Every month or so, this booster magazine appears on my doorstep. It is unapologetically rah-rah about Grosse Pointe in the most icky, groveling way; I remember a passage that ran something like, “So yeah, property values are down — that just means young families can move in!” Etc. You don’t expect a magazine like that to sparkle, but on the other hand, is it too much to not have to deal with this?
I ask you. Man, that is a very long embed code. (Real bloggers don’t use the Visual tab in WordPress. We like to SEE our HTML.)
What a week of lameness, blogging-wise. I’m busy, and work drains the creativity out of me when the weather isn’t doing it first. And stuff is happening now that seems to cry out for heated commentary. Like this. Actually, that requires stand-up comedy. OK, then, this:
Former presidents may keep quiet about those who occupy the White House once they leave, but the code clearly does not extend to vice presidents. Nearly seven years after leaving office, Dick Cheney has produced a book that amounts to a stinging indictment of President Obama as an ineffectual, America-hating, military-destroying, soft-on-terrorism appeaser whose tenure has damaged the country.
It is a case he prosecutes relentlessly. To the witness stand, Mr. Cheney and his daughter and co-author, Liz Cheney, summon the ghosts of presidents past, including Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Reagan, to testify to the greatness of America and what they call the bipartisan postwar tradition of muscular leadership on the world stage.
This is a tradition Mr. Obama has shirked, the writers argue, making him a modern-day Neville Chamberlain. “The damage that Barack Obama has done to our ability to defend ourselves is appalling,” they write in “Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America.” “It is without historical precedent. He has set us on a path of decline so steep that reversing direction will not be easy.”
I don’t say this often, but how much longer can this affliction remain on the earth, sucking up health care on the taxpayers’ dime? Can we send an electromagnetic pulse to his robo-heart and end this sort of thing? You’d think.
Oh, and look: Donald Trump is “surging.” I welcome you to have a great weekend. I will have an insanely busy one, about which I can tell you more later. Enjoy yours.
Brandon said on September 11, 2015 at 12:37 am
Just be glad Cheney’s not in office anymore.
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alex said on September 11, 2015 at 5:57 am
Give people a free advertiser and they’ll have fish wrap for a day. Edit the damned thing and you’ll attract enough advertisers to give them fish wrap for a lifetime.
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David C. said on September 11, 2015 at 6:21 am
I have to believe that there will be musicians lining up around the block to tell the donald to go fuck himself. So all he’ll have left is “God Bless the USA” and “Wang Dang Sweet Poontang”
http://crooksandliars.com/2015/09/rem-tells-trump-and-cruz-go-fk-themselves
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Connie said on September 11, 2015 at 7:29 am
Somewhere I have a button thatsays “impeach Cheney first.”
And in the useless details dept: I picked it up at BEA in Chicago on the day Reagan died.
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coozledad said on September 11, 2015 at 8:04 am
Cheney’s a big pain in the ass for the Republicans right now. They’ve been trying to shove him down the memory hole but he keeps coming back, saying exactly the things Republicans are saying now, and reminding the sentient portion of the voting public that Republicans are sticky with blood. They’re going to have to execute some strange gymnastics to put Jeb in office, and Cheney being out there articulating Jebs policies is only multiplying the number of accidents and remarkable coincidences that’ll have to occur before Jeb can lay back, fire up a blunt, and watch his people cart off the remaining assets of the country.
Republicans practice the politics of despair because it resonates with a particular class of mental infirmity- people for whom the happiness of others is misery. Cheney is what any Republican would be if they could only climb to the top of the crab bucket. In the interim, they have to fake up little fragments of humility and reason, even if they appear to be shitting breezeblocks while they do it.
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coozledad said on September 11, 2015 at 8:09 am
Cheney’s opposite number:
http://morningafter.gawker.com/watch-joe-biden-reflect-on-the-life-of-his-son-beau-on-1730003121
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beb said on September 11, 2015 at 8:13 am
Coming from the man who did not get Bin Laden it’s pretty rich criticizing the man who did get Bin Laden.
Courser and Gamrat have gone bye-bye. Courser resigned and Gamrat got expelled. Of course this means two special elections to replacement them (or does the Gov. get to pick replacements until next year’s election?) one can only wonder what worse politician will crawl out from under the rocks to run.
The Freep has a rumor that the Tiger’s general manager is toast at the end of this season. I wonder how long it will be before the entire franchise is up up on the auction block?
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Jeff Borden said on September 11, 2015 at 9:18 am
Dick Cheney represents most of the things I dislike most about the U.S. and he does so loudly and proudly. There’s a bottle of Oban waiting for me the moment he kicks. His poisonous little offspring, surely, will take up where he left off, but she doesn’t have the literal blood on her hands that daddy does.
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Wim said on September 11, 2015 at 9:27 am
That old saying about how you can have your own opinion, but not your own facts? These people are living in an alternate reality. They’re children scaring themselves with ghost stories.
If Cheney can just hold out until they get the kinks ironed out of head transplants, we’ll never be rid of him.
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Jolene said on September 11, 2015 at 10:43 am
Poisonous is exactly the right word for Liz Cheney. I don’t think I’ve ever disliked anyone I’ve never met quite so strongly. She is just awful.
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brian stouder said on September 11, 2015 at 11:08 am
Last night I was returning from Harol Holzer’s Lincoln lecture at the ACPL, and popped the radio to AM for the top-of-the-hour news, and then heard that Levin (leVIN) guy, who is completely crackers!
With him, literally – up is down, and white is black, and what IS the frequency, Kenneth?
He was on a rant about how the DemoCRAT party is ALWAYS on the wrong side of history, and ALWAYS defeatist and destructive of the American way, blah blah blah.
So, he never heard of FDR, who won the most horrible war in human history, and genuinely saved “the American way” up to that point and beyond?
As I changed it to something a little more intellectually satisfying (America’s Top-40), I did so knowing that some number of angry white males out there like this guy, and buy his books, and are vindicated by (and repeat) his sentiments.
I hope Joe Biden runs, if only to have interesting Democratic presidential debates, wherein they can lambast this Donald Trump-‘angry ignorance’ riff, conclusively
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coozledad said on September 11, 2015 at 11:16 am
So, he never heard of FDR, who won the most horrible war in human history, and genuinely saved “the American way” up to that point and beyond?
Oh, he knows all that. And he knows whose balls he’s tickling. One of the central grievances of Republican grief culture is we were on the wrong side in WWII. I’ve heard it from too many of them now to regard it as an anomaly.
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Pam (the sister) said on September 11, 2015 at 11:34 am
I finally watched the 1st Stephen Colbert show last night. I wasn’t thrilled with it, but hoping it will get better. Although I liked the bit on the Oreo cookies. It started out with the Ham Colored One* stating that he will never eat another Oreo cookie because Nabisco is moving their Chicago based Oreo plant to the hated Mexico! Forbes calls it the Mexican Oreo Menace. Ham Boy asked his audience, “why did they do that?” Like he doesn’t know! Ham Boy is just the male version of She who Shall Not Be Named. What will the R’s do to keep him out of the White House?
* Credit to Bill Maher for the Alias
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basset said on September 11, 2015 at 11:48 am
had never seen Colbert on cable, watched for a few minutes the other night and didn’t connect with it. Probably too old.
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MarkH said on September 11, 2015 at 12:24 pm
I, too, was underwhelmed by Colbert’s CBS debut. The Oreo bit stood out, but Jeb?, on your first go? It has proved a misfire for both, imho. Conversely, I thought the Biden segment last night was heartfelt and revealing, both of them sharing experience of loss.
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Deborah said on September 11, 2015 at 12:29 pm
I’ve only seen clips of the Late Show with Colbert and so far I like it. I saw the clip of Biden, I honestly don’t know how he got through that without crying. I really feel for the guy but I don’t think he could win in an election for president.
My laptop is supposed to be shipped to Santa Fe because it wasn’t going to be ready for me to pick up in Chicago before I left. Of course they tried to deliver it shortly before we got to our place in SF yesterday. Supposedly they’re going to deliver it today, and it was supposed to be before 10:30 (mountain time) so they’ve got 2 mins. Fat chance.
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beb said on September 11, 2015 at 1:46 pm
Connie @4: when I first read your comment “I have a button…” I automatically filled in “…on my computer.” It’s kind of like te joke about people not being able to find the “Any” key that their manual tells them to press. Oh, to have an “impeach Dick Cheney first,” key on my computer.
It’s discouraging when people say that Joe Biden is a nice guy buy he could never win. We’ve already Bernie Sanders who is a nice guy, but could never win. Then we have Hillary who’s suffering a slow-rolling high-tech lynching from the New York Times. It’s gotten so bad that progressives are sighing that Barry O. can’t run for a third term. He has been a good president who became great when he didn’t have to run for office anymore. So if he could run for office he would be back to the overly cautious, compromise seeking Obama of his first six years.
What gets me is that while people are claiming that this or that Dem is unelectable the Republican field is filled with people who are shockingly ignorant of the position they’re seeking. Rick Perry is as dump in 2016 as it was in 2012. Scott Walker avoids answering questions because when he does he has to walk it back the next day, and back from gibberish to incomprehensible. Jeb Bush was supposed to be the smart Bush but seems committed to repeating every misstep his dumbass brother made. Huckabee may well be the anti-christ. Ted Cruz is the anti-christ wannabee. Jindal and Christie have driven their states so far into the ditch they should be tarred-and-feathered, burned at the stake and their ashes tarred-and-featherd. And yet no one has told any of these morons that they need an IQ on the plus side to be presidential.
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MichaelG said on September 11, 2015 at 3:32 pm
So I’m back from Spain. I didn’t do any trip things. There were one or two minor health issues and I ended up sleeping a lot and didn’t feel like writing stuff. I feel good now and everything is OK. The trip actually turned out rather well.
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Scout said on September 11, 2015 at 4:19 pm
beb @ 17 pretty much sums up exactly what is wrong with political punditry in general. It seems that currently, by the sheer deluge of coverage they’re giving him, Donald tRump is the media anointed candidate. Is it because he is such a bag of crazy that it’s great for ratings?
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Sherri said on September 11, 2015 at 4:27 pm
Glad you’re okay, MichaelG, and that the trip went well. I missed you!
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Sue said on September 11, 2015 at 4:29 pm
Now this is why I read Tom and Lorenzo:
Betty Windsor. Vicki Hanover. Followed by some interesting observation/insights.
These guys rule, haha.
http://tomandlorenzo.com/2015/09/queen-elizabeth-ii-becomes-britains-longest-reigning-monarch/
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Sherri said on September 11, 2015 at 4:42 pm
Standing while black: http://deadspin.com/nypd-releases-video-of-officer-taking-down-former-tenni-1730137308
Note that the reason given for Blake’s arrest was that he resembled a suspect in an identity theft case.
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Judybusy said on September 11, 2015 at 5:10 pm
MichaelG, welcome back! I’m glad the health issues were somewhat minor, and tha tyou still enjoyed the trip.
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nancy said on September 11, 2015 at 5:15 pm
Happy to see Michael back safe and sound, but DEEPLY BUMMED that Serena lost to that nothingburger. I’d have taken a dive.
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Sue said on September 11, 2015 at 5:39 pm
Perry’s out.
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Brandon said on September 11, 2015 at 5:44 pm
The Queen is in a class by herself. To illustrate, nightlife impresario Rudolf “once imagined a club with a series of VIP rooms–a box inside a box inside another box, each one more exclusive than the next, until the only person who could get into the ultimate box would be Queen Elizabeth II.”
https://books.google.com/books?id=EugCAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA50&dq=Rudolf+nightclub+Queen&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBoQ6AEwAGoVChMI6pf_7vfvxwIVkJWICh0cMwXS#v=onepage&q=Rudolf%20nightclub%20Queen&f=false
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Jill said on September 11, 2015 at 10:14 pm
Beb, the Michigan newspaper I read on line each day covers just south of Gamrat’s district. I read there that there won’t be a special election; staffers will serve the two districts until the next regular election.
Welcome back, MichaelG. Sorry about the problems but I’m glad they were minor enough for you to enjoy your trip.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 11, 2015 at 11:00 pm
MichaelG, welcome back; Gov. Perry, farewell.
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Dexter said on September 12, 2015 at 1:54 am
The 78 year old lady that whipped Serena is actually only 32 years old…ranked something like 48th in the world, but casual fans and those like me who abhor TV tennis and have not watched it since guys like McEnroe and Connors were playing had never heard of er and have already forgotten her name.
beb, it’s the manager…the Tigers’ GM will likely stay put for awhile. Al Avila is much younger than he looks. Brad Ausmus the manager is gone and I read the stories about fans clamoring for an immediate canning, count me in…the guy ain’t got it.
I had to come back from the third world, known as Toledo, Ohio, to re-stock the cat’s water and food and change his kitty box. He’s fine and he relished his boiled half chicken breast I made him for being a good soldier cat as Mom got her new knee. Mrs. Dexter’s surgeon is no fan of post-surgery rehab operations; I suspect he’s encountered too many MRSA cases in those places. He wants her to come straight home and have home-health nurses check her knee daily until she’s ready to go full speed ahead. My daughter from Columbus is a department head at rehab and they have decided to take the patient there and ignore the surgeon’s wishes. The doc said he’s sick of these post-surgery rehabs bilking Medicare claims for 20 day stays when it’s just not needed. Helifino. I do know my daughter has been doing this stuff since 2000 so we trust her judgment.
Toledo, where I have been dog-sitting and have to return in mere hours, can never get caught-up with road repair. I-75 is a goddam mess from below Findlay at least to the Michigan line and maybe further. “The Trail” (OH-25) is open but a long total re-vamping of the median is one huge project, and at times the dust is blinding. The narrow streets in The West End where I stay are just patched pot holes and the streets are just rough as hell everywhere. And then there’s the crime…murderous teen stabs everyone and kills one just four doors down from where I stay, just five weeks ago. My grandson got jacked again as he was almost home while walking, pistol in face, had to give up wallet and phone. After all that shit, damn…I won’t even walk to the 7-11 anymore, just down as alley, no damn way will I. Nobody else is walking the sidewalks either, except a few school kids with bookbag backpacks strapped on. I really hate having to go back right away to all that, but somebody has to watch those Weimaraners.
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Deborah said on September 12, 2015 at 5:24 am
Welcome back MichaelG. Glad your trip was enjoyable, sorry about the health issues.
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alex said on September 12, 2015 at 6:22 am
Wow, Dex, I didn’t know Toledo had gotten so rough.
As for extended care facilities, it was Medicare that wanted to be bilked by those rather than the hospitals, which charge a whole lot more per day for occupancy and are also cesspools of MRSA. I remember when this trend began some years ago. A friend’s elderly dad had just gone through some major heart surgery and was immediately discharged to a “nursing home.” He and his family interpreted this as the hospital and the insurance company writing a death sentence because it was such a novel thing and they thought he should be in the hospital until well enough to come home, as was done traditionally.
When my partner had to be on IV antibiotics for six weeks, the doctors tried to corral him into one of these facilities and he just wasn’t having it. The doctors probably had an ownership interest, I’m guessing. My partner wanted to be at home, and it was much less expensive to have a home health nurse stop by every few days, which was all that was really needed. Besides, there was a battle over whether work comp insurance was going to pay for it. After getting lawyers involved that matter is finally settling.
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David C. said on September 12, 2015 at 6:34 am
When my mom had her knee replaced, she was in the rehab center for two days. The rest was done at home by visiting PTs. It seemed to work well.
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coozledad said on September 12, 2015 at 7:23 am
So the BBC has become as gutless as NPR?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyns-team-send-complaint-to-bbc-over-its-hatchet-job-panorama-programme-10495955.html
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Jolene said on September 12, 2015 at 8:13 am
My mom came home directly after her knee replacements too, with follow-up visits from a physical therapist and quite a lot of family support. She did pretty well with that amount of help, and she was, by any standard, far from a brave or uncomplaining patient.
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Jerry said on September 12, 2015 at 12:30 pm
Myra and I are celebrating with champagne today. We moved into our house forty years ago today. According to my wife she’s been happy every day we’ve lived here. Selective memory I think – certainly the latter days of her mother’s life weren’t happy ones at all for either of us. But we’ve seen our three boys grow up here and if there have been bad times they’ve been outweighed by the good. She’s just wished that our next forty should be as good!
More champagne, goes up the cry. And more champagne we shall have.
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coozledad said on September 12, 2015 at 1:08 pm
Well, now. Don’t this make you want to rush right out and get yourself a face full of Republican ass:
http://wonkette.com/593817/congrats-america-the-troops-got-poisoned-and-you-get-to-pay-for-it
They should have been forced to do some honest whoring for those costs.
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BethB said on September 12, 2015 at 2:05 pm
I was discharged to a rehab facility just three days after a multi-disk-fusion back surgery. I was there eleven days, but since insurance would only cover 75 minutes total a day of combined PT and OT, I was bored silly almost immediately. I ate well, and had fairly good care from various aides, but I was dumbfounded that insurance was paying for this extended stay, and I wasn’t getting INTENSE PT. After the eleventh day (and the second weekend with NO PT or OT because, well, it was the weekend), I asked to be discharged. It took them all day to get it done. The facility’s doctor gave me RXs for ridiculously large quantities of both valium and a 10 mg narcotic pain killer; he had only seen me twice, and once was right as he was in my room writing the prescriptions!
I did much better having home care PT and OT after I had a total hip replacement a year later.
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Wim said on September 12, 2015 at 8:28 pm
Awed congratulations, Jerry!
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Deborah said on September 12, 2015 at 10:32 pm
Congratulations Jerry. Forty years in the same house is amazing.
I finally signed up for Netflix to watch Longmire mainly, but since then I’ve found all kinds of things to watch. One of the fantastic things that I watched today was a cooking show about Francis Mallman. He’s Argentinian, an Argentinian friend of ours who teaches architecture at Washington University in St. Louis introduced Mallmann to us recently. My husband is enamored with his methods of cooking over open fires and has attempted some of the recipes on our fire pit on our land in Abiquiu. We also built ourselves what someone called a harvest table which is a grand rustic table made of thick planks of wood. This table is near the fire pit outside in the elements and I’m interested in finding interesting textiles as table cloths for it. So far I’m using some Finnish Marimekko fabrics that I got at the Crate & Barrel outlet in Chicago, which alas is no more. The fabrics originally cost $40 to $50 per yard but at the outlet are around $3.99 – $5.99. Oh well it was great while it lasted. And Netflix is amazing.
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Sherri said on September 13, 2015 at 12:41 am
Forty years in one house! I’ve lived 12 in my current house, and it’s the longest I’ve lived in one house my whole life.
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Jerry said on September 13, 2015 at 2:47 am
Sherri, we thought very seriously about moving about six years ago – to a town some hundred plus miles away. But we’ve been here so long most of our friends and some of our family are in the area and it seemed too risky to move.
Myra is no lover of change and I suspect plans to die here; but not for a good many years. She needs twenty more years to outlive her mother which is one of her goals. This is only the third house in forty eight years of marriage!
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David C. said on September 13, 2015 at 6:46 am
I’m so happy I don’t still live in Allegan County. I lived there for 19 years and only very rarely did I get to vote for a sane person except in statewide races. Things look like they have become decidedly worse since I left.
http://woodtv.com/2015/09/11/allegan-co-tea-party-compares-garmat-expulsion-to-911/
The post on the Allegan County Tea Party’s Facebook page read as follows:
“On 9/11 2015, the terrorist network in Lansing Michigan (sometimes called the Republican Party leadership), has taken down the Twin Towers.
“It took more than a few box cutters to destroy the foundation, but included well placed explosives in a true conspiracy to cover the truth.
“Justice has not been served in this matter, but destroyed.”
The twin towers he’s referring to are Courser and Gamrat the the horny teahadis who were both expelled from the Michigan lege.
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alex said on September 13, 2015 at 8:21 am
If those Michigan teabaggers had gone to a gubmint school they might have learned what a metaphor is and maybe even how to select an appropriate one.
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Sherri said on September 13, 2015 at 10:36 am
Alex, at least they didn’t use the overworked Holocaust metaphor. It’s time for a different inappropriate overwrought attempt at metaphor.
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ROGirl said on September 13, 2015 at 11:32 am
So following the logic of equating the leadership of the Michigan Republican Party with Al Qaeda, that means that the Tea Party is planning to invade Lansing and attempt to destroy them.
Can’t wait to see that.
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coozledad said on September 13, 2015 at 1:44 pm
Todd Courser had a dream. A dream that one day legislators of both sexes could shag each other like whippets in a bath of hormone infused chicken gravy. He dreamed that the husbands and wives of these legislators would be struck blind from all the gravy splatter for the greater good of gravy boning everywhere. He dreamed of watering the tree of liberty with that gravy, and pulling the dollar bills off its branches with his teeth, because his hands would on Cindy Gamrat’s hips, while she steadied herself against that tree, and pushed herself furiously against his….
Still can’t top the whole “chopping the towers down with boxcutters” thing.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 13, 2015 at 7:25 pm
I pick Walker for the next to bail out on the GOP race.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/scott-walker-the-most-tested-of-gop-candidates-b99570827z1-325944281.html
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brian stouder said on September 13, 2015 at 8:06 pm
He looks woeful, doesn’t he? And Jindal, and (presumably right after SC, if not sooner) Graham……and really, Jeb! looks much more likely to implode than HRC, and HRC is looking defeatable.
I can’t see President Biden….but who knows? If it’s a Biden/Kasich race…..we’re up ’til 3 in the morning after election day
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Jolene said on September 13, 2015 at 8:14 pm
Hard to tell who will drop out next. There are several who barely register in polls. Walker is contending for my least favorite (It’s a close race; there are so many possibilities.), but I think he has more financial backing than some of the others.
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Deborah said on September 13, 2015 at 8:36 pm
Walker makes my skin crawl, he’s that kinda guy. I hope he’s out next but I doubt it.
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alex said on September 13, 2015 at 9:33 pm
We’ve got some underfunded pathetic losers who will probably drop out first. Jindal, Santorum, Pataki. There are also a few little-knowns like Jim Everson who’ll probably get more recognition for dropping out than they’ll ever get from staying in. Walker’s in a higher tier, like Huckabee and Graham, but has fallen out of the same esteemed league as Cruz, Rubio and Paul. All of which is to say that he’s a very undistinguished middle-of-the-roader in a pack of pathetic fools who aren’t going anywhere anyway.
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