The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    Trump: I am the Very Model of a Modern Major General

    By NCD on Wed, 01/02/2019 - 9:11pm |

    President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he essentially "fired" former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, criticizing the outgoing defense chief's service in the Marine Corps and his two years leading the Defense Department.

    "What's he done for me? How had he done in Afghanistan? Not too good," Trump said at a Cabinet meeting... "As you know, President Obama fired him, and essentially so did I," he explained to reporters, contradicting an earlier statement.

    "I think I would've been a good general, but who knows," the president, who has not served in the military and sought five deferments to avoid being sent to Vietnam, further remarked.

    Plans for Mattis to step down as the defense secretary were first announced in a presidential tweet that said the revered former Marine general was retiring. link

    Donald J. Trump

    General Jim Mattis will be retiring, with distinction, at the end of February, after having served my Administration as Secretary of Defense for the past two years. During Jim’s tenure, tremendous progress has been made, especially with respect to the purchase of new fighting....
    "I think I would've been a good general, but who knows," the president, who has not served in the military...
     

    Comments


    by artappraiser on Wed, 01/02/2019 - 9:43pm

    that toon's okay, but I still think photographer Alison Jackson for Vanity Fair did the meme best of all way back in Sept. 2016 with her "First in War" titled photo, 2nd in her set of 6 parodies:

     


    by artappraiser on Wed, 01/02/2019 - 9:52pm

    and another helpful reminder, how the role play thing can always get worse:


    by artappraiser on Mon, 01/14/2019 - 3:15am

    Good ones, Driftglass had this:

    TRUMP: Will at times be difficult. We're talking about sand and death. That's what we're talking about.

     


    by NCD on Wed, 01/02/2019 - 10:47pm

    ...and after accusing Iran of spreading terrorism, Trump today: 

    WASHINGTON – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that as far as he’s concerned, Iran "can do what they want" in Syria....

    Bibi none too happy....


    by NCD on Wed, 01/02/2019 - 10:53pm

    LOL, truly; was your choice of excerpt for caption that made me do so. Certainly how Trump would do Churchill!


    by artappraiser on Thu, 01/03/2019 - 12:22am

    Meanwhile, for the cabinet meeting, it appears it was back to politburo-style loyalty kabuki show:

    Acting AG Whitaker kisses up to Trump for staying in DC over holidays: "Sir, Mr President, I will start by highlighting the fact you stayed in DC over the holidays, giving up Christmas w/your family, New Year's w/your family... you have demonstrated your dedication to delivering" pic.twitter.com/9Lo2pMocgN

    — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 2, 2019

    Just on a superficial level of all the kabuki going on, not even getting into real policy or action, apart from that: it's really hard to believe the country has put up with it so long.  Driftglass chose the correct word: farce. (Driftglass also gets the strangeness by making it like watching aliens from a Star Trek ship.) It wasn't so long ago that GOP campaigns were complaining about Clintonites not wearing a jacket and tie in the White House. We have gone so far beyond the absurdities what a dark humor scriptwriter, say like Paddy Chayefsky, could even dream up.

    Edit to add: I give the "Don a Day" cartoonist credit for even attempting to keep up with it all.


    by artappraiser on Thu, 01/03/2019 - 12:45am

    Just a few years ago they were ranting about Obama putting his feet up on the desk. They know it's all a show put on for the rubes but what I don't get is why the rubes buy it.


    by ocean-kat on Thu, 01/03/2019 - 1:06am

    SAD!


    by artappraiser on Thu, 01/03/2019 - 2:04am

    No one sacrifices more than the Fuhrer Trump!! Even immigration officers working and not being paid!

     

    --Could you imagine if Trump HAD campaigned on 'Well, I WANT Mexico to pay for it but if they don't - then YOU WILL - and I'll hold your paychecks until YOU DO'--

    (from comment at Washington Post.)


    by NCD on Thu, 01/03/2019 - 1:16am

    Exactly! We're living Through The Looking Glass.. here. Don't need to ask Alice, and don't need no LSD to do it.


    by artappraiser on Thu, 01/03/2019 - 2:07am

    that said, or ridiculed, often enough it's more like Chauncey Gardiner/Being There where the White House beat media people get carried away dazed and confused trying to deconstruct the babblings:

    What was more befuddling is why he would even bring it up. https://t.co/e8Wsqx6GwG

    — Katy Tur (@KatyTurNBC) January 3, 2019

    I am absolutely 100% convinced just from my own aging effects that sometimes the babblings are simply misfiring of neural nets. I.E. He's got something in his head over here that is something Putin said to him once and other thing Mattis said and another maybe he read in high school history class and it all comes out crazy when he starts motor mouthing. I think of how I would say incongruent things if motormouthing and not given time to think. and I've got a history knowledge base, pitiful as it may be, he's got basically none to start with and years on me.

    I would venture that the motormouthing by our "stable genius" is of course a major symptom of his narcissism, he thinks any kernel he might share of his brain is precious to all.

    But in the end, It has me thinking about this: Trump is extremes, but it should remind us also this a danger for all presidents, as regards the famous "bubble" problem. They need to be challenged by others to think, and not be surrounded by yes men.  It follows that pushing a president to talk unguardedly with the media just like any other person, without time to prep remarks, may not be such a good thing? People would complain he or she is not "personable", doesn't connect like a real person, but expecting them to ad lib off top of head may not be best.


    by artappraiser on Thu, 01/03/2019 - 5:22am

    A helpful reminder of how there's really no there there, all is an act and "stories":


    by artappraiser on Mon, 01/14/2019 - 3:13am

    to top it all off, he's got a lawyer/spokesman who's really going off the deep end of being a terrible spinner from the getgo:

    According to CNN witches favor Democrats and they are offended that the Meuller investigation is described as a Witch Hunt. There is no reason for the witches to be offended because Witch Hunt derives from,for example,the Salem Witch Hunts where people were executed unjustly.

    — Rudy Giuliani (@RudyGiuliani) January 3, 2019

    Natasha Bertrand, not lawyer, citing case law, Rudy Giuliani, former prosecutor, citing Sean Hannity and Hillary:

    Flynn didn’t think he was treated unfairly, according to what he and his lawyer told a judge under oath last month. https://t.co/LsKQiDtPiZ

    — Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) January 3, 2019

     


    by artappraiser on Thu, 01/03/2019 - 2:28am

    This is one of his favs that just drives me nuts on the ignorance front:


    by artappraiser on Thu, 01/03/2019 - 5:48pm

    Usually I don't like rap but that Major General rap was pretty good. Only problem, cultural appropriation?


    by ocean-kat on Thu, 01/03/2019 - 6:17pm

    ocean-kat: off-thread (or maybe not if it's about shifting cultural realities); oy, you've got quite some new Senator there:

    You got to love @SenatorSinema at her swearing in just now in the Senate chambers. pic.twitter.com/BA7eeS2Rac

    — Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) January 3, 2019

    by artappraiser on Thu, 01/03/2019 - 6:23pm

    Wow. I'm hoping for some really good things from her. I'm amazed that she won especially considering Trump won Arizona by almost 4 points. And Sinema is not some center right democrat that you'd expect from this conservative state. She's clearly to the left. 

    Consider how many people who voted republican for years and who voted for Trump must have flipped for her to win. I'm not sure what that means going forward, one off or the beginning of a trend, but it's a big deal for me. I thought I'd spend all my time in Arizona ruled by republicans just like I spent 10 years in Florida with republicans in charge. It's a glimmer of hope for me.


    by ocean-kat on Thu, 01/03/2019 - 6:57pm

    In 1879 when the Pirates of Penzance was written, cultural appropriation of rap, jazz or even punk was the norm, I blame the French and the EU for what went on then.


    by NCD on Thu, 01/03/2019 - 9:19pm

    A hah, you so funny. But let's get real: Gilbert & Sullivan not only racist but "transphobic", too! It's not enough to just skewer the upper classes, you gotta do more.Dickens, Shakespeare...banish em all, bourgeois.


    by artappraiser on Thu, 01/03/2019 - 10:30pm

    And yet I hope that like Mark Twain one hundred years from now people will see my work and think, Wow, that is actually pretty racist.

     

     


    by ocean-kat on Thu, 01/03/2019 - 10:52pm

    Apologies to NCD for any hijacking, but I just gotta go there being a longtime fan of 19th-C cultural studies. There is true irony in the whole Twain racism thing about simplistically interpreting cultural history by current standards. In context of his own time, Twain was remarkably anti-racist as regards southern American blacks, while at the same time it is less known that he was xenophobically racist about the Ottoman Turks and other eastern cultures, a thoroughly-pro-western-civilization kind of guy. See here and here for examples.The evidence is mostly in "Innocents Abroad" but it's in some speeches, too. Now in that context, compare how he treated American blacks in his work! Totally different picture! They are basically his equals, with human foibles, for sure, but not like "dirty Turkish people" etc.


    by artappraiser on Thu, 01/03/2019 - 11:56pm

    I ate at the Mikado in Vegas. Lots of Japanese in the place!


    by NCD on Thu, 01/03/2019 - 11:23pm

    I was envisioning just from your two simple sentences, sounds like: FUN! 


    by artappraiser on Thu, 01/03/2019 - 11:40pm