So In Today’s News ~ Happy F*cking Valentine’s Day Edition

So in today’s news, I see that we now have classified briefings at golf course banquet rooms with the flashlights from cellphones ¹ lighting the briefing materials. Never mind the potential hacking problem this brings up. And rumor has it that the so-called new guy is spending a third straight weekend at said golf course at the end of the week. He hasn’t even been in office a whole month and his national security advisor has already resigned after only twenty-four days in the position over his ties to Russia that everyone has known and been up in arms about for some time. And now a creepy little man named Miller has reared his white nationalist head and seems to be the so-called new guy’s spokesperson. The press and social media are having a field day with all of this while the world watches in both amusement and horror at this clown show run amok.

Irrespective of who was in office, there always seemed to be at least some level of decorum. Our president could be counted on to show up to lay a wreath now and again at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, for example. Japan’s Prime Minister visited the Tomb the other day where he graciously laid his own wreath in honor, but evidently, the so-called new guy decided flying off to his golf course was more important than accompanying the Prime Minister.

But back to that Flynn guy. Vox.com reports the so-called new guy is concerned about all the leaks that seem to be occurring. Of course, he could put away his unsecured android phone and stop tweeting continually like an attention-starved adolescent, but evidently, that’s just too much for him. From Dylan Matthews at Vox:

 

The core problem was that Donald Trump chose to hire Michael Flynn

Take Michael Flynn, who at 24 days has set the record for shortest tenure as national security adviser in the history of the office. It should have been extremely obvious well before Trump won the presidency that Flynn was not an acceptable choice for a senior national security job. He was forced out of his last major job, as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, in 2014, after alienating officials in the Pentagon, CIA, and Director of National Intelligence’s office alike.

According to the Washington Post’s Dana Priest and Greg Miller, “Former subordinates at the DIA said Flynn was so prone to dubious pronouncements that senior aides coined a term — ‘Flynn facts’ — for assertions that seemed questionable or inaccurate.” Priest and Miller spoke to Flynn about that departure, and he asserted that it was “a political purge orchestrated by an (Obama) administration unwilling to heed the warnings he was sounding about militant Islam. Asked for evidence, he said, ‘I just know!’”

After being forced out, Flynn leaned hard into right-wing, anti-Muslim crankery. “I asked why Flynn got fired,” Colin Powell, the former secretary of state and national security adviser, wrote in an email to his son that has since been leaked. “Abusive with staff, didn’t listen, worked against policy, bad management, etc. He has been and was right-wing nutty every [sic] since.”

As Flynn became a more vocal conservative activist — leading chants of “lock her up” at the Republican National Convention, tweeting, “Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL” — former colleagues like retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal (who worked with Flynn in Iraq and Afghanistan) and retired admiral and former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Michael Mullen contacted him and urged him to cut it out. Two other retired officers told Vox’s Yochi Dreazen that they viewed Flynn as “unhinged.”

Flynn also showed a remarkable willingness to cozy up to dictatorial regimes — especially when they’re paying. On Election Day, he wrote an op-ed calling on the US to extradite Fethullah Gülen, an exiled Turkish cleric whom the current regime in Turkey blames for a July coup attempt; Flynn compared the coup to 9/11 and asked what the US would do if Osama bin Laden were living peacefully in Turkey. But when the coup actually happened, Flynn called it something “worth clapping for” and attacked the Turkish government. What happened in between is that a Turkish government–aligned firm hired Flynn’s private intelligence firm.

Most revealing of all, Flynn repeatedly took a sympathetic line with regards to Russia, appearing regularly on its propaganda network RT and accepting payment for a speech at a 2015 anniversary party for the channel — a party at which he was seated next to Vladimir Putin. “People went crazy,” retired Brig. Gen. Peter Zwack told the Post’s Priest and Miller. “They thought it was so out of bounds, so unusual.”

Then, after all of this, Trump hired this person as national security adviser. If the White House didn’t have all this information, it should have — it was all public knowledge. The Priest and Miller story came out in August. Trump hired Flynn anyway. That was his first mistake.

His second was keeping Flynn as long as he did.²

 

Of course, the so-called new guy’s swamp is still filled with all sorts of nefarious people. From the blonde spokeswraith to the various and sundry white nationalists that slank about the halls of the people’s house, fascism seems to be alive and well in the white house. And now the so-called new guy and his spokespeople are sending Saturday Night Live’s ratings into overdrive while his own plummet. Rightly so when you think about it. He lied his way into office and it’s only appropriate to skewer him on his way out.

Apparently, the Office of Government Ethics wants the spokeswraith to be disciplined over hawking ³ the so-called new guy’s daughter’s jewelry from the white house. And then I read this from R Muse at Politicus USA:

Even the most ardent conservative who believes the government exists solely to prevent them from becoming a billionaire and drive them into dire poverty likely rests comfortably at night knowing that government is protecting the nation’s security. Chief among the agencies protecting the nation is the expansive intelligence community (IC) consisting of, that we know, 16 separate agencies. Although it’s true the military is tasked with physically defending the nation’s interests at home and abroad, they are as dependent on data and information from the intelligence community as the White House that orders the military into action.

It is beyond comprehension that the intelligence community would ever distrust the White House to the extent that it withheld critical intelligence from the current occupant, but that is precisely what is happening and it signals that this nation is in a state of distress. When the intelligence community, all 16 entities, cannot trust the man serving as president or his trusted advisors to protect national secrets every American alive should be terrified and demand corrective action immediately, no matter what that action entails or no matter who is “corrected” out of their unwarranted positions of power.(4)

Well now. Our intelligence community distrusts the so-called new guy. How about that. And according to Shannon Argueta at The Daily Banter quoting portions of an interview with Matt Lauer, Ms. Conway fumbled a bit and made it look as if the so-called new guy knew all along who Flynn was and didn’t care. Inae Oh from Mother Jones reports that Spicer said his boss knew for weeks. No wonder our intelligence community is concerned, as we all should be.

Why do I think this is just the tip of a very large iceberg that his supporters have gifted us with? Are they all Putin supporters? Or were they conned by the biggest con artist of all? But then who is that person? Is it Putin, Bannon, that Miller guy, the blonde spokeswraith? Or is it the so-called new guy? Who is really pulling the strings now in this country?

According to other reports I’ve read, republicans in Congress are physically running away from their constituents and town halls are apparently full of people who actually like having health insurance. One fool was shouted down after bringing up death panels. Fascinating when you finally understand that it’s republican ideology behind those death panels. They all appear happy to control the room now. Never mind there won’t be one when they’re through.

I don’t watch cable news anymore. I have a news reader, Feedly, that I like and I use it as a news source. I was able only last Saturday to watch Saturday Night Live and that’s only because of Melissa McCarthy. The news is far too disturbing to laugh at most days and although I try to take a dispassionate view, it’s just too difficult at times.

Even when we had a president that I didn’t vote for there was at least some level of decorum in our government. We lost much of that from a Congress who just couldn’t get past our electing a black president. And now we have this embarrassment. And as far as I can tell, he’s only going to get worse. None of them appear to have any clue how to govern and at the rate they’re going, they might as well have Putin or one of his minions at every meeting.

Without any other proof of election tampering, the responsibility falls squarely on the shoulders of his supporters who believed in a conman. How we go forward together to fix all of this is going to be interesting to watch but we’ll have to if we’re to survive this fool.

Forgiveness can be tough. But we’re tougher.

Blessed Be

 

References

1. Vox.com. Why it’s a bad idea for Trump aides to use their phone flashlights to read documents

2. Donald Trump wants to know who’s causing all these problems. It’s Donald Trump.

3. The Office of Government Ethics wants Kellyanne Conway to be disciplined

4. Opinion: If Intelligence Community Can’t Trust White House, America Is in Distress

5. In Rare Misstep, Kellyanne Conway Admits Trump Knew Michael Flynn Was In Bed With Russia

6. Trump Knew About Michael Flynn Situation for “Weeks,” Sean Spicer Says