Aretha Takin’ It Home to Jesus

I don’t have any highlights for you from yesterday’s walk-about for Senator McCain at the Capital Rotunda but here are the highlights from the Queen of Soul’s funeral in no particular order, including chronological:

Ariana Grande, singing Aretha’s Natural Woman in a mini-dress designed to display nearly every inch of that naturalness. The church ladies were not amused, speculating that she clearly has never been to a black church in her life and snarkily noting that her ponytail was longer than her dress.

Following Ariana’s tribute Bishop Charles H. Ellis III noted that “when I saw Ariana Grande on the program, I though that was a new something at Taco Bell.” Um, good thing Bishop Ellis isn’t white or that racist crack would cost him his livelihood.

Bubba, America’s first black president, did what he did best: open mouthed leering.

Meanwhile America’s last black president was busy preparing the kind words he’ll deliver Sunday for the man who singlehandedly saved Obamacare, and practicing the delivery with the artist formerly known as TOTUS.

And the woman-who-still-isn’t president registered her displeasure at being seated next to the artist previously known as Prince. (h/t Abenaki)

Al Sharpton used the occasion to bash President Trump. What did you expect from an alleged reverend whose career has been built on rabble rousing?

Jesse Jackson took the opportunity to chastise people for lining up to attend funerals of icons but not to vote.

And a real pastor, Rev. Jasper Williams Jr., who also eulogized Franklin's late father in 1984, delivered “controversial” remarks by reminding people that black-on-black crime today finds African-Americans killing the same number of black people slain by the Ku Klux Klan throughout history in a matter of months. Boy, is he ever out of touch with the zeitgeist.

Finally, 8 hours after it began, Aretha Louise Franklin, singer, songwriter and true civil rights activist, was laid to rest. And in case you were wondering, for her final outfit the Queen donned a sparkling full-length gold dress and gold sequined heels which matched her coffin. Let’s see McCain top that.

God bless you, child; take it home Aretha…

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#FLOTUSFriday: Let’s Put a Little Butt Into It

The reliably, rabidly anti-Trump media never misses an opportunity to behave like the mean girls they are. Take this week’s ceremonial planting of an oak sapling - an ancestor of the White House Eisenhower oak tree.

Melania along with descendants of James Monroe and Dwight Eisenhower plant a sapling to replace a tree damaged earlier this year

Had this happened during the O’s Occupation we would have been treated to oohs and ahhs from the press about the environmental importance of planting trees in these trying times of global warming, along with a touching story highlighting the symbolism of presidential ancestors participating in the planting of a White House ancestral oak – along with a sidebar note explaining the poignancy in the Age of Obama of one of those ancestors being a descendant of James Monroe who – although he was critical of the practice - owned slaves himself.

But since it’s the Trump White House and all things related to Trump must be destroyed we get instead snotty stories from home and overseas about boob jobs, stilettos and expensive skirts.

Did she wear 4in Christian Louboutin stilettos to aerate the soil? Did she choose a $4,000 floral Valentino skirt for its horticultural motif? …Maybe Trump decided she would just wear what she liked and that it was the tree and the mud that were inappropriate out there. After all, when she “gardened” in a plaid shirt (albeit a Balenciaga one) and Converse, people laughed at the fact that the Converse looked box fresh. - The Guardian

But I don’t recall appropriate wardrobe ever being an issue when the press had the POTUS and FLOTUS they thought they deserved:

This time around, Trump's trolling took the form of a pair of pastel pink Christian Louboutin stilettos; a tight, sleeveless tank top; and a $3,950 A-line Valentino skirt, which was made in Italy but, coincidentally enough, via the collection's theme and its floral print, pays homage to Cuba—the same country that the Eisenhower administration targeted with the (failed) Bay of Pigs Invasion, plotting to overthrow Fidel Castro.** All that certainly matched the golden shovel Trump used—and further showed off by abstaining from using gardening gloves—though it also seems to further the idea that she truly Really Doesn't Care about the media's scrutiny, which is she must know is guaranteed at this point.

Heh, sounds like W magazine enjoys a bit of trolling themselves. More:

In contrast to the pair of (brand-new) Converse and a (Balenciaga) flannel she wore when getting to work in the White House garden back in September, Trump didn't even pretend to go through the motions of dressing for the occasion. While she did indeed make it to the dirt, she remained loyal to her usual uniform, which is to say an expensive ensemble practically designed to incite outrage.

“Let me show you the proper way to use a shovel”

Now that we’ve established skill, let’s discuss technique and style:

Put a little butt into it (for the record, Hillary is wearing heals for this tree planting)

   (as is Michelle) Or a lot of butt

And these people still wonder who Melania’s “I really don’t care” message was for?

**For the record the Bay of Pigs, although conceived by the CIA during the Eisenhower administration, was actually approved and carried out by the JFK administration. But then historical accuracy is not a big deal to journalists these days, and why blame a Democrat for something you can pin on a Republican.

Linked At: Larwyn’s Linx on Doug Ross@Journal, and Free Republic, Thanks!

There Is One Thing You Can’t Call Your Teacher

Remember when teachers were the adults in the room? Apparently that’s not always the case these days. Take the case of 10-year old Tamarion for example; his teacher punished him for addressing her (zir?) as “ma’am” – a term of respect towards the female gender until such time SJWs began creating new genders and gender neutrality rules. This was his punishment: writing “ma’am” over 200 times – 4 columns, both sides of the page.

Now I don’t pretend to know what grievance the teacher was attempting to redress by instructing her young student to cease and desist. It could be ageism, sexism, genderism, racism, patriarchy…your guess is as good as mine. 

I can’t help but wonder if Tamarion’s teacher would have been happier if he had called her bitch or ‘ho. Seriously, who are these idiots teaching your children? Never mind, the answer is contained in the the question.

Note: apologies to all hard working teachers out there who aren’t idiots but still have to work with a lot of them.

Larwyn’s Linx on Doug Ross@Journal, and Free Republic, Thanks!

A Whistleblower by Any Other Name Is an Enemy of the (Deep) State

In a sane world Sara Carter’s report on the Pentagon whistleblower who was fired after revealing that Stefan Halper, an FBI informant, was paid extravagant sums of money to frame the President of the USA would have been a blockbuster:

In the fall of 2016, Adam Lovinger, a former senior official of the Defense Department’s Office of Net Assessment (ONA), stumbled upon evidence that the deep state wanted buried -- documents exposing Halper's role in the frame-up job. He voiced his concerns about what he had found and paid dearly for it.

But in the Deep State rabbit hole we find ourselves, pfft, it’s just fake news. Reporting is optional.

"Stefan Halper invited the Trump campaign officials into the lion's den," Bigley explained. "This was not a set of organic meetings. This was not Halper reporting things that he witnessed that he thought were concerning -- as he has put out there in the media."

He continued: "We have an absolute, ironclad document trail that shows that Halper invited the Russians -- Halper foisted the Russians on the Trump officials at these meetings and at these seminars."

Bigley said that deep state actors were engaging in "a classic espionage tactic" by accusing the Trump campaign of what they themselves were doing. "That's the entire genesis of the Mueller investigation," he explained.

"There's no question that there was a conspiracy afoot here, and that was to use people to insinuate themselves into the Trump campaign as spies and in order to set up individuals as scapegoats essentially for the Trump/Russia collusion probe," Fox News' Gregg Jarrett added. "And the FBI's all in on this."

Gosh, I’m so old I remember when Obama swore to protect whistleblowers.

Although he doesn’t think “whistleblower” means what you think it does.

BTW, anyone seen this man lately?

Just wondering.

Propaganda: Much More Important Than a Soap Opera or a Horse Race

If you have ever done a Google search for anything related to Trump you know how biased the entire  internecine world of internet technology is; 90% of the first 20 pages of results will be anti-Trump. From search engines to social network platforms the tech world is pro-progressive and anti-conservative. And they can’t believe that it didn’t work in their favor in the last election. I’ve got bad news for them: it’s not going to work in the next one either. Why?  David Catron explains:

In Reagan’s America: Innocents at Home, Garry Wills described the 40^th President’s relationship with the voters as “a kind of complicity,” implying that Reagan and the electorate had colluded to commit some sort of crime. The offense was, of course, their mutual refusal to imbibe the propaganda ladled out by the liberal establishment and the media. This defiance caused Reagan and his supporters to be written off by their “betters” as a collection of cretins. History proved precisely the opposite, but the Beltway brain trust never absorbed the lesson. They are thus repeating their error with President Trump and his supporters.

Citing credentialed journalists such as the NYT’s Charles Blow:

Republicanism is Trumpism, with no daylight between them. Traditional Republicans are now afraid to stand on principle because they do so at great peril of being drummed out of politics. The voters are now Trump’s noxious base, ergo Trump holds each of their fates in his hands.… Viewed that way, Trump’s base itself becomes the enemy of the Republic.

and the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank:

Trump and his Fox News-viewing supporters dock their spaceship in a parallel universe where truth isn’t truth. At Tuesday night’s rally in West Virginia, Trump’s irony-challenged audience could be heard chanting “Drain the Swamp!”… Republican lawmakers fear that with 87 percent of Republican voters backing Trump, crossing him is political suicide.

and Politico’s Marc Caputo:

 who mocked attendees of a recent Trump rally as toothless ‘garbage people.’

he describes the contempt they hold for people who don’t think the same way they do. So much for diversity.

All I can say is I hope the 4th Estate keeps up the good work.

Linked At: Free Republic, Thanks!

Lanny’s Level of Sliminess: Expert

Lanny, shilling his book The Unmaking of the President 2016: How FBI Director Comey Cost Hillary Clinton the Presidency

Per the Washington Post:

Davis did not rule out that his claims were correct but expressed regret that he did not explain that he could not independently corroborate them, saying that he now believes he “should have been more clear.” [...]

Davis told The Washington Post that he cannot confirm media reports that Cohen is prepared to tell special counsel Robert S. Mueller III that Trump had advance knowledge of the 2016 Trump Tower meeting, where Donald Trump Jr. expected to receive damaging information about Clinton from a Russian lawyer.

To be clear: Lanny can’t confirm the media reports that he generated and spread.

The information in the Post story, which was attributed to one person familiar with discussions among Cohen’s friends, came from Davis, who is now acknowledging his role on the record.

Davis said he should not have expressed such confidence in his information.

“I should have been more clear — including with you — that I could not independently confirm what happened,” Davis said, adding: “I regret my error.”

If I were a cynic (full disclosure: I am) I’d say Old Lanny was scamming the Trump haters: promising them red meat in exchange for their greenbacks: Michael Cohen and Lanny Davis latest to 'sell' scandal testimony.

You would think that sort of thing would be illegal but apparently it falls under the umbrella of unregulated gaming.

Lawyer Lanny Davis this week became a virtual infomercial for a GoFundMe site. In continuous appearances on every network, Davis shilled for donors for his client, former Donald Trump attorney Michael Cohen. […]

For many, GoFundMe has become a bazaar where one can put money down on the testimony most likely to hurt or help Trump…

It is a curious extension of the entertainment industry where, instead of selecting the next star on “America’s Got Talent,” you can support the next star witness.

Sometimes the next star witness is actually the lawyer.

And as Alan Dershowitz often says, sometimes your witness sings, sometimes they also compose.

Linked At: Larwyn’s Linx on Doug Ross@Journal, and Free Republic, Thanks!

Hitler Discovers His Plan To Set Trump Up Has Failed

NOTE: Just because Lanny Davis, the ultimate Clinton spinmeister, declares his client guilty doesn’t mean he committed a crime.

So good luck with the ongoing shilling for Michael Cohen, hope that GoFundMe works out for you.

And RIP Senator McCain; regardless of everything else he did to tick me off I’m giving him a political pass simply for his five years as a POW in that Hanoi Hellhole. Please don’t speak ill of the dead today.

Linked At: Larwyn’s Linx on Doug Ross@Journal, and Free Republic, Thanks!

A(nother) Rainy Day

This is sort of how I feel today:

And since I’m not really blind, I’m taking the day off to read a good book. A hammock would be nice…

but for all the rain, which would recommend that I take my book inside.

Have a good day regardless of the amount of global warming, liquid or otherwise, coming your way.

Linked At: Larwyn’s Linx on Doug Ross@Journal, and Free Republic, Thanks!