IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 2 Comments

by John Walters

Tonight, His Count Ends

His commitment to the conceit has been impressive. Every night that Brian Williams has been on air the past four years, he has opened his program, The 11th Hour, by saying, for example, “Good evening, it is Monday, January 18th, Day 1,460 of the Trump presidency.”

Every night he has noted the day of the Trump presidency, i.e., the Klandemic.

Tonight his count ends.

Now, never mind that Williams’ show actually airs in the day’s 24th hour, he’s been our favorite cable news anchor during the Trump presidency. Understated, wry, extremely gracious with all of his guests without being obsequious, and occasionally, when needed, he provides the stinger. Simply the best.

Pillow Balk*

*The judges will also accept “Not Sleeping With The Enemy”

A number of big-box stores, among them Bed, Bath & Beyond and Kohl’s, have terminated their business relationships with My Pillow. Seems they find that having the founder and CEO, Mike Lindell, being photographed carrying an insurrection playbook into the White House three days after the attempted insurrection is not a good look.

Worth noting that Lindell’s previous wife, Dallas Yocum, divorced him after just a few weeks of betrothal. Maybe there’s a pattern.

Perhaps the stores should donate all of their inventory to the National Guardsmen sleeping in the Capitol?

Mall Of America

Two weeks after the MAGA ghouls and goblins marched the mile from the Washington Monument to the U.S. Capitol, that same space is awash in American flags ahead of tomorrow’s inauguration. Approximately 200,000 flags are festooning the mall to replace spectators who cannot be there due to the pandemic and, of course, safety concerns of Insurrection 2: Boogaloo Boogaloo.

By the way, let’s not forget this photo of Donald Trump rushing into the White House and forgetting all about his wife, while the Obamas see to being kind hosts (notice: His back is already turned to the trio). This after her husband spent four-plus years ladling out the filthy birther lie.

Neither Trump will be on hand at the White House to welcome the new first family. Probably for the best.

A Dagger From Steph

It’s a few years removed from the Warriors-Cavs battles, but we never get tired of seeing Steph Curry put a frown on the face of LeBron James. Last night the Warriors visited Los Angeles and trailed by 11 entering the 4th quarter.

They stormed back, though, taking down the defending champions with a 34-21 blitz in the final quarter. The exclamation point was the above three by Curry with 1:07 left. Kids, if you’re watching at home, this is what a legal step-back three looks like.

Monumental

In the South, a statue goes up! And it’s another sign of progress. The University of South Carolina erected a statue to former women’s hoops star A’ja Wilson, who led the Gamecocks to their first national championship in 2017.

The following season Wilson swept all the national player of the year awards, was named SEC player of the year for the third consecutive season (a first), and was selected No. 1 overall in the WNBA draft by the Las Vegas Aces. Her speech above is worth your time.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 1 Comment

by John Walters

I posted some thoughts yesterday if you’re interested…

A “My Pillow” joke here just seems inappropriate

January Jitters

Have you ever been on a flight where the pilot came on the intercom to announce, “We are heading into some severe turbulence for the next 45 minutes. There’s no way to avoid it?”

I have. Buckle up, America.

It’s about to be, potentially, a perilous week. Two movie scenes came to mind as I thought about the week ahead. The first comes from The Godfather II.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGXG3U_I7r0

You can go right to 2:35 here, through 3:05.

I do wonder, if it comes to it in the coming days or weeks, if National Guardsmen and cops will put their lives on the line in defense of our country… against men who look like them, who also come from this country, and with whom they might even share political views.

You may have heard VP Mike Pence brag that during the Trump administration America did not get involved in any new wars. What a dope. Right now if you are a National Guardsman or cop the greatest threat you face to your life is from an armed American, most probably a white male. Who started that war, Mike?

The second scene comes from Bridge On The River Kwai, and I thought of it as I read that the FBI is investigating whether has charged a woman for stealing Nancy Pelosi’s lap top during the storming with intent to sell it to Russia. I mean, how deranged have these Trumpers become that they believe it’s in America’s best interests to sell our national security to Russia? And so I thought of the moment of epiphany Sir Alec Guinness experiences moments before he dies. “What have I done?”

If you remember the film, the final scene has the POW doc looking down at the scene below him and simply muttering one word: “Madness.”

That’s where we’re at.

Brady To Brees

The most memorable moment of the NFL divisional playoffs occurred after the fourth and final game of the weekend. A pair of fortysomethings, two of the most prolific to ever play, meet on the field. One, who is retiring, is with his family. The other, who is not and has a game in Green Bay next weekend, tosses a TD pass to the other’s son.

The NFL could not frame a better ad if it spent a year trying.

Look Out, You Rock ‘n Rollers

Came across this old video of David Bowie discussing Lou Reed last night. You don’t like to go to this well too often, but he was assuredly a prince among men. Good-natured, thoughtful, charming, witty, hyper-intelligent. And that accent is so rich. Love it all (except the smoking). Stick around until the very end—or fast forward to it—as Bowie gets off a very funny line.

And here’s Bowie and Reed performing “Dirty Boulevard” together on the occasion of Bowie’s 50th birthday. Enjoy.

Give me your hungry, your tired your poor I’ll piss on ’em
that’s what the Statue of Bigotry says
Your poor huddled masses, let’s club ’em to death
and get it over with and just dump ’em on the boulevard

Pardon The Insurrection

The most pitiful man in America

The president is reportedly selling pardons and will issue as many as 100 of them tomorrow (my thought: small price to pay for the eviction). I do wonder if he’ll pardon anyone involved in the insurrection and whether that wold later serve as incriminating evidence against him when the event is fully investigated.

MLK: “I have a dream…“

DJT: “I have a scheme…“

Look, we all know Mr. Biden and Mrs. Harris have been preaching unity and healing and getting the vaccine out, and that’s all well and good. But what is also imperative is that every single person involved in the insurrection, from Donald Trump to Ted Cruz to Josh Hawley to Lauren Boebert and others, all must be held accountable. All must stand trial. You don’t just get to get away with this simply because no major figures were killed. Am I nuts here or do you agree?

From Michelle Goldberg in the NYT:

Making Trump face consequences for trying to overturn the election will not, by itself, stop the disorder he’s instigated. But it may be a precondition for making the country governable. “The time to stop tyrants and despots is when you first see them breaking from the demands of law,” said Raskin. Trump, he said, “has been indulged and protected for so long by some of his colleagues that he brought us to the brink of hell in the Capitol of the United States.”

By the way, in the past six months the Trump administration has executed 13 death row inmates. By that we mean federal executions. That’s more than took place in the previous six decades. That seems frightful until you look at the hundreds of thousands of Americans who’ve somewhat needlessly died of COVID-19 in the same time period. Yes, Americans were going to die of COVID-19. But probably 1/10th the number should have.

It got us to thinking about how Alex Azar resigned over the weekend as Secretary of Health and Human Services and pointed to the insurrection as having “tarnished the president’s legacy.” Oh, yes. That. Because the pandemic and the putting kids in cages and the 20,000 or so lies had not tarnished his legacy. His entire legacy is giant smudge.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | Leave a comment

by John Walters

U. Grant

We don’t want to say that former Civil War general and U.S. president Ulysses S. Grant was prescient as much as that he noticed some universal and timeless dilemmas that any democracy or society faces. Grant spoke the following words in a speech he delivered to the annual reunion of the Army of Tennessee on September 29, 1875.

If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason’s and Dixon’s, but between patriotism and intelligence on one side, and superstition, ambition, and ignorance on the other.

Listen Up

Don’t know who this dude is, or who wrote his eloquent prose, but it’s a must-listen.

WaPo For The Win

With its “41 Minutes Of Fear” piece, a video journey through the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, the Washington Post has deconstructed some of the mayhem that occurred on January 6th. Watching at home that afternoon, I never truly feared that the safety of U.S. senators and representatives was at risk. But I was wrong. I did not quite appreciate how much the inner sancta of the Capitol had been breached. This also is required viewing.

One thing that should impress/depress you as you watch the video is the utter and egregious sense of entitlement these white dudes have. They’re committing treason and they’re talking to the cops as if they’re employees at your local multiplex who’ve been charged with telling them that they cannot bring that bottle of beer inside to the screening of Deadpool. Or as if they’re gate agents who’ve just told them that their bag will not fit into the overhead and must be checked.

“AND YOU WILL ATONE!”

I picture Ned Beatty standing at one end of the conference table and little Donald Trump seatead at the other end. Beatty is telling him that his populist schtick was okay for awhile, but then once he incited a coup d’etat against the largest capitalist nation in the world, he’d gone a step too far. And there’s a price to pay for that.

“The world is a business, Mr. Trump.”

The most illuminating aspect of the past nine days, at least for me, was the swiftness with which major American corporations took action after Jan. 6th and announced that they would no longer donate to Republicans who backed the fraudulent claims of Donald J. Trump. First, you realize that they’ve been pumping blood into the insurrection for years by supporting these politicians in the first place (and likely the ones across the aisle as well).

Second, you have to say to yourself, that companies such as American Express, Amazon, AT&T (and that’s just the A’s on the list) and others did not just wake up on Jan. 7th and have this epiphany of, “Ohhh! Donald Trump is a lying sonofabitch who’s doing a terrible job as president.” I mean, the 3,500 dead per day should have told them that.

Nope. They woke up on Jan. 7th and said, “A violent insurrection and toppling of the government will create mass instability, which is bad for the market, which is bad for business. NOW this must be stopped!”

In other words, they didn’t get involved when Donald Trump was bad for America. They didn’t get involved until Donald Trump was bad for business. That’s your lesson for today.

Sham. Wow.

I used to think that all Minnesotans were wonderful people.
I’ve had to downgrade that assessment to “most.” Here’s Mike Lindell, MyPillow creator, departing the White House with his “Two-Minute Insurrectionist Offense” playbook. These are the most desperate of times for Mr. Lindell, but not so desperate that he’d be amenable to departing the White House with cup of coffee in hand. Did he just leave the greatest residence in our land or the 9 a.m. pitch meeting at the Mankato Free Press? Holy cats, Mike.

I don’t know what exactly it’s going to take to charge men like this with treason. But I think a good start will be boycotting big box stores (See: Bed, Bath & Beyond) that continue to sell his product. Watch the video he filmed below, flying home from the insurrection.

I can’t wait for three more days when the grown-ups are back in charge (they’ve named a Science Team!). And as the years pass we will look back on Nov. 3 and Jan. 6 and realize just how close this democracy came to plunging over a cliff, derailed by idiots and miscreants such as Lindell, Rudy Giuliani and Mike Pompeo. Among millions of others. Not a whit of decency among them.

30-Second Dossier: Lauren Boebert

–House of Representatives, Colorado

–High school dropout

–Resides in a town named Rifle, Colo., which is deep in the heart of the Colorado Rockies. The kind of town where you’d find Hank Reardon and Dagny Taggart holing up.

–Owns, with her husband, a saloon named “Shooters’ and encourages her employees to open-carry firearms.

–Had her mother at the insurrection.

–Used “I call bullcrap” on the House floor during a debate.

Finally, A White We Can Admire

https://twitter.com/scottEmovienerd/status/1350677303110610944?s=20

Simply gorgeous, simply hilarious. Betty White turns 99 years old today and what a stunner she was 70 years ago. And still is. If you are old enough to recall her playing the viciously funny Sue Ann Nivens on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, lucky you.

I didn’t quite understand Sue Ann’s motives when I was younger, but thinking back on her now, she was an early cougar preying on the middle-aged frustrations of Lou Grant and Murray Slaughter (men who were, most likely, younger at that time than I am now. And I’m still wearing a Speedo every day. Scary.) Sue Ann was sort of the Col. Flagg of MTM. You didn’t need to see her on every episode, they were never going to make her part of the inner circle, her entire persona was based on self-delusion (she’d be MAGA, you have to think), but all of that is what made her such a pleasure to watch. A classic TV character the likes of which you just don’t see any more.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 1 Comment

by John Walters

Trump/Nixon

The president is reportedly fuming (again) and shooting down any suggestions from aides that he resign. He’s particularly peeved that anyone inside his circle is even mentioning the name Richard Milhouse Nixon in his presence. From CNN

And he has made clear to aides in separate conversations that mere mention of President Richard Nixon, the last president to resign, was banned. He told one adviser during an expletive-laden conversation recently never to bring up the ex-president ever again.

Yet, if one is being honest, as deceitful and treacherous a president as Trump Nixon could be, it is he who should be insulted by comparisons with Donald J. Trump. This vignette stands out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opK4XeVEE1Y

So, you have an unpopular president who on his own meets with his detractors in person at the Lincoln Memorial. Which, as you know, is at the other end of the National Mall from the U.S. Capitol. And the purpose of his visit is to ease tensions as opposed to escalating them. And, to reiterate, he goes himself. He doesn’t send others to do his bidding.

Also, of course, Richard Nixon was reelected.

Banana Stand Republics

It’s crazy, when you think about it. Arrested Development premiered in 2003. It’s the story of a cravenly corrupt real estate magnate and his four grown children, three of whom are extremely dsyfunctional. Only Michael (Jason Bateman) has a moral center.

So the parallels are all right there—with the exception of Michael, and don’t for a moment think Ivanka; no, you don’t. How ahead of its time was this series, anyway?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNJ7qyhJONA&t=349s

Here’s Will Arnett, who played Job, having tons of vicious fun at Jason Bateman’s expense. You’ll laugh.

NFL Homonyms

This weekend Tom Brady will face Drew Brees in an NFL playoff game for the first time. Between them Brady and Brees have completed nearly 14,000 passes (they’re 2-1, respectively, on the all-time list), have thrown for nearly 160,000 yards (again, 2-1 all-time), and have each thrown more than 570 TD passes (1-2 on all-time list). They’ve also lived a cumulative 85 years and play a cumulative 41 seasons.

I doubt either will retire after this season. I also doubt either will lead his tam to a Super Bowl win (but I do hope that Tom Brady is playing in Lambeau a week from Sunday).

Next spring the NFL draft will be held and you should know that you’ll probably hear the name “Brady Breeze” called in the second or third round. He’s a defensive back from Oregon (that’s really his name) who was the Defensive MVP of the 2020 Rose Bowl. Solid player. It is probably his sincere wish to one day intercept Brady or Brees, if not both.

One Officer’s Story

In the days, weeks and months ahead you’re going to hear more and more detail about all the horrific stuff that happened at our nation’s Capitol building on January 6th. And I think we’ll all feel tremendous relief that as much of a catastrophe as it was, it could have been far, far worse. Something that those of us watching in real time (at least me) did not quit appreciate in the moment.

https://twitter.com/ryanjreilly/status/1350096088645169154?s=20

Sometimes, though, all it takes is to hear one officer’s story. This is the tale of Michael Fanone. That’s obviously him talking up top and then there’s video o how he was nearly murdered, in broad daylight, at the foot of the U.S. Capitol, is a Blue Lives Matter flag obscures him. Pure poetry, no?

****

A thought: if I were a shameless white supremacist with a lot of anger and weaponry, and sincerely butt-hurt that my racist president lost his election, to the point that I was willing to delude myself that he did not lose fairly, I might circle the date January 16th, Martin Luther King Day, to make my statement. I imagine our friends at the FBI have already considered this.

Joe Lives Matter

Yesterday came the news that officials in Australia were preparing to euthanize a pigeon, whom they’d named Joe (above). Seems it was believed that Joe had flown 8,000 miles from the USA to the land Down Under and officials there were concerned that he may be carrying strains of an American-borne disease (such as racism).

The sentence? Death.

But, unlike our current American administration, which has been putting actual people to death with nary a care in the final weeks of the presidency, Australian officials dug a little deeper. They discovered that the leg band Joe was wearing that identified him as being from Oregon (a militia pigeon?) was likely counterfeit and that he was most likely an Aussie bird.

And so they have granted him a reprieve.

Aussies: better than Americans again.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | Leave a comment

by John Walters

Unprecedented!

https://twitter.com/jcrutchmer/status/1349559682407530497?s=20

(But Not Un-presidented)

Ladies and gentleman, your first two-time impeached president, Donald Trump (are you tired of all the winning yet?). If you’re scoring at home, that’s two impeachments and also 0-fer-2 in popular elections. Trump’s 1-1 in Electoral College elections, which cater specifically to deals the founders made with slave owners long ago in order to get them to buy into forming the union. So he owes his lone win to racism. That fits.

From CNN:

As President Trump made history tonight as the only US president to be impeached twice, one White House adviser said “everybody’s angry at everyone” inside the White House, with the President being upset because he thinks people aren’t defending him enough. 

“He’s in self-pity mode,” the source said.

The story goes on to say that even Hope Hicks has departed. That’s right: all Hope is lost.*

*By the way, and I’m not making this up, if you visit Hope Hicks’ Wikipedia page, next to height it reads: ” 5’9″ (same as Chris Christie).” Oooh, snap!

AOC Sounds Off

I mean, not bad for a barmaid.

A Beard Grows In Brooklyn

The borough of Brooklyn is flush with millennials sporting outlandishly overgrown beards, but James Harden just became the most famous one. And perhaps the wealthiest. The Houston Rockets sent the former MVP-with-no-gruntle-remaining to the Nets in a multi-player trade. He joins long-time-ago OKC teammate Kevin Durant, another former MVP.

In nine of the past 11 seasons, either Harden or Durant has led the NBA in scoring. How will this work? Perhaps if former two-time MVP and assists wizard Steve Nash, the coach, puts himself onto the active roster.

For Clarity’s Sake

It may be too late to ever persuade all the Casey Affleck-lookalike wack jobs who stormed Capitol Hill that “Stop The Steal” is, as Yale prof Timothy Snyder has said, “The Big Lie” (this will be the title of Michael Lewis’ book, no?). But that does not mean that every GOP senator and representative who parroted President Trump’s false claims the past few months should not publicly reverse course. To quote The New York Times (something New York Post staffers are no longer allowed to cite as a news source…meaning everything you’ll read in the NY Post from now on will come directly from Twitter):

Republican lawmakers who objected to the electoral vote results on the grounds of mythical election fraud should immediately and publicly apologize, repudiate their lies and admit that Joe Biden won the election fairly.

We need clarity. And honesty. That is, as this editorial attests, the first step.

Clarity and honesty from all the GOP in Congress who repeated a lie to help make it grow and take root.

The next step? Clarity and honesty about what took place last Wednesday. You keep reading about how the details of what went down inside the Capitol would leave Americans shocked. You know what? Shock us. Or are they waiting until after Jan. 20 to share this news?

And, by the way, what is the excuse for Mitch McConnell to not think the Senate needs to convene to hold a conviction trial on impeachment? As we stated on Monday, the most plausible reason is that he doesn’t want to be the Majority Leader when it goes down. Let that be Chuck Schumer’s dog.

Iran-sacked

You gotta give the Iranian students and radicals—I’m assuming they thought of themselves as “patriots”—who stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979, this much: at least they didn’t kill anybody.

As we watched the storming of the U.S. Capitol unfurl last week in real time, those of us old enough to remember the Iran Hostage Crisis noticed how similar the scene looked: an unruly mob bent on destruction and violence criminally trespassing on U.S. government property and taking it over.

But again, they never killed a single American. Last week’s mob did, police officer Brian Sicknick. I guess it’s not terrorism if you think your side is in the right against Uncle Sam. I’d point this out to anyone in a MAGA cap but they’re either too dumb or too brainwashed to comprehend analogies that fit.

Or expose them to their own hypocrisy.

To them I say, “Argo f*ck yourself.”