Take on the Russian ties

Imagine that in March of 2009 it came out that 

David Axlerod was on the payroll of some crown prince in Saudi Arabia for millions of dollars 

James Jones was working with Jordan but never disclosed it 

Valeria Jarred communicated with the masterminds of a terrorist attack via twitter

Ben Rhodes was mentioned multiple times in a dossier involving a night Obama spent in Bahrain 

Obama's business had multiple deals with the Saudi's and that shady Saudi's were operating out of one of the buildings he owned 

there was an FBI investigation into ties between his campaign and the Saudi government 

he would have been hanged

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Take on the electronic cabin ban

The more you think about this laptop ban, the more it is just a travel ban in disguise. Having just gotten off of a 14 hour flight, I can't imagine having done it without a laptop and my iPhone.   I get that they show a couple of crappy movies on the inflight entertainment but if I have to sit through another version of Love Actually, I'm going to poke my eyes out.  

Now imagine doing that 14 hour flight with my three kids, without a tablet, you can forget what you have heard about Jihad, that thought might be worse   

So so I think that this will effectively stop anybody from ever wanting to visit our country again..

Make America Safe Again  

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Take on the very limited Paul Manafort

Apparently Paul Manafort role in the Trump campaign was vastly overstated by everybody fro the Fake Media, to the campaign itself and definitely by Donald Trump because today Sean Spicer indicated that his role was very limited during the campaign. That's a bit silly being that he was...the campaign manager...but maybe we are parsing words or making word soup or maybe we are eating sour with parsley. I assume that if Sean Spicer is good with Paul Manafort having just had a very limited role in the campaign, he'll also agree that John Candy had a limited role in Planes, Trains and Automobiles or Chris Farley was only a small part in the 90s SNL. Thanks but I'll take my fat guy with my soup.

Take on the checked luggage

I work up this Saturday morning at 4am Tokyo time, which is 3PM New York time on Friday.  I can never sleep well the day before a flight, an affliction which really sucks if you fly 50 legs per year. 

 I went to the gym, packed my bags, had breakfast and by 9am I was off to the airport.   It is now past midnight in New York,  28 hours since I left my hotel after a long connection in Shanghai (don't ask) and in still waiting for my bags to come through.   I never check a bag, mainly because I'd prefer to schlep it through an airport than deal with the endless waiting at the end of a long flight.  But when I was gifted a couple of bottles of Saki, I didn't have much of a choice and did the one thing I promised myself I'd never do again, especially when there is an international connection involved.    We deplaned an hour ago and I have already been standing here for 50 minutes painfully watching the same twenty suitcases go around this conveyer belt but mine is nowhere to be found.  All for a bottle of saki that I didn't want and will sit in my cabinet for years, until one day I take it out and bring it to somebody's house as a housewarming gift at which point it will sit in their cabinet for years. 

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Take on Rex Tillerson's Asian vacation

Sexy Rex Tillerson had to cut short an event with his Korean counterparts because of fatigue..   We feel for Rex, knowing first hand how grueling Asian trips are, between the time changes, the long flight, the rice wines, the crappy food, you get really tired.   Everybody is going to call him Low Energy and weak but we won't pile on, having just spent a similar trip in three Asian cities in a week, sometimes you just need a little break from all the Lost in Translation moments. 

Rex just doesn't seem like the kind of Secretary who is able to take on that much, he doesn't come across as a guy who can take on that much pressure, which is fine if you are a gas station attendant but maybe not ideal if you represent the United States on the world stage.  

Then again maybe he just wasn't in the mood for another Korean barbecue, those things are delicious but when it's the fifth time you're having it in three days, you might need a break and you certainly don't want another one of your suits to smell like you rolled around on the floor of a butcher shop.    It could also be that his Korean counterparts were doing some heavy drinking the night before and Rex needed a night off, we know how hard those can be.  

Listen, Rex is no Hillary Clinton (or John Kerry, or Colin Powell or Madeleine Albright or Condi or whoever)  I think Rex is probably more comfortable at home, playing Risk with his grandkids, and we shouldn't fault him for that.  his job is really not that important to the future of the free world.  

Take on the bathroom signs in Japan

Every bathroom in Japan has a photo of exactly how you need to wash your hands. In the US you might see this in a restaurant for workers or in a kindergarten but in Japan these guidelines are for everybody and you kind of have to appreciate the level of commitment to cleanliness.

 I'm wondering if they did a nationwide study and found that Japanese dudes were not adequately washing after taking a dump or if this was more precautionary but in a country where there is no physical interaction, the paranoia might be overkill. You literally don't touch anybod here, nobody hugs, nobody shakes hands and nobody high fives, the only true interaction is probably in the massage places and your hands are probably the least of your worries there. The rest of it is like a completely virtual existence.

Take on China's AIDS brochure

As you leave China, right befor you go through customs, there is a table with some pamphlets on it, all intended to give vulnerable Chinese people some much needed information before they venture into the great unknown wilderness. There are ones about getting pick pocketed, there are ones about Zika and there is a stack of them about AIDS. Not since I was in the seventh grade, have I seen such scare tactics. They show loneliness, weird looking characters like that fox and wolf from Pinocchio and an Albert Einstein looking doctor telling young Chinese people to not stick their chopsticks into the noodle bowl of some weird duck. I applaud the vigilance, I am happy to see any country take health issues seriously but you'd think they could make the entire thing not look like a Saturday morning cartoon.

take on Rachel Maddow's BIG reveal..

not since Geraldo tried to open up Al Capone's vault has a TV program been this hyped and give us such so little in the actual money-shot.

Rachel Maddow hyped her release of Trump's taxes on Twitter and then almost immediately threw cold water on by announcing it was the 2005 ones.    If that wasn't bad enough even before her show, Trump scooped Maddow by confirming the numbers before her program, so CNN was announcing Maddow's scoop way before she did as she tried to tease her way from commercial break to commercial break in a way that would make Mike and Mike jealous. 

Even when the taxes came out, it was really Geraldo esquie, it showed he paid $38 million on $150 million in income, not exactly the 35%+ that the top-rate requires but more than Romney and a bunch of other rich guys probably paid that year.  I get that this is all just noise at this time and the fact that The White House beat her to the punch really took any of the wind out of the sail of her big reveal.. Then when it comes to the facts, they also sort of failed to impress.  What is impressive, and Trump is probably most impressed by this, was the way she was able to turn this sort of lame story into a ridiculously highly rated bunch of hype..   

so I guess at least she had that going..

my guess is that the one who released these are Trump himself as they actually show that a) he's rich and b) he paid a fair amount of taxes...

Take on the fish head

Yesterday I was served Howard the Duck, today it was Jimmy the Fish. A Chinese meal is never complete without a complete fish and I felt like Tony Soprano looking at Big Pussy. I like fish, but when they serve it with the eyes in, it's a bit much. I know what the fish is but I just don't need to have Nemo staring at me while I'm eating its belly.
Then again the woman who sat next to me chewed on the gills and waged it down with the eyeball. I was just happy she didn't stick her Hong-King foot right in the soy sauce, although that might still have been more sanitary than when she blew a gigantic snot bubble into her napkin.

Take on Peking Duck

Nothing is less appealing than having a full  duck head served on a giant lazy Susan between your bull balls and jelly fish.  The problem is that in China, there is always something that makes you want to puke all over the stained linens.    Peking Duck is just one of the nastiest looking things because it comes served whole and the charred crisp and looks like what you'd imagine what 70 year old Chinese Woman's wawa looks like.     The thing about Peking Duck is it that items fatty and disgusting, it's that it just looks like the turkey Clark served in Christmas Vacation if that bird had been caught swimming in lime green toxic swamp water. 

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Take on the VIP treatment

There is nothing like landing in Shanghai and going through the VIP section of security. VIP apparently means that the carpet is only partially stained, the Chinese people behind you are only slightly pushing you and the lady who runs that magic wand over your body only slightly slaps that stick on your nutsack. I get how important security is but the VIP portion is just laughable. The good news is the lounge feels like you are hanging out in Port Authority with a bunch on homeless people who are picking their teeth, digging between their toes and slurping their soup. Oh yeah, the bathrooms smell like just like the one on the second floor of the Port Authority, it's almost like being home.

Take on Preet

I remember reading about Preet Bharara in the papers as he always in the process of taking down bad guys as well as bad guys who dressed like good guys. Trump, as his right, had asked him to stay on as US Attorney a few weeks ago, probably because he was ready to indict DeBlasio for some pay for play thing but something happened in the last month or so. Maybe Trump just wanted to purge any Obama loyal guys, maybe he had a better guy lined up or maybe it is because Trump Tower fell within his jurisdiction and the sharks were circling. Bharara didn't take the suggestion to resign but instead waited a few hours for Trump to go Apprentice on him and fire him. He may have won some new political clout as scars for standing up to Trump are certainly ones you want to show off or maybe he was just waiting for his pension but either way, Bharara is out and I expect Bo Dietl or Krusty the Clown to be sworn in any second.

Take on Michael Flynn

Michael Flynn has to be one the slimiest humans alive. After spending a good potion of the Donald Trump campaign calling for Hillary to be locked up and accusing her of pay-for-play, he's spent the first two months of the new administration getting pushed out of his job for not disclosing information pertaining to secret meetings he had with the Russians and now has retroactively registered for a $500,000 lobbying job for a foreign agent. The only thing more nuts than having had him in a position of national intelligence was allowing him to try to jimmy his bonehead, conspiracy theory spouting son into the pot, too. Michael Flynn should have his citizenship stripped away, dressed up like that Bear from The Jungle Book and forced to like as a concubine for some three thousand pound gorilla.

But remember, Hillary was the most corrupt candidate ever.

Take on the World's Greatest Healthcare plan

We. Are. Being. Trolled.

The official legislation in front of the Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means committees is official dubbed "The World's Greatest Healthcare Plan of 2017". I'm not sure if the "of 2017" is part of the name or if all bills like this have an "of 2017 ending" but either way, this just shows that Trump hasn't just infiltrated the electorate, his verbiage has infiltrated everything. Who, outside of a fourth grader, speaks this way. Everything is either the most fabulous, the greatest, the most fantastic and everything that's not supported by him is the worst most dreadful piece of dog crap that has ever been seen.
Listen, in fully aware that you can't judge a book by it's cover, but when it's this obviously trolling, you just know the little guy is getting bent over a barrel. The only good thing is that has those stubby little fingers

Take on the darkened Statue of Liberty

Give us your tired, your hungry, your poor, yearning to be free

Or just give us a big wall but make sure we get a few Mexicans to make sure the lawn is well kept.  

Who knows if the Statue of Liberty going dark was fine intentionally but the symbolism of it wasn't lost on anybody.  We are a country who stood for the little man, we stood up against tyranny and we fought for what was right and true.  We worked hard, we played (mostly) by the rules.  We made mistakes, some that are huge scars on our history but we also made progress the type that changed the course of history.  We've had good leaders and bad ones, we've had exceptional ones and deeply flawed ones, we had one who lead us for a decade and a half and ones who died almost immediately but our leader was always one who held the office in the highest regard. 

Our current president met with the head of TMZ yesterday, with a new healthcare plan on the table, new aggression of of North Korea, PhoneTapGate and everything else under the sun and he spent an hour with a website devoted to telling guy if Kim and Kanye are going to break up. 

Maybe the Statue of Liberty should take the next four years off, too 

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Take on the wire tapping

The more I think of it, the more I think that phone calls with Trump surrogates were tapped.  I think that there were/are investigations into Russian hacking and that calls coming from Russia are being screened, it should be abundantly clear that anybody having conversations with foreign actors with bad intentions have chance of being tapped and taped, so the calls were likely screened not because of anybody on Trump's side but people on the other end of the line.  They are tapping the Russians but when they are calling an American they can get caught up in the giant fish net.   My working theory is that when the first findings of this were brought to Trump's attention he either made the assumption that they were brought on by Obama or is using that line of offensive attack as cover.   If it's the former, he lacks an understanding of intelligence gathering as it pertains to the laws of the country.  If it is the latter, it is to try to delegitimize the process and throw up a giant smoke screen since he feels the walls of justice closing in on him. 

Either that or he just made the entire thing up which sadly might be the most likely scenario.  

Good job electing this guy, America.  

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Take on the U.K. High heel dilemma

There is an issue in front of the UK parliament which is so important we have to put our DonaldTrumpWatch on hold for a day. There is legislation pending which would make it illegal to ask women to wear high heels as part of their dress code

The entire thing is a response to a petition by a receptionist who was sent home for wearing flat shoes while working at PWC in 2015, a petition which got 150,000 signatures.

Our position on flats is well documented as it's up there as one of the most egregious fashion faux pas out there, and that is coming from a guy who shoves the NY Post into his Jets jacket. Our position on proper work attire is that, in general, a woman should dress anyway she'd like, as long as it's professional. But this is assuming they are not on the client side, in which case everything changes. That doesn't necessarily have to mean heels but it certainly should mean something different than what Marge in accounting wears. The receptionist at a major financial firm is often the first view that you have when you walk in, he or she is the first impression. If he or she is sitting behind a desk it may not matter but if they are walking around they shouldn't look like a dumpy frog.

So if you complain about the heels, realize that a man can't come to work in shorts, a sleeveless shirt or flip flops. The requirements for proper dress are different depending on the sex, that's an unfortunate fact
A dress requirement isn't just a receptionist thing, if my financial advisor shows up with a Donald Duck tie, I'm asking him to leave.
It's not as if women's shoes are an exception either, If my insurance broker shows up in sneakers, I'm taking my business elsewhere. If the guy handling our 401K shows up in flip-flops he can find another company to try to pitch. Some jobs even make footwear a requirement, a guy working on a construction site has to wear work boots but a guy in an office can't. A baseball player has to wear cleats, a basketball player sneakers but neither is appropriate for me.

I want my lawyer in a suit, my doctor in one of those white jacket things, my UPS driver in those weird brown shorts, the POTUS in slacks even on the weekend, my lifeguard in a thong, a stripper in stilettos. It just means that they are taking their job, and themselves, seriously.

Take on the fasttrack backtrack

I guess we should have know this as students of The Art of the Deal but the more we get to know Trump, the more obvious it is that he constantly moves the goalposts. Yesterday he told us that he had evidence that Obama wire tapped his phones, an accusation which so far hasn't been backed up by anything and every person with any knowledge including Clapper has said it's a bunch of hogwash. This was the smokescreen as Trump has masterfully done before, change the narrative from his campaign's Russian involvement to something outrageous. The problem is when the White House was asked for even an inkling of evidence, they came up with nothing whatsoever. It's pretty clear that he got his. "Evidence" from Mark Levin which is like strong a literary recommendation from Donald Duck. This isn't surprising because, well Trump tends to lie, but when caught he usually retreats just enough to allow for wiggle room. See today he asked for a congressional inquiry as to whether Obama tapped his phones but this seems odd. Yesterday he was given evidence of it but today he is asking congress to investigate. If he has evidence, why do we need an inquiry? Obama should be convicted immediately and we can all start the process of healing.
But this is classic Trump, make an outrageous statement and then back off by saying that "very credible people are saying". This, of course, means nothing but that isn't important to a president who treats the press like dog poo and the constitution like the toilet paper to clean it up.
But hey, at least he told Arnold what a loser he is, Trump wins again

Take on our unhinged president

Our president has gone totally nuts. He spent this Saturday morning throwing some pretty serious allegations at his predecessor without even the slightest grain of evidence. The problem with the tweets accusing Obama of watergate type phone-tapping is that anything that comes out of this is going to be damaging

If Trump is correct and Obama ordered this as some kind of political move, it would be the biggest political scandal and coverup since Watergate

If Trump is wrong it would be one of the great libelous accusations of all time and prove (again) that this man is not mentally equipped to hold the office

If Trump is half right that his phones were tapped, it would have happened from the justice department and only after getting a warrant from a sitting judge who would only have done so with some major probably cause. Which would likely mean that Trump's Russian ties are stronger than we feared

We are so screwed but at least SNL should be good

Take on Trump's education email

Trump took to twitter today to do his normal Trump things. Make fun of Arnold, rip on Nancy Pelosi and make America look like a moron again. He tweeted out a sort of innocuous thing about making our country's education system great again in between a couple of tweets filled with misspellings demanding that Chuck "The Duck" Schumer and Fancy Nancy Pelosi needing to be investigated for their meetings with Russians. The beauty of it was that Trump just doesn't seem to think that any of the Russian ties are a big deal unless it involves the democrats.

Can't believe how quickly I got tired of all the winning

Take on Mike Pence's AOL account

Mike Pence attacked Hillary Clinton repeatedly for using a personal server to conduct government business but it turns out, so did Pence. When Pence was governor of Indiana, he used his personal email address to discuss state business in judging homeland security issues. People will call out the hypocrisy but I don't care, we know that politicians trade in hypocrisy like other people trade in "good morning, Joe, how was the weekend". So I guess Pence is a Christian first, a republican second and a hypocrite third which I'm fine with. Him. being a Snake is nothing surprising but what surprised me even less was finding out that Mike Pence still uses an AOL email address. The. only people still using AOL are my grandmother and her grandmother. You just know this dimwit is still using the stupid dial-up system too. I wonder if his password is MikeLovesJC or something similarly idiotic. It certainly wasn't too complicated being that he got hacked a Nigerian prince last yesr

Take on the sort of SOTU

It wasn't an official State of the Union but it felt like one and for the first time in what seems like forever, our president wasn't a complete embarrassment. The best point of the night was when he showed his stubby little finger in the eye of the retired mutant ninja turtle, Mitch "The Itch" McConnell. Trump looked a bit better, less bloated, less maniacal, more professional, which was made most apparent when he showed up wearing a new tie for the first time in years. Gone was the weird overly long red tie which always made him look like a mentally ill overgrown Elf. Instead he had something that, for a change, didn't look like it was bought off the sale rack st Nordstrom. Even his suit seemed to fit a bit better, glad he may finally have gotten a stylist.
Let's hope we get more of this Trump and less of the twitter crazed, always wronged, forever scorned, not very bright, combative beast that Bannon has unleashed on our great nation.

Take on the Kelyanne kneeling thing

When I saw the photo of Kellyanne Conway on her knees on the oval-office couch, I turned to my wife and said "this won't end well"   I'm not sure what got me, but it wasn't the fact that some losers were annoyed she had her shoes on.   It was just this weird seductive looking pose, on her knees in front of a room full of smiling dudes that made me think, well this like Monica Lewinsky all over again

I'm not calling it anything that it isn't and although she's no angel I certainly wasn't her idea to appear like she's Annabel Chong  on the Howard Stern circa 1993.  

I don't think she disgraced the White-House, I don't think she did anything wrong other than just take a ridiculous group photo with her iPhone instead of getting, I don't know ,the White House photographer to take it using his the big ridiculous Nikon he has set up on that camera stand for occasions just like this.

 

anyway, i'm just happy that she's allowed back in the Oval Office, not sure where she's been hiding for the last few weeks (maybe under a desk??) after she apparently went rogue on a couple of Sunday Morning shows.   The world is better (or much worse) with her standing right behind Trump.. or I guess kneeling in front of him..  I really don't know but she's certainly gives a lot of fodder for SNL

Take on Wilford Brimley

When the senate confirmed our new commerce secretary today, my first thought was, get the oatmeal guy got a new gig. Sadly for America, the winner of the latest Trump rose was Wilbert Ross and not Wilford Brimley, although I can't say I know for sure what either guy would do. Really you have to hope that Ross can curtail some of the rhetoric coming out of the White House, he's a billionaire who has made money because of globalization, so we have to hope that he doesn't kill our economy with some shortsighted tariff war. What these morons don't understand is that manufacturing in 2017 is a global enterprise, you cannot make a plane, boat, car, tank, cell phone, computer or refrigerator without tapping into global resources. More than that if you decide to tax the hell out of a certain Chinese import, it can have massive unexpected consequences through ripple effects right down the line. Time to let adults into the room and calm everybody the hell down, hopefully a couple these billionaires will shake some sense into our Dear Leader.

Take on the leaks

Sean Spicer told every staff member to leave their phones in a room so he could check where the White House leaks were coming from and within minutes it was leaked that he was doing just that. Nobody can be that surprised that a seventy year old man has problems with a little leaking out but when he's gotten his entire staff to help him clean up his piss stains, it just looks embarrassing for our country

This is our White House in 2017, so scared about leaks that it bars the press, has their staff go through what can only be seen as a loyalty oath and have gone on a scorched earth approach to the leaks by calling them "Fake News". These morons don't even realize how ridiculous they look, with every press briefing looking more and more like they are channeling their inner Kim Jung Un, another Putin lapboy.
But the best thing is this phone check thing, you just know that Spicer sat on that room and was completely puzzled when the number 1-2-3-4 didn't unlock all those iPhones, he is really that dumb

Take on the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner

I'm not surprised that Our Dear Leader is skipping the White House Correspondents' Dinner this year, mostly because that weird bronzing thing he does is probably meant to help thicken his very thin skin. Trump is neither funny nor able to take a joke well, so he would actually be a poor choice for the Alfred E. Newman crowd, so maybe it's for best. It was always a great spot for Obama, who could take a joke and deliver one, too but with the way this administration has jousted with the media, it's probably smart he declined. I always found it to be sort of an odd day, with the POTUS and press getting a little too chummy, so don't mind it going by the wayside for a bit especially when it's become so adversarial. Although it would have been brilliant if Trump had showed up and the bouncer at the door told him that he wasn't on the gaggle list and wouldn't let him in.

Take on the White House's freedom from the press

You know you've lost the high ground when China mocks your government's lack of freedom of the press. Today our executive branch started their attempt to break one of the cores pillars of our democracy, the press keeping our government accountable. But Trump, a psychopath who used to call tabloids disguised as his own press secretary, doesn't feel like he needs to be held accountable to anybody. Today they cut CNN, The New York Times, Politico and The Los Angeles Times out of a gaggle with Sean Spicer which I've never heard of before today but sounds about as much fun as having a threesome with Sean Spicer and Mellisa McCarthy, but still it reeks more than the aftermath of that threesome would. Punishing the press for pushing too hard is Nixonian but with a guy who, unlike Tricky Dick, loves the spotlight, it's that much more odd. Trump has always believed that all press is good press, but I guess when that press is coming close to revealing that you are Putin's cabin boy, you better start fighting

Take on the ID line

Maybe I'm a few hours late on this but WTF is going on with forcing people to show ID when getting off of an airplane on a domestic flight? From what I'm reading, immigration officials were looking for some illegal and customs officials forced every person from a delta flight from San Francisco to NY to show identification proving they were not the wanted Mexican or Guatemalan or whatever. So a party who claims to champion personal rights is now ok with having every Joe, Dick and Guillermo show ID at any point that a customs official says boo. Love the land of the free we live in.

But what is the most annoying about this entire thing is that you have to think this will make deplaning a two hour affair. If every person on a 200 person flight needs to show ID and stand there for thirty seconds, we are talking about 1:40 to get off the plane. Forget about making your connection, Chachi

I'll be sure to keep my ID in my underwear when I get on a flight to Florida next week.

Take on Immigration

As our Dear Leader starts another week and another controversy, he decided to take on illegal immigration head on. Give Trump credit in that he really has hit all the classics during this Best-Of tour, and no song is bigger for Trump than his Don't Stop Believin', immigration. It resonates with the old timers, it gets the young girls all hot and excited and the radio stations love. The problem is that the fans are idiot because they all say that immigrants suck because they take away good paying American jobs, but they don't do any of that.

The conversation goes like this

Some Guy
But Righetti, Joe SixPack in Toledo told me that those guys are taking good paying American jobs.

Righetti .
Well Joe SixPack doesn't have a job and still wouldn't be caught dead picking berries and would go ape-#### if he found out his strawberry pancakes at IHOP just jumped in price by $5. He doesn't seem to be able to connect the dots in this game of 3D checkers
Joe Sixpack wants his toilets cleaned, his car washed, his flower beds pruned and he'll be damned if his Motel-6 bill jumps $20 a night. And god forbid he couldn't get to his non existent work because he couldn't find a nanny or because he was busy shoveling his own snow

Dude
But I, I mean Joe SixPack, likes shoveling snow

Righetti
No, you, I mean he, really doesn't

Dude
But global warming will mean that we won't get as much snow

Righetti
You didn't just say that, right?

Dude
Benghazi, emails!!

Righetti
What JoeSixPack doesn't realize is that immigrants are the gift that keeps on giving, they offer cheap labor, doing jobs that nobody wants for as many hours as you need them..oh yeah, they don't take vacations or breaks or sick days or anything. They just work hard, every. single. day.

Dude
But they are killer and rapists and smell bad

Righetti
no they aren't and mostly they don't

Dude
But they take from our social safety nets..

Righetti
yeah, no

Dude
But they are brown..

Righetti
yes, now we got to the expressway you were looking for

Dude
But Trump told me that they came here and took our jobs and put them in a duffle bag and brought them to Mexico where they are turning those jobs into crystal meth and shipping it over the unsecured border by shoving it up the wawas of innocent girls but we will find them and arrest them and catapult them over the wall and charge them for the ride

Righetti
We are so screwed

Take on the Trump Pie Chart

The failing and very unfair Washington Post put out a very biased poll today which took their eye off the prize and ignored Trump's landslide victory and complete mandate. Well it was sort of silly but, at least, it was sort a nice distraction from our Dear Leader shoving his tiny foot in his gigantic mouth. The pie chart showed how Trump presumable spent his first 744 hours, the most striking thing was of course that he spent about 75% less time on Intelligence Briefings than he did on golf and we know that at least 15 minutes on briefings was done while lobster bisque was being served at Mar-a-Lago. Most people are upset about this, especially in light of Trump's constant trolling of Obama's golfing while president but I'm not one of them. I'd like to see Trump at golf every single day, preferably at Andrews Air-force Base which is a hop, skip and a jump (and a helicopter ride) away from The White House, instead of the $3 million dollar weekend jaunts down to Florida. I mean what sane person would care if he plays golf, it only means he can spend that much less time messing thing up. I could see a bunch of Trumpettes being upset because it would take time away from repealing Obamacare, building walls, starting wars, breaking treaties, undermining alliances, exiting trade deals and every other horrible thing he wants to do.

From the official tally, it sounded like Obama played 333 rounds of golf while president, which is nothing compared to Woodrow Wilson's 1200 or Ike's 800 rounds.

Trump is at 6 or something, so he has some serious catching up to do

Take on Milo

When I first heard of Milo Yiannopoulos it was as part of the Alt-Right movement and I just assumed he was some right wing Greek guy as part of a new age of neofascism pushing across Europe. I read a few things he wrote, saw a few news pieces, watched the protests at Berkeley and just assumed he was the face for neo-right with Steve Bannon as the brains. A libertarian with an ability to get under your skin, a more vocal Peter Thiel if you must. Not until I saw him on Bill Maher did it become clear that this was nothing of the sort, after 10 minutes I turned to my wife and said "this has to be shtick, right?" I mean, he was so clearly trolling both the liberals and the conservatives with his over the top Borat thing, that nobody could take him seriously, yet everybody does. Even Maher seemed in on it. If Bannon is pure evil, Miller is sadistic, then Yiannopoulos is the smartest man in the room because he's pulled on over everybody. He's a more ridiculous Colbert, he's an actor plays a flamboyant European transplant with a ridiculous Greek last name with more vowels than a Sesame Street episode and says the most outrageous thing and then tops it with another, and people are up in arms

Today all the talk will be about his pedophilia thing, and as repugnant as that is, I have to believe that's just all part of the act. Performance art designed to elicit a powerful emotion all on the unsuspecting minds of the GOP and their freedom of speech caucus. I get that it all comes across as bizarre but that makes it all the more perfect, an act so over the top that you can only shriek in defiance. This is Skip Bayless, this is The Iron Sheik, this is Sacha Baron Cohen at his absolute best and everybody is freaking the hell out which is exactly the goal

Take on Dancing in the Darkness

I finally figured out what makes Chris Christie so obsessed with Donald Trump, it's probably not the hard charging bully thing or the meatloaf, it's that Trump pretends he's Springsteen. Yesterday during the beginning of the 2020 presidential campaign, Trump pulled Courtney Cox onto the stage and he guy practically made out with him. The dude had been waiting on line for 14 hours like he was some obsessed Yankee fan and got serenaded by the president in front of the entire world. We found out later that Mr. Cox has a cardboard cutout of Trump which he salutes daily, presumably on his knees
Hope there was some extreme vetting on this psycho before he got on stage and then crowd surfed back to his seat

Take on Trump's survey

Trump's Make America Great Again, Again committee put out a survey to poll Americans on the levels of bias in the Main Stream Media and it reads as if The Donald himself wrote it.  Long gone are the days of policy defended in long form, it now has to fit nearly into 140 characters for our president because he can't keep his attention for much more than that.   Well the survey is another doozie, with questions like

1. On which issues does the mainstream media do the worst job of representing Republicans? (Select as many that apply.)

   •  Immigration
   •  Economics
   •  Pro-life values
   •  Religion
   •  Individual liberty
   •  Conservatism
   •  Foreign policy
   •  Second Amendment rights

There are so many double negatives in this thing that you can't even fill it out quickly because every question reads like. Do you not like the person who you hate more than the person who you only sort of hate?     I'm sure that after this stupid survey gets passed around the country, Big Don will not like the findings of it, because it's hard to convince a country a country that they have an enemy when that enemy is the only sensible voice in the room. 

Anyway, fill it out and sign it Eric Trump 

https://action.donaldjtrump.com/mainstream-media-accountability-survey/

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Take on MeatloafGate

Poor Chris Christie, he's had a rough patch lately.   First he lost all credibility over BridgeGate which in turn lost all his popularity.  He then got trounced in the republican nomination, then he hitched his wagon to Trump until being unceremoniously dumped on the eve of the inauguration.  He then  finally does get invited back to the White House and when he gets there he is told by Trump to order anything on the menu which, to a guy like Chris Christie, is like waking up for Christmas morning. And then, not three minutes later, when the waiter shows up, Trump tell him that both he and Chris will have the meatloaf.   Trump knows how to emasculate a man better than anybody (little Marco, Low Energy Jeb!) and he did a masterful job at it with the (not) lovable governor of our fair state.  

But I'm calling FakeNews on this, because the thing about MeatloafGate is that we all know that Big Chris was going to order the meatloaf anyway.  There was no way that he was ordering the arugula-kale salad with baby corn and quinoa, so this all Much Ado About Nothing.   It would be like me asking my two year old if she'd like ice cream or broccoli.  For the sake of expediency, I'd already be at the freezer with that weird looking ice scooper thing.  

With all that said, I would love to try that meatloaf, it does sound delicious. 

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Take on leaked Fake news

Some people want to have their cake and eat it too and one of those is our cake eating commander in chief. Trump is like Def Leppard, he has about five good songs all wrapped into one Hysteria.

When things go bad and people aren't interested in hearing the newest studio release, they go to the hits like Pour Some Sugar on Me and that one other song people know. In Trump's case he either turns to crowd size (lie), the fake news (dangerous) and failing news (silly), his own alternative facts (stupid) people treating him unfairly (boohoo), electoral mandate (sort of) and Hillary/Obama (lame).

But most of the time he goes to only one of them to defend himself and placate his audience but today he went with the Triple Lindy and went Fake News and Obama based Leaks and threw a crowd size, electoral college falsehood and snowflakes in there for good measure. The weird thing is that you can't have it both ways, it's either Fake News or they are illegal leaks. If they aren't real, then they aren't legitimate leaks and if they are real then, by definition, they can't be fake news. What he probably did was mistake his Fake News for his Failing News thing which is understandable since they both start with an F and have "News" after it.

Take on buyers remorse

Donald Trump has been president for less than a month and has fulfilled a ton of promises, mostly that he'll get things done.  You can fault the man for a lot but not for lack of effort.  But with the latest Gallup poll dropping his approval rating to the level of GWB post Katrina, you wonder how much more he (and the country) can take 

You can't complain that there are leaks and then also say it's fake news when they are reported.  It is either a leak or it's just garbage, there are no grey areas.     They have now come under tremendous scrutiny and it's time for Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell to step up and put country first which is about as likely to happen as Trump staying off of Twitter for 24 hours because I'm not sure there is a vertebra between the two of them.  

Then I heard somebody say that for the good of the country and the world, the left should stop goading Trump with this Russia stuff because, as you can see from his tweets today, he will feel the need to prove he can be tough which will likely lead to some international incident (and change the narrative for Trump).   

I like how the responsibility of the world not ending now squarely falls on the shoulders of a bunch of latte drinking, tree hugging, pizza parlor visiting, kale eating, man hating, non sock matching, gay sex having, iguana owning, Prius driving, tandem bike riding, Chardonnay drinking, Roger Goodell supporting sycophants 

Time to learn Russian 

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Take on the Valentines Day Massacre

I've been thinking of ranking the Trump inner circle from most dangerous to least and it was a doozy but today my job got a little easier

Michael Flynn was on top of the list, either right in front or right Steve Bannon and nobody wants to be that close to that stinking pile of human flesh. Stephen Miller is up there but his youth gives him a chance for redemption although he seems like a complete wacko.

Kellyanne Conway is more sleazy than dangerous and she'll be gone before the weekend and Spicer is just a doofus who is going to get minimized shortly. Priebus is just a suit, so I'm not that worried about him either. But Michael Flynn had that camp groundskeeper with a hacksaw look in his eyes and that was probably the best part of him. This guy is certainly a hypocrite, possibly a traitor and likely a criminal (lying to the FBI). The only question now is if he is covering for his boss and complicit in obstruction.

If the DoJ told Trump about this on January 26th and then Trump sent Pence out a week later to tell Chuck Todd that all was good without Pence knowing, then who is bludgeoning who? Pence either knew and lied or was not told the truth and made to look like a schmuck claiming now he found out about it when the Washington Post went to print.

But the fact that he might be compromised didn't bother Trump because Trump is probably compromised if the dossier has any truth to it. Why else has he gone after every solid ally we have (Australia, Mexico, NATO) and has been softer on Russia than his own soft belly

Either way we need an investigation because the ties to Russia are deep and dangerous although asking our elected officials to put country over party is about as likely as having Trump replace Flynn with Gandhi

Take on the smug smile

While both his and Abe's inner circles were frantically looking for cell phones to illuminate the super secret intel about the latest North Korean provocation, our Dear leader sat back and took it all in, like a mentally challenged six year old. I get that not every president handles a crisis quite the same, Obama liked to listen, Reagan went to his advisors, Herbert drew on his experience from the CIA, W liked to color and Bubba told the girl under the table to go faster, so it's not surprising that Trump has his own way. Trump takes the opportunity to marvel at the curtains and carpeting and cutlery at Mar-a-Lago and thinks about the impromptu speech to a newlywed couple in the main ballroom 100 feet away.
A campaign which was punctuated with "lock her up" chants because of Hillary's questionable use of classified materials, now put their own classified information spread on the table right over the lobster bisque and the peppers with anchovies, so they could read it clearly. Didn't seem to matter that waiters were refilling water glasses and club members were taking photos, because Trump is Trump and the rules only apply to other people.

Great job America

Take on the Stephen Miller Band

I have a buddy who has a striking resemblance to Stephen Miller, down to the creepy eyes but nothing could prepare me for that abomination I saw today when Miller stopped by George Snuffleupagus on the This Week set. Miller who is 36 and might very well still be a virgin, looked like a child when confronted with a simple question of "show me the facts". Unlike Kellyanne Conway, who is a seasoned political snake, Miller came across as a toothless gecko who sounded like he was arguing politics on a anonymous online forum. Of course we all awaited his bosses tweet on his performance which read, to me, as the same vote of confidence Phil Jackson will give Jeff Hornacek in April this year.

Take on the abused Ivanka

When Trump tweeted "I am so proud of my daughter Ivanka. To be abused and treated so badly by the media, and to still hold her head so high, is truly wonderful!" I thought immediately that something had happened. Maybe the FailingNYTimes had put out a hit piece about her fashion line, the failingWashingtonPost had a story about her not being a good mom or the winningNationalInquirer had a story of her having an affair with Rosie O'Donnell. But looking through Twitter I couldn't find anything other than the Nordstrom scrum from earlier in the week. The one who got beat us about that were Daddy Trump and the one chick who looks like a cross between Sarah Jessica Parker and a troll.
What shocks me is that I actually think the media has been pretty fair to Ivanka, many people seeing her as the most reasonable voice in her fathers circle. Although that is like saying your the prettiest fat girl considering the rest of that circle involves Trump sons Beavis and Butthead, Stephen "crazy legs" Miller and a guy in Steve Bannon who actually looks like a fat woman.
But I guess Trump feels that she's been wronged, so much that she has actually been abused which is pretty strong language especially considering the way Melania seems to cower whenever The Big Don comes her way.

Take on the great negotiator

So much for the brilliant negotiator... what trump lacked in experience, temperament, ability and competence was all going to made up by his ability to make great deals. What those deals are is still completely unclear but if his negotiation tactics with China are any indication, we better all learn to speak Mexican. Trump broke with long precedent by speaking with the president of Taiwan breaking The One China policy set out by Jimmy Carter. This was seen as a shot across the bow, Trump's method of showing China whose boss.

In retaliation, Xi Jinping refused to take Trump's call and after three weeks in office, the great negotiator came back and said he'd stay with the One China policy which only showed how weak our president is.

Take on @Rosie

There aren't many things I agree with Trump on, the lone exception might be that I never thought Rosie O'Donnell was all that special or funny...until today.
She just changed her profile picture and it's a doozy, fat Rosie now looks just like fat Steve Bannon and it's glorious. The only thing missing are all those nasty blood blotches he has all over his face like he is about to blow up from a diabetes attack. I'm sure his boss won't be thrilled with this one, only a matter of minutes till he tweets

Take on the lying president

Trump isn't studious, he isn't meticulous, he isn't detail or fact oriented.   He sees what is fed to him and believes it.   He hears that Chicago has a growing murder rate and thinks, this isn't what it was before so it must mean that it's the highest in history.  He sees a story about voter fraud and thinks that there must be a reason why he lost the popular vote.  He hears that crime is high and thinks that it wasn't that way when he grew up so assumes it is the highest it has been in the last 40-50 years 

He sees a huge crowd at his inauguration and thinks that must be the biggest crowd I've ever seen and can't imagine a bigger one, so he tells everybody it is the biggest one  he hears one story about Mexicans coming across the border with bad intentions and assumes they are all the same.   

He's like the old timer at work who tells you that in his day they'd ship 1000 shipments per day even if the sales number back then don't confirm it, the father who said he walked in foot high snow to school every day.   The story you tell your kids today about playing outside every night until dark which probably happened sometimes but you were home watching tv a whole lot, too.   

It's not all bad intentions but it's what you see, what your own biases tell you and what you choose to believe.  Not a bad way to live through life but a terrible way to set the nations agenda.   See Trump lives in an anecdotal reality, he believes what he sees and reacts off of it.   

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Take on FLOTUS

Calling a woman a prostitute is one of the worst things you can say about her, it's an insult that hits so low it's almost inexcusable. The word in itself defines her so, that she's almost paralyzed by it, so when she defends herself she has every right to do so with all her vigor. Melania was accused of just that, a Eastern European high-end call girl before she was swept off her feet my a man in a robe riding in his limo.
She came back and filed a $150million lawsuit which even for me seems a bit much. Whenever you see a lawsuit with an outrageous sum, I have to peak into it to see what the plaintiff is claiming and in this case Melania's claim is as outrageous as the original story. Her claim is that because of this article she has lost her "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity" to leverage multiple business and brands worth millions of dollars. Money she would have been able to earn as a brand ambassador while serving as FLOTUS. Let's leave the completely ridiculous part of a First Lady trying to profit from her role alone, plus the fact she is supposedly already a billionaire but the fact she thinks that her image is worth $150 million is just ludicrous. Her marriage to a petulant man-child with a terrible temperament is enough to sink her line. Maybe she should hawk her crappy stuff on QVC, the people watching that seem more her audience

Take on the new ACA

One of the things that Trump campaigned on was to immediately repeal Obamacare and replace It with something great. After a few weeks the repeal portion seems to be moving very slowly while the replace option is probably even further down the line. For a change, Trump isn't rushing this out and jamming down our throats and he admitted to Papa Bear yesterday that the entire thing might be a year, or so, off. For this we have give credit where it is due. This wouldn't be some inconvenience or even an infringement on liberty and rights but likely something that could literally be life or death. If they repealed it and left millions of people without healthcare we might be playing with fire and would at minimum probably send a bunch of likely Trump voters into personal bankruptcy.

But we all know that the entire replace thing is just going to be Trump taking Obamacare, rebranding it putting a big ribbon on it and rolling it out to the American public as the greatest AAA mortgage backed security ever.

Take on the lamest Super Bowl party ever

I have to think that the lamest Super Bowl party ever had to be then one held at Mar-A-Lago tonight. It's not that you expect Trump to do it any differently and you gotta be impressed that he's convinced blue collar America that he's their guy while he's watching the Super Bowl while sipping merlot while eating frog legs in a suit with Reince Priebus. This sounds about as much fun as hanging with Bill Belichick will be at about 10pm tonight.

Take on the separation of powers

I remember sitting in civics class in the eight grade and learning about the Separation of powers to limit each of the three branches from concentrating power. The division of responsibilities is designed to limit any one branch from encroaching on the functions of the others limiting the legislative branch to writing the laws, the executive branch from enforcing it and judicial branch from interpreting the laws. But somehow our president has decided that he is going to throw it all out the window and demand that everybody listen to what he wants and if they defy him, he'll break all the toys and scream until his mom comes out.

Lucky us

Take on Bowling Green Massacre

We often take life for granted, spending more time buried in our iPhones than enjoying the setting sun or listening to the crashing waves. We are always in a hurry, always trying to improve our lot but never appreciating what we do have.

But when imaginary people in a real city lose imaginary lives we take notice. They didn't stand chance when an imaginary boogieman gunned them down under the name of Radical Islamic Extremism (either that or some white supremacist thing, it's kind of hard to keep track) but what they don't know is that our resolve is stronger than hate, bigger than fear and more potent than that green stuff they add to sushi.

But today we remember those who were not lost, those who still breath the air and those who will still have the opportunity to have children whose childhood they can still ruin. These are people who woke up one morning and didn't ask to meet their Maker and for once their wishes were granted and for that they should be thankful, whoever they are or aren't

During this time of national mourning, we ask that all citizens (legal residents should too unless you are some weird Muslim and illegals then please in with your local immigration officer). We ask that rightful citizens and white legal residents please, in solidarity put down your pens and editorials and blogs and come together to heal. We know this country sometimes divides us, and we know that when it does, we are weaker for it and we all know that when we come together and heal we are better for it. So today we come together to honor the victims of the tragedy that wasn't and ask us all to turn around and hug your neighbor, unless your neighbor is some weird child toucher type, then please punch them in their jaw.

America is more than guns and church and apple pie and crappy ABC comedies, America is goodness, it's pushing the little guy down so you can reach you goals, it's deregulation, it's a bunker mentality, it's isolationism, it's Wall Street and SuperFunds, and not just the ones that pay for 50 tons of PCP's dumped into the Hudson.

Our country is about crashes and bubbles and explosions and balloons and it's heart and soul and soul food and Chinese food (we are ok to keep them, I think) and it's you, so today we stand together for everything that is true and right and white

Let us pray

Take on the first two weeks

Donald Trump is nothing if not incompetent. In nearly two weeks as the Leader of the Free world he has infringed on the rights of lawful residents, he's exaggerated and then doubled down on his crowd sizes, he has threatened to use federal authority to go into Chicago and maybe Mexico, he has driven a wedge between the US and Australia, staunch ally. He has disgraced the CIA fallen wall, he embarrassed himself with his lack of historical knowledge, he has turned the SCOTUS into a game show, he may have forced the military to push a raid in Yemen under circumstances that were far from ideal, he has insulted critics, he has stroked bigotry, he has demonized the press and it's only 14 days in
But the funniest thing is that on Black History month, he spent more time attacking fake news than speaking about the perils of slavery. He made it clear that he had no idea who Fredrick Douglas was and he almost spoke longer about Omarosa than Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Douglas and Harriet Tubman combined. But he did let everybody know that he is good friends with Ben Carson because...well..Ben Carson is black. I was surprised he didn't mention Steve Harvey, Kanye West and Bill Cosby.
The good news is that it can't get worse, right? We are all under the impression that Bannon and Miller are running the show and Trump is actually the puppet he denied being.
Thanks America

Take on Google Maps' "how crowded is it" feature.

I decided to download the new google maps version off of iTunes and peeked to see what additions they had brought to be update. I'd expected the normal "bug fixes" or "updated for new iWatch10" but this one seemed more political. It now allows you to see how crowded a place is which, I guess, would allow you to see whether or not to waste your time to go to something...or maybe.. it's Google's cheeky response to Trump's inauguration size which, like his hands, was smaller than advertised. Either that or they want to give you plenty of warning before you take the bullet and show up at Magic Kingdom with three kids in tow