First of all, Happy 59th Birthday to President Barack Obama.
What better way to celebrate than with one of the greatest cultural events in White House history from the first spring of the Obama presidency. On May 12, 2009, 'An Evening of Poetry, Music, and the Spoken Word' gave us a sneak peak at a song from a proposed hip-hop album that would become the Broadway classic 'Hamilton' six years later.
Will we ever have a White House that has such cultural highlights again?
Who, for example, visited the current president for a photo op (there are no musical or poetry performances there since 2017) during his first spring in the office?
No, America's worst painting is not from "The Painter of Light™," but from Sean Hannity's favorite painter, Jon McNaughton.
It's turning out to be right-wing art history week. A few days ago we heard commentary on statues from the Tweeter-in-Chief. Today Fox News' Dumbest Anchor® tweeted the video above with the comment "Amazing video and Art! Love this." As an investor and collector of McNaughton's work, he's only coincidentally trying to increase the value of his own collection, but as an art expert I'd also like to ask Sean if the black snake being crushed under Donald Trump's heel represents
who we think it represents (Hint: not Satan). If there's any doubt that the black snake is Barack Obama, all one has to do is to look at the artist's earlier "Forgotten Man" masterpiece in which President Obama is standing in the same spot with the Constitution under his foot while getting dirty looks from all the earlier white presidents as the forgotten man hangs his head sitting on his bench. Now, in the glorious Trump years, the forgotten one is off his bench and planting a tree of hope, and Barack Obama is being trampled underfoot.
Heavy-handed symbolism in representative art is always ugly, but heavy-handed racist symbolism gives this waste of canvas the prize for America's Worst Painting.
As I type this, the 45th president of the United States is getting ready to give a commencement speech at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia (established 1971), though he would have preferred to have given this address at Trump University if fraud charges hadn't brought it down.
As an antidote, here is the 44th president of the United States giving the address to Rutgers University's (established 1766) graduating seniors almost exactly one year ago, on May 15, 2016.
The recent lie that President Obama had wiretapped Candidate Trump at his golden lair at the top of Trump Tower was beaten 57% to 43% by the original lie that brought Trump ridicule on the left and among people who respected facts, but political prominence among racists, nativists, and the illiterate, that President Obama wasn't born in the United States.
In the second semifinal match, his post-election lie that Hillary Clinton only beat him in the popular vote (65,844,610 to 62,979,636) because 3 to 5 million illegal aliens voted for her narrowly defeated (52% to 48%) his repeated denials of sexual assault and harassment from over a dozen women.
So here's your final match in The Untruthful Trump Tournament.
FINAL MATCH of The Untruthful Trump Tournament.
What's #LyingTrump's worst lie. His ur-lie about Obama, or lying about illegal alien voters?
— True Blue Liberal (@TrueBlueLiberal) April 1, 2017
You have a week to vote and share this question with your Twitter friends.
I could probably use the term F*nal F*ur if I wouldn't be in danger of being sued by the large corporation that makes billions off the actions of unpaid college athletes at this time of the year, so I'll just call this the semifinals of the tournament to identify Donald Trump's worst lie.
The quarterfinals saw four very lopsided wins.
In match one, his lie that Presient Obama wasn't born in the US got 81% while his lie that citizens of Jersey City danced on rooftops as the Twin Towers fell got 19%.
In quarterfinal match two, his recent lie that Obama personally wiretapped him in Trump Tower beat his claim that unemployment was as high as 42% under Obama by a margin of 79% to 21%. Therefore, the first of two semifinal matches is:
Semifinal Match One of The Untruthful Trump Tournament.
In quarterfinal match three, his lie about getting the most electoral votes since Saint Ronald Of Tampico was easily beaten by his lie that Hillary got votes from millions of illegal aliens by 68% to 32%.
Finally, in match four, his lie about thousands of Massachusetts Democrats being bussed across the border to New Hampshire to vote for Hillary was also eliminated by 68% to 32% by his repeated denials of sexual assault and harassment claims from dozens of women. The second of two semifinal matches is:
Semifinal Match Two of The Untruthful Trump Tournament.
Please vote in both contests to pick the finalists by next Saturday, April 1 (it's purely coincidental that these semifinals will be determined on the same day as the NCAA's F*nal F*ur).
It's so easy to get tied up in knots by the daily flow of crimes and misdemeanors coming from the inarticulate TV-watcher-in-chief currently occupying the White House; I needed to cleanse my mind this afternoon by reading this full interview of novelist Marilynne Robinson by President Barack Obama that appeared in two issues of The New York Review of Books in November 2015.
"...When I think about how I understand my role as citizen, setting aside being president, and the most important set of understandings that I bring to that position of citizen, the most important stuff I’ve learned I think I’ve learned from novels. It has to do with empathy. It has to do with being comfortable with the notion that the world is complicated and full of grays, but there’s still truth there to be found, and that you have to strive for that and work for that. And the notion that it’s possible to connect with some[one] else even though they’re very different from you..." -Barack Obama, 2015
Even though it hurts to know that he's not the president now, it helps to know that Barack Obama is a fellow citizen. I'll say it again (and again and again): The 2016 election was a contest of readers versus brain-dead boob-tube addicts (not to be too judgmental about it), and the TV watchers are currently (but, I hope, temporarily) in control.
The FBI, Justice Department, and British intelligence may have all publicly denounced Donald Trump's early morning tweets about President Barack Obama personally wiretapping Candidate Trump at Trump Tower, but I discovered during a trip to the supermarket this afternoon that a major defiler of newsprint has joined Trump's friends at Fox & Friends in backing him up.
If it's in the National Enquirer -- the only publication the current resident of the White House allows next to his toilet -- it must be true.
In match one of the round of 16 that finished tonight, Donald Trump's lie about making Mexico pay for his idiotic border wall was beaten 52% to 48% by his lie that Barack Obama wasn't born in the USA.
In match two, his lie about New Jersey citizens celebrating the attacks on the Twin Towers on 9/11 beat his lie that Ted Cruz's father conspired in JFK's assassination by 66% to 34%. So the first of four quarterfinal matches is this:
The Untruthful Trump Tournament, Quarterfinals, Match One.
In match three, his lie about crime rising under Obama was beaten 79% to 21% by his lie that true unemployment under Obama was actually as high as "42%" rather than under 5%.
In match four, his lie about Obama personally wiretapping Trump Tower beat his lie about having the largest inauguration ever by 72% to 28%. The second of four quarterfinal matches is therefore:
The Untruthful Trump Tournament, Quarterfinals, Match Two.
Match five of the previous round saw his lie that he received the most electoral votes of any Republican since Ronald Reagan easily beating his lie about the media ignoring European terrorism by 75% to 25%.
In match six, Trump's untruth about millions of illegal votes for Hillary Clinton beat his whopper about America's low murder rate being the highest in 45 years 83% to 17%. The third of four quarterfinal contests is:
Untruthful Trump Tournament, Quarterfinals, Match 3
He got the most electoral votes since Reagan or millions of illegals voted for Clinton?
In match seven of the round of 16, Trump's repeated denials of multiple credible sexual assault and harassment claims garnered 55% of the votes while his recurring tweet about the "failing NY Times" losing subscribers got 45%.
Finally, match eight saw his lie about busloads of Massachusetts voters flocking to New Hampshire to vote against him beat his untrue assertion that US taxpayers face the highest tax rates in the world by 60% to 40%. So the final quarterfinal matchup is:
The Untruthful Trump Tournament, Quarterfinals, Match Four.
If the Rutgers Scarlet Knights don't make it to the NCAA tournament (which they generally don't), I don't pay any attention to March basketball. That's no reason to miss all the fun with brackets that much of America is engaging with today.
I just came up with sixteen of Trump's most famous and brazen lies and posted the following eight matches on Twitter.
There are four days to vote in Round One. On Monday night I'll post Round Two (winner of Match One facing Match Two, Three facing Four, Five facing Six, and Seven facing Eight).
Untruthful Trump Tournament, Round One, Match One.
As a quick reminder, back in 2012 when Donald Trump's racist call for Obama's birth certificate lost traction, he started his racist call for Obama's school records (because, of course, a black man could not possibly get into Columbia and Harvard Law without unfair affirmative governmental action).
Now it's becoming clear that we probably need to see the new PEOTUS's school transcripts before he takes office on January 20th. Specifically, there are so many questions about whether he has ever taken and passed a single class in history or civics. His latest blunder tonight was speaking directly with the President of Taiwan, possibly by accident, reversing 40 years of foreign policy and conceivably antagonizing China before he has even moved into the White House.
Just three days ago, he showed a complete lack of knowledge on a couple of pretty simple constitutional points, flag burning (constitutionally-protected 1st Amendment speech) and revoking citizenship (not a legal punishment), in one quick tweet triggered by his heavy diet of watching Fox News:
Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag - if they do, there must be consequences - perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!
This list could easily include hundreds of similar items spread out over every week of this year's campaign.
We probably do need to see Donald Trump's complete school records (and his tax returns) before January 20.
I had a plan for this morning. Though I'm a digital subscriber to The New York Times, I was going to run out early and buy a print copy of today's paper with its headline about America's first woman president. I was going to put it away with these copies from 2008 for my one-year-old granddaughter.
Yes, We Did.
I have no desire to buy (or even see) a print copy of the Times this morning, but I have another plan. I want anyone who reads this to think about subscribing to the Times or the Washington Post, or your local newspaper that probably endorsed Hillary Clinton along with every major print publication in the nation. In many ways, last night's result was a victory of the illiterate reality-television world over the world of printed words. Subscribe to the Times if only to prove the man wrong who unfailingly and gleefully refers to this essential national publication as the "failing @NYTimes" whenever he tweets about it.
The failing @nytimes reporters don't even call us anymore, they just write whatever they want to write, making up sources along the way!
I don't work for the Times or the Washington Post or any other newspaper, but I consider subscribing to at least one paper as a civic duty of anyone concerned about the First Amendment. Think about it as a non-deductible charitable contribution if you need to. Think about it the same way you think about contributing to your local PBS or NPR station. We need them all all the time, but we will need them all even more over the next four years.
With the election coming in less than four days, it's too late to take any pre-election action against a rogue Federal Bureau of Investigation that seems to be trying to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump with selective last-minute leaks and innuendos, but the FBI is going to have to be put under control after the election.
The 44th President Barack Obama will not be the first chief executive to have concerns about an out-of-control secret federal police force.
"Now I am going to tell you how we are not going to fight communism. We are not going to transform our fine FBI into a Gestapo secret police. That is what some people would like to do. We are not going to try to control what our people read and say and think. We are not going to turn the United States into a right-wing totalitarian country in order to deal with a left-wing totalitarian threat."
It's probably not too much of a stretch to assume that J. Edgar Hoover was at least one of the people Truman had in mind when he suggested that "some people" would like to turn the FBI into a Gestapo-like agency. The FBI can't be expected to police itself, or limit its own power. But somebody has to do it.
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
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.
@realDonaldTrump Really?? You are now officially the worst human being now living on the planet. Congratulations on your victory.
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.
It's time to show the world our resounding repudiation of the ugly trumpism that has defined 2016's campaign so far. That should be easier with Barack Obama on the campaign trail for Hillary.
I woke up this morning at my normal time to come to work and turned on WAMC a little before 5am, when the BBC Witness segment is usually airing, but I heard Barack Obama in the middle of his remarks at Hiroshima, as the first sitting President to visit the site of the first atomic bombing. As I listened, I couldn't help thinking once again how much we will miss him -- how much the world will miss him -- when his successor takes her (or, shudder, his) seat in the Oval Office next January.
My own nation’s story began with simple words: All men are created equal and endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Realizing that ideal has never been easy, even within our own borders, even among our own citizens. But staying true to that story is worth the effort. It is an ideal to be strived for, an ideal that extends across continents and across oceans. The irreducible worth of every person, the insistence that every life is precious, the radical and necessary notion that we are part of a single human family — that is the story that we all must tell.
That is why we come to Hiroshima. So that we might think of people we love. The first smile from our children in the morning. The gentle touch from a spouse over the kitchen table. The comforting embrace of a parent. We can think of those things and know that those same precious moments took place here, 71 years ago.
Those who died, they are like us. Ordinary people understand this, I think. They do not want more war. They would rather that the wonders of science be focused on improving life and not eliminating it. When the choices made by nations, when the choices made by leaders, reflect this simple wisdom, then the lesson of Hiroshima is done.
The world was forever changed here, but today the children of this city will go through their day in peace. What a precious thing that is. It is worth protecting, and then extending to every child. That is a future we can choose, a future in which Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known not as the dawn of atomic warfare but as the start of our own moral awakening.
--Barack Obama, Hiroshima, 27 May 2016
Maybe I shouldn't speak for the whole world, but I will miss him. I'm 60 years old and he is, without question, the best president of my lifetime.
America's All-Trump-All-The-Time mass media won't show you this great speech, but it was streaming live in a couple of places and now it's available on YouTube if you're interested in today's address at my old school:
I couldn't be more proud to be a Rutgers alumnus or an American after watching President Obama's address. It's hard to believe that anyone who's running for President in 2016 will be anything other than a step down from our current President.
Is it time for David Letterman to repeal this half-assed 2012 apology to Donald Trump for having called him a racist on an earlier show?
In case you're wondering why David Letterman had called the slumlord dope a racist, it goes back to Trump questioning President Obama's intelligence:
"I heard he was a terrible student, terrible. How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?... I'm thinking about it, I'm certainly looking into it. Let him show his records."-- Donald Trump, April 25, 2011
The insinuation plays into some of the deepest and most common racist resentments -- that somehow a less-intelligent black man was given the place at Columbia University and Harvard Law School that could have gone to a more deserving white right-wing nutjob or a rich child using the more traditional forms of affirmative action known as nepotism and family ties to grease his or her easy path through Yale University and Harvard Business School, or Wharton.
The quote comes at the 1'30" point in the video up above, but watch the whole thing to see how Letterman won't let Dr. Phil jokingly let his friend Donald off the hook. "If he comes back on this show -- and I'm not sure we want him back on the show under those circumstances -- he ought to be prepared to apologize ... ought to be prepared to apologize just for that kind of behavior."
Speaking of apologies now in 2016, it's time for David Letterman to rescind his "apology" to Donald Trump in 2012, even if it was glib and obviously insincere.
According to the results of free non-scientific online tests, TBL found that he was "Existentialist", "Communist", and "A Grammar God," i.e., if he were a short wall-eyed Frenchman rather than a 6'3" blond American, he would be constantly mistaken for Jean-Paul Sartre!
