Time for a roundup of all the shit I've missed! I haven't puked in a few hours and I got dressed, so I'm declaring myself recovered! Huzzah?
TrumpLand:
- "Let the record show that President Trump, in this moment, is not having fun."
- Trumps Plunges More Than 200 Spots on Forbes’s Billionaire List
- 37 percent approval rating.
- "If Trump stood in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shot somebody, I’m confident he’d see his current approval level of 37% free-fall to about a 36%. Trump could jerk off onto the constitution while taking a dump on the bible and the GOP still wouldn’t speak out against him. But, his approval rating would almost certainly plummet from 36% to around 35.2%. (I doubt the dip would last more than a couple newscycles.)"
- Security is really excellent at Mar-A-Lago.
- The White House Said Trump Was Going To A Golf Course For Meetings But Then This Picture Emerged
- Trump Winery Relies on Foreign Workers Because Americans Don't Want the Job
- Trump Madness Bracket by Alexandra Petri (Washington Post)
- Trump Not Lying, He Speaks 'Americanese'
- Trump Signs Bill Directing NASA to Send Humans to Mars (Eventually) Okay, one thing I agree with.
- Trump Sics Lawyers on Teen for Making Silly Site Where Kittens Punch Him. For the moment, you can see this at KittenFeed.com.
The Evil Empire:
- "Noting that Comey acknowledged receiving Department of Justice approval to publicly reveal his agency’s investigation into potential collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia, Clinton’s former press secretary Brian Fallon tweeted, “An approval he did not care to obtain in Clinton’s case."
- Kellyanne Conway is the real First Lady.
- Kellyanne Conway Is Not the First Lady of the United States
- Why Can't the Media Break Up With Kellyanne Conway Already?
- Der Kommissar's in town.
- Ivanka Trump has West Wing office and will get access to classified information Trump, who holds no official title in administration and is not serving as government employee, will receive security clearance soon
- "The pair are expected to remain in the building until June, meaning the overall cost to taxpayers could amount to around $18.2 million (£14.6 million). Calculations show that this amount could cover two mayor education programmes Mr Trump has proposed to eliminate in his recently announced budget."
- the U.S. Pulls Out of Planned Human Rights Hearing
- "There are plans afoot to add a new “Middle East/North Africa” category to the US census. After 70-plus years of having to tick “white” or “other” on administrative documents, people originating from the Middle East and North Africa may soon have their own category."
- So questioning is going well? I guess....? Franken calls it.
- "Rex Tillerson said the job of secretary of State wasn't a role he sought out. "I didn't want this job. I didn't seek this job," Tillerson told the Independent Journal Review in an interview during his recent Asia trip. When asked why he agreed to take on the position of secretary of State, Tillerson said his wife "told me I'm supposed to do this."
Russia:
- Oh, that's not suspicious at all. "The lawyer representing the family of an anti-Putin-government, anti-corruption attorney who was murdered in prison in 2009 was reportedly thrown from the fourth floor of his apartment building in Moscow. According to Hermitage Capital CEO Bill Browder, a noted Putin critic, Nikolai Gorokhov is in the intensive-care unit of Botkin hospital in Moscow with severe head injuries after allegedly being defenestrated from his building, BBC’s Daniel Sandford reported on Tuesday. In addition to representing the family of the late Sergei Magnitsky, Gorokhov reportedly served as a witness for ex-U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara’s separate case probing allegedly corrupt Russian businessmen and officials."
- The FBI had a court-sanctioned warrant from 2011 to 2013 to monitor a Russian crime organization working out of a unit three floors below President Trump’s penthouse, according to an ABC News report.
TrumpCare:
- How would the Republican health care plan affect you?
- Trump Threatens House Republicans: Repeal Obamacare Or Lose Your Seat
Fear and loathing:
- American politics can seem baffling. Psychology is here to help. "Only 9 percent of the liberals in the study made arguments that reflected conservative moral principles. Only 8 percent of the conservative made arguments that had a chance of swaying a liberal....“I don’t think Trump created new prejudices in people — not that quickly and not that broadly — what he did do is change people’s perceptions about what is okay and what is not okay,” University of Kansas psychologist Chris Crandall says."
- "For years, the United States has given a safe path to citizenship for victims of abuse. Under Trump, they may face an impossible choice: silence or deportation." Also, “It puts enormous power and control in the hands of the abuser to say, ‘See what happened in El Paso? The same thing is going to happen to you if you reach out for help,’”
- Shame on you, dude. And you.
- Vandalizing the "Fearless Girl" statue.
- No sympathy for the hillbilly.
- Philadelphia Cinco de Mayo Event Canceled Due to ICE Raid Concerns
- Africa Trade Meeting Has No Africans After US Visa Denials
- U.S., Britain Restrict Electronics On Flights From Mideast Countries which also screws over musicians.
- "About a fifth of the attacks we've collected were done in Trump's name."
Town halls:
- Bernie Sanders's town hall in “Trump Country” revealed a longing for a past that never was
- Vote him out!
- Anatomy Of A GOP Town Hall (It's Not Pretty): "The story this morning is that Rep. Dave Trott, Republican from the Detroit area, had a "rowdy" town hall typical of town halls this year. But there is more to the story and it's worth watching because you will see this story unfold again and again:
1. Republican congressman does everything possible to avoid holding a town hall. Dave Trott hasn't held a town hall in over 2 years. He even spent a week designated on the Congressional calendar as "district work week" on a fact-finding tour of India.
2. Republican congressman gets shamed by his constituents, who have learned how to do media. These smart ladies held a "Trott-less town hall" with a live chicken to point out Trott's cowardice:
4. Republican congressman's town hall goes as you might expect.5. Republican congressman's town tall ends and in this case Republican staffers are caught on a hot mic planning how to make those constituents look "un-American" because they booed defense spending.
Television:
- Last Week Tonight. And more.
- A Closer Look.
- Jussie Smollett drops the F-bomb in song.
- The Boy From Mar-A-Lago.
- Shut it, Tim Allen.
- James Corden does a Matilda/Trump mashup. Especially funny to me since I just saw that musical.
- Trevor Noah is bailed on.
- When Sesame Street made fun of Trump.
- Melissa McCarthy is taking notes.
- Japanese wrestling has its own Donald Trump storyline, and it is getting extremely weird: "Believe it or not, this is not the first match of that kind to be held in Japan, although the rules of previous Anus Explosion matches were a little different. Traditionally, the match only ends when one wrestler is able to set off a firework in the other wrestler’s ass. In this case, some poor sap who wasn’t even in the match, which was held this last night in Japan, had to take the anus explosion. And yes, DDT has provided video of the ass blast, if you’re curious enough to watch:" And I am ashamed of myself for watching it. So ashamed.
- Iron Fist raises the question, is Danny Rand the Donald Trump of superheroes? "We’re only three months into Donald Trump’s presidency and it’s already cliché to frame TV and film criticism within the framework of “Trump’s America.” Yet there’s one scene in this episode during which I couldn’t help but think of The Donald. As Joy gets Danny to open up about his time in K’un-Lun, he describes his journey to becoming the Iron Fist:
When I got to the monastery post-crash, I learned of a certain position. A powerful, important job and I wanted it… Everyone there, and I mean everyone, said there was no way a xiaoguilao like me could do it… [But being called an outsider] just made me want the job more. The problem was I never thought through why I wanted this job. I mistook my stubborn will for a sense of destiny or something. I never counted the cost of what it would actually mean for my life.
If you had to sum up Trump’s road to the presidency, you couldn’t do it more eloquently than Danny does. But like Star Trek Beyond before it, Iron Fist seems to think there’s something eminently relatable in the idea of almost accidentally achieving all of your dreams and then feeling dissatisfied and bored by your success. And perhaps for some people that is a relatable problem. But I’d wager that for most people, particularly those who have a harder path to walk in life (you know, those who don’t start out with small million dollar loans from their parents), it’s a fairly privileged problem to have.
But on a purely metaphorical level, Danny’s disinterest in the Iron Fist position he bullheadedly fought for couldn’t be more potent."
The Resistance:
- The Trump Chicken. "By then more people involved in the San Francisco march had begun to embrace the Trump chicken because thinking about it brought us joy. Instead of obsessing about every new error or edict emerging from the administration, after the rooster entered my life I thought not of Trump when I woke up but of Chicken Don... New York comedian Frank Lesser, who thought up the idea for the march, also got in on it, suggesting Chicken Don may have joined the Coo Clucks Clan. We imagined Chicken Don came to the U.S. with a precarious immigration status. He stowed away on a cargo plane filled with Ivanka’s shoes only to find his student visa was invalid once Trump University had shut down. He lusts after the Twitter bird. He hatched from a golden eg but claims he earned it. All chickens are flightless, but Chicken Don's wings are too small even to be an appetizer." There is also a shirt.
- Nevertheless, Science Persisted shirt.
- "A group of lawyers who worked for President Barack Obama, calling themselves United To Protect Democracy, are setting their sights on Trump. Believing that he and his staff will break rules of conduct put in place by the Obama administration, they just took action against the Trump White House. The group submitted 50 Freedom of Information Acts this week “that they believe will confirm their suspicions” that the President and his staff have committed these ethics rules violations, “like potential intervention in and intimidation of regulatory agencies by West Wing staff.”
- After years of being in the Senate, can Al Franken be at least a little funny again? (Washington Post) "The Minnesota senator spent the last eight years proving that he’s good enough, smart enough, and doggone it, people like him. (Don’t groan. Reporters who write about him should be allowed the indulgence of using at least one of his signature lines from SNL.) Nearing the halfway mark of his second term, Franken said, he feels “a little freer to be myself, and so every once in awhile, something comes out.”.... "By one measure, Franken’s career has come full circle. In a 1991 “Saturday Night Live” skit, he played a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. A week ago, on an episode of SNL’s “Weekend Update,” cast member Alex Moffat portrayed Franken in what is now a real-life role on that panel. He has many sides. During slow periods in committee hearings, Franken sometimes sketches elaborate portraits on a notepad. If he does not take them when he leaves, Senate staffers scoop up the Franken doodles as collector’s items."
- Women Wore ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ Robes To The Texas Senate Floor
- Oh, sure, get our hopes up, why don't you.
- Advice From Pussy Riot: How to Defy Putin and Trump'
- Always Carry an Extra Tampon and 9 Other Things You Learn As a Woman in the White House
- People Are Sharing Their Stories of Abortion on the Steps of the U.S. Capitol'
- “the first time in history people have something productive to do on Facebook on a Friday night.” Though since the ACLU has a lot of money right now, maybe I might suggest this going to Planned Parenthood instead?
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