dozens of actions by Donald Trump and his minions.  They are not questioning the clear facts, as you very well know.  They are attempting to shout those facts down in any way they can, by denying over and over again what we all know to be true. They are not stupid; they are paid liars, and they are going to go on lying, and threatening, and diverting people's attention, from now until doomsday, since the alternative is to admit that their entire party is a corrupt pack of traitors. There.  Isn't it nice to just state the truth for once?

As I've said, I have pretty much given up on Wingnut Wrapup, but I think it's a good idea to once in a while look in on the wingnuts, just to remind ourseves of what a grotesque pack of evil, anti-American, hate filled people make up the Republican base.  So, here we go: Katie Pavlich, Town Hall:  "Dennis Prager: The Left Chooses to Go After Statues Instead of Fighting Real Evil...Prager argued that the left goes after statues because they aren't willing to confront real evils in the world." Real evil apparently not being the return of the most malignant form of racism, or the efforts of the Republican party to turn the country into a fascist state, or the right's embrace of sadism as a legitimate way to treat their opponents.  Because the Democrats are confronting (however weakly) those evils, or I should say, I guess, those delightful new American principles brought to us by the Republicans. Guy Benson, Town Hall:  "Will Democrats Take 'Yes...

Hurricane Harvey, which dumped the greatest amount of rain in a single storm in US history, is barely over, and the damage has barely begun to be calculated, when along comes Irma. And here it is, earlier today.  Have you ever seen such a perfectly organized hurricane?  Irma is currently the second strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic, with wind speeds only a few miles an hour short of the all time record of 190 miles per hour. One storm after another.  What will it take to get the right wing liars in this country to give up their multibillion dollar campaign of deception and finally admit that something is happening here that must be addressed?  We still have a couple of months of this year's hurricane season to go- maybe we will have a third or a fourth of these things, while the short term profits of energy companies destroy the future of the human race. And what is to come in that future?  In five or ten more years, will we see half a doz...

Really.  I think with the last month- with the Charlottesville business and Trump's open approval of the Aryan Supremacists behind it, with the freeing of the concentration camp master Joe Arpaio, with the mindless threats against North Korea, with the hideously callous reaction to Hurricane Harvey, with the dozens of hateful actions he has taken as President, with the endless dribble of details of his collaboration with the Russians and their dictator, there is no reasonable person on earth that can not see what is going on in the United States. I am positive that even the majority of the 34% or so of the American people that claim to believe in him are lying, too ashamed at the way they were suckered into selling the country to crooks to ever admit that they know what they did. Well, so what? As I said, we all know it, and we all know that the rest of the Republican leadership is as corrupt as Trump is, if not as stupid and deranged, so we know that things are going to have t...

Ever ready to apologize for the worst of the right wing, the Washington Post has this incisive analysis: "Evangelical Christians voted for Donald Trump in overwhelming numbers. Evangelical support for the president remains relatively firm; indeed, even as others criticized the president’s remarks in the wake of Charlottesville, evangelical leaders rose to the president’s defense. All of this gets under the skin of President Trump’s critics, who cannot believe that men and women who think of themselves as godly can possibly stomach Trump’s behavior. For such critics, the only possible explanation for evangelicals’ continuing faith in Trump is some combination of ignorance and hypocrisy. Conversations with actual evangelical Christians at a recent gathering here — the Hillsboro Family Camp, where families have met annually since 1972 for four days of praise and worship — suggest a different picture. These voters — and almost all of them voted — see Trump’s flaws but perceiv...