This Is Not My Beautiful House

Revolution Not Be On The Netflix

The Bush years began with his appointment to the Presidency and ended with hundreds of thousands of dead in Iraq, the worst economic disaster since 1929; government-sanctioned communications surveillance; a dozen dump trucks carting away shredded documents from Dick Cheney's residence; and Wee Georgie leaving town after Obama's first Inaugural address with a sour look on his face. For eight years, it was a wasteland of mediocrity, greed, mendacity, and death. Not to put too fine a point on it or anything.

On the lighter side, for six of those eight years, Democrats and Other liberals could tune in every week to watch The West Wing on NBC. Developed by lead writer / producer Aaron Sorkin (Moneyball; Charlie Wilson's War; Steve Jobs), TWW ran from September 22, 1999 -- while the Clinton administration was still in office and before Bush v. Gore --  to May 14, 2006.

The story follows the administration of a fictional President, Josiah Bartlett (Martin Sheen), his family and staff, through two terms in office. Sorkin was only involved for the first few seasons but the program was moderately popular over its full seven seasons. The cast (in particular, Stockard Channing, Allison Janney; Dulé Hill; James Spencer, Richard Schiff; Bradley Whitford and Janel Moloney; Rob Lowe appeared during the first two seasons and Jimmy Smits in the last two) were well-chosen. They did exactly what a good acting ensemble should: Made you believe, and made you care what happened to their characters.

More than half the country believed that the 2000 election had been stolen by thugs, and Fredo Corleone ("I'm not stupid -- not like everybody says !!! I'm smart !!!"), had been appointed President by the Scalia Court. As the Bush years progressed and the 2004 election all came down to more questionable voting in Ohio, The West Wing was a counterpoint to the rabid dysfunction in Washington -- though Wee Georgie and his retainers still had two and a half years left to bugger the country in his second term when the last episode was broadcast.

I liked TWW as teevee. I understood it was an escapist fantasy for liberals, trapped in what we believed were the Dark Ages. It was well-acted and funny -- in a way those troglodyte right-wing stupidheads could never be; of course. Right. The staff and President Bartlett didn't always win their battles against clever, greasy right-wingers, but we were left with the image of  forward motion towards a better future under a left-of-center leadership.

Not everyone believed the program was a good advertisement for American democracy, but so long as actual war in the Middle East was distant, and The Good Times rolled, The West Wing was great entertainment.

Since 2006, a lot has happened.  We understand now that presenting serious questions and offering potential solutions in a television drama is no substitute for those issues being addressed and solved. Watching a fictional, responsible left-wing Presidency on the small screen is not the same as actually having a liberal government in office -- one that walks the walk of its ethical and moral talk, and makes decisions that benefit the interests of all its citizens as opposed to a small percentage of them. Having bittersweet satisfaction in seeing Goodness triumph in D.C., while the actual government is run by fanatic True Believers bent on domination and revenge, is no satisfaction at all.

(I might add that, as satisfying as using a bow and arrow or six-foot, two-handed sword might appear to be, scenes of dystopian imbalance and revolution in Hunger Games or Thing Of Thrones might be fun but don't relate to life in 21st century America after November 8, 2016.)

In the new era we're about to plunge into, I hope no one attempts to revive The West Wing, or anything like it.  We don't have the luxury of watching a substitute for Raising The Issues -- the issues are in the streets. They're in our faces, whether we like it or not. We don't need escapism. We need resolution. And we need resistance.

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Zukunft

That Which Has No Shape

Zukunft (Zoo/kun/ft): The Future. The word Kunft is from kommen, which is to come. And the word zu can be translated as to, so in a way Zukunft means nothing other than: to come.

(And, all you wags out there: Turn the page now.)

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What Michelle Goldberg Said.
All over this country, the deplorables arewilding. “US Hate Crimes Spark Anxiety in the Wake of Trump Win,” says a Financial Times headline. Reports CNN, “Fears of heightened bigotry and hate crimes have turned into reality for some Americans after Donald Trump’s presidential win.” Fliers at Texas State University said that in the wake of Trump’s victory, it’s time “to organize tar and feather vigilante squads and go arrest and torture those deviant university leaders spouting off all this diversity garbage.” ...

Trump has taken time to denounce the protesters filling city streets to express their horror at his election but not the people committing violence in his name. He has not, for example, said a word about the Trump victory parade that the Ku Klux Klan is holding in North Carolina.

What Peter Thai Larsen Said.
...an explicitly inward-looking America would have a far-reaching impact on the world. Protectionist measures might prompt other countries to retaliate... Countries that previously sheltered under the U.S. military umbrella would rearm, adding to regional tensions.

There are no other hegemons ready to step in. The European Union is grappling with a stagnant economy, a wave of migration and the threat of an expansionist Russia. Several of its members could suffer Trump-like insurrections next year. ...

China, meanwhile, will strengthen its grip on Asia: the Philippines and Malaysia are already cosying up to the People's Republic. However, China's extraordinary growth over the last three decades has largely depended on its ability to hitch a free ride on the global system of trade and finance policed by the United States.

What Valerie Volcovici Said.
The election of climate change skeptic Donald Trump as president is likely to end the U.S. leadership role in the international fight against global warming ... Trump has called global warming a hoax created by China to give it an economic advantage ... He has appointed noted climate change skeptic Myron Ebell to help lead transition planning for the Environmental Protection Agency.

What Mandos @Ian Welch Said.
5. The Supreme Court appointment issue is the worst thing to come out of this. A court that has assisted an unjust legal and social order has ensured the perpetuation of its worst elements.

What Digby Said.
Popular disgust with the status quo propelled Trump to the presidency as a Republican. It arose because after decades of being played for dupes by their leaders, the GOP base finally caught on that they were being bullshitted. Finally, people rebelled. Also against Democrats more interested in business interests than voters'. What made Trump their champion was how he out-bullshitted the bullshitters. Somehow, in spite of his sketchy personal history, this made him seem more honest and trustworthy. We will see how far Trump's talent for bullshitting gets him with supporters once he breaks their hearts.

What TT Said. Kind Of.
(See it Here At The Nation.)

What Dan Wright Said.
There’s no way to sweep this under the rug: the American people have voted to end the empire. The entire imperial apparatus lined up behind former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to become president. Former CIA Director Mike Morrell even publicly endorsed Clinton and called her opponent an “unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.”

But it was ultimately Donald Trump who prevailed in the election. Trump spent the entirety of his campaign attacking the foreign policy of George W. Bush and one of its chief advocates, Clinton. First Trump took down former Florida Governor Jeb Bush in the primary by slamming the Iraq War and Jeb’s ambivalence surrounding it. Then he used Clinton’s support for the Iraq War and regime change in Libya to call her “trigger happy” and dangerous.

... Trump’s realism and Clinton’s history of aggression and interventionist positioning led to a neoconservative exodus from the Republican Party. The neocons uniformly opposed Trump from the beginning and before long they all endorsed Clinton. By election day, almost all of the 2003 Iraq War architects and cheerleaders supported Clinton or at least said they would not vote for Trump.

In the final debate, Clinton said she would launch an air war against Russia and the Syrian government to establish a No Fly Zone in Syria, then accused Trump of being a “puppet” of Russian President Vladimir Putin for not supporting it. Trump coolly responded that he thought it would be good for the country and world if America and Russia got along.

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 What Matt Taibbi Said.

... Shunned during election season by many in his own party, President-elect Trump's closest advisers are a collection of crackpots and dilettantes who will make Bush's cabinet look like the Nobel committee. The head of his EPA transition team, Myron Ebell, is a noted climate-change denier. Pyramid enthusiast and stabbing expert Ben Carson is already being mentioned as a possible Health and Human Services chief. Rudy Giuliani, probably too unhinged by now for even a People's Court reboot, might be attorney general. God only knows who might end up being Supreme Court nominees; we can only hope they turn out to be lawyers, or at least people who played lawyers onscreen...

Trump made idiots of us all [i.e., in the media]. From the end of primary season onward, I felt sure Trump was en route to ruining, perhaps forever, the Republican Party as a force in modern American life. Now the Republicans are more dominant than ever, and it is the Democratic Party that is shattered and faces an uncertain future.

And they deserve it. The Democratic Party's failure to keep Donald Trump out of the White House in 2016 will go down as one of the all-time examples of insular arrogance. The party not only spent most of the past two years ignoring the warning signs of the Trump rebellion, but vilifying anyone who tried to point them out. It denounced all rumors of its creeping unpopularity as vulgar lies and bullied anyone who dared question its campaign strategy by calling them racists, sexists and agents of Vladimir Putin's Russia.

... Most of us smarty-pants analysts never thought Trump could win because we saw his run as a half-baked white-supremacist movement fueled by last-gasp, racist frustrations of America's shrinking silent majority... no way he could topple America's reigning multicultural consensus. How could he? After all, the country had already twice voted in an African-American Democrat to the White House.

Yes, Trump's win was a triumph of the hideous racism, sexism and xenophobia that has always run through American society. But his coalition also took aim at the neoliberal gentry's pathetic reliance on proxies to communicate with flyover America. They fed on the widespread visceral disdain red-staters felt toward the very people Hillary Clinton's campaign enlisted all year to speak on its behalf: Hollywood actors, big-ticket musicians, Beltway activists, academics, and especially media figures...

Candidate Trump told a story about a conspiracy of cultural and financial elites bent on finishing off a vanishing white middle-class nirvana, first by shipping jobs overseas and then by waving hordes of crime-prone, bomb-tossing immigrants over the border.

These elites lived in both parties, Trump warned. The Republicans were tools of job-exporting fat cats who only pretended to be tough on immigration and trade in order to win votes, when all they really cared about were profits. The Democrats were tools of the same interests, who subsisted politically on the captured votes of hoodwinked minorities, preaching multiculturalism while practicing globalism. Both groups, Trump insisted, were out of touch with the real American voter. Neither party saw the awesome potential of this story to upend our political system.

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Leonard Cohen ( 1934 - 2016 )

Closing Time

Goddamn it. Knew the news was coming, but wasn't ready for it just now.

Ah we're lonely, we're romantic
And the cider's laced with acid
And the holy spirit's crying, where's the beef?
And the moon is swimming naked
And the summer night is fragrant
With a mighty expectation of relief

So we struggle and we stagger
Down the snakes and up the ladder
To the tower where the blessed hours chime
And I swear it happened just like this
A sigh, a cry, a hungry kiss
The gates of love they budged an inch
I can't say much has happened since
But closing time
Closing time
Closing time
Closing time 

 Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died

When people talk about Leonard, they fail to mention his melodies, which to me, along with his lyrics, are his greatest genius. Even the counterpoint lines—they give a celestial character and melodic lift to every one of his songs. As far as I know, no one else comes close to this in modern music. Even the simplest song, like ‘The Law,’ which is structured on two fundamental chords, has counterpoint lines that are essential, and anybody who even thinks about doing this song and loves the lyrics would have to build around the counterpoint lines.

His gift or genius is in his connection to the music of the spheres. In the song ‘Sisters of Mercy,’ for instance, the verses are four elemental lines which change and move at predictable intervals . . . The song just comes in and states a fact. And after that anything can happen and it does, and Leonard allows it to happen...

‘Sisters of Mercy’ is verse after verse of four distinctive lines, in perfect meter, with no chorus, quivering with drama. ... This is a deceptively unusual musical theme, with or without lyrics. But it’s so subtle a listener doesn’t realize he’s been taken on a musical journey and dropped off somewhere, with or without lyrics.

I see no disenchantment in Leonard’s lyrics at all. There’s always a direct sentiment, as if he’s holding a conversation and telling you something, him doing all the talking, but the listener keeps listening. He’s very much a descendant of Irving Berlin... [whose] songs did the same thing. Berlin was also connected to some kind of celestial sphere.

And, like Leonard, he probably had no classical music training, either. Both of them just hear melodies that most of us can only strive for. Berlin’s lyrics also fell into place and consisted of half lines, full lines at surprising intervals, using simple elongated words. Both Leonard and Berlin are incredibly crafty. Leonard particularly uses chord progressions that seem classical in shape. He is a much more savvy musician than you’d think.

-- Bob Dylan 

I loved you for your beauty
But that doesn't make a fool of me
You were in it for your beauty too
And I loved you for your body
There's a voice that sounds like god to me
Declaring, (declaring) declaring, declaring that your body's really you
And I loved you when our love was blessed
And I love you now there's nothing left
But sorrow and a sense of overtime

I know there’s a spiritual aspect to everybody’s life, whether they want to cop to it or not. It’s there, you can feel it in people—there’s some recognition that there is a reality that they cannot penetrate but which influences their mood and activity. So that’s operating. That activity at certain points of your day or night insists on a certain kind of response. Sometimes it’s just like: ‘You are losing too much weight, Leonard. You’re dying, but you don’t have to cooperate enthusiastically with the process.’ Force yourself to have a sandwich.

What I mean to say is that you hear the Bat Kol (divine voice). You hear this other deep reality singing to you all the time, and much of the time you can’t decipher it... At this stage of the game, I hear it saying, ‘Leonard, just get on with the things you have to do.’ It’s very compassionate at this stage. More than at any time of my life, I no longer have that voice that says, ‘You’re fucking up.’ That’s a tremendous blessing, really.

-- Leonard Cohen / September, 2016

And everybody knows that the Plague is coming
Everybody knows that it's moving fast
Everybody knows that the naked man and woman
Are just a shining artifact of the past
Everybody knows the scene is dead
But there's gonna be a meter on your bed
That will disclose
What everybody knows

And everybody knows that you're in trouble
Everybody knows what you've been through
From the bloody cross on top of Calvary
To the beach of Malibu
Everybody knows it's coming apart
Take one last look at this Sacred Heart
Before it blows
And everybody knows

And I missed you since the place got wrecked
And I just don't care what happens next
Looks like freedom but it feels like death
It's something in between, I guess
It's closing time
closing time
closing time
closing time

___________________________

MEHR, Several Hours Later:  The last thing I wanted to do was write a post about this man that had even a hint of self-reference, but remembered a thirty-year-old conversation. 

A long time ago: someone said in a discussion of Sufis and 'The Work' that "There are a lot of people around who say they're looking for answers, want self-enlightenment, and they present a posture -- removed, serious, aesthetic. Like a parody of the Holy Man. And the feeling I get is, they're not authentic. The Sufis I've met have been raw and real, man; There's grit in their voices -- they're like Blues singers. They've been around the fucking block, they've done some things, and they know what really matters. They're not saints -- 'rogue sage'; you know? -- but about the Big Things, you can trust them."

Cohen loved the Blues. He sang them, no matter what style his songs were.  He spoke simply, straight from the heart, about The Big Questions.  His music, the way he lived his life, was grappling with those questions and his human condition, and ours, unashamedly. He was no saint, but an honest and sincere seeker of Truth -- and his music was a commentary on that stumbling around in the dark. His work was illuminated by a long family Rabbinical tradition; he was born with a Heart On Fire.

His songs were in the language of missed chances, relationships spoiled by ego or greed or a simple misunderstanding; ecstatic revelry and bone-crushing disappointment. When he sang politics, it was about choice and betrayal from the level of someone in the street. He told you: This is what happened to me. I don't know what all this is. I don't know what I'm doing, either; you're not alone out here. It was like the end of Moby Dick: A thing happened; buoyed up by a coffin, I came back to tell thee.

And what he sang about was a reminder that everything in this world was part of something else  -- The Big Questions, maybe. And he sang about that all the way to the end -- "You Want It Darker", his album released in October.

People sense how much truth they're being told by others, moment to moment, moving through the world. The number of people who speak in an authentic voice that we recognize, instinctively, as being true are very few. Poets can do this; Cohen was a poet, first, which is how I met him (only discovered later that the guy had albums of music, too, which made sense). From his work, he was recognizable as being as egotistical, confused, scheming, greedy; fucked up; kind, generous; lonely and longing -- as human, as I am. He had the energy and talent to share his particular vision, and it resonated with a wide audience.

When someone like that leaves the room, I grieve, because they're so few. And I'm pretty damned sad (The Best Friend texted back "Goddamned shit storm November" when I told them Cohen had died). I understand: never knew the man personally; it's the connections on so many levels to memory and hope and experience that add to the emotions. And there was Fucking Tuesday; and, today.  We're all going to have to leave the room -- if I can bow out in the same frame of mind, with the same intent as he was reported to have, that would be an act of grace.

Another Mensch leaves us. Now he knows what we do not -- but he was frankly curious, without much fear, as to whatever that is.

___________________________

Also, remembering the day, and Absent Friends. "We Have Done So Much With So Little For So Long That We Could Do Everything With Nothing Forever" (1969 - 1971)

Avanti !

Faremo Una Nuova Nazione Del Popolo!

Today, we introduce a new Blog category: Duce!

You must always be doing things and obviously succeeding. The hard part is to keep people always 'at the window', because of the spectacle you put on for them. And you must do this for years.
 --  Benito Mussolini

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MEHR, VON DIE ZUKUNFT:

Welkommen ins die neues Welt!
 

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UND NOCH IMMER MEHR:

... I actually feel quite sorry for Hillary Clinton as a person because I see someone who is eaten alive by their ambitions, tormented literally to the point where they become sick; they faint as a result of [the reaction] to their ambitions. She represents a whole network of people and a network of relationships with particular states.  

The question is, how does Hilary Clinton fit in this broader network?  She's a centralizing cog. You've got a lot of different gears in operation from the big banks like Goldman Sachs and major elements of Wall Street, and Intelligence and people in the State Department and the Saudis. She's the centralizer that inter-connects all these different cogs.  She's the smooth central representation of all that, and "all that" is more or less what is in power now in the United States. 

It's what we call the establishment or the DC consensus. One of the more significant Podesta emails that we released was about how the Obama cabinet was formed and how half the Obama cabinet was basically nominated by a representative from CitiBank. This is quite amazing....

... [Let's talk about] Donald Trump. What does he represent in the American mind and in the European mind?  ... Because he so clearly -- through his words and actions and the type of people that turn up at his rallies -- represents people who are not the middle, not the upper middle educated class, there is a fear of seeming to be associated in any way with them, a social fear that lowers the class status of anyone who can be accused of somehow assisting Trump in any way, including any criticism of Hillary Clinton. If you look at how the middle class gains its economic and social power, that makes absolute sense.

--  Julian Assange; Interview with John Pilger 
(Read some of it here, or watch the entire interview on UTub. Go. Now.)

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MEHR, MIT 'WARUM KOMMT TRUMP?'

... nothing shifted. People have been homeless, addicted, without protection or help from government for thirty years now. Hillary wanted, it was rumored, to privatize social security. The US population is drugged, desperate, and angry. But THAT America is invisible in media. People toil for minimum wage, as guest workers in their own country. Unpaid internships are now the norm. College degrees mean shit...

Trump is not the answer, of course. He is the symptom... of the virus of neoliberal Capitalism. I never thought Trump would win because I didn’t think he wanted to win. And maybe, maybe he didn’t. None of that mattered, as it turned out...

[But w]hen you have fifty bucks in the bank, how important is it that Trump makes sexist jokes? The public turned more and more as the campaign process went on. Never have the debates looked so staged and fake. Never have they seemed so removed from daily life for most Americans. The... poor black and latino communities could find little enthusiasm for either candidate. But I sensed a resentment to the smug liberals that come to gentrify neighborhoods, and who ASSUME everyone should think as they do. ... The poor are the object of derision and are patronized and ridiculed. 

The one thing I am surprised about... is that the Clinton machine allowed it to happen. But then, in certain corners of the financial elite, trust was eroding in their favored candidate. But the Dems were arrogant, too. And inept. They ran a terrible campaign with one of the worst candidates ever to run for president. So, no, it wasn’t sexism or racism, it was anger at the status quo. An inarticulate anger, but still anger.  The big mistake of liberals was to think Trump was bringing fascism, without realizing fascism was already here.

-- John Steppling, "The Big Split" / Counterpunch, November 10, 2016

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Weimar

Wrong

Put On A Happy Face.  Or, Not.

Clinton would win. Of course; aber natürlich she would. Because the idea of a victory by Trump was so far outside the bounds of possibility. It was laughable; worse, it was stupid, and I said exactly that here and elsewhere, over and over.

Trump was a joke. He was clownish, 'Brassy', utterly without gravitas. He was like the owner of the hardware store in a small town, outwardly successful (though there were stories about how he ran that business), a member of the country club, invited to all the right public parties -- but no one would ever suggest he had a serious chance if he ran for mayor. This asshole?  Ha ha; no.

And, the people who supported Trump had to be troglodyte, tin-foil-hat wearing, racist, misogynist Brownshirts. They lapped up propaganda paid for by the Koch Brothers, as eagerly as anything being passed in the right-wing public vomatorium. They were bitter-enders, the "twenty-four per centers'; of course they were. There couldn't be enough of them in America to elect that, that -- person.  My America was (at a minimum) progressive, fact-based, secular. There was no room for the kind of Tea Partei intolerance and lunacy which Trump's running mate (and now Vice-President) Pence tried enacting into law in Indiana.

Trump's supporters were angry that America has been moving down the wrong path, its political priorities not addressing what they saw as our critical needs -- oddly enough, I feel the same. But our ideas of 'critical needs' are diametrically opposed. And most conservatives I've met seem to have basic assumptions about How The World Works that just make me foam whenever I hear them -- and if they're evangelical conservatives, I start veering into Stroke territory. Thank god, I thought: they're only the 24%. Not enough to move the dial.

Hillary, as distasteful as her assumption of power might be to me, would obviously win and I felt some license to be snarky and sarcastic. After all, she would win anyway, right? Of course.

And the numbers that appeared in Nate Silver's analysis of the electorate at fivethirtyeight.com supported that assumption. Silver, the Quant / pollster who defied 'conventional wisdom' in 2012 (predicting a second term for Obama when most polls and the GOP declared Romney the probable winner), consistently predicted Clinton a shoe-in:  as of Tuesday, November 8, her estimated chances of winning were 71.4%; Trump's were 24.6%.  The last message posted at the 538 site yesterday was:

Throughout the election, our forecast models have consistently come to two conclusions. First, that Hillary Clinton was more likely than not to become the next president. And second, that the range of possible Electoral College outcomes — including the chance of a Donald Trump victory, but also a Clinton landslide that could see her winning states such as Arizona — was comparatively wide.

That remains our outlook today in our final forecast of the year. Clinton is a 71 percent favorite to win the election according to our polls-only model and a 72 percent favorite according to our polls-plus model. ... This reflects a meaningful improvement for Clinton in the past 48 hours as the news cycle has taken a final half-twist in her favor. Her chances have increased from about 65 percent.

Our forecast has Clinton favored in states and congressional districts totaling 323 electoral votes ... but ... because Clinton’s leads in North Carolina and Florida especially are tenuous, the average number of electoral votes we forecast for Clinton is 302, which would be equivalent to her winning either Florida or North Carolina but not both.

____________________________

I spent yesterday in a jury assembly room, answering a summons to serve along with 200 other people. We were shown two videos which extolled jury service as a part of our system of law and justice, 'trial by ones peers', part of the rights guaranteed by our Constitution (where trial by jury is mentioned, we were told, three times).  It was interesting, even fun (possibly not for the petitioners or defendants).  We saw "Former Jurors" telling the camera that they would want someone like themselves on a jury if they were ever "in a fix".

Having to serve on a jury when I am galactically busy at my Place O' Labor™ is a drag -- but I agree with the idea that membership in a body politic means one may have to step up when asked. It was also ironic to be watching the videos while the country was casting votes about the potential future makeup of the Supreme Court.  But, Clinton would win; that would be fodder for eight years of jokes and photoshopped images. Not a problem.

Last night, I didn't even watch the returns. I sat down and wrote out a post -- a good one -- about the election, but my free blogger service ate it. Gone. I'd saved it, ready to Publish; when suddenly the screen refreshed and a much earlier draft of the same post was left. An hour of decent writing up the spout. So, I watched the last episode of Ken Burns'; documentary on America's experience of WW2, The War. I was bored; get it over with, already, and went to bed convinced I would see Hillary's face trumpeted from the skies tomorrow.

Wrong. 

____________________________

This morning, members of my department at the Place O' Labor put in a half-day's work at the County Food Bank, sorting oranges, removing spoiled or damaged fruit and boxing the rest, carrying the boxes to pallets. We processed 13,000 pounds. As I was boxing the oranges (purchased in bulk from suppliers; edible, but not of very high quality), I considered that this is how some of America's most vulnerable are being fed. Obtaining even Grade-C oranges, or cast-off peanut butter, is the difference between eating, and not.

When we were finished, one of the volunteer managers stood up and gave a small presentation about what the Food Bank did and who it served -- approximately 120,000 persons in the San Francisco Bay area. "Every day, we receive about 100 calls from first-time people asking how they can receive food," he said. "These aren't people looking to receive something for free -- they ask because they can't afford to pay their rent or mortgage, their utility or phone bill, and feed themselves or their children.  Our staff says that number has been fairly consistent -- around 100 first-time callers per day.

"When did that start? I asked. They agreed -- it began after the Crash in 2008; it's been consistent ever since." He paused for a moment. "The elements that created the Crash were in motion for a decade before it happened -- and many of those same causes were never addressed afterwards. The same things could happen --" He stopped, then corrected himself -- "Will happen, again."

What kind of safety nets will be available for the Underclass now?  What kind of safety will there be, for any of us?

________________________________

MEHR, MIT ANDERN STUFF:  Most people in public, or the workplace, seemed to studiously avoid talking about What Happened. They talked around it; they talked past it. Their attitude was equal parts disbelief, and not wanting to create a conflict with anyone who might have voted for Trump.  

Very early in the morning, before the cubicle farm filled up, I did overhear an ancient project manager known as The Walrus (GooGoo Ka-Choob) saying to someone over the phone, "Yeah; I mean, think about it -- Presidents change, but the bureaucracy is the same. Right? The military doesn't change. That's the most important thing." That'll be a comfort to all those targeted by drones for Kill Tuesday.

I only heard the 'B' side of one conversation between two people  about the election all day -- two members of the permanent staff at the Food Bank: a woman had said something about Trump I didn't completely hear, and a man responded, "We don't know. Jus' gotta roll widdit."  That was all. 

At The Place Of Employ, even My Very Own Hillaryite Colleague was subdued and unwilling to comment. Only one person (we'll call him Harry Tuttle) said anything. Harry is a technical worker of long experience, a San Francisco native, and black; I asked for his take. "Well -- yesterday, America elected someone who's shown himself a known quantity. He's bigoted, sexist, and all kinds of fucked up. With all that, you tell me what the immediate future's gonna be like. I expect he'll take on the Fat Boy in North Korea, or someone he thinks is a soft target -- or he'll do something else that's stupid."

The Girl Who Refused To Be Mrs. Mongo sent a text: "What will we do? I think we should marry a foreigner. I'm willing to learn any language."  The Best Friend: "Whitelash! ... WTF?? Fuck You Very Much, America!"  I read through most of the comments traded by readers last night on The Great Curmudgeon's 'Eschaton' and watched the disbelief seep in as the vote-counting progressed; it was painful. 

_______________________________________

In Burns' documentary, The War, a photo was shown of a road sign erected by Marines on the island of Saipan in the summer of 1945, with an additional marker that reflected the apparent endlessness of the Pacific conflict: "Golden Gate In [19]48 -- Bread Line In [19]49". On The Line, no one knows what it means when there's a significant change, like a new commander. You expect the deck is stacked against you, because you've seen the system and that's how it's arranged. You only hope you're not fucked too badly, that no one takes anything else away from you, and that whoever shows up to lead will not get you killed. That is not a joke.

______________________________________ 

However, the comments on Eschaton and on a number of other sites make me want to add this note as a counterweight to the disbelief most seem to be feeling:  The election is over. But if our 45th President, or those who believe they own America and its people, think they're going to have free rein to drop a saddle on all of us and try to ride, I believe it's our duty to disappoint them as frequently and strongly as possible. And, all calls for 'National Unity' aside -- I believe a lot of people already have that intention.

It's going to be one hell of a ride.

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What's Goin' On

Oh, what's goin' on
(What's  goin' on)
Yeah, what's  goin' on;
Oh, what's  goin' on
-- Marvin Gaye / "What's  Goin' On" (1971)

My public service is jury duty.

Why -- is something special happening today ?

Historicalositude

Eight More Years

Smeagel Rejoices At Recovering The One Ring

HC: What's that new post supposed to be? You just put up photos of Hillary that look bad. Pretty juvenile.

DOG: Not true. The one I posted of her being led away by police was tasteful, and she looked groomed.

HC: Still going to throw your vote away?

DOG: Actually, I have a jury summons. And I have to wash my hair.

HC: That's just one more vote for Trump.

DOG:  Eight more years. Eight more years.

HC: What do you mean?

DOG: [Affectless Stare]

HC: [Walks Away]

 ___________________________

Reprint Heaven: Good Night, Uncle Walter

And That's The Way It Is
(The Googlegerät reminds: Today is Uncle Walter's birthday. This, from 2009)

Walter Cronkite 1916 - 2009 (CBS News)

I know that the memories and worldview of Boomers are things of derision for more 'relevant' generations; who the hell cares what we remember. However, for most of my childhood and early adulthood, there wasn't a single major event that didn't have the voice of Walter Cronkite narrating it.

The Cuban Missile Crisis; The arrival of The Beatles; John F. Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963; the war in Vietnam (1962-1975); Dr. Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy's assassinations in 1968; Chicago during that years' Democratic Convention; the first landing of human beings on Earth's Moon on July 20, 1969; the Watergate hearings in 1973; the collapse of Richard Nixon's presidency and resignation in 1974...

...and it wasn't only the signal events between 1962 and 1981 which Cronkite narrated which made him an icon. It wasn't even the thousands of mundane items that he introduced or reported on for over twenty years. It was the sound of Cronkite's voice. Even if you only had the CBS evening news on in the background, that voice added to what made up the continuity of our times.

Cronkite represented a connection to news reporting that reflects the Reality of what was occurring (he wouldn't have made it as a Fox Entertainment 'journalist'). He was also willing to court physical risk to discover what that Reality was, and translate the essence, the Truth of it, as best he could. Beyond all that, being a reporter was his job; he wanted to do it as best he could.

As a 25-year-old AP reporter, Cronkite covered America's war in the Mediterranean and Europe at its beginning. From Operation Torch in North Africa in November of 1942, he went to England -- where he gained a reputation for going on more 8th Air Force daylight bombing raids over Germany than any other reporter. On D-Day in 1944, Cronkite was one of the first correspondents ashore; later that year, he was landing by glider behind German lines with the 101st Airborne in Operation Market Garden. He was in Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge. And he covered the Nuremberg trials of the twenty-one major nazi war criminals.

In 1962, CBS created the 30-minute news-program format. News on the radio had been commonplace for forty years, but it had never been presented on television. The program would go out live in New York, but taped for delayed broadcast in Central and Pacific time, to be received in millions of American homes at 6:00 PM, Monday through Friday. It was an innovation -- and some thought, risky: Would people accept the idea of a news program broadcast when most people were eating dinner? More important -- would they watch the commercials? And CBS' choice to be the lead commentator, the "anchor" for a lineup of filmed segments filed by other reporters, was Walter Cronkite.

CBS' decision was based on the fact that he appeared so completely mainstream, so inoffensive. His baritone voice sounded authoritative, like the radio news broadcasters most people were familiar with -- H.V. Kaltenborn, or Edward R. Murrow, who had moved on to television. Cronkite was a solid, thorough reporter who had paid his dues; he had a reputation for "Iron Pants" -- sitting still through the most boring assignments, never sounding or appearing anything but interested, never losing his temper or melting down on the air.

And unlike Murrow, Walter had no apparent interest in using the television soapbox he was about to be handed to express any... uncomfortable opinions. He didn't like to throw controversial questions in an interview, and was known to toss "Softballs" to subjects like Eisenhower, Nixon or Kennedy. When Murrow had taken on Joseph McCarthy and the endless 'Red Scare' hearings of his Senate committee, CBS lost advertising revenue. That fact was not lost on CBS' Chairman, the redoubtable William S. Paley, who had to approve the choice of Cronkite for this new venture.

The format was a hit. Apparently, people did watch television news while they ate their evening meals, and liked it. The Neilsen ratings agency said so, and the advertising revenue began to roll in. The other major networks copied CBS, a sure sign of a winning trend. CBS affiliate stations (like the main network, dependant on advertising dollars) loved Walter because he was making them money.

People at home, watching their RCA or GE or Magnavox Teevees from the dinner table, instead of each other, thought Cronkite was so... trustworthy. People had liked Edward R. Murrow -- but when he broadcast, Ed sounded like some critical relative, lecturing you about a choice of meat for dinner, or scolding your children for running with scissors. You knew he was smart, but America doesn't like smart that much; it's not neighborly. Nobody really likes someone better than you.

But -- if you had "accidentally" borrowed money from the 4-H petty cash and couldn't pay it back; or couldn't decide whether Polaroid at $3.50/share was a good deal; or your girlfriend had missed her period... for 1962 America, Cronkite looked like the Dad or Uncle you could confide in. He'd never lecture you like that prissy Murrow, or sound like that undertaker, Chet Huntley; or that Mr. Peepers-type with the glasses, John Chancellor, on NBC.

You could see just by looking at him that Uncle Walter had been around; he knew what was what, but somehow, it hadn't changed him. He didn't believe he was better than you. He'd give you straight advice. And even if you'd utterly and irredeemably fucked up, and his advice was to face the music and dance... you'd know he was right and still go away feeling good about yourself.

Cronkite had come up as a reporter when radio was king, and the best-known broadcast commentators all had signature 'hooks' -- Murrow's opening was the famous, "This -- is London", during the Blitz in 1940; Walter Winchell's was, "Good Evening, America, and all the ships at sea". Lowell Thomas' closing line was, "So long, until tomorrow!" So, early in the CBS Nightly News, Cronkite adopted his own famous signature close, which he would repeat for the next nineteen years: "And that's the way it is: Friday, July Seventeenth, Nineteen Sixty-Four; this is Walter Cronkite. For CBS News -- goodnight." It stayed in our heads as well.

And when JFK (initially concerned that Cronkite was a Republican, and so might skew his reportage -- he wasn't; he was a registered Independent) was murdered, it was Uncle Walter who broke the bad news, first, to the nation -- and who sat up with the country for hour after hour over the next days, through the pomp and circumstance and unbelief. More than Chet Huntley or David Brinkley's voices on NBC, or Eric Sevaried's on ABC, it was Walter Cronkite's voice that bridged that period between the end of Camelot, and whatever was to come next.

All this gave him the necessary credentials when, five years later, Cronkite publicly questioned the wisdom of America's involvement in Vietnam. The Pentagon Papers would reveal that the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident (pretext for the next eight years of escalating war in South Vietnam) had been a sham. Cronkite, who had excellent sources, might have suspected the war had been engineered, but never questioned it on those grounds. Like many of his viewers, he had supported America's mission in Vietnam -- but only until it was plain that we were mired in a conflict that could not be won under post-WW2 rules of engagement: It wasn't the kind of classic, "Good War" between Light and Darkness which he had seen first-hand.

After a series of journeys to Vietnam and long interviews with everyone from Diplomats and Generals to Grunts, Cronkite came to the firm conclusion that we couldn't win. He wasn't interested in the details, so much as the broader questions -- In a world with nuclear weapons, can we win this war? And, is it worth it? He believed another solution was possible, and necessary; and it would include pulling our troops back from Southeast Asia.

It was 1968, with Martin and Bobby already both assassinated. It was an election year defined by the war; by three years of race riots, National Guard soldiers in the streets. It was a year defined by the Counterculture, and by an antidraft, antiwar movement. Cronkite decided to do what CBS' executives never though he would -- to tell America that uncomfortable truth from behind the Anchor's desk on the CBS Nightly News. In a closing commentary reminiscent of Edward R. Murrow, Uncle Walter said "In this reporter's opinion", that the Vietnam war simply wasn't winnable; "that perhaps we should say, 'We did the best we could'," and bring our boys home.

President Lyndon Johnson, watching the broadcast, knew it was a watershed moment: If Walter Cronkite had said America should pull out of Vietnam, Johnson told an aide when the broadcast was over, "then I've lost the war". Little more than a week later, LBJ went on national television to say he "would not seek, nor will I accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President."

Cronkite and his CBS team in Vietnam, 1967 (Public Domain)

Cronkite broke the code of silence that made up so much of life in post-World War Two America; he was calling things by their right names, reality with a Capital R. I remember watching Cronkite deliver that message in 1968. It was the sort of moment I hoped some other American broadcast journalist would come to during the "Lil' Boots" Bush years. Finally, Keith Olbermann did, a little late in the day, and not entirely because he had come to a heartfelt conclusion about the disaster of Lil' Boots' presidency... but also because it meant good ratings for MSNBC, something Cronkite would have barely considered.

Our leaving Vietnam would take another four years, and cost additional thousands of American lives. Richard Nixon was elected claiming he had a "secret plan" to end the war. That turned out to be more escalation, CIA assassination squads; J. Edgar Hoover's COINTELPRO; the 1970 invasion of Cambodia and a heavy crackdown on antiwar demonstrations; The Plumbers and black-bag jobs and 'Enemies Lists', and cozy relations between the GOP and the Mob-run Teamsters' Union. After the killing of four students at Kent State in Ohio, Cronkite lashed out at Nixon's policies, and his stand gave other reporters and networks the courage to voice their own opinions in closing segments.

In response, Nixon put heavy pressure on William Paley to muzzle Cronkite's criticism; then, Vice-President Spiro Agnew went after America's media in a series of speeches, essentially accusing national news outlets, and figures like Cronkite, of treason.

Nixon's pressure and threats had a chilling affect. In 1970, after a broadcast criticizing the government's attempt to threaten journalists into silence, ABC News anchor Frank Reynolds was forced to resign. The war went on; bombings of North Vietnam escalated; the whole period was a reminder of the blacklisting and censorship of the McCarthy period -- which Cronkite's CBS colleague, Edward R. Murrow, had famously stood up to.

For network television news anchors, Murrow's courage in criticizing the bullying atmosphere of fear which Tail Gunner Joe created set the bar for future television journalists to defend their ability to inform Americans what is happening in, and to, their country. Cronkite maintained that tradition, not backing down despite the obvious threats made by The President -- and Cronkite knew Nixon was famous for using the power of his office to take revenge. It helped that CBS' executives stood behind him (Something they didn't do for Dan Rather, thirty years later -- but, in these days, truth is highly overrated in the news entertainment industry).

Even backstopped by CBS, Walter had professionally put his ass on the line. He knew it didn't matter what his reputation was, whether he was considered a presence on television. Cronkite knew the other side of Murrow's defiance of McCarthy; Murrow had been a legend, too -- and came within a hairsbreadth of being fired (rent Good Night and Good Luck, again) by the same Bill Paley whom Nixon was calling to express his wattle-jowled displeasure.

At the same time, Cronkite had been as close to actual combat situations as a noncombatant can; something like Nixon or Agnew coming at him only made him angry. He must've had a moment of satisfaction, watching Agnew forced to resign under indictment for talking over $300,000 in bribes when Governor of Maryland; and later, watching a paranoid, self-destructive and self-pitying Nixon, pinned down by Watergate, resign himself. And, as with JFK's assassination almost eleven years before, the voice of Uncle Walter took us from the "long national nightmare" to whatever would come next.

People who didn't grow up with him as a fixture won't understand the context within which he was important, or how he's missed. It isn't nostalgia for a simpler time -- it's that in 2009, television news is simply another form of corporate entertainment. It's always been an Establishment mouthpiece in one way or another -- except for people like Cronkite, who believed that facts didn't need to be presented like movie trailers, or with political spin. Cronkite intensely disliked the media style of Limbaugh, Wiener and O'Reilly because for him, it distorted the Truth, the Facts: Fox and other networks' use of this kind of format wasn't about news, but personalities, and a political agenda.

Few people have the opportunity to reach so many other human beings, a fixture in our cultural memory, without being corrupted somehow in the process. After nineteen years as CBS' anchor, Cronkite retired -- like any working person, putting in their twenty and then calling it quits -- and didn't look back.

Cronkite never used status for personal gain or to create another career. He always reminded me of another man from Missouri, Mark Twain -- though without the bite of wit, or his obvious humor; but still an honest and quintessentially American observer. He never ran for office; never appeared in films (in 1984, approached to appear as himself in the film version of The Right Stuff, even with his interest in America's space program, Cronkite said no; they had to use Eric Sevareid instead).

He declined, gracefully, to capitalize on his image in a way that would be accepted as normal today (and I shudder to think what that says about contemporary culture). David Halberstam, another legend as a reporter and writer, once observed about Cronkite that "He liked, indeed loved, being 'Walter Cronkite', being around all those celebrities -- but it was as if he could never quite believe that he was a celebrity himself."

Cronkite participated in developing the Illusion Factory television has become, but I think the reason he never took his status seriously was that he never confused Walter Cronkite, the image and voice on millions of television screens, with Walter Cronkite, a guy doing a job. It may seem incredible, especially with the cynical take many of us have on the age we live in, but I swear it's probably just that simple.

He was as ambitious as the next person; when some lucky breaks arrived in his job, he took them. But when he saw something he believed was wrong, he judged his chances and then stood up and spoke out -- even at the risk of losing that job. He worked for a living, tried to meet his bosses' expectations, and (because he was very much aware of his own status) live up to the standards of his profession as he saw them; doing a 'good job' mattered. At night, he went home to his wife and children.

Regarding himself, he never said, Hey, what's all the fuss about?; he knew. He was, after all, like the Uncle Walter we believed he was, the guy who had been around -- but for all that had been unchanged. Unlike media personalities in 2009, Cronkite was a reporter who never believed in his own press.

And that's the way it is.

________________________________

Random Barking: Tears In The Rain

Still Crazy After All These Years

So we don't believe that life is beautiful because we don't recall it; but if we get a whiff of a long-forgotten smell, we are suddenly intoxicated, and similarly we think we no longer love the dead because we don't remember them -- but if by chance we come across an old glove we burst into tears.
-- Marcel Proust

In My Head, The Theme To (The Original) 'Magnificent Seven' Plays, but The Dog grows old. Physically, mentally and spiritually (at least one of these three categories are very subjective) I am doing better than most of my chronological peers, but I am now officially, by government standards, old.  I was already that in the eyes of the Kiddies of Kiddietown (bless their tiny white cotton socks), where The Olds are treated by degrees as Replicant life forms; hideous, useless eaters, grown in vats.

Some days ago, The Girl Who Refused To Be Mrs Mongo (the heroine of yet another unpublished Steig Larrson novel by that name) took me to a seaside restaurant in an All-White enclave by way of celebrating. There was a view of The Bay, and the venue was architecturally pleasant -- but the food was oddly muted, not quite tasteless, reminding me of the old Woody Allen joke about his mother, "running the chicken through the deflavorizing machine."  I enjoyed the wine, though, as Dogs do, and The Girl and I discussed politics.

GIRL: Well, I voted. For Hillary -- and don't tell me about how much of a tool she is.
DOG: This election puts everything that's horrifying about America's political structure and our culture on display. Forget Trump; but I can't vote for her.
GIRL: But it's simple: you vote for Clinton, or you get something even worse.
DOG: So, choose between the lesser of two weevils?
GIRL: This is going to make me crazy. If Trump gets elected --
DOG: He's can't. It's simply not possible. Clinton is already elected. That should make you feel better.
GIRL: Okay; let's just drop it. What did you mean about ' two weevils'?
DOG: A bad Captain and Commander joke, but it applies to this election.

Over the weekend, I re-read an article by Laurie Penny about the DNC's Convention this year which made me want to puke, endlessly, like Ron sicking up Banana Slugs at Hogwarts after a spell gone bad.  Then, I read:  

... Al Franken... chants “Hillary, Hillary.” Fuck that guy. He’s not helping. The only way this could get more embarrassing is if they wheeled out Paul Simon to sing Bridge Over Troubled Water. Which is exactly what happens next. 

Now, before I say what I’m about to say, I want you to understand that I have been a fan of Paul Simon and his work since my father first played me the Greatest Hits when I was six years old.

... Outside, an epic summer storm is breaking over the Democratic Demilitarized Zone like the world’s laziest metaphor. ... I spend an hour sheltering ineffectively outside the Wells Fargo building [where] an independent internet journalist wearing a giant crystal pendant and no shirt starts explaining how he’s hoping for a Trump presidency to usher in the coming collapse of civilization.

Paul Simon's Greatest Hits, Etc., was released in 1977 (meaning Penny was born at roughly the same time that I was participating in America's geopolitical containment strategy in Southeast Asia), and I remember the cuts "American Tune", and Kodachrome, and Still Crazy After All These Years well.

But I could walk it back farther than that. It was here that I had a Proustian moment, stumbled across a forgotten glove: I knew Simon and Garfunkle when they were brand, spanking, never-before-heard new -- Sounds Of Silence; Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme; 59th Street Bridge Song, Feelin' Groovy; Bridge Over Troubled Water, El Condor Pasa; Bookends and Mrs. Robinson brand-new.

I listened to them with my now long-gone High School friend, JJ, while stoned on pot in the basement rec room of his house, the doors locked and the blinds drawn because, you know, pot was illegal. JJ's tastes in music were more reflective than most of the stoners in our small town, which leaned heavily towards Cream, Butterfield Blues Band, Spirit, Creedence Clearwater.

(JJ also introduced me to Zappa and The Mothers Of Invention -- and to Leonard Cohen. Wherever you are, buddy; for that, I am grateful.)

I listened to them outside the U.S. on a PX-purchased TEAC reel-to-reel, and in a string of apartments afterwards -- until the day I stood in an elevator and heard a version of "Feelin' Groovy" by Montovani or 1001 Strings oozing out of the Muzak -- and thereafter found myself listening to Bowie, the Stones, and later (Gott; Hilfts Du Mich) the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever and the BeeGees' Odessa album.

The TEAC R-to-R is still around, in need of repair; but the SNF and BeeGees albums are long gone. Some day, we'll say the same about Trump and Hill-o, and about America; and it will also be said of us.

________________________________

MEHR, MIT HUNDE:

STONE: Aningaaq. Is that -- is that your, is that your name? Aningaaq is your name?
ANINGAAQ: ["May Day? Aningaaq. Aningaaq, May Day?"] (Laughs)
STONE: No, no, no. My name is not Mayday. I’m Stone. Dr. Ryan Stone, I need help. [Dogs barking]  Those -- are dogs. They’re calling from Earth.... Woof, woof; yeah...
ANINGAAQ: (Laughs) ["Woof, woof ! May Day? Woof Woof Woof!"]
STONE: Yeah... Aningaaq, make your dogs bark again for me, would you please? Your dogs. Dogs, you know. Woof, woof. Dogs.
ANINGAAQ: ["Dogs don't sound like that -- they go, Aooooo!"]
STONE: Aoooooo. Woof Woof. Aooooo!
ANINGAAQ: [Aooooooooo!]
STONE: Yeah... Aoooo... Oh; I’m gonna die, Aningaaq. I know, we’re all gonna die. Everybody knows that. But I’m gonna die today. Funny, you know, to know that. But the thing is; I’m still scared. I’m really scared. Nobody will mourn for me; no one will pray for my soul. Will you mourn for me? Will you say a prayer for me? I mean, I’d say one for myself, but I’ve never prayed in my life; so. Nobody ever taught me how.

-- Sandra Bullock (Stone), Orto Ignatiussen (Aningaaq), Gravity (2015)  

__________________________________

Ruh-Roh

Who Cares 

 Oh Get Real: Na Gah Happn

Apparently, She, The Expected One, has a new teensy email problem. More information as events warrant,  but it's doubtful it will have any affect on the manufactured outcome of this Thing we're involved in (oh; choosing the Emptysuit.  Got it).

Ironically enough,  this new fresh crisis for Hill-o resulted from an investigation into the cybersexual escapades of Herr Wiener,  husband to Huma Abedin, one of Hill-o's top aides: apparently some emails from She related to the investigation into HC's private email server were found on Abedin's laptop. 

However, reality asserts itself. Let's face it; unless She has been forwarding copies of the Single Integrated Operational Defense Plan for North America to Kim Jong Fatboy, or the lurking ChiCom menace, the bad bad Iranians or even Sad Vlad, The Putin; or unless she's been moving tons of Blow and scores of underage Hoors around on military air transport, She has it in the bag.  She has for months.

Whew. For a moment there, I thought, you know, this was real news. But that would mean if there was any violation of law there would have to be, you know, real consequences.

(This would be a nice moment to put on the "Passerella Di Addio" by Nino Rota, the theme to Fellini's  8 1/2, a musical interpretation of humanity's ultimately absurd and overblown sense of itself.)

________________________

MEHR MIT EINEM NEUES GEDENKEN: What if it's just a false-flag? A moment of panic for those who believe that Trump has any chance whatsoever.  A late change to the script.

This is Theater, folks. This is Caramel Popcorn level teevee. This is the change in the middle of the third reel, when the heroine is gravely threatened ("Like an 18-wheeler smacking into us!").  And, in keeping with the National Narrative, Little Hillary will push on bravely, fighting the Good Fight against the evil the evil the evil who have always had it in for herself and her Saintly Bill-o. 

And, She will triumph, going On To Greater Glory and to become Our Leader.  Her victory, just that much sweeter. And all America will go Yay! Party!  Roll credits. Buy a T-Shirt on the way out of the theater.

________________________

MEHR, MIT DER POLIZEI: Hill-o has responded this new news by demanding that the FBI reveal all: "Come and get me, Coppers!!"  Apparently, DOJ officials warned FBI Director James Comey not to send a letter to Congress announcing news of the Abdein emails, and the Campaign of She has trumpeted that Comey, a conservative Republican, is attempting to influence the election by doing so.

Comey had apparently told Congress in July when delivering testimony that he would keep them informed of any new developments and so (at least according to the Politico reporter who just appeared on PBS' Weekend News Hour) was compelled to send the letter (earlier, I'd said he was not; silly Pooch, me). 

But if I could ask Comey a question, it would be: What is the point of this, Stupidhead?? Donald Trump is not going to win. He never was. The election is over, already.

Turn up the Nino Rota, please.

________________________