Monday, October 31, 2016

"The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails!"

This remark of Bernie Sanders' about Hillary Clinton's emails from last October will probably go down as the quotation of the 2016 election, and it's even more true today than it was a year ago as the cable media continue to give wall-to-wall coverage to the "email controversy" to give her contest with Donald Trump the appearance of closeness in these last two weeks.


Monday, October 24, 2016

"...suppress the the Trump..."

I felt I needed to grab and preserve an image of the following tweet from the entity tweeting as "@realDonaldTrump" this morning before it is corrected.
"Major story that the Dems are making up phony
polls in order to suppress the the Trump . We are
 going to WIN!" @realDonaldTrump 24 Oct 2016
Not only is the idea of "phony polls" supporting his fiction of an upcoming rigged election classic Trump, as is the capitalized "WIN!" and the citing of an unnamed "major story" to support his unsupportable rant, but it reaches legendary Trump tweet status with the vaguely Freudian typo about his fear of people out to "suppress the the Trump." The combination of egotism and paranoia in that strange combination of words needs professional exegesis, but it's clear that this tweet belongs in his hall of twittering fame.

Reading it earlier, I couldn't resist one more quick response from the Trump Tweet Translator that makes a regular appearance on the Twitter feed of @TrueBlueLiberal:

Friday, October 21, 2016

Leonard Cohen in the Record Stores Today!

This is not only a musical, but a literary event:

I'm heading out to buy my copy at lunchtime.

Bill & Don's Excellent Adventure in Voting

Back on August 13, I asked here, "Is there any proof that Donald Trump ever voted (before voting for himself)?" There were real reasons two months ago that I had to bring his familiarity with the process into question.

This morning, however, I stumbled on this video of a very short-tempered Donald himself actually voting (or attempting to vote) at various locations on the Upper East Side in November 2004 ... with a camera crew and the notorious Billy Bush at his side. While he does finally vote (or at least fill out a provisional ballot) by the end of the video, this still doesn't inspire a lot of confidence about his knowledge and familiarity with the mechanics of the process that he is now loudly questioning.

The frame of this video is interesting too. Billy Bush and his co-host Kit Hoover at Access Hollywood are in the studio on election day of 2012 looking back at Donald's antics of 2004 and giving an update about Donald's current (2012) racist attempt to get Barack Obama to release his college transcripts and passport documents.



"Your vote is one vote. His vote is a GIANT vote." --Billy Bush, Election Day 2004


Thursday, October 13, 2016

Michelle Obama has given the two best speeches of 2016

The first was, of course, her "When they go low, we go high" speech at the Democratic National Convention.

The second was at noon today in Manchester, New Hampshire:



The fact is that in this election, we have a candidate for president of the United States who, over the course of his lifetime and the course of this campaign has said things about women that are so shocking, so demeaning, I simply will not repeat anything here today. And last week we saw this candidate actually bragging about sexually assaulting women. And I can’t believe that I’m saying that. A candidate for president of the United States has bragged about sexually assaulting women and I have to tell you that I can’t stop thinking about this. It has shaken me to my core in a way that I couldn’t have predicted. So while I’d love nothing more than to pretend like this isn’t happening and come out here and do my normal campaign speech, it would be dishonest and disingenuous for me to move on to the next thing like this was all just a bad dream. This is not something we can ignore. It’s not something we can sweep under the rug as just another disturbing footnote in a sad election season. Because this was not just a lewd conversation. This wasn’t locker room banter. This was a powerful individual speaking freely and openly about sexually predatory behavior. And actually bragging about kissing and groping women, using language so obscene that many of us are worried about our children hearing it when we turn on the TV. And to make matters worse, it now seems very clear this isn’t an isolated incident. It’s one of countless examples of how he has treated women his whole life. I have to tell you that I listened to all this. And I feel it so personally. And I’m sure that many of you do too. Particularly the women. The shameful comments about our bodies. The disrespect of our ambitions and intellect. The belief that you can do anything you want to a woman. It is cruel. It's frightening. And the truth is, it hurts. It hurts.

Monday, October 10, 2016

Happy 99th Birthday to Thelonious Monk!

"Round Midnight" from the Thelonious Monk Quartet (with Charlie Rouse, tenor sax; Larry Gales, bass; and Ben Riley, drums) live in Norway in 1966.


Familiarity with Monk should be part of every American's education. This is what makes America great in the eyes of the world.


"Million Dollar Loan" from Death Cab For Cutie

This song about a certain free-falling presidential candidate that appeared today from Death Cab For Cutie pretty much speaks for itself:


You hate to hit a man when he's down ... unless that man is Donald J. Tr*mp.

Friday, October 07, 2016

I don't want to get all braggadocious*, but...

I saw the following favoriting of a tweet show up in my Twitter notifications today and I was a little bit confused, because I did not remember responding to a tweet of @realDonaldTrump's about Hurricane Matthew currently off the coast of Florida.


It took me a moment to note the 2012 date and realize that this was my response to Donald Trump using Hurricane Sandy as his reason for extending his racist call for President Obama's college and passport documents. Again, not to be all trumpy and braggadocious* about it, but I'd like to pat myself on my own back for pointing out that Donald Trump was "the worst human being now living on the planet" four years before that simple truth became a universally-acknowledged fact.



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