Uncategorized

We must remember that it was only the media that first gave us Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee in the first place(how often can you report “superdelegates” in the count as real delegates…apparently as often as it takes). And then, it locked in our current predicament when it gave us Donald Trump as the Republican nominee (letting him be on all the talk shows without even showing up while the other candidates had to pay for ads… and don’t forget his gratuitous Saturday Night Live appearance as guest host, a privilege no other candidate of either party was afforded.)...

Final GTMO census number under now former President Barack Obama… forty-one men were handed off to the tender mercies of [gak] President Donald Trump, as of his inauguration mid-day on January 20. Andy, nearing the end of his American post-reality reality tour here has more on the ten men recently released to Oman. And so we have a challenge…and an opportunity. As Andy and GTMO attorney Tom Wilner recently noted in an op-ed in NY’s Daily News, at this census level, it costs around $10 million per prisoner each year… an insane amount of money simply to continue a pointless...

Given that we have the twitter President, at this point, I can only direct you to the twitter site of my good friend, Donald J. Putin. With the new regime, we have to take it literally, but not seriously. Whatever that means.

And we’re off. In an interview with the German publication Bild and London’s Times, the president-elect suggested that the NATO alliance was “obsolete,” that only five members (there are twenty-eight total members) are “paying their fair share,” he praised the Brexit vote, called the EU a device for Germany’s benefit to impose its will on the rest of Europe, and he threatened to impose import duties on BMW if it locates a plant in Mexico, as it proposes. He also suggested he wants a deal with Russia, to reduce nuclear weapons and to eliminate sanctions. He chided German chancellor Angela...

It’s the 15th anniversary of the opening of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba today; Andy is stateside, and, when not sojourning at Stately Dog Manor, is down in Washington, where I will be as well, protesting near the Supreme Court (festivities start 11:30 a.m., for those able to join…) Obviously, none of us really know what the next Administration will bring… but, in matters GTMO, drone, indefinite detention, war/peace, etc…. it’s not like we don’t have “issues” with the current Administration. Just sayin’.

The Associated Press (btw, thanks AP for handing the nomination to Hillary and hence, the presidency to Voldemort Trump), via ABC, tells us that the president-elect seems to be moving at glacial pace (or not at all) towards divesting his far-flung corporate empire into any kind of “blind trust” prior to the inauguration. Regular readers (whomever you are) know from a post just yesterday that Mr. Trump himself is deeply in bed with and/or in hock to Russian and Chinese entities. Aside from the possibility (or probability) that unwinding his own actual interests (as opposed to notional interests) might demonstrate...

That’s monologuist Mike Daisey (we’ve written about him before) and his recent presentation called “Trump Card,” in which he notes the original secret of the late Fred Trump’s business success (passed down to his heir apparent, the president-elect), that being never, Never, NEVER… NEVER…pay for labor. As a third separate contractor files a mechanic’s lien against the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., because… well… see above. The champion of the American working man, ladies and gentlemen… he’ll be here all week… and, evidently, for at least the next four years.

A Gallup poll shows that the majority of Americans surveyed do not believe that Cheeto Jesus the most unqualified man ever to be elected president [tm] President Elect Donald Trump is capable of doing the job of President. This is in sharp contrast to his three immediate predecessors, for example, each of whom had significant a majority of Americans expressing confidence in their likely performance. Perhaps Mr. Trump’s extraordinary divisiveness at the moment he might be expected to be drawing towards national unity has something to do with this… or maybe the public (the significant majority who did not vote...

The new year of 2017 rings in with a horrifying bang, as one attacker (or is it more?) apparently with a Kalishnikov automatic rifle, stormed into a popular nightclub in Istanbul, Turkey and murdered at least 39 people celebrating New Year’s Eve. Turkey has had a whole lot of bad crap of late, including bombings, the assassination of the Russian Ambassador, a near-coup, millions of refugees from nearby Syria… in short, a witches’ brew of much of the world’s instability, sitting conveniently at a junction between Europe and Asia, bordering Greece and Bulgaria on the European side, and on its...

An over-empowered minority of American voters chose the form of the destructor. Slate offers us this note that 2016 was some kind of a wake-up call for White liberals… as if. The president-elect wishes a happy new year to his enemies “who lost so badly.” At some point, he might consider stepping out of his professional wrestler persona and comporting himself with the decorum and dignity his newly acquired office requires. Then again, as long as the American media considers any emanations reaching us from the unfiltered, undrained swamp via his short fingers typing on his twitter account to be...