TGIF 3/2/18

If you're in the danger zone for Winter Storm Riley, or the California storms, or any of the other major weather events happening tonight, please stay safe.

If you're Jared Kushner, you're probably wishing you were in the middle of the danger zone for the storm - somewhere on Cape Cod, for example - instead of in the middle of the media storm that's swirling around you.

There are the reports of the fruitful meetings Kushner had at the White House, which somehow ended up with hundreds of millions of dollars being loaned to his company, on top of the loss of his coveted interim security clearance which gave him access to our country's most secret secrets.  And now, there's news about an SEC inquiry into one of those "meet with us and we'll loan you hundreds of millions" companies; the inquiry was dropped just weeks after the loan was made.

Now, there is no proof (yet) of a quid pro quo (yet) and Kushner, the Kushner Companies (run by his family, which tried to sell visas for half-million investments in the company), Apollo Global Management, who loaned the $184M, and their founder Joshua Harris, have all vigorously denied there being anything nefarious here.

And there's likely nothing to be concerned about, either, that Apollo Global receives backing from the Qatar Investment Authority, a sovereign wealth fund of the Qatari government. Because in the world of high finance and skyscrapers and almost broke real estate companies, what's to be concerned about when a White House staffer and family member of the president has his company's fanny saved by a loan from a foreign government?

If you're the president, and your world is falling apart and you're fighting with your own appointees and your staff is leaving and people are unhappy with you for pretty much everything, including lying to school children about gun control (or else lying to the NRA about gun control), you go and launch a trade war (but it's not official, yet, so maybe you won't really do it).

And that's not all. If you're the president, you attack Alec Baldwin on Twitter, proving again how much you're going to miss Hope Hicks.

And if you're me, on the back side of the nor'easter and pretty much done with this nonsense, which included 7 hours of power outages (in two separate stints) and more than a foot of snow, today you're happy that this week is over.

TGIF.

Wondering on Wednesday (v117)

Oh wow -- Wednesday again, already?

Tonight I'm wondering about words, lots of words, different words...

I'm wondering, for example,  if anyone I know has gotten a copy of  Fire and Fury, the Michael Wolff book yet. I'm hoping someone has, so I can get a first-hand report from a trusted source. How full of errors is it, really? Can any of it be relied upon as true? 

What else did Sloppy Steve say, other than the one quote we've heard a couple hundred times so far, about Little Donny Trump Manafort having a traitorous meeting in Trump Tower? And I wonder, was what he said worth what he lost?

Speaking of books, my husband got the Alec-Baldwin-as-Donald-Trump book, You Can't Spell America Without Me, which I might read before he does. I mean, how bad can this one be, when it gives us stuff like this?

I have the best words, beautiful words, as everybody has been talking about and talking about for a long time. Also? The best sentences and, what do you call them, paragraphs? My previous books were great and sold extremely, unbelievably well - even he ones by dishonest, disgusting so-called journalists. But those writers don't understand Trump, because quite frankly they were major losers.

Baldwin Trump might have beautiful words, but I think the ones that might be more worth reading that his, and certainly than Wolff's, are the ones that Glenn Simpson, the Fusion GPS guy, gave in his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The transcript was leaked by Senator Dianne Feinstein, who said in a statement

After speaking with majority and minority committee staff for 10 hours, Glenn Simpson requested the transcript of his interview be released publicly. The American people deserve the opportunity to see what he said and judge for themselves. The innuendo and misinformation circulating about the transcript are part of a deeply troubling effort to undermine the investigation into potential collusion and obstruction of justice. The only way to set the record straight is to make the transcript public. 

Fusion GPS was the group that hired former British Intelligence Officer Christopher Steele, who assembled the Trump Dossier, which is at the heart of at least some aspect of some investigation of what Russia may or may not have done to interfere with the election.

Steele was referred for criminal investigation to the Justice Department by two Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee, who are now in a snit that the transcript was leaked. Where the hell,  I wonder, is all of this leading? And who, I wonder, is going to end up winning?

Winning is always a great segue to Trump, isn't it? Today, the president threatened (again) to do something about people who say and publish things that are not true.

We are going to take a strong look at our country's libel laws, so that when somebody says something that is false and defamatory about someone, that person will have meaningful recourse in our courts.

Our current libel laws are a sham and a disgrace and do not represent American values or American fairness.

 We want fairness. Can't say things that are false, knowingly false, and be able to smile as money pours into your bank account. We are going to take a very, very strong look at that, and I think what the American people want to see is fairness.

I have to wonder, if the American people wanted 'fairness' would they have elected Trump? And similarly, if American values are misrepresented by false and defamatory statements, would the American people have elected Trump?

Finally, to end on a happy note, I wonder if the people at Trader Joe's knew all along that so many of their product names could be sung to the tune of Eleanor Rigby?  Here are a few examples that  a keen-eyed (keen-eared?) Twitter user, @DanSpenser noticed last fall.

• Harvest whole wheat bread
• Mini beef tacos
• Super burrito
• Pita bite crackers
• Three seed beet crackers

There are more - Spenser has added to the collection this week -- and, like everyone else who's read the tweets, I can't stop singing.

And, I can't stop wondering, who is the face that she keeps in a jar by the door for?

Wondering on Wednesday (v72)

So, what am I wondering about tonight? Well, let's see.

Are you getting tired of hearing people talk about 'fake news' and how 'fake news' may have influenced the outcome of our recent presidential election, and how 'fake news' is becoming the new normal and how hard it is to differentiate between 'fake news' and real news?

I wonder, do you now (or did you ever) really believe that Hillary Clinton was ever (or is now) involved in a lesbian pedophile sex trafficking orgy of epic proportions, operating out of a pizza shop in Washington, DC?

This guy did. He drove from North Carolina to our nation's capital to 'self-investigate' what's become known as 'Pizzagate' and he went into the shop, fired off a round, and was promptly arrested.  The pizza place has been the target of harassment for weeks; other businesses have been been harassed for their proximity to the presumed den of iniquity, and more.

The best part? General Michael Flynn, our soon-to-be National Security Advisor, tweeted a story on this fake news as a 'must read.'

Which, of course, makes me wonder how the hell he's going to keep you and me safe when he can't even make a reasonable judgment on a story as ridiculous as this.

There are lots of people out there who can't tell satire sites from real news outlets, and who don't understand the little 'Show Facts" and "Hide Facts" buttons at the top of articles that tell us what's real and what comes from the author's imagination.

To some extent, this drives from the fact that the real news is sometimes so absurd, we have to clarify that what we post is real; for example, I've been compelled to use a "NOT The Onion" disclaimer more times than I ever thought would be necessary.

But I wonder, how did we get so far removed from that little voice in our heads asking us if we're SURE about something... you know, like when your older brother asks you to taste something, and you hear that little voice asking if you're SURE you want to do what he asked you to? Yeah, that's the voice I'm talking about.  How did we lose that, and start trusting everything we read without the slightest hesitation?

Is it because people treat the news as a hook-up, a bit of instant gratification with no strings attached, I wonder? Or maybe it's because of all the 'reality' TV shows (which, as we know, is about as 'real' as the ubiquitous boob jobs that star in that medium)? Is it because we're in a 'sampled' world, filled with autotune mics, and we're willing to pay boatloads of money to watch people lip sync their way through concerts?

A lot of what passes for 'news' can be debunked in seconds - not days hours minutes but mere seconds.  Don't we have that much time to educate ourselves? Or is it that we simply don't care to?

Here's another test for you: is this passage real or fake?

You wouldn't believe the nonsense WideAwakePatriot and ArmedLibertyNews are pushing about how the world elites meet in Davos, Switzerland to rig the global economy, when if you actually paid attention to the facts the mainstream media doesn't want you to know about, you'd realize that the actual power players of the Jew World Order meet every day in Los Angeles to design their doomsday compounds and determine new methods to control us. (Click here to find out if this is real or fake.)

Or this one, about the POTUS-elect and a certain Baldwin brother?

And you know, I get that that's show business and it's supposed to be funny and entertaining and all that, but this just goes overboard every single time I see it, it's just plain offensive. And here's the thing right, I'm a guy who knows about show business. I've been part of it my whole life and I've made millions off of it. I know what people like and what people want to hear and see - that's part of why I am today the President of the United States and not a company owner struggling with debt who's about to go bankrupt. I know what I'm doing and I'm the first one to take a joke, but what they're doing on that show is plain rude and offensive. I won't stand for it. (Click here to see if this is real or fake.)

I wonder if General Flynn would have gotten the right answers. I think he would have said they were both real, what do you think?