The Last of The October Drawings

Happy Halloween!

More below the fold.

Dark Money Co-opts the IRS and No One Says A Word

This meme was mainstreamed by Rupert Murdoch

The comatose mainstream news media ignored the story yesterday, preferring instead to act as amanuenses to the GOP’s alt-Russia conspiracy lunacy (see my post “The GOPpelgänger Cometh“, and Jonathan Chait’s New York Magazine story of two days later, with essentially the same analysis).

Here’s a typical “report” on it:

Justice Department settles IRS lawsuits from 400 conservative groups claiming discrimination
Kevin Johnson / USA Today

WASHINGTON – Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Thursday that the Justice Department is settling class action lawsuits brought by more than 400 conservative groups who said they were “improperly” …

And here is the GOPaganda version:

Trump DOJ settles lawsuits over Tea Party targeting by Obama IRS
Brooke Singman / Fox News

The Trump administration, after years of litigation, has settled lawsuits with Tea Party and other conservative groups who say they were unfairly targeted by the IRS under the Obama administration.

[…]

“The IRS’s use of these criteria as a basis for heightened scrutiny was wrong and should never have occurred,” Sessions said in a statement Thursday. “It is improper for the IRS to single out groups for different treatment based on their names or ideological positions.” While the IRS did not immediately respond to Fox News’ request for comment, court documents show that the agency did offer an apology….

And their trailing gaggle of GOPagandists can be seen here. But let me disabuse the uneducated. And let me NOT allow poisonous GOPaganda to be swallowed without a peep from our “watchdog” press. 

The GOPpelgänger Cometh

Grab your britches and hitch up your drawers, kiddies. Mister Trump’s Wild Ride to Toad Hall just found a new gear.

Clinton campaign, DNC paid for research that led to Russia dossier
Washington Post

The Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee helped fund research that resulted in a now-famous dossier containing allegations about Donald Trump’s connections to Russia and possible coordination between …

“helped fund”: remember that term. It is crucial to your interpretation of the story.

It was only a matter of time before the unholy covens of the Republican Echo Chamber came up with a GOPpelgänger argument to reflexively counter the “Russia” story. As the drowning scorpion said to the dying frog: I can’t help it; it’s my nature.  But who would have thought that they would come up with a narrative that may well rend this nation asunder.

Here’s the short of it: The Clintons (and, hazily Obama because he’s a Kenyan) and the FBI, led by hyper-liberal James Comey, were all in collusion to sell uranium to the Russians, to fund the evil Pee Pee Dossier, and to generally … cause the Republican’ts (sic) to, er … lose?

Is disgraced former Judge Roy Moore clue-challenged?

Another day, another dullard:

Senate Candidate Roy Moore Says NFL Protesters Are Breaking the Law

Nash Jenkins / TIME

—  Senate candidate Roy Moore believes that professional athletes who take a knee during the national anthem are breaking the law.  —  In an interview with TIME magazine, the Alabama Republican argued that NFL players …

Not only is he wrong, but he’s pretty much B-F Crazy™ to boot. His legal illiteracy is well-known, having been removed from the Supreme Court of Alabama bench TWICE for ignoring law that he didn’t like. Now he wants to MAKE laws. But this is the Year of the Incompetent® so who knows?

In an interview with TIME magazine, the Alabama Republican argued that NFL players and others who have protested police violence are violating a section of the U.S. code which outlines how people should conduct themselves when the anthem is played. (The code merely outlines proper etiquette, and there are no legal penalties outlined in the law.)

 “It’s against the law, you know that?” he said. “It was a act of Congress that every man stand and put their hand over their heart. That’s the law.”

Wrong. W.R.O.N.G. Ok?

Holy Guacamole, Callista!

Look: I entirely agree with President Grant that the United States of America doesn’t have any business sending ambassadors to churches. But Ronnie Ray-gun overturned that apple-cart in 1983 so he could suck up to John Paul II, and we have continued the scrofulous tradition. I have great respect for the current pope and for the institution of the Roman Catholic Church, but we don’t have any business establishing embassies here or there. I don’t notice any lack of Catholic churches and personnel.

The unfairly maligned President U. S. Grant

That said, once we accept that the USA IS going to send an ambassador, are we out of our tiny minds?

Senate votes to confirm Callista Gingrich as Vatican envoy
By Richard Lardner | AP October 16 at 6:33 PM

WASHINGTON — The Republican-led Senate on Monday confirmed Callista Gingrich, wife of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, as the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican. Senators approved her nomination, 70-23, with more than 20 Democrats joining Republicans in backing her for the post. Newt Gingrich is an ally of Trump, who had announced in May that he would nominate the former congressman’s wife.

Callista Gingrich is president of Gingrich Productions and has produced a number of documentaries, including one about Pope John Paul II. She worked for the House Committee on Agriculture as chief clerk until 2007. She was a key figure in her husband’s 2012 bid for the Republican presidential nomination. She was a congressional aide when she began a six-year affair with Newt Gingrich, then a married Republican lawmaker from Georgia….

Nightmare on Pennsylvania Avenue

Friday the Thirteenth. For you triskaidekaphobics:

15 states sue over Trump-halted ObamaCare payments
Rachel Roubein / The Hill

A new multistate lawsuit has been announced to stop President Trump from halting key ObamaCare payments to insurers.  —  Fifteen states and Washington, D.C., are signing onto the new lawsuit, which will be filed Friday …

The rich man has aimed his revenge directly at the poor, in order to “get” Obama. Flustered and flummoxed, ultimately, by the People’s representatives, he decides to unilaterally scuttle as much of Obamacare as possible by going after the insurance businesses.

By cutting the subsidies that “make up” the portion of the premiums that the poor don’t pay (not the poorest, who, long since, were denied Medicaid coverage by Republicans in twenty-plus states) just as open enrollment is set to begin, he hopes to force insurance companies OUT of the market.

Thus sabotaging Obamacare, the Law of the Land™, in direct defiance to his solemn oath to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution and laws of these United States of America. But none dare call “impeach.”

I am speechless. But not meme-less.

The Drawings of October

A dozen new drawings, mostly from the Maryhill Art Museum, in the Columbia Gorge, outside of Goldendale, Washington.

Art has nothing to do with taste. Art is not there to be tasted

— Max Ernst

Donald Trump’s War on Decency, plus GÖPperdämmerung

Donald Jong Trump is NOT a Christian, let’s get that straight. If, “by their fruits ye shall know them” is accurate, then the fruit of Trump has been naught but meadow muffins, steaming cow pies  of selfishness, narcissism and poorly masked sadism.

I suppose that it is telling that I’m far more pissed off that Trump has decided to destroy the credibility of the American word (with abrogating the multi-lateral Iran agreement) and to directly attack 62 million American women by pretending that “Christian” morals (although the administration will argue ALL morals, we know it’s the “Pro-Life” fascists he’s placating) than that I am angered by the GOP’s direct attack on my life, by attempting to destroy Obamacare — the only reason that I did NOT die in hospital last year, but actually got the treatment and drugs that have kept me alive and even returned my life to a livable, tolerable degree of health.

From November 15, 2016

It’s a character failing I have: I tend to become far more exercised at the injustices of others than to threats to my person. Why? Dunno. But it’s a fact, jack, going back to my taking on of my Third Grade teacher for making a speech accusing the Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts of violating the Green River Law. (My parents and the principal agreed that I was right, but told me not to tell anyone, inaugurating my career as a political troublemaker. She retired at the end of that year, sparing the second graders of Nellie Iles her rather vicious ministrations thereafter.)

So, take my last essay, and add a zero to the final score. Listen to the stamp of tiny jackboots:

Watch: Sarah Huckabee Sanders callously laughs at women who will lose their birth control
Kaili Joy Gray / Shareblue

For the Trump administration to block women’s access to birth control is bad enough.  To laugh at those women is exceptionally cruel.  Donald Trump has utterly failed to deliver on his threat to repeal Obamacare and harm the millions of men and women who have health care because of it. So he’s going to punish women directly instead.

On Friday, his administration announced that he is rolling back the critical provision that covers birth control — a cruel, unnecessary, and costly decision that will affect 62 million women and their families…

Nothing “Christian” in that. But the modern “Christian” evangelicals aren’t actually Christians either, so it all works out: cruelty masked as religion; misogyny masked as “Christianity.”

Slimed

Screencap from NBC. Commentary by HW

AP-NORC Poll: Low marks for Trump’s Puerto Rico response
By LAURIE KELLMAN AND EMILY SWANSON, ASSOCIATED PRESS 
WASHINGTON — Oct 4, 2017, 1:22 PM ET

Americans are more likely to disapprove than approve of President Donald Trump’s handling of the Puerto Rico hurricane relief effort.

According to a poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, just 32 percent approve of how Trump is handling disaster relief in the U.S. territory, while 49 percent disapprove.

“It took him how long to get to Puerto Rico?” said Bree Harris, a 25-year-old chef and Democrat from Los Angeles. She suspects Trump “didn’t even know that Puerto Rico was an island that was part of America. It’s embarrassing.”

Embarrassing? Well, yes, but then that is a monumental understatement.

I guess it was the spectacle of watching the Hirsute Cheeto Beast pretending to be a t-shirt gun in distributing paper towels to Puerto Ricans devastated by Hurricane Maria in perhaps the single most obscene photo op since the Bush Baby took over a square in New Orleans and backlit an equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson  so that he could have HIS Hurricane Katrina photo op in a city whose ONLY electricity (virtually) was from the generators Bush’s handlers set up to light his photo op — it was the spectacle of the cottonelle towel tossing that finally did it.

Shooting: The Obligatory Liberal is Sacrificed to Right Wing PeeCee

Well, here it is, as predictable as an eclipse and just as malevolent:

CBS Legal Exec: No Sympathy For Vegas ‘Because Country Music Fans Often Are Republican’
Will Ricciardella / The Daily Caller

A top legal executive at CBS, Hayley Geftman-Gold, said she “is not even sympathetic” for the victims of the shooting at a country music festival at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas Sunday night.

In a tweet. And was fired. Score one for the Revenge of the 101st Chairborne.

O, Absalom. THIS festival of Right Wing Hate is now atop Memeorandum as I write this. In other words, it is the TOP CONCERN of the blogosphere (increasingly dominated by the giant News Korporations that the blogosphere originally counterbalanced, you will note.)