Apparently, nothing has the potential to rain on a Jeff Sessions confirmation parade than Code Pink protesters showing up unannounced to disrupt smooth as jello proceedings, and dressed as of all things, Ku Klux Klan devotees! And the whole sordid business happens to be peculiarly strange, not because one of the protesters laughed hilariously when Senator Richard Shelby climbed to the highest branch of the iroko tree and from that vantage point proceeded to boldly and unashamedly declare that Senator Jeff Sessions has an,”Extensive record of treating all Americans equally under the law,” that is to say the same Jeff Sessions who once missed out on a plum legal appointment during Mr Reagan’s time in the White House, and based solely on allegations [totally unfounded of course] of using the heft of his legal office in Albama to advance a sinister agenda whose clear aim was amongst other things to hinder unfettered access to the ballot box for elderly black voters. But mostly and most importantly, this whole unseemly business of protesters trying to remind Jeff Sessions of the life that he left behind in an Albama closet, is strange because these verbal insurrectionists forgot to put on the decorum of their good manners blouses, and subsequently became willfully disruptive when in the hallowed presence of a man who once habitually referred to a black colleague who worked with him down in Alabama as,”Boy.”
Stemming the flow of alternative facts even as the emboldened lice continue to crawl out of the woodwork.
In the wake of the Quebec city mosque attack, some members of Donald Trump’s kitchen cabinet, notably one Sean Spicer (who’s increasingly now being fondly referred to as Sean Sphincter in many American households) looked all set to turn tragedy into an extempore moment of Carpe Diem. And that’s because according to Sean Sphincter, the Quebec city mosque attack only served to prove the necessity of the virulence of Mr Trump’s anti-Muslim EO. Except for one thing, the Quebec city mosque attack is the exact antithesis of any good that can ever come of evil policy. For, spurred on by indefatigable heroes of the cause such as Donald Trump as well as French far right diva Marie Le Pen to mention but a few of Alexandre Bissonnette’s self-confessed political influences, this young man finally managed with a profoundly macabre act of bloody blue murder to bring to fruition whatever cockamamie/nationalistic/racist/xenophobic notions that he’d secretly been brewing in his head for all these years. And so to one Sean Sphincter I’d say, don’t be shy to take meritorious credit where credit is due, especially not when an axe murderer like the Quebec city mosque killer cites your boss as one of his all time ideological gurus. You must be proud Sean, I know Jesus is, so very proud of you I mean.
Trump isn’t just being set up for blackmail, he is already being blackmailed. Early in the election cycle it was conveyed to Trump that the sanctions against Russia were annoying, and if he were elected Russia would be eternally grateful. Sometime later it occurs to Trump that he is walking on thin ice because he could be thought of as a traitor. Putin tells him about the unpleasant videos in Putin’s possession, and how unfortunate it would be if they were to surface, but if the sanctions are lifted all that evidence will vanish, and Russia would be eternally grateful to Trump.
At some point, later rather than sooner, it dawns on Trump that he is in long prison term or death penalty land if any of this gets out.
Several other realizations hit him as well: 1) Putin will never destroy the evidence; 2) there are people on Trumps staff reporting directly back to Moscow (therefore the only people Trump can really trust are members of his family, and probably not Melania), and 3) Putin is perfectly capable of killing him or members of his family.
And now Western intelligence agencies are hot on the trail.
A must-read from Masha Gessen on how to live under autocratic rule
For a decade now, Masha has consistently been one of my favorite reporters and thinkers. From the time of her return to Russia from the US after the wall fell, she fearlessly reported on what her birth country was turning into under Vladimir Putin, even as free media outlets were being shut down. She continued, even as other reporters were being murdered and “disappeared”, until she became so worried about the situation for LGBTQ Russians that she consulted a lawyer about how to ensure that her own teenage son wouldn’t be taken away from her simply for her being lesbian, and his answer was, “you have American citizenship; your answer is at the airport”. She left.
She’s just an extremely cool person with principles and intelligence, and I’m an unabashed Masha fanboy. (She also writes the dialog for the Russian actors in The Americans, which is awesome.)
She now sees what’s happening in this country, which is also her country, and her insight and experience is something we all need to pay attention to.
Today, President-elect Trump, in his first day of official transition business, did at least four things that were unprecedented for a president-elect:
1. He did not allow a press corps to follow and report on him (all footage we’ve seen today of him came from reporters invited by the White House, Speaker Ryan, or the Congressional press corps).
2. His spokespeople lied to the press pool about where he’d be spending the night and he gave them the slip for several hours until he showed up at Trump Tower—causing for the first time in 40 years a situation where the American people did not know where their president and president-elect was (even if “the American people” was notionally represented only by a small “tight pool” sworn to secrecy for national security reasons).
3. He tweeted. He has his phone back, ironically on the very day that he gained unlimited security clearance and was politely asked by the Director of National Intelligence to cease using an unsecured phone as Bush and Obama had done at this point in the transition—a request he refused. (I suppose that’s two unprecedented things, but I meant the refusing to follow security protocols, not tweeting.)
4. That tweet was to complain that spontaneous protests around the country were actually “professional protesters incited by the media”. (And that’s actually such a ball of unprecedented things that I can’t untangle them all and will pretend like it’s just one.) If you’ve never visited the alt-right corners of the web, you may be unaware of the concept of “crisis actors”, but he’s claiming that they’ve been mobilized against him. (Oddly, “crisis actors” up till now have always been in the Obama administration’s payroll, but I guess “the media” has decided to take them over as part of the peaceful transition of power?)
This is happening, folks. If you’d hoped he was going to make that presidential pivot; if you thought that last week, when his phone was stolen from him by his own advisors and he was convinced to just sit back and let the Comey letter do its job—”easy, Donald, play it smooth”—and everyone applauded him for managing to get through eight whole days without a scandal (so presidential!), if you thought that was a preview of his presidency, today put the lie to that.
