IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 3 Comments

by John Walters

Axis of Evil, circa 2020

Coup de Twats

Lie, lie, lie.

Deny, deny, deny.

Decry, decry, decry.

That’s it. That’s the GOP’s entire plan to steal the election.

We’re not even going to give any more oxygen to Mike Pompeo’s absurd statement from yesterday other than to say what we said months ago: at some point in time push is going to come to shove.

There is nothing in Donald Trump’s past to suggest that he will ever admit defeat or do the right thing. He will obstruct and delay, and then obstruct some more and delay longer. So at some point by January 20th some MUSCLE is going to need to come in and order him out of the White House.

And now that it seems that William Barr and Mike Pompeo are also in bed with Trump on this denial of election results, that means that some active resistance must take hold. Resigning if you work under Barr or Pompeo or in the military is one thing, but perhaps some MUSCLE from the National Guard or the military or Secret Service is going to have to storm the castle.

And what happens, by the way, if Trump fortifies the White House with the very right-wing, white supremacist militia types who are so eager to defend him?

The latest Banana Republic outlet just opened on 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

One Minute Of Truth

Cannot wait to see where this young man is in 20 years. #NotSafeForPhyllis

Amen Corner

This is Jon Rahm on the 16th hole during a practice round at The Masters yesterday. They didn’t even think to try and attempt this in Caddyshack. You may ask how come one of the world’s best golfers duffed a shot so horribly and for that we have no answer.

No-Fraud Zone

The New York Times contacted the top election official in each of the 50 states. Here’s what they heard back:

–directly from the top official in 49 states, NO EVIDENCE OF VOTER FRAUD.

–from someone speaking for that top official in four other states, NO EVIDENCE OF VOTER FRAUD.

–from Texas, a state that Donald Trump won, no reply.

Of course, you may want to ask your favorite GOP tin-foil hat wearer why it is that people such as Mitch McConnell and Tommy Tuberville were legally elected on the very same ballots on which Joe Biden was illegally elected, but it’s exactly that type of logic that proves too unwieldy for them to embrace.

Which is not to say that there has not been election fraud in the past two weeks. This, for example:

And you have to wonder if this person in silhouette actually works at Nevada Pole & Total Landscaping:

So at this point you have to wonder what it’s going to look like when Donald Trump is frog-walked out of the White House in handcuffs.

But here’s an epiphany I had this morning: What if this is all part of Trump’s plan to avoid jail. He’s going to keep ratcheting up the 3rd World Dictator schtick in hopes that eventually he can approach the Biden camp and say, “Look, I’ll leave the White House peacefully if you’ll just pardon me on everything else.” At which point, if I were Biden, I’d simply start laughing.

The SEC’s Day Off

Due to Covid-19 testing, this weekend’s Alabama-LSU contest and Texas A&M-Tennessee game have been postponed. This is probably the best news LSU fans have had all season.

Leo at 46

To celebrate Leo DiCaprio’s 46th birthday, let’s post five favorite performances:

  1. Arnie in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (still his best)
  2. Billy in The Departed (where Matt Damon plays the a-holeā€”in Boston! These two could easily have swapped roles and it would’ve played just as well if not better).
  3. Jack Dawson in Titanic (yes, it’s schmaltzy in moments, but he’s fantastic)
  4. Rick in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (an imperfect film but he and Brad were phenomenal)
  5. Frank in Catch Me If You Can*

*honorable mention to Danny in Blood Diamond, another film (like Nos. 2 and 3) where Leo does not survive.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 4 Comments

by John Walters

Jet Downer

There have been no major domestic airline catastrophes in more than a decade… with the exception of the New York Jets.

How did the Jets manage to lose last night on Monday Night Football? When we tuned in there were fewer than seven minutes remaining and New York (0-8 entering) led the putrid Patriots (2-5) 27-17.

Then New England kicked a field goal.

Then Joe Flacco (now a Jet) threw an ill-advised bomb on first down (a tight end was WIDE OPEN 10 yards downfield) that was picked. Then New England got 19 yards on 3rd-and-19. Then New England scored a TD. Then the Jets, getting the ball back with under 2 minutes, took a sack and threw an INC and, again, 0-8, decided to punt on 4th-and-3 from their 41 with the score tied.

New England then threw about a 20-yard completion with just a few ticks left, which put former Jet Nick Folk in position to kick a 51-yard field goal, and, yes, never even a question.

Pats 30, Jets 27.

The misery continues for football’s worst team.

White Supremacy’s Last Gasp

In the past 24 hours alone:

*Lame-duck president Donald Trump fires Secretary of Defense Mark Esper. This is his replacement below, in his first day on the job.

*Lamer still Attorney General William Barr orders prosecutors to look into voter fraud during the election with absolutely no evidence to sustain why he is doing so. While you’re at it, Bill, let’s investigate whether Matt Gaetz is a serial-killer. I mean, he could be, right?

*In response to Barr’s order, Richard Pilger, director of the elections crimes branch in the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, resigned. Perhaps Pilger is smart enough to realize he’ll have his job back in less than three months.*

*This, by the way, must be the strategy to counterattack Trump and Barr and the rest of them. Trump will attempt to rid the top levels of government resistance (see: Sally Yates, James Comey, etc.) and is rumored to be considering firing FBI director Chris Wray. But even if he installs henchmen such as Barr atop key agencies (including the military), those people still need underlings to carry out their orders. And as long as people refuse to do so, there’s absolutely no way Trump’s nefarious plan will work. It’s kind of bizarre to see “Hamilton” in real time, but here we are.

*Georgia’s two Republican senators, Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Klansman, have told the state’s Secretary of State, who happens to be Republican but apparently did not give the ball a favorable spot, to resign. He oversees the election results in Georgia. He is refusing to do so.

*Lindsey Graham went on Fox News and said, and I quote, “Republicans win because of our ideas and we lose elections because [Democrats] cheat.” Sadly, there are plenty of Republicans who’d rather buy this logic than face the truth.

I keep returning to what Dave Chappelle said near the end of his SNL monologue the other night. Referring to how Trump got himself A-plus health care while letting friends/sycophants Chris Christie (wither in ICU) and Herman Cain (die) suffer, not to mention one million-plus Americans, Chappelle said: “That’s your leader. For four years…THAT’S your leader. What kind of man does that? What kind of man makes sure he’s okay while his friends fight for their lives? Die?

“A white man. And I don’t mean to put this on the whites, but I’ve been black a long time, I’ve noticed a pattern.“

Stop The Count!

Meanwhile, the coronavirus rages out of control even after Pfizer announced that it has produced a vaccine (without government assistance) that is 90% effective. Yesterday the U.S. had yet another new record of coronavirus cases (125,000-plus) while leading epidemiologists are predicting the next few months will be “coronavirus hell.”

One went on TV this morning and predicted at least 100,000 more deaths before inauguration day.

And your president? He has not sat in on a coronavirus briefing in 12 weeks. Frankly, they’re boring to him. Hey, if you didn’t want to die from the ‘rona, you should’ve gotten your ass elected president, no?

When The Witch of November Comes Stealin‘

Forty-five years ago today (November 10, 1975), the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald sank in a massive gale on Lake Superior. The freighter, 790-feet long, took down 29 men and 26 short tons of iron ore with it shortly after 7 p.m.

One year later Canadian musician Gordon Lightfoot (still living, by the way) wrote his classic ballad, “The Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald.” Lightfoot has said he was inspired to pen the tune after seeing a story about the disaster in Newsweek and noting that the ship’s name had been misspelled “Edmond” (where were the fact-checkers??? Or even Micah Sage?). He felt that the typo dishonored the 29 lost souls and wanted to correct the error.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 2 Comments

by John Walters

Spontaneous celebration in South Bend and…

Wake Up The Echoes!

Quite a Saturday as both President Donald Trump and No. 1 Clemson officially lose for the first time in years. The news organizations began declaring Joe Biden the winner shortly before 11 a.m. and then Notre Dame, in another contest that seemed to go on interminably long, took down the Tigers in two overtimes, 47-40.

…and Times Square

A bad day all around for orange creatures. A great day for the Irish, which Biden is. Notre Dame had not taken down a No. 1 opponent in 27 years, since Florida State in November of 1993. Brian Kelly, now in his 11th season, finally gets his first victory against a Top 5 team and moves his name closer to the plateau of Rockne, Leahy, Parseghian and Holtz. All that remains elusive is a national championship.

A Man For All Seasons

The inimitable Alex Trebek, 80, passes from stage 4 pancreatic cancer, with which he was diagnosed last year. The Canada native served as the host of Jeopardy! for 36 years and turned it into an American institution. His kindness, dry wit and genial charm will forever be missed.

It says something about the way Trebek connected with viewers, and also the simple genius of the game, that the host and the show inspired a long-running parody on Saturday Night Live (the foil to Trebek was Sean Connery, who passed just one week ago), a Weird Al song, and an entire episode of Cheers. If you want to see a beautiful tribute to Trebek, we posted one in Friday’s edition of MH at the bottom.

Trebek was taping episodes of Jeopardy! less than two weeks ago. The show has enough episodes with him hosting in the can to last us through Christmas. After that it’ll be interesting to see who succeeds him. No one will replace him.

A Man For Four Seasons

One could read shelves-ful of books that dissect the incompetence, the cruelty, the corruption and the smug self-satisfaction of the Trump presidency… or you could remember that in a final act of defiance, the president had his bag man, Rudy Giuliani, stage a press conference at what he thought would be the Four Seasons hotel in Philadelphia. Only it was a company called Four Seasons Total Landscaping, located betwixt a sex shop and a crematorium.

And for some reason, even at some point realizing the error they’d made, they still went through with the press conference. Even Sacha Baron-Cohen isn’t brilliant enough to concoct such a perfect metaphor.

Major Harris

Yes, America elected another old white man as president (he is a massive step up and in the right direction, though). But, in terms of historical impact, a woman of color and of Indian heritage who was educated at an HBCU and comes from zero privilege, well, she’s the vice president.

The American Dream is alive and well. It’s funny how much that upsets some patriotic Americans.

By the way, and we can’t remember if we typed this last week, but in 2020 Donald Trump received more votes in a presidential election than any previous candidate in any election ever had. The problem for Donald is that he received four million fewer votes than Joe Biden and also fewer electoral votes.

What does that mean? That democracy won last week, more than anything. Americans still believe in the power of the vote, no matter how hard Donald Trump attempted to crush their optimism. Americans voted, to use a phrase that Trump always like to trot out, “like they’ve never done before.” And that is in part why he lost. And why democracy, more so than Joe Biden, won.

Chapelle’s Glow

About six minutes into his 16-minute host monologue on SNL, Dave Chappelle stopped tap dancing and begin super-spreading the truth: “Don’t even wanna wear a mask because it’s oppressive? Try wearing the mask I’ve been wearing all these years. Can’t even tell something true unless it’s got a punch line behind it… you guys aren’ ready.”

And that’s when the monologue really begins… Dave eases up on them for a few more minutes but then after about 11:30 it’s just devastating. Impactful stuff. Total silence in the studio as he outlines his plan for a “Kindness Conspiracy.”

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 2 Comments

by John Walters

Mapquest

As we woke up on Friday morning, Joe Biden leads Donald Trump in electoral votes, 264-217, with five states still in play: Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. The odds favor Biden as mail-in votes seem to favor Democratic candidates…because who wants to be shot at a polling place?

On Thursday night, President Trump delivered what CNN’s Daniel Dale calls “the most dishonest speech of his presidency.” That’s like saying you just spotted the planet’s largest blue whale. Wow.

https://twitter.com/RexChapman/status/1324689612518969344?s=20

This was Trump’s biggest doozy: “If you count the legal votes, I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us.”

I’m mortified at the stupidity of people who buy this bullshit. Here’s a simple test: Would you believe this to be true if someone you did not know said it? Of course not. So why does President Hitler always get a free pass?

Netflix’s Election Coverage

If you’ve watched The Queen’s Gambit (fantastic), then you remember this scene from the opening episode and you are able to spot the metaphor. If you’ve either watched TQG or know what a metaphor is, you probably did not vote for Donald Trump.

All The Symbolism

Election Day was Colin Kaepernick’s birthday.

Today, in a matter of hours, Georgia could be the state that puts Joe Biden over 270: and today is the 89th anniversary of Louis Armstrong’s “Georgia On My Mind” being released.

The county that may clinch it for Biden in Georgia was in Rep. John Lewis’ district.

Meanwhile, Back At The Coronavirus Ward

The United States went Tesla-stock-in-late-July on coronavirus cases yesterday, breaking new barriers as if no boundaries can stop it. More than 120,000 new cases yesterday, which is about a 20% jump from the previous all-time high the day before. You know how we’ll know when Donald Trump has officially lost? When Fox News and OAN and The Hill begin obsessing about this terrible pandemic and why can’t the government seem to do anything to control it?

They’re Not Going Away

If the past four years have taught us anything, it’s that the Trump kids have come to understand that politics is the new family business. Grifting irate and/or disenfranchised (or so they feel) white folks is so much more lucrative than Trump Steaks. So expect Don, Jr., and Ivanka and Eric to be out staging Trump rallies in support of Dad, who will be, too, stoking up white nationalism at every turn.

Who knows where this car is headedā€”off a cliff?ā€”but they’re not going anywhere.

Hallelujah Chorus

Four years ago, for the first SNL following the election, the show’s cold open was simply Kate McKinnon, costumed as Hillary Clinton, playing Leonard Cohen’s somber “Hallelujah.” She played it straight, not for jokes.

So what comes this Saturday (with the same host as four years ago, Dave Chapelle)? Here’s our guess/suggestion: the cast (and others), all in their political garb (both a Jason Sudeikis and a Jim Carrey Joe Biden, for example) singing the “Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s Messiah.

You heard it here first.

What Is, One Man Makes A Difference?

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 3 Comments

by John Walters

Biden His Time

While President Trump was “hereby” claiming states that had not yet finished counting votes, challenger Joe Biden was keeping a low profile and letting the vote-counters do their job. As we type this it’s late Wednesday evening and still no definitive winner. Is this what prolonged labor is like?

We don’t want to go “Dewey (Beach) Defeats Trumpman” here, so we’ll note that one candidate is throwing paradoxical tantrums (“Stop counting the votes!” “Keep counting the votes!”) while the other is sitting on the front porch playing Crazy Eights with his wife.

It wasn’t easy: voter suppression, voter intimidation, a concerted effort to delegitimize the U.S. postal service and Chevy truck caravans… and still, MORE AMERICANS voted for Joe Biden than any other presidential candidate in U.S. history (Donald Trump received more votes than any Republican candidate in history, too). By the way, in seven of the last eight elections, counting this one, the Democratic candidate has received the majority of the votes. Sounds as if the GOP is getting governmental assistance via our electoral process: is that not socialism?

p.s. Your faithful scribe moved to Arizona last March and voted here. You’re welcome, America.

Heaven-Sent

When the up-and-down history of the year 2020 is written, it should be remembered that the coronavirus was the stuff that saved democracy in this nation. Just as 405,000 American soldiers gave their lives for the U.S.A. in World War II, more than half that have sacrificed theirs in 2020 for this country.

Not following? When you see how slim the margin of victory for Joe Biden was in this election, there’s little getting around the idea that Donald Trump wins without the introduction of the coronavirusā€”and his administration’s response to itā€”last winter. And if Trump wins in 2020 the path of darkness for this country only becomes more sinister.

By no means is this country out of the woods yet. And let’s make no mistake: this is a battle between white supremacy, i.e., the patriarchal white male, and inclusion of all types of people. That’s all any of this is about. Don’t attempt to complicate it.

There will be other Trumpian figures in the future. For now, America has held him and his horde at bay. To continue to do so in the future will take vigilance. But for now, God sent down a virus to provide an assist. And again, there’s nothing more outlandish about suggesting that than suggesting that God Him/Herself exists. The evidence is equally convincing/unconvincing on either count.

And, before we leave this topic, 1,100 more Americans died of Covid-19 yesterday. With more than 100,000 new cases. America First!

Stop The Count!

No one ever said White Supremacy in America would vanish without a bitter fight. Here are some “patriotic Americans”, a.k.a. “Vanilla Isis“, in Michigan literally chanting that votes should not be counted because, you know, ‘merica. Listen: “Stop the Count!” was quite the populist expression centuries ago in Transylvania, but I’m not sure if it’s really that in modern-day Wayne County, Michigan.

Of course the funny part is that all of the GOP and Trumpism is rooted in hypocrisy. So what a perfectly symbolic end for what may be the end of his presidency:

Whose Side Are You On?

A question I posed some of my friends (we are divided) last night: Watch these two clips and determine whose side you’d rather be on. Him?

Or him?

Black people forever wondering how come they have to be twice as smart, twice as composed, twice as articulate just so that white people won’t call them radical or unhinged. You know what? They have a damn good point.

That’s WMR (White Male Rage) up top and this is what happens when you don’t realize that the Constitution is color-blind (especially after that whole Emancipation Proclamation deal).

The Manchester (Ob)Scene

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctrOpTrgOL8

In the world of soccer, Manchester United was once the gold standard. But nowadays Man U. cannot even maintain the goal standard. We’re not super-sophisticated when it comes to football acumen, but based on the media reactions from punters it seems that the defense here against Basaksehir, a Turkish club, in Champions League defeat was, well, indefensible. Something you’d admonish your 10-and-under team for failing to be prepared for.

The goal was scored by that unmarked man, Demba Ba, who is 35 years old. Basaksehir won, 2-1.