Category Archives: Donald Trump

Thanks, POTUS, For Breaking Up The Annual Correspondent’s Circle Jerk

Celebrity, Donald Trump, Ethics, Media, Pop-Culture

Thanks, POTUS, For Breaking Up The Annual Correspondent’s Circle Jerk” is the current essay now on the Daily Caller. An excerpt:

As a newly elected president, Donald Trump was quick to take one of Washington’s institutional pillars down a peg. By snubbing the 2017 annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner (WHCD), the president deflated what should have been more appropriately called the Sycophants’ Supper. Would that it was the last such supper. For now, the POTUS’s slap to this gathering of sycophants this past weekend will have to do.

Like nothing else, the annual Correspondents’ Dinner is a mark of a corrupt politics. It’s a sickening specter, where some of the most pretentious, worthless people in the country—in politics, journalism and entertainment—convene to revel in their ability to petition and curry favor with one another, usually to the detriment of the rest of us in Rome’s provinces.

Those gathered at the Annual Correspondents’ Dinner, or its Christmas party, are not the country’s natural aristocracy, but its authentic Idiocracy. No matter how poor their predictive powers, no matter how many times they get it wrong—in war and in peace—the presstitutes always find time for this orgy of self-praise

And they’re all on the same circuit, beavering at sculpting celebrity personas. Anchors at major networks hangout on late-night shows, where presidents and first ladies hobnob, too. Jimmy Fallon’s “Tonight Show” may be a vaudeville of giggles, goofiness, and mind-numbing banter. But providing bread and circuses for Booboisie comes with a “responsibility” the dancing, prancing, androgynous Mr. Fallon takes seriously. To his tomfoolery, Fallon once added a spot of promotion for ObamaCare (March, 2014), to honor Michelle Obama’s visit to the set. Fallon’s lead was a signal to Sister Act. FLOTUS launched into her own agitprop for her husband’s healthcare juggernaut on that show.

Meanwhile, “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central is a professional Shangri-La for the cast of characters at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. This year, the downright mirthless “Daily Show” donated one Hasan Minhaj as its circus clown to amuse the sycophants. I hope he came for free, for Hasan is worthless as a funny man. Not a funny bone in his body.

Hasan’s idea of verbal swordplay: calling The Donald “liar in chief.” The quip has 9,650,000 results on Google, most of them unrelated to hackneyed Hasan. “Liar in chief” goes back to 2011 and before, and has been applied to every president and candidate since 2011.

Hasan’s “originality” came together in lines as, “I would like to say it’s an honor to be here, but that would be an alternative fact.” He also invented a new form of satire: the sermon on The Hill. Interspersed with kvetching—“No one wanted to do this so, of course, it landed in the hands of an immigrant, [t]hat’s how it always goes down”was a string of clichés on the press’ duty to do a better job. For “our democracy,” you know.

The press is meant to be roasted at the WHCD. Were I a Muslim ostensibly roasting the press, like Hasan, I’d lampoon how present company covers my peaceful religion. But to do that, Hasan would have to be clever, creative, and willing to say what everyone is thinking but is too afraid to say. He’s none of those.

Someone who’s all of those things is Anthony Jeselnik. Here’s a demonstration, for future mediocrities to emcee an event like the annual Correspondents’ Dinner. It’s courtesy of the gifted (and gorgeous) Mr. Jeselnik, whose rape and Holocaust jokes are obviously more irreverent than his digs at Islam. (Smart. The offended cohort won’t KILL YOU.) To the president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council: …

… READ THE REST. “Thanks, POTUS, For Breaking Up The Annual Correspondent’s Circle Jerk” is the current essay now on the Daily Caller.

UPDATED (5/17): Witless And Wall-less In America. Lots of Wars On The Go, Though

Ann Coulter, Celebrity, Conservatism, Donald Trump, IMMIGRATION, Media, Neoconservatism, Pop-Culture, Private Property, War

UPDATED (5/17):


Stephen Colbert: Witless.

Another banal brain. So boring:

The Wall?

Those grants of government privilege, continued.

Nothing changes. Fox News never keeps them honest.

Borders abroad: We’ll pay to protect those.

MAGA? No. This doesn’t even making Afghanistan Great Again.

Fighting wars of choice is the neocon way.

Linguistic evolution needed.  Tribal leaders say they don’t have word for Wall in their languages. Then time to invent one. Languages evolve.

Is an epic betrayal in the offing?

Ann Coulter is mad as hell this week and was mad as hell last week. As she should be.

UPDATE II (5/11): Weasel Words About The TRUMP Tax Plan

Business, Donald Trump, libertarianism, Private Property, Taxation

I thought I’d listen to some wise words from David Stockman about the Trump tax plan. Stockman is, after all, a hero of libertarians. Instead, I got an earful of weasel words.

I can’t listen to a “libertarian” prattle about “paying for tax cuts.” You’re no libertarian if you talk like this. Taxes are private property stolen. Tax cuts are private property returned to its rightful owners. Or, so we hope. “Paying for tax cuts”: These are weasel words.

UPDATED 5/3:
Larry Kudlow, Stephen Moore (he wrote a book praising the Bush ‘ownership society,’ more candidly known as the mortgage bubble), anyone?

Corporate America, on the other hand, will benefit big time:

Reduction of rates, but no restructuring of the tax code:

Corporate America über alles.

This seems related, don’t you think?

UPDATE II (5/11):

Mainstream Media, don’t tell America. Trump Admin strikes a trade deal with China to boost exports & benefit the US!

Here’s What Korean War Number II Would Look Like, Donald Trump

America, Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, Military, War

How insane is it to threaten Korean War Number II! Unlike Chucky Krauthammer and Ivanka, the great, grizzled journalist Eric Margolis knows what it’ll look like. Why he’s even been to North Korea. Come to think of it, Dennis Rodman may know more about Pyongyang and its potentate than Donald Trump and his military mad dogs.

And unlike the idiots surrounding the president, Margolis’ visits to South and North Korea have shown him “that soldiers of both nations are amazingly tough, patriotic and ready to fight. I’ve also been under the Demilitarized Zone in some of the warren of secret tunnels built by North Korea under South Korean fortifications. Hundreds of North Korean long-range 170mm guns and rocket batteries are buried into the hills facing the DMZ, all within range of the northern half of South Korea’s capital, Seoul. North Korea is unlikely to be a pushover in a war”:

… [I]f heavily attacked, a fight-to-the-end North Korea may fire off a number of nuclear-armed medium-range missiles at Tokyo, Osaka, Okinawa and South Korea. These missiles are hidden in caves in the mountains on wheeled transporters and hard to identify and knock out.

This is a huge risk. Such a nuclear exchange would expose about a third of the world’s economy to nuclear contamination, not to mention spreading nuclear winter around the globe.

US analysts have in the past estimated a US invasion of North Korea would cost some 250,000 American casualties and at least $10 billion, though I believe such a war would cost four times that much today. The Army, Air Force and Marines would have to mobilize reserves to wage a war in Korea. Already overstretched US forces would have to be withdrawn from Europe and the Mideast. Military conscription might have to be re-introduced.

US war planners believe that an attempt to assassinate or isolate North Korean leader Kim Jung-un – known in the military as ‘decapitation’- would cause the North Korean armed forces to scatter and give up. I don’t think so.

… Even after US/South Korean forces occupy Pyongyang, the North has prepared for a long guerilla war in the mountains that could last for decades. They have been practicing for 30 years. Chaos in North Korea will invite Chinese military intervention, but not necessarily to the advantage of the US and its allies. …

READ “What Would Korean War II Look Like?”