The Weekender: Trump Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry

Let us pause the resistance for a moment to wallow in the crapulance of Donald Trump’s reputation as a negotiator and great deal maker. Trump’s election to the U.S. presidency was based on the erroneous notion that he was a businessman par excellence, that he could run the government like a business and make the deals that career politicians cannot. In fact, there’s miles of evidence that shows Trump’s horrid track record as a businessman, and in just 64 very long days there’s now quite a collection of proof that the talents Trump doesn’t have in business are not helping him as president either. Continue reading “The Weekender: Trump Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry” →

The Weekender: What Did You Do to Fight Trump This Week?

It really is hard to pair down every scandal thus far in the two-month old presidency of Donald Trump to just one that can be named the overall biggest scandal, but if you could, his taxes would have to make the Top 3. Not since Richard M. Nixon has a presidential candidate and victor hoarded magpie-like the completed taxation information they’ve sent to the Internal Revenue Service. That’s why when Rachel Maddow announced Tuesday evening that she had his taxes, there was significant interest. Too bad most of the wags couldn’t see the forest for the trees. Continue reading “The Weekender: What Did You Do to Fight Trump This Week?” →

The Weekender: I Have Concerns, And So Should You

As Seth Meyer observed, the past few years of the Trump administration have only been a month… In covering U.S. politics for the show, we’ve come to understand that a days can seem like weeks as the day begins with one story you think is going to be the top headline only to see it overruled after lunch time by a new top story of equal or greater importance. One might mistake this intensity of output for productivity in achieving the Trump agenda, but despite the sternest of denials from the President’s supporters, it’s usually the sign of another scandal or conflict breaking, and because of that we should all be concerned. Continue reading “The Weekender: I Have Concerns, And So Should You” →

A Dark Night Rises for President Trump

Well, it’s almost eight hours into the Trump presidency and we’re not dead yet. Encouraging sign. Perhaps less encouraging was some of the rhetoric now President Donald Trump started his tenure with, which was basically a remix of his Republican National Convention speech about how everything is terrible and America is going to hell in a nuclear powered hand cart. Still, it seemed as if there was something familiar about some of the things Trump was saying… Continue reading “A Dark Night Rises for President Trump” →

The Weekender: In Trump’s America, the Press Must Stand Together, or Fall Alone

It took literally no time for the first presidential press conference with Donald Trump to get hostile. The damn thing opened with incoming press secretary Sean Spicer attacking CNN and Buzzfeed for telling two different stories about the very same concerning topic: the possibility that Russia has compromising information about the President-Elect. Somewhere between Trump’s non-announcement about not-divesting himself from his businesses and presenting a big pile of folders filled with nothing, the 45th President of the United States took things a bit further by calling a major media outlet “fake news” for reporting a story about him he didn’t like. But then something more remarkable happened, a roomful of that reporter’s colleagues did nothing. Continue reading “The Weekender: In Trump’s America, the Press Must Stand Together, or Fall Alone” →

The Weekender: What Just Happened? A Year in Review-ish.

I was watching Batman Returns the other night (it’s a Christmas movie, okay!), and it seemed like it was rubbing the past year in my face with all the big budget gothery that Tim Burton is famous for. The plot sees the Dark Knight caught between a powerful woman trying to assert dominance in a male-crowded field with an annoying habit of coming back just when you think she’s gone, and a gross trust-fund brat whose disgusting inside and out, openly misogynistic, and wickedly obsessed with his own revenge and self-satisfaction who cons a beleaguered people into thinking he’s their hero. Sound familiar? Continue reading “The Weekender: What Just Happened? A Year in Review-ish.” →

From Spannerbook: Carte Blanche

Spannerbook

hat-and-mug The first headline to finally cut through the President Trump news tsunami on my feeds was “Mosul battle: IS hangs bodies of 40 civilians from poles in Iraqi city, UN says” on November 11th. The Daesh are feeling the heat and are reacting as classic fascists do; killing civilians, getting teenagers and children to suit up and do their dirty work, sending out the suicide bombers into the markets of the unarmed and defenceless as only cowards can do. Are they finished? It’s very difficult to wipe out an ideology. You can beat it back but the latent period will end eventually. An entrenched idea will inevitably regain traction in the greater consciousness. Sometimes it’s a slow burn and other times it’s as if a switch has been flicked. Trump is insistent he is going to take care of ISIS but he seems to have unleashed a taste of an…