Skijoring!

Skijoring in Wisdom, Montana:

Waltzing Matilda

According to Charlie Pierce, this is the best anti-war song ever:



And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda - The Pogues

Now, when I was a young man I carried me pack
And I lived the free life of the rover
From the Murray's green basin to the dusty Outback
I waltzed my Matilda all over.

Then in nineteen fifteen my country said, "Son
It's time to stop rambling, there's work to be done"
So they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun
And they sent me away to the war.

And the band played Waltzing Matilda
As the ship pulled away from the quay
And amid all the tears, flag-waving and cheers
We sailed off for Gallipoli.

Well I remember that terrible day
When our blood stained the sand and the water
And how in that hell that they called Suvla Bay
We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter.

Johnny Turk he was ready, oh, he primed himself well
He rained us with bullets, and he showered us with shell
And in five minutes flat we were all blown to hell
Nearly blew us back home to Australia.

And the band played waltzing Matilda
When we stopped to bury our slain
And we buried ours and the Turks buried theirs
Then it started all over again.


Those who were living just tried to survive
In that mad world of blood, death, and fire
And for ten weary weeks I kept myself alive
Though around me the corpses piled higher.

Then a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over head
And when I awoke in my hospital bed
And saw what it had done, then I wished I were dead
I never knew there were worse things than dying.

For no more I'll go waltzing Matilda
All around the green bush far and near
For to hump tent and pegs, a man needs both legs
No more waltzing Matilda for me

They collected the wounded, the crippled, the maimed
And they shipped us back home to Australia
The armless, the legless, the blind, the insane
Those proud wounded heroes of Suvla.

And when the ship pulled into Circular Quay
I looked at the place where me legs used to be
And thanked Christ there was no one there waiting for me
To grieve and to mourn and to pity

And the band played Waltzing Matilda
As they carried us down the gangway
But nobody cheered, they just stood there and stared
Then they turned all their faces away

So now every April I sit on me porch
And I watch the parade pass before me
And I see my old comrades, how proudly they march
Renewing their dreams of past glory

I see the old men, all tired, stiff, and sore
The weary old heroes of a forgotten war
And the young people ask, "What are they marching for?"
And I ask myself the same question

And the band plays Waltzing Matilda
And the old men still answer the call
But as year follows year more old men disappear
Some day no one will march there at all

Waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda
Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me?
And their ghosts may be heard as they march by the billabong
Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me?

The Media, Bumfuzzled By Trump's Lies

The media allow Trump's lies to dominate the national conversation. Click here for an article at The Washington Post entitled "Time to Stop Chasing Trump's Lies Down the Rabbit Hole," by Paul Waldman.

In reaction to Trump's preposterous claims about the farce he himself (but no one else) calls "Spygate," surprise! The day after the meeting with the FBI that Trump breathlessly claimed would blow the lid off Washington, no one is talking about the meeting at all. Why not? Because there was nothing there. It was all based on Trump's lies. Here are Trump's first tweets on the subject:

Look how things have turned around on the Criminal Deep State. They go after Phony Collusion with Russia, a made up Scam, and end up getting caught in a major SPY scandal the likes of which this country may never have seen before! What goes around, comes around!

SPYGATE could be one of the biggest political scandals in history!

Waldman says:

This reveals the absurd pattern we’ve fallen into. It goes like this: President Trump makes a ridiculous accusation that almost everyone immediately understands to be false. Then we in the media, because it’s the president, treat that accusation as though it’s something that has to be taken seriously. Then governmental resources are mustered to deal with the accusation. Then Republicans try to twist the mobilization of those resources to give them the answer they’re seeking. But because it’s all based on a lie, they fail once Democrats force some measure of truth to be revealed.

Glenn Kessler and Meg Kelly run through some of the iterations of this maddening pattern. Barack Obama tapped my phones! The Obama administration illegally “unmasked” Americans caught up in surveillance of Russian targets! The Democrats colluded with Russia! The whole Russia investigation happened because of the Steele dossier!

How far can this go? I like Waldman's take on it:

No matter what ludicrous charge Trump makes, the entire political system reacts as though it might be true. If tomorrow the president said that “Robert Mueller” never existed and the person claiming to be him is actually Nancy Pelosi in elaborate makeup, we’d all find ourselves debating whether Mueller is a real person while House Republicans angrily demand that he produce a DNA sample.

He believes that Trump's lies "... should have been greeted with headlines reading, 'President Trump Lies to Public About Russia Investigation.'"

The North Korean propaganda machine regularly lies about the superhuman exploits of the Dear Leader:

So we should treat [Trump's] statements the way we do press releases from the North Korean state news agency. They may be newsworthy in that they show what the regime would like people to believe, but we don’t assume that they have any relationship to actual facts. When they claim that Kim Jong Un could drive at age 3 and win yacht races at age 9, or that his father Kim Jong Il wrote 1,500 books while at university and once sank 11 holes-in-one in a single round of golf, we don’t set about to determine whether they’re true.

Can You Guess? I Knew That You Could!

Jimmy Kimmel plays a "FUN GAME: Can you guess which one of these people is the business partner of Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen?"

Bill Maher: "A Spy In The Trump Campaign"?

Bill Maher on Real Time, May 18, 2018:

The latest theory from the bubble, that the FBI has planted a spy in the Trump campaign. No, not a spy; this is just what the FBI does for a living. Trump, sorry, man, you have ties to the American mob, the Russian mob, to Russian hookers, to the Kremlin, to indicted co-conspirators, to goons and shady lawyers and tax evaders and fraudulent businesses and fake charities and bribes and hush money and porn stars. This is what the FBI does: They investigate shady people like you.

Witch Hunt?

Click here for an article at fivethirtyeight.com by , entitled "How Mueller's First Year Compares To Watergate, Iran-Contra And Whitewater (and what those past investigations tell us about where the Russia investigation might go next.)"

I like one particular eye-opening chart contrasting the length of each special counsel and independent counsel investigation and the indictments and guilty pleas obtained in each:



The article was published on May 17, 2018, the date when the Mueller investigation had been in operation for one year. The Whitewater (Clinton) investigation lasted more than seven years, 77% of the time from Clinton's election win to the time he left office. Iran-Contra lasted more than six years; Watergate was just over four.

The article looks in some detail at those three previous major investigations. Here's one comparison it draws:

As the Russia investigation enters its second year, the most important variable may be how long Mueller can keep his job. Watergate, Iran-Contra and Whitewater all had one thing in common: They lasted at least four years. Given the reports that Trump has already twice considered ordering Mueller’s removal, it’s not clear that the investigation can survive that long — at least, with Mueller at the helm.

Robert Mueller v. Ken Starr

Click here for an article by Digby at Hullabaloo entitled "From the columns I wish I'd written file." It's a comparison of the Kenneth Starr and Robert Mueller investigations.

"... the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."

H.L. Mencken:

As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

Pence: Worse Than Trump, Says George Will

Click here for George Will's devastating beatdown of the groveling Mike Pence at The Washington Post, in an article entitled "Trump is no longer the worst person in government."

Don't Forget What Ollie North (Now NRA President) Did

That handsome young Marine colonel sure looked good in his uniform, didn't he?

Click here for Charlie Pierce's article at Esquire, entitled "The NRA's New President is the Most Famous Arms Trafficker in American History."

Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh, who investigated the Iran-Contra affair, said of George H.W. Bush, who pardoned Ollie North, "It’s hard to find an adjective strong enough to characterize a president who has such contempt for honesty.”

Welcome to TrumpWorld, Larry.

Blankenship: Ditch Cocaine Mitch!

Don Blankenship, imprisoned for a year after the Big Branch mine explosion killed 29 miners, is running for a U.S. Senate seat in West Virginia. Click here for an article at The Hill by Brett Samuels, entitled "Blankenship releases ad calling McConnell 'cocaine Mitch.'" (The ad has since been removed.)

The article gives a possible explanation for the "Cocaine Mitch" handle:

Politico reported that Blankenship may be referring to a 2014 report in the left-leaning Nation magazine that drugs were once found on a shipping vessel owned by McConnell’s wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao.