There's been a lot of online mockery directed at Mark Landler's political analysis in the New York Times, "Meeting With Kim Tests Trump’s Dealmaking Swagger", for its lede suggesting that the president is right to feel he shouldn't waste time preparing for his summit with Marshall Kim Jong-un of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, because "in his own unorthodox way" he's "been preparing for this encounter his entire adult life."
It's amazing how this sort of crap gets by editors at the NYT. Is it really that hard for reporters to restrict themselves to reporting on what people do and say and providing actual evidence as opposed to absurd speculations for which they have zero basis? https://t.co/hsZtwFMQ95
And yet when poor Maggie Haberman reports on what people do and say and refuses to construct fancy philosophical explanations they just dump on her.
I think that cold conventional news-story presentation has confused people as to what Landler is trying to achieve here, which might be better understood as—ah—poetry, as follows, omitting the longueurs of the article itself and focusing on the first and last paragraphs:
Trump Has a Point
by Mark Landler
When President Trump declared that he did not really
need to prepare for his legacy-defining meeting
with North Korea’s leader, he drew sighs
or snickers from veterans of past negotiations.
But he had a point: In his own unorthodox way,
Mr. Trump has been preparing for this encounter
his entire adult life.... “To the president,
‘duck and cover’ and the Cuban missile crisis
were formative experiences,” said Stephen K. Bannon,
Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist. “He knows the Korean
War hasn’t ended, and he can accomplish
what destroyed his idol, General MacArthur.”
In an astonishing and totally unexpected development it turns out that a substantial number of members, coaches, and staff members of an Indianapolis CrossFit affiliate gym, CrossFit Infiltrate, don't hate gay people! It's possible that some of them may even be gay themselves! So that, according to WTTV,
when a special workout planned by coaches at CrossFit Infiltrate in support of Indy Pride was cancelled by gym ownership[, i]n an email sent to members by gym management, it was explained that the event was cancelled because “the owners of the gym value health and wellness, and they believe that this event does not”
—they got upset, though the box's local owner, Brandon Lowe, tried to soothe them by explaining they weren't opposed to gay people, merely to pride, which is unhealthy:
adjective,Slang. (often used in the phrase stay woke)
actively aware of systemic injustices and prejudices, especially those related to civil and human rights:In light of recent incidents of police brutality, it’s important to stay woke.He took one African American history class and now he thinks he’s woke.
aware of the facts, true situation, etc. (sometimes used facetiously):The moon landing was staged. Stay woke!A tomato is a fruit and not a vegetable. Stay woke.
For every smart kid who ever found himself in in a restaurant kitchen doing too many drugs instead of being in college, all our love and esteem to a wonderful writer and good man https://t.co/ZeN9owLi5R
— Post-Impressionist Liberal (@Yastreblyansky) June 8, 2018
Bourdain left a woman because she was rude to wait staff. Balls, then. Integrity and remembering where you come from.
The poet-president did a private reading of some new pieces yesterday, at his meeting with officials of the Federal Emergency Management Agency gearing up for the start of the hurricane season, of which Washington Post got hold of an audio recording. There's a simple structure, drily comic tone, and unexpected granularity in the works, which greatly heightens the fantastical oddity of the things he says.
Alternative Facts
by Donald J. Trump
I. Hurricane Harvey
Sixteen thousand people,
many of them in Texas,
for whatever reason that is,
people went out in their boats
to watch the hurricane.
That didn’t work out too well.
That didn’t work out too well.
"I thought you were bringing the beer!" Hurricane viewing party, Houston, 28 August 2017, photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images. In fact it's a volunteer rescue party, saving people's lives, but television images of calm and colorful scenes like these have inspired Trump to imagine an entirely new narrative, like that of the Washington tourists who came out in carriages with blankets and picnic baskets to watch the First Battle of Bull Run.
A leaner but not hungrier Scott Pruitt, from your Rectification Central, exposing the former Oklahoma attorney general as a liar since March 2015.
When you're enjoying the latest story about EPA administrator Scott Pruitt's corruption—he tried, during work hours and from his office and in clear contravention of ethics law, to pressure the CEO of the Chick-fil-A company into getting his wife a restaurant franchise because it was too much work for her to apply for it in the normal way, and succeeded in getting the chief of Concordia Partnerships of Social Impact to give her a gig ($2000 plus travel expenses) to "help organize" their Annual Summit in New York last September, in a more ordinary kind of Republican welfare—don't forget that these antics are directly connected to the protection of our natural environment.
That is, while Pruitt seems to be spending all his time shopping for luxury furnishings for his office and his apartment, or rather (illegally) forcing the EPA's employees to work as his personal shoppers, for everything from $130 gift pens to $2000 mattresses to be obtained on the cheap from Trump's Pennsylvania Avenue hotel, he is in fact working to prevent the EPA from doing its work, for instance as in last October's attempt to repeal Obama's Clean Power Plan, which will, hopefully, fail, but not for want of effort on Pruitt's part, because Pruitt doesn't believe carbon dioxide emissions have anything to do with global warming, as you can read today from Ars Technica:
And in the stupidest analogies ever department we have an extraordinary performance from Mr. David F. Brooks ("How to Repair the National Marriage"), who say that
Listening to people argue about politics these days is like overhearing people in a restaurant who are in a bad marriage. They’re always trying to use disagreements to establish superiority. It’s not merely, “We’re different.” It’s, “I’m better.”
So I thought it might be a good idea to consult some marriage books for lessons on how to repair national politics.
No, you know what? That is not a good idea. In terms Brooks might understand clearly, Jesus said, "Love thy neighbor as thyself." He didn't say, "Love thy neighbor as thy girlfriend." You should not have intimate relations with everybody. You should have respectful relations with everybody. The "national marriage" is a truly grotesque idea.
Not to mention when it's Brooks giving this lecture I keep having really inappropriate thoughts. If my relations with people I have political disagreements are modeled on marriage, should I allow myself to consider dumping them for younger, hotter opponents?
That's a remarkably open way of putting it: "I have a lawyer says it's unconstitutional what you're doing, but I'm a nice guy, I let you get away with it." With the implied corollary: "So why wouldn't you do the same for me? Fair is fair!" Nice!
It follows directly on Giuliani's remarks on the Sunday shows, to the effect that Trump's pardoning power is absolute and can't be questioned even if he pardons himself, and that he can't be indicted for anything, even murder, or even subpoenaed:
Allegorical painting: As Republican party vainly attempts to bury the memory of the Obama administration under a crudely forged Jasper Johns on an inadequately primed canvas, paranoid Emperor wanders halls obsessed with spies and bugs. Obama looks on, confident it can't last. pic.twitter.com/9JA9T5RPDp
— Post-Impressionist Liberal (@Yastreblyansky) June 3, 2018
Note subtle detail in use of a pre-1959 48-state flag as Alaska and Hawaii return from Republic to Empire.
— Post-Impressionist Liberal (@Yastreblyansky) June 3, 2018
(The image apparently first came up on the Rush Limbaugh show and was posted by one Gunny G. around the time when Kehinde Wiley's wonderful official White House portrait of Obama was unveiled.)
It would be funny if Trump were to actually drive the UK back into the European Union:
The possibility of signing a trade agreement with the US was sold by Leave campaigners (and still is) as one of the big potential benefits of withdrawing from the EU. And, as a last resort, there was an assumption that the UK would be able to benefit from the baseline rules of the World Trade Organisation. But, in the current climate, those assumptions are being severely tested. Yesterday’s decision to increase tariffs is but the latest in a long line of protectionist measures adopted by a Trump presidency that is deeply distrustful of existing structures, which underpin the international trading system. (Billy Araujo Melo, MetroUK)
Not that it's going to happen, but if the Conservatives were smart, it could.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, [International Trade Secretart Liam] Fox said the UK was still seeking exemptions from the tariffs.
"We will still be making that case throughout this week," he said.
He added: "The United States believes, I believe wrongly and illegally, that this is a national security matter for the US.
"Given that we export some pretty complex steel products to the United States which are part of their national security programmes themselves, this reasoning that is given is wrong and therefore we believe unlawful."
Hatred for Trump is beginning to work as an international unifying factor. Kind of the way they used to feel about North Korea, in fact. You were always safe hating on the Kim of the day. Russians and Chinese pretended to care, you could tell they couldn't stand them as much as the rest of us. Nowadays South Koreans say pretty explicitly that whatever you say about the current Kim, and it's all true, he's still more reliable than Trump.
So young Master Walker Bragman, the limousine leftist who seems to be aiming at being the HA GOODMAN of the 2018 campaign, took umbrage at a tweet from neoliberal shill Dr. Krugman:
Hey, Roseanne Barr is only worth $80 million, and was being paid only 250K per episode. So her tweets were clearly driven by economic anxiety https://t.co/2SBgBJge0z
Promise, what follows is NOT ABOUT ROSEANNE. It's about that zombie "economic anxiety" theory of the Trump vote, which keeps coming back, and bad faith argumentation:
Trump voters aren't suffering from economic anxiety (median income $75K compared to $50K for Clinton, not to mention Roseanne). Poor people and low-wage workers are suffering from it and unfortunately fewer vote than other income groups.
— Post-Impressionist Liberal (@Yastreblyansky) June 1, 2018
There are other things than Trump in the world, I'm glad to say. Walked by a Soho pizzeria called "Adoro Lei", which sounds like an inept American student's attempt at "I love her", and then walked for six more miles and ended up with a version of the Lennon-McCartney song. Anybody who knows an Italian pop singer, I also have a pretty good version of Otis Redding's "Respect". Non–Italian singers attempting to sing along, please note that two vowels together count as a single syllable, even when they're in two different words.
Le do soltanto amor
niente di piĂą,
come lo stesso ancor
faresti tu
—e la adoro
Mi dĂ un' immensitĂ
di tanto bene;
di tutto quello che ha,
nulla trattiene
—e la adoro
Un tale amor
mai non morrĂ
finchè sarĂ
al mio lato
Le stelle illuminan
la notte oscura
e quanto dureran,
mio cuor perdura
—e la adoro
Prose back-translation: "I only give her love, nothing more, as you'd do the same too—and I love her. She gives me an immensity of so much good, it's everything she has, she holds nothing back—and I love her. Such a love will never die, as long as she's by my side. The stars brighten the dark night, and however long they last my heart will persist—and I love her." It's an extraordinary lesson in McCartney's greatness at his best to inquire in this way into what he's doing in the apparently simple-minded lyric and to realize it's so classic it could have been a 16th-century madrigal.
I know, here we are, Dinesh again, sorry if we have been over-attentive to this slimy creature at a time when so many important things are going on, but as he was thanking The New York Times in its coverage of his pardoning with the indulgence of the Emperor for, I guess, not calling him a Nazi, I noticed that their story had, in fact, a couple of errors:
This @nytimes account is largely fair and the writer should be commended for an honest attempt to give both sides https://t.co/14DKtn30A7
They should have caught your gratuitous lie about losing your voting rights. As a felon sentenced to five years probation living under California law, you never did. https://t.co/Ml8oufvZ5M same would be true in New York.
— Post-Impressionist Liberal (@Yastreblyansky) June 1, 2018
The main thing wrong with the expression used by the comedian Samantha Bee to describe Senior Counselor to the President Ivanka Trump, by which I mean the only thing wrong with it, was that it gave Republicans a way of distracting us from the issue Bee was talking about, which didn't seem to be a part of any of the news stories, but as I learned from Steve, it was the issue that's obsessed me all week. Some idiot kid set me off last night:
If you think feminists call for a double standard and giving women advantages they don't deserve that's because you don't understand.
Feminists call for EQUAL RIGHTS and equal responsibilities. When a woman is vicious and corrupt Bee calls her out just as she would a man.
— Post-Impressionist Liberal (@Yastreblyansky) June 1, 2018
Shepherd Piping to Shepherdess, ca. 1750, François Boucher, via Wallace Prints.
In a remarkable new departure, the poet-president has been projecting his imagination inside the persona of another person, a woman in fact, in a new piece published under the pseudonym "Melania Trump". I thought it seemed a little wan and thin, to tell the truth, until I found myself looking at it in conjunction with some recent stuff in his more familiar personal manner, and the two kind of lit each other up. I've taken the liberty, as editor, of splicing them together, as follows:
Duet: Working Overtime
by Donald J. Trump
SHE
I see the media is working overtime
speculating where I am & what I'm doing.
HE
The corrupt Mainstream Media is working overtime
not to mention the infiltration of people, Spies (Informants),
into my campaign! Surveillance much?
SHE
Rest assured, I'm here at the @WhiteHouse w my family,
feeling great, & working hard on behalf of children
& the American people!
HE
Not that it matters but I never fired James Comey
because of Russia! The Corrupt Mainstream Media
loves to keep pushing that narrative, but they know
it is not true!
This thread elaborating and clarifying a point that may have gotten a bit buried in the second post on Trump immigration policy, dealing with the question of asylum seekers at the Mexican border and the plan to break up families. I made an effort to really lay it out and tell the story with no smartass tricks, because I was in a rage at how the muddiness of Trump's mind keeps him from knowing what he's doing, and the Twitter audience has liked it a lot.
Put pressure on the Democrats to end the horrible law that separates children from there parents once they cross the Border into the U.S. Catch and Release, Lottery and Chain must also go with it and we MUST continue building the WALL! DEMOCRATS ARE PROTECTING MS-13 THUGS.
What this is about--it isn't hallucinations, it's about something Sessions or Miller has told him to justify the grotesque and cruel policy that he doesn't understand. https://t.co/JzegGVwvtW
— Post-Impressionist Liberal (@Yastreblyansky) May 31, 2018
Kind of pleased with this; other undertweeters gave him hell for the lies, but I seemed to be the only one who knew it was the boxer Jack Johnson Trump pardoned:
Actually Trump can't pardon Joe Jackson—only MLB (which banned him for life in the Black Sox scandal) can do that.
And in honor of Trump's rally in Tennessee on behalf of a Republican congressman down there:
Now that we're ruled by a new aristocracy of merit, the smartest people with the highest IQs and of all colors and genders and committed to equality and recycling, things are really going badly, with inequality rising and social trust decreasing and government not working at all. What on earth happened? As I've been saying for 20 years, like the books I enjoy, which are the books that agree with me, this is the fault of the ideology of meritocracy, which overvalues intelligence, autonomy, and diversity, and has a misplaced notion of the self and inability to think institutionally. Why can't we go back to the way these awkwardnesses were dealt with when our society was controlled by stupid but well-bred white men? I mean I'm grateful that the meritocracy is here to stay, but we need a different set of reasons for having it.
Oh jeez, who's going to tell him? David, we haven't gotten rid of stupid but well-bred white men yet.
