Because I have an early dentist appointment, I wrote the following post, which was intended as satire, last night . . . only to wake this morning to Billy Bush’s op-ed piece in The New York Times. It took courage to write, and it brought to mind Hans Christian Andersen’s story, “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”
Read MoreI should take a trip, I thought to myself, as I perused some interesting destinations in the news.
Read MoreAfter months of disappointment, the New Jersey governor is said to finally be in line for a top administration job. According to unidentified sources, Donald Trump will appoint New Jersey Governor Chris Christie his official food taster, a position President Franklin Pierce discontinued in the 1850s. “Nobody died,” Pierce said at the time, “and my food got cold.”
The position was apparently rediscovered by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who recommended Christie, the man who sent his father to prison a decade ago.
It represents a stunning turnaround for Christie, following a series of stinging defeats that had caused many to write him off. Last summer Trump offered the New Jersey governor the vice presidential spot on his ticket, only to take it back and give it to Mike Pence. Trump later named Christie to lead his transition team, but last week he summarily sacked him and handed that job too over to Pence. This time Christie seems safe. Pence said he has no interest in the position. “My plate’s full.”
Christie was thrilled, saying “I get to sit beside Mr. Trump at every meal.” He vehemently denied he had ever called the president-elect an “Indian giver” and compared his job’s importance to that of the Minister of Public Enlightenment, a portfolio that recently went to Stephen K. Bannon.
“Mr. Trump makes all his decisions in his gut,” Christie said, “and let me assure the American people that nothing is getting into Mr. Trump's gut that hasn’t gone through mine first.”
Put up that wall! Pronto! Deeply anonymous sources are suggesting that the real reason for building the wall along the Rio Grande is to keep Americans from fleeing a Trump presidency. In addition, Mexican immigrants, at least some undocumented, continue to “pour” across the border, heading south. Many of them are probably not the best people – “people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us (sic). They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” As a result, Mexico is reportedly considering paying its share the costs.
Numbers tell the story: according to a study by the Pew Research Center, a million Mexicans went home from America between 2009 and 2014, while only 870,000 came north. In addition, American citizens now make up 75% of all documented foreigners in Mexico, and they are increasing faster than Mexicans in the U.S.
“It’s one thing when they come to our beaches and stay in our resort hotels,” said Jorge Rodriguez, sipping coffee at a sidewalk café. “But now they’re refusing to go home. We need a wall. ”
In other news, the FBI is reportedly looking for a 400-pound man or woman as a “person of interest” in last summer’s hacking into the DNC’s emails. The person is believed to spend a lot of time in the bedroom and be a computer whiz.
Meanwhile, carbon dioxide passed the 400-ppm threshold, probably for good. Since we are in the midst of a heated presidential campaign, hardly anyone noticed.
Yesterday it was Gary Johnson’s turn to get skewered by the Fourth Estate.
Read More• Sir: I read with interest your report that Jeb Bush is paying $2,888 per vote. I work among men who have long provided those services for free, and we’re wondering if Mr. Bush pays that sum for each recorded vote, or just once per person.
Sincerely,
J.D. “Digger” Blagden, Jr.
Cook County Cemetery
• Defenders of James Buchanan and Bush 43 objected to my singling out the two gentlemen for censure (one pointing to Bill Clinton’s “thievery, lasciviousness, abuse of power and deceit”). First, I didn’t mean they were the only bad presidents. One thinks of Chester A. Arthur, Warren G. Harding and the two Andrews, Jackson and Johnson – and what to make of Millard Fillmore? – all of whom America survived. But I do believe that at least one criterion for evaluating a president is the state of the country at the end of his tenure – and on that score it would be hard to do worse than 1860, as Buchanan dithered on slavery while the country hurtled toward war, and 2008, after the work of the Bush-Cheney domestic and international wrecking crew. (Well, maybe there’s also a place for Mr. Hoover.)
• Dear Gillespie, wrong Epistle: 1 Corinthians 15:52: “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.”
• II Corinthians 3:17: It’s not two Corinthians, moron. It’s eleven Corinthians. @realDonaldTrump
Correction: A reader noted that my number of Democratic caucus goers was off by 171,109, which is embarrassing. Iowa Democrats, however, do seem to have an odd way both of counting voters and recording votes.
Fast forward to 2018. President Trump is giving a tour of his new wall. Surprisingly, he decided to build the northern one first. “We call it ‘Cruz Control,’” he said. “No more Cubano-Canadian presidential candidates sneaking down here. Everybody hates them.
“We’ll deal with the Mexican border later,” he added. “Right now we need the workers because of my huge business boom that's coming.”
Trump Construction, a subsidiary of The Trump Organization, built the wall, and much of its 5,525-mile length sits on land Trump Real Estate acquired through the recently expanded power of eminent domain.
“I couldn’t wait around for the thousands of pathetic negotiations,” Trump said. “I’m a leader. I do deals, and I needed to get this deal done.”
When Canada declined to pay for the wall, the Trump companies filed for Chapter 11 under the newly expanded bankruptcy law provision known as “the billionaires’ bailout,” which provides government-backed insurance for investors deemed too great to fail.
“That stupid kid [Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau] wouldn’t even negotiate,” fumed Trump. “What a loser.”
Trudeau noted that the logo-emblazoned Trump Tower Tollbooths make it harder for Americans to cross into Canada to get affordable health care.
Asked why he hadn’t put his business holdings in a blind trust – or at least stepped down as Trump chairman – the president responded, “Are you kidding? I’m a businessman, not a politician. I'm not missing out on the greatest eight business years in history.
“What conflict of interest?
“I put the me in America.”
With the presidential primary season practically upon us, Donald Trump is rolling in the endorsements of international heavy hitters. Last weekend, Sean Penn reported that Joaquín Guzmán Loera (aka “El Chapo”) had called Trump, “Mi Amigo!”, a double-edged phrase in organized crime, politics and real estate deals meaning roughly, “My Friend!”
Read More• This morning Hillary Clinton notified Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) that she will turn over all 60,000 emails from her tenure as secretary of state, including those that were supposedly deleted. She will also give Gowdy’s committee the server from her Chappaqua home and 10,000 additional emails she had forgotten to mention. “I talked it over with Bill,” Clinton said. “It’s the right thing to do. Whatever happens, happens. But I’d rather feel good about myself than be president.” • As temperatures in Tulsa hit the high 80s, Senator James Inhofe pledged his support for President Obama’s blueprint for drastically cutting America’s greenhouse gas emissions. Asked about his apparent about face on global climate change, the chairman of the Senate Committee on the Environment said, “I don’t care what the science says, it’s already pushing 90 degrees down here, and it’s only April 1st. And you know what? It’s not getting any cooler – scientists now say we are facing a ‘megadrought’ – the worst drought in 1,000 years.”
• “I wish I’d known about this sooner,” said Ted Cruz after his first visit to a doctor under his new health insurance plan. “I had no idea. I got an appointment with my own doctor and a low co-pay. This is so much better than Heidi’s coverage at Goldman, Sachs. So how come it isn’t available to every American – just like it is in Canada where I was born?”
• Today President Obama issued an executive order closing Guantanamo Bay.
April Fool’s.
Amid growing accusations that it had “caved to terror,” Sony has reportedly named Dennis Rodman vice president of its newly formed North Korea Office for Friendship and Internet Security. The Hall-of-Fame basketball player has made several visits to the isolated country and calls Kim Jong-un his “friend for life.” The media giant also canceled plans for a musical extravaganza, “Holiday on ISIS,” in the wake of rising Internet chatter about John Travolta’s alleged portrayal of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as “the dancing caliph” and rumors of female dancers in Lululemon chadors.
As North Korea escalated its rhetoric, announcing it is now targeting “all the citadels of the US imperialists who earned the bitterest grudge of all Koreans,” Sony insists it did not cancel “The Interview” out of fear.
Others agreed. "It seemed like a simple marketing decision,” said an anonymous reviewer from an undisclosed location. “I mean, honestly, would you attend that movie’s opening, and I don't care where they held it?”
Instead, Sony is reportedly considering a script on the 2016 Olympics. “Intrepid Dribbler” depicts the inspiring journey of the North Korean basketball team, led by Rodman and point guard Kim Jong-Un, from ostracism to Olympic gold. In the title game’s final seconds, Kim dribbles through the heavily favored U.S. team, elevates over an astonished LeBron James and pounds down what the announcer calls “a nuclear dunk.”
“It’s like an Asian ‘Field of Dreams,’” said a spokesperson. “We think Mr. Kim will be pleased.”
In his first press conference ever, North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un denounced the coverage of “those raggedy little nouveaux” in Africa and the Middle East as “totally not fair. “When I set off a nuclear bomb or have my favorite uncle executed for half-heartedly clapping, I make the front page of The New York Times for like two days,” said a visibly irked Kim. “These guys are page-one for months.”
The reclusive publicity hound then announced changes to get more media “face time.”
First, he has invited Dennis Rodman, the NBA Hall-of-Famer who calls Kim “my friend for life,” back to Pyongyang to coach the national basketball team, because “Americans only pay attention when Dennis shows up and makes an ass of himself." He added, with obvious frustration, "I have called Dennis three times, but so far I’ve only gotten his voicemail.”
Kim has also changed the name of his country to the Democratic Republic from Mars (화성 에서 민주 공화국), “the god, not the planet,” he said, because “using an ancient deity’s name has really worked for ISIS.”
Finally, Kim said he had invited President Obama for a summit on internal security. “When I read about the White House break-in, I knew we could help,” said the leader of the world’s most repressive nation. “My family has run North Korea for 65 years, and nobody has ever even tried to break in.”
After Kim's remarks, a reporter raised his hand to ask a question and was immediately arrested.
Rick Perry, the former Texas governor and once and future presidential candidate, told reporters this morning that the secession campaign in what he called "the Shetlands" should inspire all Texans, despite the crushing defeat it suffered at the hands of Scottish voters. Perry, who has been suggesting the possibility of Texas secession for years at Tea Party rallies, said he would study yesterday’s referendum in Britain to learn “how we could do it better.
“We tried leaving once before, about 100 years ago if I’m not mistaken,” he said, apparently referring to the Civil War (1861-1865). “But that didn’t work out so well. I didn’t realize until this week that you could just have a vote on it. Boy, that would have made things a lot easier.”
Perry said Scots and Texans have a lot in common, including accents that people are always trying to imitate, lots of oil, and a tradition of resisting British royalty. "The reason that we fought the [American] Revolution in the 16th century,” he said, “was to get away from that kind of onerous crown, if you will."
But the Scots' big mistake was their politics, he said, citing a column by Neil Irwin, who wrote that "Scotland’s grievances are almost the diametrical opposite of those of, say, the Tea Party. . . . They want more social welfare spending rather than less, and have a strongly pro-green, antinuclear environmental streak.”
“That would be a big loser in Texas, for sure,” Perry said, adding that "those fellas should wear pants."
Disclaimer: Many of you were shocked by Wednesday’s report on Justice Scalia’s speech to NICE! and wanted to know more about the organization. Unfortunately there is no NICE!. While Wednesday’s post was satire, today’s story is entirely factual. The second in my series to humanize corporations takes us to a cookout and fireworks display hosted by the Corporations. Despite having been declared persons with ever-expanding constitutional rights (cf, fetuses, illegal immigrants) by the Supreme Court, the Corporations remain among the most misunderstood of Americans. Apparently, while their money is “speech,” it doesn’t talk to everyone.
The Corporations throw their annual July 4th party in their awesome house with the glass ceilings. ("They keep the ladies on their toes," joked Mr. Corporation.) Unlike some of the phonies I could mention on our block, the Corporations are real persons, whose history in America traces, not just to Citizens United in 2010, but all the way back to 1819 and the Dartmouth College case. Almost two centuries later they have extra reason to celebrate, as they have just gained freedom of worship as well as of speech
There are no more loyal Americans than the Corporations, who celebrate the Fourth of July as the day the colonists declared "no taxation without representation". "And we are working hard to bring those days back to America," they said, "so we can bring back the millions of jobs and billions of dollars we have had to keep overseas because, until this Supreme Court, we haven’t had a voice."
In a speech last night to the National Institute for Corporate Entities (NICE!), Justice Antonin Scalia urged corporations to pursue their rights under the Second Amendment. “We have now secured for you two of the three most important constitutional rights – free speech and freedom of religion,” he told the audience. “It’s time to go for the trifecta.” Asserting that corporations have the same right “as any other person” to protect themselves from harm, Scalia suggested the Court would be open to an expansion of the Second Amendment, and he counseled corporations against waiting too long. “Women are ‘feminizing’ the law,” he said, making quotation marks with his fingers, “and on this Court, Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Kagan – like women everywhere – almost always vote as a bloc against the manly virtues. If Hillary is elected in 2016 and packs the court with women, you can kiss District of Columbia v Heller goodbye and my famous line that ‘it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct’. As for gay marriage, don’t get me started.”
Scalia concluded by looking wistfully into a future in which corporations enjoy all the protections of the Bill of Rights. “I dream of an America in which you are secure against unreasonable searches and seizures, cannot be compelled to testify against yourself, and ‘excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed.’
“Each of you is a NICE! person, and don't let the liberals try to tell you otherwise.”
Many of you have responded positively to proposals for universal service – and my friend Jock Hooper sent me his article, “Ten Reasons for a National Youth Service” (which notes that only 0.5% of America’s young people are engaged in any public service). The idea is getting national traction: it was the focus of Jon Stewart’s recent interview with Sebastian Junger, for example. But one place where nobody talks about it is Congress, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. Libertarians hate the idea, and the Republican Party is so jumpy after Virginia’s primary that people predict no significant legislation of any kind before November – which shows that Eric Cantor’s unexpected defeat changed little in Washington. Which gives me an idea. Our discussions of national-youth-service jobs include the military, Peace Corps, rebuilding infrastructure, fighting forest fires, restoring public lands, teaching in poor schools. What about Congress itself, where the average age is 55? Why not throw those 435 jobs into the lottery? This isn’t a new idea. Andrew Jackson believed that government is “so plain and simple” anyone can do it (or not do it, as we see today); and in New Hampshire men once served in the legislature, not to stoke their egos or line their pockets, but because it was their turn. A Congressional term is only two years, and if we make the pay and perks commensurate with those of army recruits, think how much money we will save the country and the Koch brothers.
• Taking a page from Bibi Netanyahu’s playbook, wherein the prime minister calls recognizing Israel as a Jewish state “an essential condition” for peace, the Tea Party is demanding recognition of America as “the nation-state of the Christian people.” “It’s the only way to win the war on Christmas,” said an unidentified spokesperson, who added that the Party is considering burying the hatchet with John Boehner over immigration reform. “Instead of calling those 14 million Mexicans ‘illegal immigrants’, let’s think of them as Catholics. And minorities? Most of them have lighter skin than Boehner. So no more ‘Happy Holidays’. No more Muslim presidents. And a pathway to the presidency for Ted Cruz.”
• Meanwhile, Dennis Rodman prepares to return to North Korea for his basketball game between American professionals and North Koreans. The game is scheduled for Jan. 8th, the 31st birthday of brutal-dictator-cum-basketball-fanatic, Kim Jong Un, although Rodman is having trouble signing up players. This isn’t surprising, since the last American to visit, 85-year-old Merrill Newman, spent a month in jail, and Kim more recently called his favorite uncle “despicable human scum” and had him shot for, among other things, “half-heartedly clapping.”
It’s an odd relationship between the 6’7” Rodman, who wore a wedding dress to promote his autobiography, Bad As I Wanna Be, and tiny Kim, who rules a country dominated by horrendous human suffering and an atomic bomb. But there have been stranger envoys in history, and, who knows, maybe basketball will prove better diplomacy than isolation.
John Boehner paused long enough from his August vacation at the Koch brothers’ Reclaiming America boot camp to take credit for the decline in obesity among very poor young children. “You can sum it up in one word,” said the Speaker. “Food stamps.” Flanked by Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, Boehner cited a report just released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that showed a small but perceptible drop in obesity rates among low-income children between the ages of two and four. “Our caucus sent a strong message in last month’s Farm Bill when we uncoupled food stamps from actual food,” he told reporters. “And that message got through. It’s clear that the Republican Party’s tough love toward poor minority kids is working.”
“It’s very hard on our members to vote 40 times to repeal Obamacare,” said Cantor. “But middle-class taxpayers are tired of this administration trying to shove socialized medicine down our throats. We need real deficit reduction, and we need to put the nanny state to bed and turn off the lights.”
“This is not about being mean to kids,” added Ryan. “It’s about teaching them to take personal responsibility. The American people are tired of Michelle Obama telling their children to eat their vegetables and Mike Bloomberg trying to take away their right to a big Pepsi.”
“The phrase,” said Cantor, “is not ‘poor, fat and happy.’ It’s ‘rich, fat and happy.’ Fat and happy are not government entitlements. You have to earn them.”
Yesterday Pope Francis stunned the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics by announcing the Church’s support for gay marriage. In his first encyclical, De Coniugium Hominum, the Argentine-born pontiff called gay marriage the eighth (or “lost”) sacrament, which the Church has been looking for since the second century. “I’m just relieved we found it before Dan Brown did,” he told a press conference. “He’d have had a field day.”
Although the pronouncement came on the heels of revelations in La Repubblica and The New York Times about the existence of a powerful “gay lobby” at the Vatican, Francis emphatically denied that the group had pressured him into his new position. “They contributed excellent research,” he said, “but they always presented it in a scholarly manner. Think more ‘library’ (biblioteca) than ‘lobby’ (Via K).”
Asked if the apparent liberalizing of Church doctrine might lead to the ordination of women, Francis replied, “I see no connection. We’ve had gay clergy for centuries, and we have never yet had a woman priest. That should tell you something.”
Speaking on condition of anonymity (which in the Vatican is pronounced “Omertà”), one insider said, “You can take it to our bank – and for a small fee we will launder the money for you – you’ll see a queen sitting on Saint Peter’s throne before you hear a woman preaching from the pulpit.”
Francis affirmed that homosexuality remains a moral disorder and a sin in the Church’s eyes. “Do as we say,” said the pope, “not as we do.”
Why is it that liberals always emphasize the “funds” in trust funds instead of the “trust?” On International Workers’ Day, in particular, lefties everywhere denounce the very people who had the brains to foresee an America imperiled by teachers’ unions, confiscatory taxation and Obamacare and took the steps necessary to protect their families and their capital. They set up generation-skipping trusts, invented “carried interest” to cut their tax bills in half, and sent their money to the Cayman Islands. I mean, who wouldn’t? Meanwhile, like the New Testament’s “wicked and slothful servant,” the millions of Americans who did not invest wisely find themselves “cast into outer darkness [amid] weeping and gnashing of teeth." As they sink deeper into debt, they naturally blame the prudent investors for causing the so-called “wealth gap,” which liberals see all around them: a widening chasm between whites and non-whites; a wealth differential in educational outcomes; a growing disparity between rich countries and poor ones. It's like teeing off on the responsible little pig who built his house of bricks and financed it with a mortgage he could afford.
This May Day, instead of the traditional jeremiads against the prosperous few, let’s give them their due. Who better to be trustees of an ever-growing percentage of the nation’s wealth than those wise enough to protect their own? As the Good Book says, “To everyone who has, more will be given, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”
I know this isn’t a good time to joke about nuclear packages, but Anthony Weiner is back in the news. The eponymous former Brooklyn Congressman is thinking of running for mayor of New York, which is what he was doing in 2011 when his campaign was derailed by the viral photograph of his crotch. The tasteful self-portrait was taken by the congressman himself, who then absent-mindedly tweeted it to 45,000 people. Weiner’s claim that the photo depicted someone else was difficult to verify absent a line-up, but his story quickly unraveled, and he resigned from Congress on June 21, 2011. Now he is back with a large campaign war chest, a supportive wife, young child, and an 8,000+-word profile coming out in The New York Times Magazine.
On the other nuclear front, former Vice President Dick Cheney yesterday told Congressional Republicans that “we’re in deep doo doo” with regard to North Korea, indicating that, while Denis Rodman’s recent visit to the gulag state has done little for international relations, it has certainly lowered the bar for diplomatic language. According to CNN, Cheney said that Kim Jong Un “is unpredictable and doesn't share the United States’ worldview,” which has also been said about Dick Cheney.
Meanwhile, NPR was reporting that South Koreans were calmly going about their lives, ignoring the “playground bully” and telling the world to call his bluff, which is unfortunately one thing that really makes bullies mad.
I apologize for the late post. The server was apparently hacked and down for the entire day. My daughter, Annie, called to make sure I wasn’t dead. This post will be Thursday/Friday’s.