Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Trump getting a Nobel Peace Prize would be like giving Jeffrey Dahmer a James Beard Award.
- Comedian Noel Casler

It has long been known that our lunatic President has coveted a Nobel Prize, even if he calls it a Noble Prize because, among other things, he can't spell. So, if you can't even spell the award...

There's absolutely nothing noble about Trump and there's nothing about him that even whispers Nobel Peace Prize, unless they were to hand out prizes for racism, inciting violence and mayhem in our streets, election compromise, incompetence, utter lunacy, or freakish hair. "This year's Nobel Prize for Freakish Hair goes to... Donald J. Trump! The President Of The United States! Let's hear it for Trump!"

Trump has Obama Envy. He wants lots of things Obama has; respect from hundreds of millions around the world for one. Trump wants a Nobel Peace Prize because President Obama got one. So did Al Gore and Jimmy Carter. Even Woodrow Wilson, a Trump brother in racism got one so I guess that Trump thinks the precedent of a White Supremacist getting a Nobel Peace Prize has been set. The problem is that, despite Wilson's major character flaw, his efforts to end the war to end all wars, WW1, were successful. Trump and the war against COVID-19? Not so successful. In fact, Trump is the best ally any plague has had since the 16th century. Think of him as a giant orange diseased flea-carrying rat. You shouldn't get awards for that.

This isn't the first time kooks and cretins have tried to get Trump his coveted prize. In 2017, Trump received two mystery nominations that turned out to be fakes. Personally, I suspect John Baron, Trump's alter ego fake press flak/imaginary friend. In 2018, a group of congressional Republican loons, including Tennessee's Marsha Blackburn, now current White House Chief Of Staff, Mark Meadows, and the infamous white supremacist Steve King sent an open letter to the Nobel Committee to urge them to give Dear Leader a prize. This time the perp is Norwegian (We know Trump loves Norway and we know why!) Christian Tybring-Gjedde, an ultra-rightist member of their Parliament. It's not his first time. He's nominated Trump before. Birds of a feather flock together, and shit all over the place. The first time it was for Trump's dubious efforts to unite the two Koreas, no doubt to the advantage of his friend Kin Jong-un. This time he's nominating our king of civil unrest for an equally dubious detent between Israel and the U.A.E. Trump is already.

Anyway, lots of people get nominated but only a small percentage cross the finish line. Trump is already using his little hands to pat himself on the back and tweet like mad about his being nominated. Here's hoping the only recognition Trump gets is a fake award certificate that he has no doubt already made, a fake Nobel leg lamp modeled after Ivanka, and a few more fake magazine covers. He probably even has a quintupleXL nightshirt that he wears to bed every night. On it, Nobel is spelled Noble, of course.

Another Whacky Day In The Life Our The Illegitimate "President"

Fresh from what he sees as a great victory in Singapore, where Kim Jong-Un pantsed him, Trump's Wednesday was pretty crazy. ZTE, which he promised China he would save, tanked-- 40% tanked ($3 billion)-- as Congress threatened to block Trump's deal.

Polling shows that although self-identified Republican voters are still behind Trump, normal people don't think he's doing a good job and think the most important opportunity in the midterms is to elect a Congress that will act as a check on him. Earlier, we looked at polls from Suffolk and Quinnipiac showing that Ohio Republican candidates are suffering because of Trump's toxicity. George Washington University also released one showing that Trump is inspiring a big turn out. In Wisconsin Tuesday, Democrats and independents rushed to the polls in a very red state Senate district Scott Walker had won by 24 points in 2014 and Trump had won by 18 points in 2016, where the Democrat beat a Republican 51.4% to 48.6%. The George Washington University poll warns that this is going to happen across the country, where 53% of voters-- 46% strongly-- think Trump is doing a bad job.

Americans are overwhelmingly engaged in the upcoming 2018 congressional elections, and are poised to split with the president on a number of high-profile policy issues. In the inaugural edition of the George Washington University Politics Poll more than three-quarters (78 percent) of registered voters said they definitely will vote in the November general elections; another 15 percent said they probably will. Only 2 percent said they would definitely not vote. On a generic ballot for U.S. House, voters chose Democrats over Republicans, 45 to 38 percent. Voters also indicated they think their members of Congress care about their political careers and political parties’ agendas more than local communities or “people like you.”

“In two respects, the poll suggests some Democratic advantages that are less visible on the surface,” John Sides, associate professor of political science and a poll co-director, said. “Democratic voters remain more politically engaged than Republican voters on several dimensions-- including their willingness to do the spadework of an election campaign. And Democratic incumbents in the U.S. House are perceived more positively than Republican incumbents. Whether that will add up to a veritable ‘wave’ remains to be seen.”

If that doesn't give Trump enough to yell and scream about, ABC News reported that Cohen is likely to flip as the law firm representing him bails. "[T]he law firm handling the case for Cohen is not expected to represent him going forward... Cohen, now with no legal representation, is likely to cooperate with federal prosecutors in New York, sources said."

Trump wasn't even able to bask in the glory of having destroyed Mark Sanford's career on Tuesday night before finding out that his order-- over a month ago-- to promote Rudy Giuliani's son was circumvented by Chief of Staff John Kelly. In fact, instead of being promoted, Andrew Giuliani's West Wing pass was rescinded.

Kelly and others, including Office of Public Liaison director Justin Clark, won't promote Andrew because they think he "subverts the chain of command" and claim he had other issues in the workplace that they weren't happy about, according to two sources familiar with the situation.

According to a source familiar, Kelly took away Andrew's blue staff pass about two weeks ago, revoking his West Wing access. He now only has a green pass, which means he can’t enter the West Wing without an escort.

To top it all off and get Trump flipping out over fake news again, Foreign Policy ran 3 articles that must be driving Trump crazy, one asserting that if anyone deserves a Nobel it's South Korean President Moon Jae-i and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un, not Trump. "Talk of the peace prize is obviously premature. Trump’s meeting with Kim had great visuals, but there was no real deal struck and certainly no pledge of denuclearization from the North. And this isn’t the first summit to cause hopes to soar for inter-Korean reconciliation."

Even worse was Kim Got What He Wanted in Singapore. Trump Didn’t. The point is that "The G-7 and Singapore summits have put on display breathtaking strategic incoherence and appalling moral vacuity on the part of the Trump administration... Kim made only a vague promise to 'work towards' the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, with no details on timing or verification. This commitment is far less specific even than the past promises the North has broken,' but got all that he could have hoped for.

Even more embarrassing-- if Trump was capable of being embarrassed: Mari Stull, a former food and beverage lobbyist-turned-wine blogger under the name 'Vino Vixen,' who Trump game a señor just in the State Department 2 months ago is skulking around try to determine whether employees of the State Department are loyal to Señor Trumpanzee and his absurd political agenda. She's been reviewing the social media pages of State Department staffers for signs of ideological deviation. She has researched the names of government officials to determine whether they signed off on Obama-era policies-- though signing off does not mean officials personally endorsed them but merely cleared them through the bureaucratic chain. And she has inquired about Americans employed by international agencies, including the World Health Organization and the United Nations, asking their colleagues when they were hired and by whom, according the officials."

Her motto seems to be "Global swamp will be drained." Several staffers want to leave the Department because of her. One official told FP that "I have in my entire federal career never experienced anything at this level of chaos and dysfunction."  

The turmoil comes at a time when the secretary is trying boost morale at the State Department, which took a sharp plunge under his predecessor, Rex Tillerson. The exodus in the international organization bureau underscores the continuing struggles of career diplomats in an administration whose president has repeatedly shown disdain for traditional American diplomacy.

Stull was largely unknown in diplomatic circles in Washington until her appointment in April. Her bio cites her work as a lobbyist in the food and beverage industry, which included work for the Grocery Manufacturers of America. More recently, she served as a senior fellow at American Opportunity, a Virginia-based conservative group affiliated with former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore.

She also previously worked for the Food and Agriculture Organization as a partnerships and outreach advisor. But several diplomatic sources said that she left the organization on contentious terms.

Stull’s conservative politics can be gleaned from her decade-old wine blog, where one trip to the wine store for bottles of Veuve Clicquot champagne became a vehicle for knocking former President Jimmy Carter and promoting the expansion of oil drilling sites in the United States.

On her Twitter feed, Stull has criticized the U.N. as “bloated” and “biased,” dismissed the U.N. Human Rights Council as an “abject failure,” and derided UNESCO, the organization that supports international education, culture, and history, as the U.N.’s “seedy underbelly.”

She has also said the budget for special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election would be better spent on storm victims in Texas and Florida.

In response to a tweet by former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, a controversial law enforcement figure and high-profile Trump supporter, promising to poke the press “in the eye with a sharp stick and bitch slap these scum bags til they get it,” Stull replied: “@SheriffClarke has spoken. #StandDown #FakeNews #Fierce.”

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

By the time you read this, Señor Trumpanzee will have landed in Singapore for his meeting with fellow total nutboy Kim Jong-un. No, his wife Melania isn't traveling with him. Instead, he has taken along his TV wife, Sean Hannity, really.

The fact that Trump thinks he is entitled to a Nobel Prize just for meeting with Kim, let alone actually accomplishing anything of significance for humanity, has been talked about for weeks now. Trump craves the attention a Nobel would garner. He longs to bask in the award's glow. He is desperate for a Nobel, any Nobel, if only because President Obama got one. Whether or not any previous Nobel winners actually deserved a Nobel is of no consequence to a sicko megalomaniac like Donald J. Trump. He dreams obsessively of a Nobel. He thinks that a major award would gain him the respect he dreams about but will never earn. It's all part of the same psychosis that makes him constantly tell us about his huge crowds, his huge electoral victory, his "most successful" administration ever, "people are saying great things about me," etc., etc. and on and on and on and on.

Well, I did think of one "major award" we at DownWithTyranny could give him, and tonight we can give you a picture of it: The Nobel Prize For "Dating" Porn Stars." It's an award that will trigger many happy memories for the man who has to pay $130,000 for sex. We present it in "honor" of Trump's trip to Singapore, a place that is perfect for him, if only because the concept of human rights is barely even acknowledged. Trump, Singapore and Kim Jong-un, the three just go together.

In case you're somehow not familiar with the origin of this award's design, the clip form Jean Shepherd's A Christmas Story will clear that up. In the movie, the "major award" is given to a hapless suburban father who is only identified as Old Man Parker. Why he gets the "major award" isn't exactly 100% clear, and, Parker isn't the brightest guy in the world, but, unlike Trump, he is a good man.

Bask in the glow of your leg lamp Nobel, Donnie. Put it in the window behind you desk in the oval office. The next time a Russian spymaster drops by, you can tell him all about your "major award." Maybe he can even rig it so it will pee on you whenever you touch it.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Rest assured, I don't see Señor Trumpanzee being put in a situation where he'd actually be about to be put in jail. That's not how Washington works. We can see that right now in how Congress has abdicated it's responsibility to the country and the Constitution and all but ignored the very real and present danger that Trump represents. The situation depicted in tonight's meme is just a dream, a great dream, one that I wish would come true, especially as a cursor to a hanging, but a only a dream nonetheless.

Nixon got off and his plumbers and other gang members got sentenced to what amounted to absurdly short sentences at tennis camps, so there's no reason to expect anything different this time, even though our country's current predicament is, truly, worse than Watergate. Just as one example of Washington leniency; one of Nixon's crooks, Egil Krogh, is even now Senior Fellow on Ethics and Leadership at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress. That's what those who infest Washington think of ethics. Krogh is also Counselor to the Director at the School for Ethics and Global Leadership. Ethics, that's right, ethics. Talk about post-prison job placement! Washington might as well put "Land Of The Sickest Jokes" right on its license plates. Krogh has even co-written a book with the ultra-ironic title of Integrity. This is how it is in Washington. Just as Los Angeles attracts those who long to make it in the movie industry, Washington attracts those who long to make it in the sleaze and corruption industry. That doesn't mean sleaze and corruption only exist in Washington. It just means that that is the city you go to if you want to be the top of your chosen field. You know, like Donald Trump. Trump didn't go to drain the swamp. He went to Washington to be the slimiest swamp thing the city has every seen.

Just the same, I would love it if Trump got told that he was going to jail and there would be no bail. I'd love it, too, if he was to be pelted with garbage and hosed with raw, steaming sewage as halftime entertainment at next year's Super Bowl, but, neither scenario is gonna happen. So, we're left with reality and that reality, the environment of Washington, DC, is so warped that a grotesque, diseased little man thinks he is entitled to a Nobel Peace Prize for talking to a nation we are not at war with.

If Mr. Orange Spray Tan really covets an award, maybe we should just get him one of those generic participation trophies and let him prattle on about how he was the only president to ever get one, and tell us on a daily basis that it's a tremendous award and how Obama doesn't have one, even though Obama does have a Nobel Peace Prize, which is why Trump is so obsessed with getting a Nobel in the first place.

You know that if Trump ever got a Nobel, he'd have new "Nobel Winner" hats for sale, and replica Nobel medals (oversized). He would also insist on being introduced as "Nobel-winner Donald Trump" and he'd wear that medal 24 hours a day, even flaunting it in front of his friend Putin, until Putin told him to take it off. Still, until the Nobel Committee creates an award for a sub category of the Nobel Prize for fiction called the Nobel Prize for Wacko Conspiracies, Donnie won't deserve a Nobel.

Is Trumpanzee Making His Nobel Prize A Pre-Condition?

Ivanka and Jared will run Pyongyang's fanciest restaurant

I recall that right after Trump fake-cancelled his meeting with Kim Jong-Un. he blubbered something about his willingness to reinstate the meeting but "only under our conditions." First and foremost of those conditions-- aside from Trump getting to share the Nobel Peace Prize with Kim and Moon-- is that North Korea denuclearize. But that's not really on anyone's table put the one in front of Trump's highchair in the White House nursery.

The real question is whether or not a member of the Trump family will be granted the concession to run North Korea's first MacDonalds or Burger King franchise. Courtney Kube reporting for NBC News wrote that there's no actual denuclearization going on except in the drugged up Trumpanzee cranium. I asked a friend of mine from Oslo, who lives in Amsterdam now, if a burger chain will still get Trump a Nobel and he said he'll speak with his friends back in Norway and get back to me.

"A new U.S. intelligence assessment," Kube wrote, "has concluded that North Korea does not intend to give up its nuclear weapons any time soon." This finding "conflicts with recent statements by the fake crackpot occupant of the White House.

Trump is continuing to pursue a nuclear summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un even though the CIA analysis, which is consistent with other expert opinion, casts doubt on the viability of Trump's stated goal for the negotiations, the elimination of North Korea's nuclear weapons stockpile.

"Everybody knows they are not going to denuclearize," said one intelligence official who read the report, which was circulated earlier this month, days before Trump canceled the originally scheduled summit.

In an odd twist, a list of potential concessions by North Korea in the CIA analysis included the possibility that Kim Jong Un may consider offering to open a Western hamburger franchise in Pyongyang as a show of goodwill, according to three national security officials.

It suggests Kim is interested in a peaceful gesture to an American president whose love of fast-food burgers is well known-- and who, during the 2016 campaign, had said he wanted to talk nukes over a burger with the North Korean leader.

On the nuclear question, the analysis suggests that a more realistic immediate objective would be convincing Kim to walk back recent progress on the country's nuclear weapons program, the officials said.

But it's not clear that would pass muster with Trump-- or America's allies.

"If the North Koreans don't agree in a joint statement that lays out denuclearization-- that is, getting rid of their nuclear weapons, having them put under control by international elements-- then I don't think we are going to go very far," Chris Hill, a former ambassador to South Korea, said Tuesday on MSNBC.

...The CIA report came as a top nuclear expert argued in a new paper that the nuclear disarmament process in North Korea could take as a long as 15 years. Siegfried Hecker, a Stanford professor who once directed the federal government's Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico-- and who has toured North Korean nuclear facilities four times-- argued that the sprawling nature of the North Korean program means it will take a long time to dismantle. His analysis was first reported in the New York Times.

The CIA report, described by three officials to NBC News, lays out a series of incentives the U.S. and South Korea could offer North Korea to disarm, including infrastructure and agricultural aid.

The report, like nearly all intelligence products on North Korea, offered analysis at low or medium confidence-- language intelligence agencies use to signal that analysts lack hard information to buttress their conclusions.

One of the world's most reclusive countries, North Korea is a notoriously difficult intelligence target. Human sources and communications intercepts are hard to come by.

"This is essentially some very smart analysts offering their very best guesses," one intelligence official said.

During the 2016 campaign, Trump said he would like to meet with the North Korean leader in a low-key setting that entailed "eating a hamburger on a conference table."

The CIA report does not specify which fast-food brand could be invited to North Korea, but said Kim envisioned that the establishment could be used to provide food during the talks and would show that he was open to Western investment.

In advance of major diplomatic negotiations, it's not uncommon for intelligence agencies and the State Department to provide assessments about the opposing side's red lines. The idea is to prepare American participants for all possible eventualities, and to provide options to influence the adversary's behavior.

The new CIA report, according to three national security officials, assessed that Kim may also offer other limited American investment in North Korea, particularly in infrastructure.

The U.S. and South Korea would likely focus on food delivery-- possibly through the United Nations-- and other agricultural development, the report said. The South Koreans would likely take the lead in delivering this aid.

The U.S. also could offer economic incentives, including sanctions relief.

The report says North Korean officials have not demanded in preliminary talks that the U.S. remove all its troops from South Korea, and they are not expected to do so in any initial summit.

The report says that South Korean President Moon Jae-in believes he enjoys a strong rapport with Kim, and that South Korea is considering a formal declaration to end the war between the two countries.

The CIA and the White House declined to comment.

One former senior official who has been briefed on the U.S. approach to North Korea acknowledged that U.S. intelligence agencies do not believe Kim would ever get rid of all his nuclear weapons.

"I've always wondered: How does the administration square that circle?" the former official said.

The big question going into any negotiation, the official said, was how the White House would deal with North Korea's unwillingness to denuclearize while maintaining Trump's public line requiring such a move.

rump seemed to acknowledge that dilemma in remarks last week where he said North Korea may not have to immediately denuclearize and that its nuclear program could be phased out over a period of time.

The U.S. also has decided to drop any human rights demands as part of the talks, according to a current and a former official-- a deeply significant move when dealing with a country that the U.S. believes holds between 80,000 and 120,000 prisoners in squalid camps. The former official said the U.S. approach to North Korea was broken down into phases, each of which would bring corresponding gestures of aid and sanctions relief.

First, the Trump administration wants North Korea to declare all details of its nuclear program, dispose of fissile material and close some sites.

The U.S. would then press for international inspections and a gradual elimination of nuclear weapons.

The American side would like to all but eliminate fissile material in North Korea.

An open question, said the former official, is how and whether to press Kim to account for and relinquish his chemical and biological weapons. After Trump criticized the Iran nuclear deal for failing to account for Iran's missile program, it would be hard for him to reach a nuclear deal with North Korea that ignores other weapons of mass destruction.

On May 28, the White House said in a statement that Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had spoken and "affirmed the shared imperative of achieving the complete and permanent dismantlement of North Korea's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and ballistic missile programs."

Elie Wiesel (1928-2016)

"The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference"
(For a perspective on Wiesel's "last years," see below)


The 1986 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, "who used his moral authority to force attention on atrocities around the world" (as Emily Langer puts it in her WaPo obit), in 2004

Eye-Witness and Messenger

The Jewish author, philosopher and humanist Elie Wiesel has made it his life's work to bear witness to the genocide committed by the Nazis during World War II. Today he is the world's leading spokesman on the Holocaust.

After Hitler's forces had moved into Hungary in 1944, the Wiesel family was deported to the Auschwitz extermination camp in Poland. Elie Wiesel's mother and younger sister perished in the gas chamber there. In 1945 Elie and his father were sent on to Buchenwald, where his father died of starvation and dysentery. Seventeen-year-old Elie was still alive when American soldiers opened the camp.

For the world to remember and learn from the Holocaust is not Elie Wiesel's only goal. It is equally important to fight indifference and the attitude that "it's no concern of mine". Elie Wiesel sees the struggle against indifference as a struggle for peace. In his words, "The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference".

Copyright © The Norwegian Nobel Institute (1986)

by Ken

Considering how long a time frame there has been for preparing, you'd think a person would be prepared to say something on learning of the death of Elie Wiesel, which was confirmed yesterday by his son, who asked that in consideration of shabat the family be allowed to mourn privately the rest of the day. Yet I find myself all but speechless, given the extent to which he, a survivor himself, came to personify the victims of the Holocaust (which number included his mother, his father, and his younger sister; two older sisters also survived), tracking world events from the perspective of his unquietable awareness of the atrocities humans are capable of.

There will be no shortage of full-fledged obits (like, for example, Joseph Berger's in the NYT, Mary Rourke and Valerie J. Nelson's in the L.A. Times, and Emily Langer's in the Washington Post), not to mention encomia. So I thought we would go instead, despite its outdatedness, with the bio written for his 1986 Nobel Peace Prize (with, as noted, a couple of 1999 updates from the laureate; click on it to enlarge it a bit).



I imagine Elie Wiesel thought he was living his life the only way he could, and doubt that he thought of himself as a moral force. I'd like to think he was the only one who thought so.


AN ADDED VIEW: "He spent his last years inciting hatred, defending apartheid and palling around with fascists"

As Howie puts it, Max Blumenthal (@Max Blumenthal) "has been tweeting up a storm" about Elie Wiesel. To wit:

[Click to enlarge.]

#

The Current System In China May Be Ron Johnson's Ideal, But It Probably Isn't Liu Xiabo's

Thanks to the Supreme Court, China can run a candidate in our elections

Some politically astute friends of mine are in China. Both are Americans and the wife was born in China and grew up there. Her job has her working there nearly half the year and her husband spends a great deal of time there as well. They e-mailed me this afternoon, once they found out that jailed dissident Liu Xiabo won the Nobel Peace Prize. It wasn't easy for them to find the information.

China has reacted angrily to news that one of its dissidents has won this year's Nobel Peace Prize, labeling it obscene and saying the prize has gone to a criminal.

Nobel Committee president Thorbjoern Jagland announced the illustrious award in Oslo.

"The Norwegian Novel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2010 to Liu Xiabo for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China," he said.

In 1989, pro-democracy agitator Mr Liu joined a hunger strike in support of students in Tiananmen Square. He persuaded many to leave the square as troops were poised to enter.

He was jailed for 20 months and is currently serving an 11 year prison sentence for drafting Charter 08, which called for multi-party democracy and respect for human rights in China.

..."Liu Xiabo is a criminal who violated Chinese law. Awarding the prize to Liu runs contrary to the principals of the Nobel Peace Prize," foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said in a statement.

"The fact that Nobel Committee awarded the peace prize to such a person also lowers the peace prize itself."

The government's outburst was no surprise; it had told the Nobel Committee beforehand that Mr Liu was not a suitable candidate.

My friends, we'll call them Pete and Helen, were hoping to catch up with the news by tuning into CNN International. It started off fine and then...

the reporter is about to segue into the next piece of news and then the TV goes to black, as if a power outage, and shuts down. Thirty seconds or a minute goes by and the TV image returns. What happened? The Chinese government does not want the Chinese to know that the dissent, Liu Xiabao, has won the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Chinese internet does not mention that Liu Xiabao has won. The internet reveals winners of the award for economics, science, etc.  but no mention of the Peace Prize. The government treats it as non-existent.

I can get your site and others, but they are in English and they haven't gotten around to censoring you. I read your post about how money from here is being funneled into John Boehner's campaign. It comes as no surprise, believe me.

A standard part of Chinese culture legitimizes bribes and corruption as a way of life-- true Republicans at heart. They will pour money everywhere to win recognition for anything so the Government will take credit and show what a good job they are doing.
 
They do not want to give up the BMW's or the concubines that 99% of the government officials are enjoying. The president, Hu Jintao, has admonished the officials, but it's only lip service.

Follow the Money, remains the chant and still thrives since Tricky Dickies days. However, the Chinese deal in cash. A few well placed attache cases filled with our dead Presidents at the feet of the politicians, Blue Dog Democrats or Republicans,  will easily help sway the vote.

The vote by the House to reevaluate the Chinese currency won by a large margin. But, the ones who voted against it were probably bought by the Chinese. A wise person told me this as we had tea. China does not want the Democrats to be in power and they will do every and anything to get the Republicans elected. The only Democrat the Chinese loved was that REPUBLICAN President, Bill Clinton.

Well... what can I say? Pete and Helen, it turns out the BBC was blacked out by China too. I hope American voters look carefully at which candidates China is backing in our own country and what the motivations are. There's a reason they want John Boehner as Speaker of the House-- and it isn't to create more jobs for Americans. Ron Johnson has proclaimed that China is a model for America to follow-- and now they're helping to finance his campaign through the Chamber of Commerce. Wisconsin voters may actually elect this guy. And as we pointed out yesterday, Pat Toomey is another high profile Senate candidate the Chinese government is helping to run and who has expressed overt support for Chinese policies that kill America's economy and outsource jobs and whole industries. And the Chamber and their financiers among America's foreign "competitors" have selected a few reactionary, anti-American Blue Dogs to help the same way they help Republicans, particularly pro-China bribe-takers Frank Kratovil (MD), Glenn Nye (VA), Travis Childers (MS), Jim Marshall (GA) and Bobby Bright (AL). Good to know the perfidy is semi-bipartisan. This was President Obama's address to the nation yesterday. His message isn't something the GOP wants people to hear-- and it isn't something China wants American voters to hear either. The Republican Party and China are 100% in line on this one:

Maybe they should give Nobel Peace Prizes the way you properly tip folks you depend on -- beforehand, to encourage better service

"Ms. Valle said she hoped that Mr. Obama's victory would be seen not only as a victory for him, but 'as a tribute to the healing power of beer.'"

-- from yesterday's Borowitz Report

by Ken

Personally, I think Andy Borowitz nailed this Nobel Peace Prize business:

Nobel Insiders: Beer Summit Sealed it for Obama
Rose Garden Bash Gets High Marks in Oslo

OSLO, NORWAY (The Borowitz Report) -- As the world responded with a mixture of surprise and amazement to the announcement of President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize, Nobel insiders revealed that the President's "beer summit" at the White House put him over the top.

"The committee was definitely split down the middle right up until the end," said Agot Valle, a Norwegian politician and member of the five-person Nobel committee. "Some of them were still quite upset about that nasty business with the Somali pirates."

But, according to Ms. Valle, "someone brought up the beer summit, and we all agreed that that was awesome."

Ms. Valle said she hoped that Mr. Obama's victory would be seen not only as a victory for him, but "as a tribute to the healing power of beer."

Ms. Valle acknowledged that the President's win was widely considered an upset, with most pundits having expected the prize to go to Mad Men or 30 Rock.

Elsewhere, NASA bombed the moon, saying it was the one spot President Bush missed.

Makes perfect sense to me. The Olympics people were just too greedy, too focused on having their outstretched hands filled, to register appreciation for this sort of nuance. Honestly, why isn't Andy Borowitz invited onto the Sunday political gabfests and the cable-news nets to teach all those yawning heads working their jaws endlessly to no point?

Viewed more conventionally, of course the award of the Nobel to President Obama at this point is premature -- particularly when you consider the point at which the nomination would have to have been made. At the same time, it serves as a reminder of just what a suckhole the neocon loons have turned this country into in the eyes of the world. Bear in mind that any pretense anyone connected to the Bush regime may have made about desiring peace was a crock of doody, belied by every action they took.

Those demented devils wanted war in every diseased cell of their putrid carcasses. They lusted after it, the way sane people might crave a luscious meal or good sex. To the rest of the world we became the ravaging Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan. We shouldn't underestimate the importance of turning that perception around as quickly as the new president seems to have.

Now if only he'll live up to that early promise.

But it occurs to me that giving him the Nobel now may simply be an application of my friend Richard's approach to tipping. He tips early and often, and the results are so striking, it's hard to understand why everyone doesn't do the same.

Most people think of tipping as a reward for services rendered. If they get good service, it's their privilege to tip well; if they get bad service, they express their righteous displeasure by cutting back, or even stiffing the miscreant. That'll show him or her!

Except it doesn't. Mostly it tells the recipient that you're a cheap SOB and probably shouldn't have gotten as much service as you did. And the generous tip works for you only if you're going to be getting service from that server on a regular basis, and in that case you're really tipping, not on past performance, but on future expectations and hopes.

Richard applies that principle all the time. When he has people he's going to be dealing with on an ongoing basis -- hotel staff at the start of a stay, attendants at a parking lot or garage or gas station he uses regularly, tradespeople and delivery persons of all persuasions -- he makes his appreciation conspicuous at the outset. Some people regard this as foolish or even inappropriate, a violation of what they consider the "tipping covenant": reward good service, punish bad service. Well, they're entitled to their opinion. And it'll give them something to think about while Richard's needs are being attended to ahead of theirs.

So why not apply the same principle to the Nobel Peace Prize? Just think of it as a really sweet tip. You don't give it indiscriminately; there wouldn't have been any point, for example, in giving Chimpy the Ex-Prez a preemptive Nobel. The six or seven working cells in his primitive reptilian brain appear to have lit up at the mere thought of being a "war president." Or maybe it was being a "peace president" -- he always had trouble keeping them straight. Which the one with the bombin' and killin' and maimin' and devastatin' and all that other cool stuff? That's the best fun a sociopath can have when he can't be executin' convicts.

Not to mention how yumptious war, like every disaster, was for all those sleazy corporate predators who put Chimpy in the White House. These are businesspeople, after all. They expect a return on their investment.

This Obama fellow, though, seems to have a basic grasp of war (bad, to be resorted to only when inescapable) and peace (good). So maybe it's worth a Nobel gamble.

Now, Mr. President, all you have to do is earn it.

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Republican Political Activists Target Debbie Wasserman Schultz-- With Guns And Live Rounds

Deranged but celebrated right-wing media figures give "permission" for this kind of anti-social behavior

One of my Facebook friends, John Lynch (Paul Hill?), alerted me to Broward County Republicans going on a shooting spree-- so far just a practice one. Usually these kinds of armed nutcases use standard, non-partisan targets... or maybe a target that looks like Yasser Arafat or some kind of Arab guerilla. But one Republican politician thought it would be cute to make Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz a target.

One of the shooters at the Tuesday evening event was Robert Lowry, a Republican candidate hoping to unseat U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston. Lowry's target had the letters "DWS" next to the silhouette head.

Lowry said he didn't know who wrote Wasserman Schultz' initials on his target, but said he knew they were there before he started shooting. He initially described it as a "joke," but after answering several questions he said it "was a mistake" to use a target labeled "DWS."

Lowry is being supported by notorious America-hater Dick Morris. But at least none of this bunch went on to blow up a federal building the way another right-wing gun nut, Timothy McVeigh, did in Oklahoma City (1995). The lunatic fringe Republicans showed once again how much they loathe America and how much they are rooting for the country to fail, having a collective flip out when it was announced the President Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize.

 

In case you find the picture of Glenn Beck above gratuitous, keep in mind he suggested today on his Hate Talk show that instead of Obama getting the Nobel Peace Prize, it should have gone to the pack of half-crazed teabaggers who did so much for American social cohesion this summer.

UPDATE: Reaction For Debbie Wasserman Schultz

"There is nothing light or funny about pretending to shoot someone. At a time in our country when people are bringing guns to Town Hall Meetings and a preacher is calling for the death of our President, I find this type of action serious and disturbing. Tonight I am going to have to talk to my young children about why someone is pretending to shoot their mother. Trivializing violent behavior is the kind of extreme view that has no place in American politics."

Meanwhile, Dick Morris is refusing to call off his fund-raising event for Robert Lowry on October 22 and the Broward County Republican Party is still standing by their man. Charlie Crist's office has refused to comment.

Ask President Nixon: How do you feel about Al Gore sharing the Nobel Peace Prize?

"Former vice president Al Gore and a United Nations panel that monitors climate change were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today for their work educating the world about global warming and pressing for political action to control it."
--Howard Schneider and Debbi Wilgoren, on washingtonpost.com this morning

We didn't even have to contact former President Richard Milhous Nixon to Ask President Nixon for comment about Al Gore winning the Nobel Prize. The old dickster couldn't wait to unburden himself:

Jesus God in heaven! It was bad enough when that little prick Jimmy Carter glommed onto a Nobel. That whining, holier-than-thou showboat. I mean, anybody can give the world peace by just not making war. What's the trick to that?

I did it the hard way, though, by making damn sure every crackpot Commie knew I'd bomb the bejeezus out of anybody looked at old Uncle Sam the wrong way. But did anyone give me a Nobel Prize? No-o-o-o!

Little Al Gore?! His old daddy was bad enough--a whining liberal loser. But Little Al? The guy who managed to get elected president and then watch the other slob take his place in the White House? And the other slob was an ignorant pile of protoplasm like the little Bush boy. Only thing that saved him was his daddy sent my old people--my old people and my kind of people, people who know how to get things done--into Florida to save his sorry ass.

I always thought the little Bush boy's daddy was a Grade A creep--it was like you could run your hand right through where he was standing and there wasn't a damn thing there. But the little Bush boy, jeez! They might as well have put an eggplant in the Oval Office.

Little Al Gore! You remember when he had to have some woman dress him in beige so people would think he's more of a man? Christ, if they gave a Nobel Prize for whining, that they should give to Al Gore.

The only good thing about it is that it's got to fry the little Bush boy's patoot, and his incorporeal daddy's, seeing the guy who beat him get the Peace Prize. He's probably saying, "Well, if they give him the Peace Prize, I should at least get the War Prize!"

Christ, is that W dumb or what? He probably thinks a Nobel Prize is what Prince Charles gives his horse-faced wife every two or three months. Of course, that W's such a pansy, he probably hasn't done that since, well, has anybody DNA-tested those idiot Bush twins to see if they're actually related to him? The idea of even Laura the Librarian getting in the same bed with that lump is enough to make a dead president croak.