In Case You Missed It (v54)

Grab your cuppa - here's your recap of last week's posts, in case you missed anything. 

Sunday School had me listening in on the MTP classroom for the second week in a row, and during my time there I learned that Ronna McDaniel not only wears a mask (although I couldn't find any pictures of her doing so - and there's at least one of the president wearing one, so she's pretty good at hiding), but that she had some extra N-95s hanging around that she and her family donated. And, that she's apparently unaware of what stimulus bills have been passed, and blissfully unaware of the president's lack of deal-making finesse.

Let's show the best of America. The president's willing to work with everyone. Why aren't Democrats passing a fourth stimulus bill? Why aren't they helping small businesses? Why aren't they working with this president? 

And, I learned from Peter Strzok (the real reason I dropped in) that the gang working on the FBI's Russia investigations had multiple arguments about whether the investigations were the right thing to do, but "conclusively, the concerns we had about Russia were merited and it was the appropriate thing to do to look into them." Strzok also pointed out that, given the facts, Trump "is surrounded by people who have a pervasive pattern of conduct with the Russians." And, he said, 

It is not without exaggeration that there is no president in modern history who has the same broad and deep connections to any foreign intel service, let alone a hostile government like Russia.

For last week's Sunday School Extra Credit we learned that "the fog of war" is the new mantra the White House Spin Doctors have cooked up to explain the president's mishandling of the pandemic. Here's a summary of just a piece of the conversation between Chris Wallace and Trump senior campaign advisor Steve Cortes.

He said what he means is that "it's very clear that the president, early on during the fog of biological war" (and I can't stop seeing an image of a guy with orange hair fighting off a fog of Agent Orange, or worse, a fog of sexually transmitted diseases - his own personal Vietnam, you'll recall), Trump decided to "reassure the American people. That he was going to be the kind of leader who convinces people that we can persevere through this epidemiological Pearl Harbor" and that meant he had to lie to us. (Cortes didn't actually say that last part, I did.) All of that added up to what he called "a record of superb management actually of the virus."

I'm in a fog just recalling the interview...

The first of two Sidebars last week spun off the Extra Credit post. Jake Tapper, bless his heart, attempted to interview Peter Navarro on CNN's SOTU. I didn't cover that - I can't deal with Navarro - but I did feature Tapper's remarks about China and Disney and the NBA and America's right to make a profit even in the face of that country's human rights violations. American first, and all. 

This summer two Uighur organizations lodged a complaint against the government of China at the International Criminal Court accusing the Chinese government of genocide, torture and crimes against humanity.

This is the government to whom the NBA is bowing and president Trump is giving approval and Disney is openly thanking.

After a horrible genocide, the Holocaust, the world came together and pledged never again, never again. The NBA, President Trump and the Walt Disney Company, they're making those words meaningless.

For our Email of the Week  I highlighted some snail mail my brother-in-law shared with me.  He gets all kinds of mail from the Republicans, not sure why, and passes them on to me in case I need to get riled up. The latest was from Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the truth-telling former White House Press Secretary, right?  The email was all about getting word to the president about how important my BIL's voice was on a Stop Fake News petition, since he's, you know, a special patriot.

I for one, can't sit idly by any longer as the Democrats and their medial allies try to tear down our president, our Republican Party and our values with malicious smears and pervasive lies. Your name was forwarded to me as a strong pro-America patriot, so I am counting on you to join me. 

I was moved, I tell you. I was moved.  Moved enough to share, in the second Sidebar of the week, how much it appeared the Republicans were asking that the media no longer cover the president, after I removed a dozen or so words from her petition.

I'm not a Republican - heck, right now I'm not a registered anything, truth be told - but I've got to tell you, I'm practically giddy seeing Republicans all up in arms about the lies and the attacks (in which they've been complicit, as we all know - and they know, too).  

I mean, Trump has attacked them, and lied about them, and he's also attacked and lied about: 

And then I included over 50 bullets of the attacked and lied to and lied about. The Rs have a strong case here, they really do. 

For your TGIF, I was all over the map, starting with Trump buying votes in Florida by sending billions and billions of aid to Puerto Rico to help them recover from Hurricane Maria - you know, the one where he threw paper towels to suffering Americans?  And yes, this is vote-buying in Florida, because that's where so many Puerto Ricans went in 2017 when they ran out of paper towels. And of course, who could ignore this comment from the president?

I have to say, in a very nice way, a very respectful way - I'm the best thing that ever happened to Puerto Rico. Nobody even close.

There were also thoughts on the beleaguered folks at the CDC, and about the Big 10 deciding after all that, since they can rapid-test all of their players every day, they might as well rake in some money and play football after all, and  on the administration's fear of mask fraud.

As I was finishing Friday's post, news was breaking that Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg - the #NotoriousRBG - had died. And that's what led to yesterday's post about consistency and hypocrisy. For your reading pleasure, I highlighted comments made by 15 current Republican senators about the importance of waiting to fill a vacant SCOTUS  seat during the last year of a president's term. We know where they stood when they were the ones who wanted the people to speak, and I'm pretty sure I know where they stand now that they are the ones who don't want to wait for the people to speak.  

For example, here's what Sen. Ted Cruz, himself apparently a potential justice candidate in Trump's eyes, had to say back in 2016 when Justice Scalia died. 

It has been 80 years since a Supreme Court vacancy was nominated and confirmed in an election year. There is a long tradition that you don’t do this in an election year... In an election year, we have a long tradition that a lame-duck president doesn't get to jam a Supreme Court nominee through on the very end. 

But long traditions, like long memories of someone calling your wife ugly and your father a presidential assassin, don't mean a thing when it comes to a SCOTUS swing, do they? 

I'll be back later with your Sunday School.

Sunday School 9/13/20

For today's Sunday School, I bit the bullet and hung out with Chuck Todd in the Meet the Press classroom. 

Now, I know it's not like me to devote time to MTP two weeks in a row, but he's got Ronna McDaniel, the Republican Party Chair , and he's also got author (and former FBI guy) Peter Strzok, so I couldn't pass it up. 

Todd wasted no time with McDaniel, asking right off the bat whether we should view the president's comment about "not wanting to create a panic" through the lens of him not being "a president who shies away from trying to incite panic," and that he didn't want anyone to panic "because he's worried the virus hurts him politically."

McDaniel disagreed that he "took political calculations," a comment that's truly laughable, since every waking moment of his life is spent making political calculations. She referred to the China travel ban, and the Task Force (which we all watched Trump ignore or argue with on TV for weeks on end). She didn't mention him not letting the cruise ships dock, or his petty behavior towards blue state governors and the like, nor did she refer to his oft-repeated lies about the coronavirus being nothing, being a blip, going away, cases down to zero, harmless like the flu, and so on. But, she said,

... I think history will look back on him well as how he handled this pandemic. 

Excuse me, waiter, "I'll have what she's having." 

McDaniel said that 20/20 hindsight is perfect, and also pointed to changes in the science, and even that she "went and donated some masks to a local hospital, some N95 masks that I had at my home." And when Todd asked about the "direct correlation between the president not encouraging mask wearing and the fact that fewer Republicans wear masks than Independents or Democrats," she said

I don't think this is politically dividing at all. I wear masks. My kids wear masks. My husband wears a mask. This isn't a Republican or Democrat things, whether you wear a mask.

The fact that I can't find an image of her actually wearing one probably doesn't mean anything, right? And she insisted that the president is "willing to work with every governor, Democrat and Republican," except for when he said they weren't sucking up enough, or when he said he didn't want anyone talking to some of them (Washington's Jay Inslee comes to mind).  She also said we have so many cases because we do more testing, blah blah blah. And, she said,

the president has led us through uncertain times with a Democrat party who's politicizing a time of crisis when usually people come together.

Um, here's the president not politicizing the coronavirus: "Liberate Minnesota!" "Liberate Michigan!" "Liberate Virginia..." And, McDaniel said "I don't know anything about that" when Todd asked about reports of HHS manipulation CDC recommendations and reports, but "Nancy Pelosi has called it the Trump virus" and that's the same, or something. And, truly the pinnacle of hypocrisy in this interview, here's her final comment.

Let's show the best of America. The president's willing to work with everyone. Why aren't Democrats passing a fourth stimulus bill? Why aren't they helping small businesses. Why aren't they working with this president? 

I'm not sure how she missed that the president signed the fourth stimulus bill back in April or that the House passed the Heroes Act on May 15th. I can only surmised that must have been when she was busy donating those N95 masks she had lying around her house. 

TGIF 7/13/18

It's FRIDAY!!!

I'm thinking Trey Gowdy, Bob Goodlatte and the rest of the Republicans involved in the Peter Strzok hearings are probably glad the weekend's here, would you agree?

Having made their obligatory appearances on the Trump News Network in attempts to snatch any victory, no matter how small, from the jaws of their defeat, they can co home, have a beer or three, and lick their collective wounds inflicted by FBI guy Peter Strzok at the GOP Gonna Beat You Down, Oh No You Don't, Not So Fast Skippy hearings we had both the pleasure and dismay of seeing yesterday. Regarding Strzok's responses to the attacks from the Rs, one of them actually garnered applause from people in the room.

My favorite moment from the hearings so far -- I confess I've yet to watch the full 10 hours - had to Maryland's Jamie Raskin talking about members of Trump's party who have said equal or worse things about Trump than Strzok did. And they said them in public, not in private text messages.  After reading the names of a bunch of Republicans who are involved in the Russia investigation that Strzok supposedly allowed his bias to interfere in (or something), Raskin reminded us who's said what about the president.

So I'm looking for evidence of the Republican conspiracy and all I could find were the kinds of statements that you have been arraigned on today. I want to ask you about those statements. 

In the spring of 2016, Senator Ted Cruz called Donald Trump a snivelling coward, a pathological liar and a serial philanderer...

Senator Marco Rubio said Trump was unworthy of being our president...

In October of 2016, Speaker Paul Ryan said I am not going to defend Donald Trump - not now, not in the future.

After each revelation, he asked if these were related to a conspiracy that Strzok led; the answer, of course, was no. And then he quoted Trump's current or former cabinet members, who had used terms like moron, a child, a kindergartner, a dope and an idiot, again asking about a conspiracy that Strzok must have been leading.  It was theater, it was poetry, it was bad ass.  As I said, I think they all need a beer and some mutual wound-licking.

The president might also be glad it's Friday, so he can go butcher a round of golf or two at his resorts in Scotland. He had a whirlwind couple of days in Europe, to be sure, mocking our allies, threatening them, and being quite belligerent even before breakfast. He gave a scathing interview to the  British press, denied what he said, called his own interview fake news, and then he was late to meet the Queen.

Oh, and a quarter million or so people showed up to protest against him.

And finally, I'm thinking, British Prime Minister Theresa May is probably extremely glad it's Friday, too.  For so many reasons, not the least of which is that she won't have to let Trump hold her hand again for a long time.

TGIF, everyone.