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?

Sunday School, 1/7/18

Ready for this one? I mean, are you really ready for this one?  OK, here goes.

Michael Wolff was a guest on NBC's Meet the Press, with Chuck Todd behind the microphone. Here are few of the author's comments.

On how the whole thing came to be:

You know, I literally kind of knocked on the door and said, "Can I come in?" and they said "Okay." And I came in. I sat on the couch and that's the point of view that I've written this book from... 

On how Wolff's book seems to take the one-sided, anti-Trump approach he accused the media as a whole of taking:

...You know, I went into this, a decent part of the country went into this, his entire staff went into this thinking that maybe this can work. It's different, even peculiar, but who knows what can happen here? And that was exactly my, my frame of reference. I would have been delighted to have written a contrarian account here, Donald Trump this unexpected president, is actually going to succeed. OK, that's not the story. He is not. 

And finally, when will this hit the wall? 2020, or before?

Um, I think -- I don't know when the train is going to finally hit the wall... And the thing that keeps everybody's attention absolutely riveted - this global attention - is that the train keeps going, but the wall is still there. I mean one of the things, I think, about this book and why it's hit such a chord and become this cultural moment is it's given everybody this focused opportunity to say, "Holy crap."

Moving on to Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace had CIA chief (and possible Secretary of State if  Rex Tillerson gets the boot) Mike Pompeo defending the president's fitness.

When we talk about some of the most serious matters facing America and the world, complex issues, the president is engaged, he understands the complexity, he asks really difficult questions of our team at the CIA so that we can provide him the information he needs to make good informed policy decisions. 

And I watched him do that. I watched him take the information that the intelligence community delivers and translate that into policies that are of enormous benefit to America. Statements like the one Mr. Wolff made about how we all think about the president are just ridiculous on their face. They are frankly beneath the conversation this morning, Chris. 

When Wallace pointed out that it's in part a conversation today because Trump can't help himself and responds to what Wolff says, Pompeo did answer the fitness question.

Completely fit. I mean, I paused only because it's just a ludicrous question, right? These are from people who just have not yet accepted the fact that President Trump is the United States President. And I'm sorry for them in that.

Before turning to other more boring stuff, like the protests in Iran, Wallace asked one last question.

By raising questions about the president's fitness, in a sense -- and the president became part of it, making this the big topic this week - has this book weakened our country? Weakened our standing around the world?

Pompeo's answer was swift, and sure.

No. 

On ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, the roundtable gang talked about fire and fury of The Fire and Fury, too. The group was batting around that the president made it worse for himself by getting involved, kind of like Richard Nixon's "I am not a crook" comment messed things up for him. One panelist, Roland Martin, offered some insight.

This book changes nothing. I read 250 of the 350 pages last night. Bottom line is simple. Everything that he laid out we already knew, in terms of the kind of people (Trump) chose, the fact that you don't have principles, you don't have morals, you don't have ethics.And what you have here thought is a Republican party where you have different pieces. They get exactly what they want from Donald Trump.

You have white evangelicals. They don't care about  how he has treated women because all they want are federal judges who will get rid of same-sex marriage and abortion. You have folks on the business side, you get the tax reform. You have the folks who are all about the social issues, they get what they -- everybody gets exactly what they want.

This comes down to power. The Republican Party, they want -- all those folks, they want power. Donald Trump provides that. And so as long as he's there, and they can get what they want, it doesn't matter. This book will not change a thing. 

Stephanopoulos moved on from there.

It raised a question of power but...it does also raise these questions of the president's fitness. I mean, a lot of the anecdotes in there, let's say 50% of them are true... it raises serious questions about his mental capacity, his ability to process information, his impulse control.

Sara Fagen, an ABC News contributor, offered that the agreed the 50% figure George mentioned was about right (although Martin thought it might be 90%), and then talked about Trump.

It does. But it doesn't really matter. And it's not going to matter until and unless something very catastrophic happens as a result of a tweet or a provocation to another national - international leader. 

That, I think, is probably a true statement. 

See you around campus. 

Oh Please! Oh Please!

Oh please, let there be a Trump National Golf Course within sight of one of the lease areas the Interior Department wants to open up for drilling, oh please!

Today, we learned from Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke that

Responsibly developing our energy resources on the Outer Continental Shelf in a safe and well-regulated way is important to our economy and energy security, and it provides billions of dollars to fund the conservation of our coastlines, public lands, and parks. 

Today's announcement lays out the options that are on the table and starts a lengthy and robust public comment period. Just like with mining, not all areas are appropriate for offshore drilling, and we will take that into consideration in the coming weeks. 

We all know how much a fan of energy production this president is -- he literally drips energy, 'all of the above' energy, without playing favorites or picking winners and losers, remember? Except when it comes to his own properties, well, all bets are off.

In this post from last April, I noted that when Trump found out there might be wind turbines off the coast of his Aberdeenshire golf course, he sent 16 letters to government officials, noting how damaging it would be for the country of Scotland.

Don't destroy your coastline and your countryside with these monstrous turbines. Your economy will become a third world wasteland that global investors will avoid. 

And, there was this -

Its adverse visual impact on my development and the beautiful Aberdeen coastline will be disastrous and environmentally irresponsible.  

Now, I don't know about you, but if the president got that bent out of shape about a dozen wind turbines in Scotland, can you imagine how he'd feel about oil rigs within sight of one of his American resorts? It doesn't even have to be all that close, just close enough to get a glimpse of off in the horizon...you know, the deep water horizon.

Or, even better, maybe we could put one off the coast of his pride and joy, Mar-a-Lago?

Wouldn't that be too, too perfectly ironic?

Drillbabydrill! Unleash our energy independence, right in front of the president's private club!

On another note, oh please, oh please let there be tape recordings of the interviews that went into Fire and Fury, the explosive new book about the Trump White House!

I don't really care that the GOP is experiencing a collective um, er, a collective 'happy moment' about the downfall of Steve Bannon, or whether he's the bigger believer in the Trump agenda than the GOP  leadership is (because of course, he is) and I don't even care that a really rich Republican donor like Rebekah Mercer has to publicly release a statement disavowing Bannon. That's a real first world problem right there, don't you think?

No, what I care about is wanting to know the truth about the Trump administration.

If it's as unhinged as people have been saying all along, as disjointed as the media has been reporting all along, we deserve to know.

If there are tapes, interview notes, and all of the other tricks of the journalism trade to support what's in the book, then we will know who's lying, finally, and we'll know what kind of shape the country might really be in with Trump in the Oval Office.

It doesn't mean that we'd be any better off, immediately - it will only mean that we would know, and wouldn't have to guess any more. And then, if needed, appropriate steps could be taken.  If, on the other hand, there's proof that what Michael Wolff has in his book is NOT true, then we will know that, too.

Oh please, oh please!