Chris Christie "broken clock" moment in time: Tells right wing Republicans the truth about the former guy Trump

Win or Lose, Chris Christie Is Running the Best Campaign Against Trump:  Not only is Chris Christie the only Republican who understands he is running against the former guy Trump, but he’s the only candidate who comes close to matching him as an entertainer.

Former Governor Christie of New Jersey fits the political posture of a broken clock being "right twice a day". 

Echo opinion essay published in The Daily Beast by Matt Lewis:

Don’t look now, but Chris Christie is having a moment. Calling on his experience as a federal prosecutor, he is now prosecuting a case against Donald Trump.

While Donald Trump is clearly the prohibitive front-runner for the Republican nomination, there is no denying that Christie is the most interesting of the growing Republican field of candidates clamoring for that coveted spot. Consider just a few of Christie’s recent greatest hits.

When Trump mocked Christie’s weight, Christie, appearing on Fox News’ “MediaBuzz,” responded, “Oh what, like he’s some Adonis?” When asked about Trump diverting campaign money to pay for his legal expenses, Christie called him “the cheapest S.O.B. I’ve ever met in my life.” And regarding the GOP’s performances in 2018, 2020, and 2022, Christie called the former president a “three-time loser.” For better or worse, when it comes to throwing elbows, at least, he kind of sounds like…Trump.

"Chris Christie is telling the unvarnished truth about Trump", Frank Bruni in The New York Times.

Christie is also not above dinging other Republicans for their cowardice towards Trump.

For example, after Ron DeSantis tried to dodge a question about Januaray 6th, by saying he wasn’t in Washington at the time, Christie mocked him, saying, “Did he have a TV? Was he alive that day? Did he see what was going on? I mean, that’s one of the most ridiculous answers I’ve heard in this race so far.” Vinny Gambini in My Cousin Vinny couldn’t have put it any better.

I don’t want to go too far out on a brittle limb here. Christie is still polling at under 3 percent.

Still, I wouldn’t be surprised if (unlike many of his GOP competitors) Christie’s trajectory is still on the rise. There are a couple of reasons for this.

First, Christie is the only contender who actually realizes the 2024, election is about one question and one question only: Trump or not Trump.

This is to say, the 2024 GOP primary is not about who has the best 10-point policy plan or who is the most anti-woke. It’s simply about whether or not Republicans want Trump again.

Christie is the only candidate whose strategy and message suggest he accepts this reality—and is acting accordingly.

What this means is that Christie can get on TV at any time he wants because Trump is always in the news.

Will this allow him to gradually consolidate a larger chunk of the GOP primary and get to double digits, possibly even blowing everyone’s mind by becoming Trump’s main rival? That’s the unanswerable question.

But what I do know is that Christie is the only Republican opponent who has the correct interpretation of what the primary is about. And that is a huge advantage.

This also brings us to the second reason Christie has a chance to gain traction. He’s the only non-Trump candidate who is not only tough, but also funny and entertaining.

Perhaps it’s a commentary on our culture, but this is vitally important. In fact, I would say that Trump’s entertainment value is a wildly underrated political attribute.

A recent column in the Financial Times notes that in a 2016 paper, “...three anthropologists from the University of Colorado Boulder and University of Texas at Austin argued it was the fact that Trump was so entertaining, above all else, that won him the Republican nomination that year.”

Jemima Kelly, the FT columnist, goes on to note that “If there’s one thing the former president does have, it’s personality. It’s not that he’s likeable. No, Trump has a much rarer gift: he’s funny.”

I get that “funny” is a weird description for a guy who tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power, but let’s be honest, Trump is at least partly a stand-up comedian.

And while it might be convenient to assume that to his fans, the cruelty is the point, at least some of his fans think entertainment is the point. To them, Trump is an authentic class clown in a world full of boring rule-followers who spew scripted talking points.

This brings us back to Christie. Not only is he the only Republican who understands he is running against Trump, he’s the only candidate who comes close to matching him as an entertainer.

It might not be enough to sway Republican primary voters, but that’s on their collective conscience. Christie can’t control how voters will respond to his message. What he can control is how he delivers it.

And on that count, he’s hitting it out of the park.

In praise of Dr. Anthony S. Fauci: A dedicated public health expert

"Like #TFG Trump, DeSantis has a cruel method to his madness", Roger Sakolove, echo opinion published in The Palm Beach Post, Florida newspaper.

Thank you Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., NIAID Director:

Echo from Boynton Beach, FL with Maine Writer inserts:  

The defense for rape or assault often centers around impugning the reputation of and demonizing the victim. 

Weinstein did it (and failed!). Trump did it- Ugh- repeatedly. 

Bill Cosby did it. Maxwell did it. That’s exactly what (#SIASD! IOW "idiot") Governor Ron DeSantis is doing to (the public health hero!) Dr. Anthony Fauci, as he calls for Fauci’s imprisonment – to raise money for his re-election or, even more chilling, for his (#SIASD delusional) presidential run.

The unwarranted brutalization of Dr. Fauci by stupid Ron DeSantis began  innocently(is there really such a think?) enough, with DeSantis fundraising through “Don’t Fauci Me” t-shirts and koozies. Perfectly harmless, right (dumb!) Ron? But the call to imprison Dr. Fauci has taken this cruel and evil “joke” to a new level.

".. DiSantis apparently has no core beliefs other than the unshakable conviction that he should sit in the Oval Office."

I’m sure the “fringers,” who see Dr. Fauci and his medical science as some kind of threat to their personal freedom, will have more dangerous thoughts about the octogenarian who the Governor calls a felon. Absurd rumors continue to spread about Dr. Fauci making money from the pandemic, just as the previous administration fostered conspiracies about doctors selling ventilators and personal protection equipment at the height of COVID-19.

Like (Dumpti) Trumpti, DeSantis has a cruel method to his madness. Assault people of exceptionally good character. Propagate lies. Assail the truth. All under some warped concept of Trumpzi-upped patriotism and freedom.

I fear for Dr. Fauci. I applaud Dr. Fauci's strength, leadership and experience. I hope he can survive the brutal assault engineered by Ron DeSantis and his cult of accomplices.

Roger Sakolove is a resident of Boynton Beach.

Convict the January 6th seditious rioters including the instigator

From Trump’s promise of a “wild” protest to far-right calls to “get into Capitol building” and posts of floor plan layouts- it was  sedition! - TheDailyBeast.com

Maine Writer opinion - Often, cliché's are the best way to summarize a situation. History repeating itself is one way to conceptualize the dangers still simmering, post the January 6th seditious riots at the U.S. Capitol. Just read summaries about Mein Kampf to learn more and read the following letter published in Tulsa World. In fact, the first attempt by Nazis to take over Germany failed, until it didn't.

"this violence will continue..." Dr. Setter opinion.

This opinion echo letter was published in the Oklahoma newspaper "Tulsa World", one of my favorite US newspapers! 

The January 6th (seditious!) insurrection at the Capitol was what Donald Trump wanted, and he must be held accountable!

Trump agitated his supporters by repeatedly lying about the election being stolen and warning that the fate of the nation was at stake.

He organized the rally, encouraging his supporters to come to Washington when Congress would be certifying the electors.

Trump tweeted: “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th,” and “Be there, will be wild!”

Many of his followers planned a violent protest. 

They posted in plain sight about using force. On Jan. 1, one tweeted: “The calvary [sic] is coming, Mr. President!”

Trump responded: “A great honor!”

On Jan. 5, one posted: “If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.”

Responding comments included photographs of assault rifles and other weapons they planned to bring and comments about occupying the Capitol.

Trump did nothing to discourage this.

At the rally, after one statement about a peaceful protest, Trump sent them to the Capitol with this message: “And we fight. We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore. …and we’re going to the Capitol."

He sent no messages to stop the rioters, nor call in the National Guard.

He must resign, be removed from office, or impeached and convicted with a bipartisan vote, or this violence will continue.

Kenneth Setter, M.D., Tulsa Oklahoma

Donald Trump cognition- Wash Rinse Repeat.: Covfefe?

Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA),
the elephant question.

Echo opinion published in the Chicago Tribune newspaper by Jonah Goldberg

Donald Trump’s interview with Chris Wallace, which aired on “Fox News Sunday,” was remarkable in more ways than there is room to recount here.

But let’s start with what should be the lead story: The president of the United States told Wallace that the mental competence test he recently took was “very hard,” specifically the last five questions.
Just to be clear, Trump “passed” the test (Maine Writer, Paaaleeeze! It's not a "test"; rather, it's a cognitive assessment screening tool!)— a fact he’s boasted about on numerous occasions. “I aced it,” he proudly told Fox News’ Sean Hannity, earlier this month. 

Nevertheless, the problem is that none of the questions on the standard Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) test are supposed to be hard, if you aren’t suffering from dementia of some kind. Crowing that you “aced” the MoCA is like bragging that you passed a sobriety test, while sober.

The last five questions of the 10-minute, nine-task exercise assess things like basic abstract reasoning — e.g., how are a train and a bicycle alike? — and rudimentary memory. The final exercise, presumably hardest, according to Trump, simply asks the patient to provide the date, time and location of the examination.

We should all hope the guy with the nuclear codes can “ace” this test. Some might even say we should have a president who didn’t find it “very hard” to ace it.

Trump’s bragging about his test results may simply be part of his strategy to cast presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden as “not all there.” But it’s hard to fathom why the Trump campaign thinks this is a shrewd gambit.

In Sunday’s interview, Wallace asked Trump point-blank, “Is Joe Biden senile?”

“I don’t want to say that,” Trump answered. “I’d say he’s not competent to be president.” (Hello? Vice President Joe Biden was competent to be president according to the US Constitution!) At first, it seemed the president was opting to take the high road. But he then went on to say, “Joe doesn’t know he’s alive, OK? He doesn’t know he’s alive.” And, later on, “He’s shot, he’s mentally shot.”

Perhaps he’s seen data suggesting attacks on Biden’s age don’t play well with senior voters, so the task is to claim Biden is mentally handicapped but not as a result of his age? That’s a level of nuance we’d expect of someone who aced a cognitive evaluation, but not what we’d associate with Trump’s political style.

Regardless, the whole strategy of attacking Biden as mentally incompetent is (wrong minded).... and risky. 

Forget that such tactics were once considered beyond the pale. And put aside the entirely reasonable conclusion that Biden does indeed show his age quite often — and that he’s always had a propensity to say weird things. The Trump campaign is now betting his reelection’s already slim chances on Biden proving Trump’s diagnosis is right.  (But, Donald Trump is completely incompetent to diagnose anything, he has no qualifications to diagnose.)
One of the central tasks of campaigning, and politics generally, is managing expectations. Beating expectations in a primary makes you a winner. Falling short has the opposite effect. For instance, Lyndon Johnson won the 1968 New Hampshire primary by seven points but fell so far below expectations that he withdrew from the race. Trump has benefited from early warnings that the U.S. could see millions of deaths from COVID-19, so the current — and rising — death toll of “only” 143,000 beats expectations.

As of now, all Biden has to do to beat the expectations laid out by Trump is prove he knows he’s alive — a very light lift. In normal times, presidential campaigns work hard to set expectations for the opponent unreasonably high.

Before Trump’s first debate with Hillary Clinton in 2016, for example, then-RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said, “The expectations on Hillary are very, very high. She’s been doing this for 30 years. I think people expect her to know every little detail. She has to perform in a way that is of the highest of expectations. I think in the case of Donald Trump, look, he’s the outsider, he’s a person who’s never run before, let alone be in a presidential debate.”

In other words, if Trump even held his own in the debate, he should be declared the victor? (I don't think so!!!~ ugh!)

Given that Vice President Joe Biden's lead in the polls continues to widen, there’s no rush for him to call off his front-porch-style campaign. But, after months of Trump’s flailing, erratic and increasingly desperate attacks on Biden as a near vegetable, all Biden will have to do is come across as a reassuringly normal, pleasant, albeit gaffe-prone and competent leader. Biden, despite his flaws, seems up to that.

If the Wallace interview is any indication, it’s Trump who struggles to meet that remarkably low bar.

Jonah Goldberg is an editor-at-large of National Review Online and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

And the Guardian newspaper wrote this:  

The test is called the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), and was created by the neurologist Dr Ziad Nasreddine in 1996. Talking to MarketWatch on Monday, Nasreddine stressed that the test “is supposed to be easy for someone who has no cognitive impairment”, saying that “this is not an IQ test or the level of how a person is extremely skilled or not. The test is supposed to help physicians detect early signs of Alzheimer’s.”

There are a few different versions of the test with small variations (such as the words to remember or animals to name), but the questions are generally the same. We can’t tell for sure which version Trump took, but as he said he did it recently, I’ve taken the latest MoCA test from their website.

Trump is right about the start of the test being easy. But when it comes to the last five questions, his claim that they’re “very hard” is unsettling (although not surprising) in what it reveals about his relationship with reality.

But before we dive into that, here’s what the test involves:

The first few questions are indeed “easy” – although it goes without saying that anyone experiencing cognitive problems is supposed to find it hard, and the point of the test is to help diagnose their condition.

First, you have to draw a line between numbers and their equivalent letters (1 to A, A to 2, 2 to B and so on). Then you have to draw a cube, and a clock at 10 past 11. Call it what you will – millennial-itis, lockdown brain – but this was actually a slight challenge as I can’t remember the last time I looked at a clock that wasn’t on my phone or laptop. So yes, it took me a second to remember that the minutes are all multiples of five – for 10 past the big hand points to two. But I figured it out in the end, and that’s all that matters.

The ‘elephant’ question

If you’re lucky enough to not have any cognitive impairment, this part is also easy. There are three drawings – a lion, rhino and camel. As mentioned, there are a few versions of the test with very minor differences – for example, the test Fox News showed during the interview had an elephant on it, but the latest test has a rhino instead. This has led some of Trump’s critics to baselessly claim that he can’t tell the difference between the two.

Repeat after me – and do some maths

Both of these sections are very simple, and involve repeating a series of numbers forwards and backwards, and remembering a string of five random words. The final part, which Chris Wallace mentioned, asks you to count back from 100 in multiples of seven (100, 93, 86). Like the clock, this took me slightly longer than I would have liked – but nowhere does it say this is a timed test. I did it in the end, slowly but surely.

The difficulties begin

This is where things get a little concerning.

If you remember, Trump bet Wallace that he “couldn’t even answer the last five questions” of the test. But for a mentally healthy person, the last five questions should be as simple as the rest.

The fifth-to-last question on the test asks you to repeat a sentence out loud, before naming as many words as you can starting with F. In the following “abstraction” section, you have to spot the similarity between different objects such as trains and bicycles (modes of transport), or a watch and a ruler (measuring devices).

Next, you have to recall the random words that were included in the earlier memory section. This may be the part that’s easiest to trip over.

And finally, for the orientation part of the test, you have to … say what the date is.

For Trump to claim these are hard is worrying because for any cognitively healthy person, they shouldn’t be. But before we start any armchair diagnosis, you have to weigh up two probabilities against each other. Is it really likely that he found the last five questions hard? Or is it more likely that he’s misrepresenting about how hard they were, in order to look “smarter” than Joe Biden?

In the same interview, Trump got his team to pass him a chart that he said showed the US had “one of the lowest mortality rates in the world”, when it didn’t do anything of the sort. This is shocking, but not surprising – Trump has now made more than 20,000 false or misleading claims since he took office.

So it seems more likely that Trump’s difficulties at the end of the test tell us nothing that we don’t know already. His prolific lying and self-aggrandisement, two things we have empirical evidence for, should be what worries us. For, similar to his “stable genius” claims, you’ve got to ask yourself: how many smart people brag about their supposed intellect so much, and in such a misguided way?

• This article was amended on 24 July 2020. To ensure that the memory section of the MoCA test remains valid for future participants, two images which revealed the answers to that section have been removed. (Maine Writer: The purpose of the cognitive evaluation tool is to assess memory capacity regardless if the image presented to the test taker is an elephant, a giraffe or a rhinoceros.)

America faces an epic choice ...

Root cause analysis of the modern political "witch hunt"~ Echo opinion

Rigged Witch Hunt!

Echo opinion by Jay Michaelson published in The Daily Beast

Senator Joseph McCarthy (1908-1957) with Roy Cohn (1927-1986) Senator McCarthy died from complications associated with heroin addiction and alcoholism and his Attorney Cohn died from complications with Acquired Immune Deficiency (AIDS). These two men were the root causes of modern political "witch hunts". 

Wait! Does Donald Trump want us to think the Russia investigation is a witch hunt? I’m starting to get that impression.

Indeed, the (MaineWriter ~ "failed") leader of the free world has tweeted the term “witch hunt” 106 times in 2018 alone—which, I’d like to propose, is a poor choice of metaphor.

If this were an actual witch hunt, Mr. Trump would be on the side of the hunters.

Estimates vary widely, but it is thought that between the 14th and 17th centuries around 60,000 people were executed for witchcraft (in Europe and America), and 75 to 90 percent of them were women.

Actual witch hunts were largely gendered affairs, with women being targeted because they were sexualized and literally demonized: one common theme was that Satan grabbed witches by the you-know-what. Another was that women were “weak.” Does any of this sound familiar?

Moreover, women accused of witchcraft were disproportionately those who did not conform to gender expectations. Outcast women (“sluts”), single women (including widows), women who disobeyed their husbands. Nasty women.

Once again, methinks the president doth protest too much.

He learned that stuff from (Roy) Cohn ~ ?perhaps reincarnated in Stephen Miller? (How Donald Trump and Roy Cohn's Ruthless symbiosis changed America), who before becoming Trump’s mentor, was Senator McCarthy’s henchman. 

It was Cohn, not Robert Mueller, who helped orchestrate the actual “greatest witch hunt in political history,” now known as McCarthyism.

Careers were ruined, lives destroyed, and anyone who ever supported a union or protested a politician was regarded as guilty until proven innocent.

All of this woman-hating rhetoric, of course, was holy and wholesome and good, because religion. Seventeenth century Puritans believed women to be particularly susceptible to evil. Puritan women themselves believed this. Thus women had to be exceptionally pious and saintly, and also kept close at hand.

Mike Pence calls his wife “Mother.”

But it’s not only women that were targeted by witch-hunts, as by the president’s schemes of seduction: it was sexuality itself. 

Women outside the control of men and the church were seen to be dangerously sexual. The witch hunts of Europe and America were in part sexual inquisitions, often snaring those we might call LGBT today: perceived sexual deviants, ‘mannish’ women, ‘effeminate’ men.

Needless to say, all these impulses, too, are abundant within the current administration: sexual puritanism, the need to control women’s bodies, and the denial of dignity to those who are gender-nonconforming, transgender, or queer.

Indeed, the conservative evangelicals so lately enamored of our philandering president are the spiritual and sometimes literal descendants of those same Puritans: the extremely conservative theology, the bizarre belief that all of us are born sinners, the active roles Satan and Jesus take in human lives, the sex-phobia, the inability to let people live and let live, the rigid gender hierarchy.

Moreover, to the extent there really was witchcraft in the 16th to 18th centuries—most likely folk traditions and holdovers from the pre-Christian past—they share their Christian ancestors’ religious intolerance as well.

Even the notion, now prevalent on the Christian Right, that Donald Trump’s manifest unsuitability to be president only proves that he is an instrument of Divine Providence, is part of the same worldview that regards people as puppets of greater forces, whether benevolent or malevolent. Some people are instruments of Christ, others of Beelzebub.

Well, you might say, Trump doesn’t mean actual witch hunts—he means figurative ones, like McCarthyism. After all, that’s where the term entered common usage: the Red Scare was the inspiration for Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, which forever linked the two phenomena in American culture.

Here again, though, Trump is on the side of the hunters: namely, his loathsome political mentor, Roy Cohn.

People forget sometimes that Trump didn’t burst out of the womb with his pugilistic rhetorical style and reactionary political views intact.

It’s a short stone’s throw indeed from Cohn’s imprecations against all those he deemed Un-American to Trump’s evil claims that the free press is the enemy of the people—and, more recently, his stripping of security clearance from his critics such as former CIA Director John Brennan.

More broadly, McCarthyism was a burst of populist conservative paranoia, just like “Make America Great Again.” Both claimed that America was both the best nation in the world and threatened with imminent destruction by anti-patriotic elites and unpopular minorities “opposed to our way of life” (then: communists, African Americans, Jews; now: Muslims, immigrants, Jews).

Both movements are radically anti-rational, anti-education, anti-science. Both are fervently particularistic, placing America First and defining America as narrowly as possible (white, suburban/rural, conservative, Christian).

Trumpism is, itself, a great witch hunt, desperately in search of an enemy.

Really, it’s quite an irony: the flaxen-haired prodigy of America’s foremost witch-hunter now declaring himself the victim of a witch-hunt—no doubt an irony that Cohn himself would have admired, and been all too familiar with.

Remember, Cohn focused his attacks on people disproportionately like him, especially Jews and closeted queers (and, it turned out, he was among the queers! Hypocrite!).

Cohn, with the assistance of the closet queen J. Edgar Hoover, relentlessly persecuted gays in what became known as the “Lavender Scare,” associating homosexuality with ‘subversives’ and communism. That led to President Eisenhower’s order banning gay people from serving in government, which led to the firing of over 5,000 people.

This is what self-hatred looks like, and Cohn and Trump can’t help but show it off: the preening, the vulgarity, the tacky taste for the gaudiest luxuries imaginable, the constant need for validation. (If Roy Cohn could’ve hosted demagogic pep rallies in the 1950s, he would’ve done that too.)

In other words, whenever Trump tweets against contemporary witch-hunters, he’s attacking his own reflection in the mirror.

Donald Trump is a crises acceleration machine

It's difficult to understand how many more scandals and indictments can be piled on to the "crises du jour" by the failed Donald Trump administration.  In an interview reported in The Daily Beast, the political cauldron being stirred by Trump and his chaotic management is as bad (and getting worse) as anything in American history.

BE AFRAID ~ echo reported in The Daily Beast reported by Marlow Stern

Ex-CIA Director John Brennan to Bill Maher: Trump Is ‘A Real Threat to Our National Security’

The former CIA director under President Obama—and the architect of the bin Laden raid—sat down with Bill Maher on ‘Real Time’ to discuss Trump revoking his security clearance.

John Brennan is pissed.

John Owen Brennan is an American intelligence official who served as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency from March 2013 to January 2017

The former CIA director under President Obama, and the architect of the bin Laden raid, sat down with host Bill Maher on Friday night’s Real Time to vent about President Trump, who last week took it upon himself to revoke his security clearance. 

In a statement delivered by press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump pointed to Brennan’s “frenzied commentary” and “unfounded and outrageous allegations” as the reason for the revocation—without, of course, getting into any specifics.

Brennan, who is an MSNBC analyst, was very critical of Trump’s cozy relationship with Vladimir Putin, branding the president’s ring-kissing during their (failed!) Helsinki summit “nothing short of treasonous.”

This is what Brennon posted on Twitter: Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of “high crimes & misdemeanors.” It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???

“There are two principal reasons why I used that term,” Brennan explained to Maher of the “treasonous” comment. “One, I think I exhausted all the other adjectives in the English language to describe Donald Trump’s failures to fulfill his responsibilities as president of the United States. And two, I saw him on that stage in Helsinki failing to be able to say to the world and to Vladimir Putin that Russia tried to interfere in our election, that it never should have happened and it never should happen again, and if it does Russia is going to pay some very severe consequences as a result, but he didn’t do that.”

He went on to describe how unique the revocation was. “I didn’t ask to keep my security clearances—former directors don’t do that. We keep those clearances because sometimes, those in government want to avail themselves of our experience, our expertise, our knowledge about certain issues,” Brennan said. “This is the first time in 38 years that I haven’t had a security clearance, and the basis for the revocation is bogus. Mr. Trump and the administration didn’t adhere even to the process that they reaffirmed last year, and the politicization of security clearances, either the granting or the revocation, is a real threat to our national security.”

The 62-year-old Jersey native blamed Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) for being “the one that put this idea in Donald Trump’s head,” even though, according to Brennan, “Rand Paul has never served on the intelligence committee. He knows not of what he speaks, but yet he has this impression that I’m ‘monetizing’ security clearances, so he continues to spout out on these issues.”

“But again,” he continued, “I believe very strongly in the principle that national security is one of the most sacred and solemn professions in this government, and every American citizen deserves to have national security professionals—intelligence professionals—who are not going to be politicized, and no president ever should take that capability away from them.”

Later on, Maher claimed that Trump’s presidency is “the third great crisis in American history” behind the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, before asking Brennan if he agreed with that ranking.

“I would,” said Brennan. “And I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better, because don’t forget: Donald Trump has the authority of the president of the United States in his hands, in terms of what he can do domestically here and as well as what he can do internationally to try to distract attention, whether or not he’s going to try to pursue some type of foreign adventure, military or otherwise. But fundamentally though, what he’s doing to this country: he’s dividing us.”

Marlow Stern

Serial Russian deaths ~ for whom the bell tolls increases

Reports: Outspoken Russian Playwright Found Dead

"Another Shock"

Reported in The Daily Beast

Sergei Leonidovich Magnitsky (Russian: Серге́й Леони́дович Магни́тский; 8 April 1972 – 16 November 2009) was a Russian lawyerwho specialized in anti-corruption activities. His arrest in 2008 and subsequent death after eleven months in police custody generated international media attention and triggered both official and unofficial inquiries into allegations of fraud, theft, and human rights violations in Russia

A renowned Russian playwright who wrote a play about the death of anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky has been found dead, according to a number of reports from Russia. Elena Gremina, 62, reportedly died just six weeks after the death of her her husband, Mikhail Ugarov, who directed the play, which was called One Hour and Eighteen Minutes. The play revolved around the death of Magnitsky in a Moscow prison cell in 2009 after he exposed a coverup by state officials to embezzle an estimated $230m from the Russian treasury. Deputy theater director Viktoria Kholodova told the Russian news agency TASS: “I just found out, they say it’s true .. It’s another shock for us... It’s all very unexpected now. On the first of April [died] Mikhail Ugarov, now here it is.” Ugarov was reported to have “died suddenly” of a heart attack at the start of April this year. The lawyer who represents Magnitsky’s family also experienced misfortune last year, when he reportedly fell out of a high window in March.

Evangelicals don't practice what they supposedly preach

Prejudice rooting in distorted Biblical arguments

An echo from The Daily Beast by Jay Parini

Taking Back Christianity From The Religious Right

Very little in the actual teaching put forward by Jesus would support the political philosophy of the Christian right in 21st-century America.

Since the early seventies, with the Supreme Court legalized abortion in Roe v. Wade, the Christian right has been on the prowl, adding grievance to grievance, aligning themselves with the Republican Party and its Teapot wing.

The Christian right had long, of course, been gathering steam in the South in response to the Civil Rights movement—there is a dark story there, with prejudice rooting in distorted Biblical arguments—but the mass turn of evangelical and fundamentalist Christians into the realm of politics has been at full strength only in the past four decades. Their influence on the 2016 election of Donald Trump was noteworthy, signaling a high point of hypocrisy on their part. It didn’t matter that Trump was an unhinged philanderer, a braggart whose own life and example was a mockery of Christian values—as long as he delivered a reliably anti-abortion and anti-gay rights judge to replace Antonin Scalia. Neil Gorsuch was their man, and Trump delivered.

The narrowness and hypocrisy of the Christian right upsets me, as I’m myself a Christian. That my faith has been miserably sideswiped by this particular eighteen-wheeler is disconcerting; but I sense that their movement has begun to burn out. Certainly the statistics bear this out. The religious right is waning, and fewer and fewer young people belong to any religion at all. The vast majority of my parent’s generation, the so-called Silent Generation, identified as Christians: 85 percent. Just over half of Millennials do.

Unlike other well-educated northeastern progressives, I don’t dismiss evangelicals and fundamentalists (they’re not the same, although their beliefs often mesh) as an unthinking herd who cling desperately to their guns and Bibles. 

In fact, I grew up among them, and I respect them one-on-one. 

My father was a Baptist preacher, and I attended camps and revival meetings through my eighteenth year. I still respond warmly to the hymns of my childhood, and I felt sad when Billy Graham died recently. I heard him preach countless times, even met him once. He was a sincere and thoughtful man whose views in the course of many decades broadened. Indeed, in a television interview he once suggested that God was compassionate and would surely “save” those outside of the narrow confines of his own faith-brand. (Billy was vastly more broad-minded than his son, Franklin, who has taken over the reins.)

By the time I entered college in 1966, I had begun to change my ideas about the meaning of Christianity and the example of Jesus. The chaplain of the small college I attended was a passionate thinker and activist, and he led profound discussions of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement, drawing a clutch of like-minded students around him. I began to see that Christianity, at its core, was about personal transformations that led one in the direction of nonviolent protest against nuclear war, against colonial actions abroad, against militarism of all kinds. 

Jesus became, for me, a profound spiritual master who wished us to change swords into plowshares, urging us to turn the other cheek when struck, to find and serve God in others. I began to focus on his commandments to his followers: love God, and love your neighbors as yourselves. [Mark 12:30-31] These were, indeed, his only commandments, and they pretty well summarize Christian thinking.

The example of Christ, as I saw it, was instructive. He came from the working classes, from the equivalent of peasant stock in Galilee, a remote area of Palestine. He walked and preached in the countryside, avoiding cities for the most part (with the exception of Jerusalem, the center of Temple worship, a place important for every Jew). His associates were working men and women, often peasants and farmers, not scholars or wealthy aristocrats. He drew on rural metaphors in his parables. He spoke to outcasts easily and often: lepers and whores, the poor, the lame. He celebrated the meek, the mild, the peacemakers. He had himself been a refugee—if we can believe the tale of his origins as it appears in Matthew’s gospel: his family had been forced out of the country, forced to hide out in Egypt until the wrath of the King Herod subsided.

Jesus allied himself with refugees from political and religious oppression. He was drawn to those who lived on the edges of society, and lived among them. He traveled with women as well as men; indeed, it’s easy to forget that so many of his associates were female, including Mary Magdalen, the first person to bear witness (according to the Gospel of John) to his resurrection. The early church was, remarkably, led by strong and powerful women: Phoebe, Lydia, Prisca and Junia. The key message of early Christianity, which came directly from Jesus through Paul, his apostle, was that in Christ “there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free man, neither male nor female.” [Galatians 3:28] This is the radical core of Christian doctrine, the idea of equality, the erasing of racial, class, and gender boundaries.

Above all else, Jesus was never punitive. In the eighth chapter of John’s gospel, we encounter the story of the woman “taken in adultery.” She is seized by the scribes and Pharisees and brought to Jesus, asking for his judgment. According to Jewish tradition, she deserved death by stoning. Capital punishment was the only punishment they could imagine for such wickedness. But Jesus replied: “He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone.” [John 8:7] This attitude is echoed in the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus says emphatically: “Judge not, lest you be judged.”[Matthew 7:1]

Jesus was quite clear about the accumulation of worldly goods: you should avoid this habit. Indeed, he saw wealth as a stumbling block to salvation, saying it was “easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven.” [Matthew 19:23-24] Again and again, he tells those who come to him to give up their possessions and follow him. He believed that if one cast one’s bread upon the waters (as we read in the first verse of Ecclesiastes 11), it would come back us “after many days.” Extreme generosity was his mode of being: if your neighbor wants your shirt, give him your coat as well.

I love the idea of Jesus as generous teacher, a man inspired by the spirit who sought to lift up those around him, and who modeled grace in suffering and death. His resurrection was not a literal resuscitation but something more astonishing, a transformation that cannot be understood by those locked in the flesh, in world-time. Notice that all of those who met Jesus after the resurrection did not recognize him. To see him, post-life, is to refigure him, and to begin to see your own life in a different way as well, open to transformation.

All Christian thinking is resurrection thinking: it’s about daily resurrection of the spirit, about moving into the eternal moment, which transcends the limits of ordinary time. It’s about practice, too: the benefits of group worship, the opening of the mind and heart in prayer and meditation. 

Matthew 5-7 ~ The Beatitudes

The best summary of Christian teaching will be found in the Sermon on the Mount, as contained in the Chapters 5-7 of Matthew, where Jesus presents himself as a radical Jew who rejects violence (including capital punishment) in the most profound ways: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.” [Matthew 5:38-42]

Very little in the actual teaching put forward by Jesus here would support the political philosophy of the Christian right, with its worship of military might or its obsession with capital punishment. But it’s probably too much to ask them to consider what Jesus actually said or contemplate a spiritual life that treasures independence of thought, inviting the faithful to read the scriptures closely in a critical way.

Not long before his death, I debated Christopher Hitchens, one of the leading New Atheists, at a book fair in Pennsylvania, and I recall saying that what I most dislike is literal thinking, whether it takes the form of Christian fundamentalism or atheism. These are, as I argued that night, two sides of the same coin. I explained that I wanted to move from a literal to a symbolic level of thought. This is, indeed, what any Christian should try to do, and it’s what I have tried to do myself over the past decades.

I’ve written two books arguing for a mythic view of Christianity: Jesus: The Human Face of God (2013) and, recently, The Way of Jesus: Living a Spiritual and Ethical Life. In both books, I’ve made a conscious effort to imagine what a symbolic Christianity might actually look like. Rudolf Bultmann, the great German theologian, famously wished to “de-mythologize” Jesus, but I’ve been trying to re-mythologize him, returning to myth as mythos, a story that isn’t just true but which is especially true, with contours that have resonance and can help us to understand our lives.

A myth is a tear in the fabric of reality, and immense psychic energies pour through these openings. To live without this abundance is, in my view, to endure a life without depth, cut off from sources that we ignore or reject largely because the language of religion has become so offensive. I’ve made an effort to frame and explain a view of Christianity that grows out of my own evangelical upbringing—my awareness of how important a spiritual practice can be in the work of self-transformation—but which digs deeply into the Jesus of scriptures, looking without fear at the contradictions in the gospel stories, the moral complications and consequences of his teachings, seeing in the Jesus movement a way forward into a life of compassion, a life rooted in the deep soil of the wisdom tradition.

It’s high time that progressive thinkers take back Christianity from the right—from literal thinkers who misread the gospels, and who argue from their own political prejudices in ways that distort what Jesus, the Prince of Peace, actually preached.

Republicans empty vote promises

“The problem is what we’ve seen so far for Congress, it seems, is not in the attempt to reach a deal [but] to make a statement rather than make a law. And these kids (DACA) are going to be timed out here soon. And so we’ve got to actually get serious with it.”~ Senator Jeff Flake (About the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals ~ DACA)

As disappointed and, frankly, angry, as I am about how the Republicans rammed through a 500 page "tax cuts for the rich" bill without allowing the Senate to read it, my disdain continues for those who were sold a "pig in a poke" to barter for their support.  Surely, seasoned Senators like Susan Collins and Jeff Flake knew better than to believe that the empty promises thrown at them in exchange for their vote to support the bad economic reform was just whistling in the wind, by Mitch McConnell.

The Daily Beast reports: by Andrew Desiderio

SO MUCH FOR THAT
House Republicans Already Shooting Down Tax Bill’s Promises
Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ) got assurances for their votes. Someone forgot to clear it with conservatives in the other chamber.

House conservatives are already indicating that they're prepared to block some of the key legislative promises that Senate Republicans demanded in exchange for their votes on tax reform legislation.

Republicans are whistling in the wind- right wing partisans won't hear them- when they believe Senator McConnell's empty promises in exchange for their votes.

Those promises materialized in the frantic final hours of the tax debate last week, as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) gave Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ) assurances that some of their personal legislative priorities would be dealt with in exchange for their votes.

Senator Collins said she received a promise that the Senate would consider two bipartisan pieces of legislation that would ostensibly mitigate the negative effects that could come from the tax bill’s repeal of Obamacare’s individual mandate. Flake said he received a “firm commitment from Senate Leadership and the administration” to work on a permanent protections for the soon-to-be-ended Obama-era program that shields children of undocumented immigrants.

Both senators ended up voting for the tax bill, giving it the 51 “yes” votes it needed to pass. Within days, however, reality began setting in that those promises might have been flimsy at best.

Moving the Collins and Flake deals through the House was always going to be an uphill climb, with a conservative bloc sharply opposed to both measures, having dubbed DACA a de facto form of amnesty and arguing that the health insurance market stabilization bills that Collins supports are tantamount to a bailout for health insurers and what they view as a broken system. On Monday, those conservatives railed against McConnell for making promises on legislation that they have long opposed.

“We still have the same issues. Nothing has changed in the last two months just because we’re fulfilling our promise on delivering on tax reform,” Rep. Mark Walker (R-N.C.), the chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, told The Daily Beast. “I find it problematic to be promising something that the House has shunned from very early on.”

Lawmakers made it clear that they felt no reason to support the proposed deals, and blamed Senate leaders for trying to wheel and deal their way to a successful result on reforming the tax code and slashing rates, an issue they believe all Republicans should have been united around from the start.

“I think this is exactly what the American people are sick of: learning about trading votes to modify the healthcare system and one fifth of the economy in exchange for a tax vote,” Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA), a member of the hardline House Freedom Caucus, told The Daily Beast. “So it seems like it would be wiser for Republicans to actually follow what is in the Republican platform and not what is in the Democratic platform.”

GOP leadership has long had difficulty corralling its conservative members on even its own agenda. And on Monday, aides scoffed at the idea that leadership would be able to sell them on swallowing what the Senate’s more moderate lawmakers produced in their tax bill—let alone really try.

“McConnell is asking for us to vote for these unpalatable things to do tax reform,” a conservative House GOP aide told The Daily Beast. “We have someone who’s taking a hostage, we have to negotiate with them, and, oh, they happen to be from the same party.”

The aide was granted anonymity to candidly discuss House conservatives’ longstanding frustrations with the Senate and with McConnell throughout the Trump presidency, in particular the upper chamber’s failure to repeal and replace Obamacare.

The likelihood that the House declines to follow through on either the Collins or Flake measures may not, in the end, complicate tax reform at all. The Senate has already passed its tax bill and the House could simply pass the Senate’s bill—meaning that even if the senators raise objections, the bill would still be able to pass.

That was the risk each senator took by giving up their votes before firmly securing their legislative promises.

Collins had been extremely skeptical of the Senate bill because it included a repeal of the Obamacare individual mandate—something that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says would result in 13 million more Americans uninsured over the next 10 years. She demanded that Congress pass two bills in exchange: one crafted by Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Patty Murray (D-WA) that aims to lower premiums in 2018; the other co-authored by Collins and Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) and would provide a federal reinsurance pool worth $4.5 billion.

Flake, meanwhile, is one of a few Republicans who supports a bipartisan version of the DREAM Act that was introduced by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). But while Durbin, the Senate Minority Whip, has said he’s willing to block any spending bill that does not codify DREAMer protections before the end of the year, Republican leaders in both the House and Senate have said they don’t plan to deal with the issue by the end of the year. The White House, meanwhile, has stressed that they only promised Flake a seat at the table, not a final legislative outcome.

On Monday, Flake downplayed the significance of the administration’s commitment to work with DACA, which was given when Trump first announced he was rescinding the program in September with a six-month phase-out. Instead, the Arizona senator described it as an affirmation of Congress’ role in the process.

“Both the vice president and the president have said they want to work with me on it. That wasn’t my condition to vote for the bill. It wasn’t. It was a secondary thing. But I’m glad I got it,” Flake told The Daily Beast in an interview. “The problem is what we’ve seen so far for Congress, it seems, is not in the attempt to reach a deal [but] to make a statement rather than make a law. And these kids are going to be timed out here soon. And so we’ve got to actually get serious with it.”

Flake has been one of Trump’s sharpest critics. When he announced in October that he wasn’t seeking re-election in 2018, he took to the Senate floorto cast Trump as a “reckless” threat to democracy.

On DACA, though, the senator appears to have faith in Trump.

“I’ve said before I think this is one area the president has said some good things about wanting to do it. I think his instincts on DACA, at least, are probably better than some of the advice that he’s gotten on this,” Flake added.

Victims of the failed Yemen raid and heroes of SealTeam6

Chief Petty Officer Ryan Owens (SCPO). Seal Team 6. May he rest in peace.  Grieving with his family are his heroic colleagues in the Seal Team Six- America's Naval Special Warfare Development Group.You can be just as sure that the SEALs were heartbroken when Owens was killed.

PATRIOT
The Navy SEAL Who Gave All in Yemen-by Michael Daly
After 12 deployments, Ryan Owens—who spent his adult life fighting in America’s longest war—became its first casualty under its third commander in chief.

Owens telephoned his high school pal Cody Jackson and announced himself with his "high school nickname". 

“This is O-Dog,” Owens said. “What are you up to?” “Not much,” Jackson replied. “What are you doing?”
“Living the dream,” Owens said.

Jackson had no doubt this was entirely true, even after a decade of wartime active duty, more than twice the length of America’s part of World War II. Owens was a man who was doing exactly what he had always wanted to do. He along the way received three Bronze Stars and numerous other medals.

Early Sunday, Owens headed into action yet again with SEAL Team 6. The planning for this pre-dawn mission had begun during the last days of the Obama administration and the final approval had come during the first days of the Trump administration, as it no doubt would have if Hillary Clinton had won.

Seal Team 6 swooped into Yemen targeting several senior members of the al Qaeda, supposed to include Qasim al-Raymi, the current emir of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. (Al-Raymi is one of 23 men who escaped in the 3 February 2006 prison-break in Yemen, along with other notable al-Qaeda members. in the Arabian Peninsula, whose own targets had, in the past, included American jetliners).

In fact, the alQaeda group is particularly diabolical in devising bombs.

Therefore, the SEAL mission's added goal was “site exploitation,” collecting computers and other intelligence that might help thwart future terrorist attacks on Americans.

Even the best trained and most experienced operators can encounter the unexpected. One of the support aircraft had what was termed a “hard landing.” And a gunfight erupted where the SEALs found themselves under heavy fire from two sides.

By several reports, eight-year-old Nawar Anwar al-Awlaki was fatally wounded. She was the daughter of Sheikh Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed by a drone strike in 2011. His teachings had since inspired a number of terrorist attacks in the United States.

But you can be sure that nobody on SEAL 6 was anything but sickened by Nawar’s death. You can be just as sure that the SEALs were heartbroken when Chief Petty Officer Owens was killed.

“People always say the guy was a great guy,” said a counter-terror officer who knew him. “He really was a great guy.”

Word reached Jackson in Chillicothe via a news alert on his phone. He was waiting for his 5-year-old daughter to get out of dance class when he saw a report that a SEAL from the area had been killed.

“I said, ‘No, I hope that’s not Ryan,’” Jackson would recall.

The SEAL was then identified as 36-year-old Chief Special Operator William Ryan Owens.

“As tough as this is to say, he wouldn’t want it any other way,” Jackson later said. “He wanted to serve his country and protect the freedoms that we have. From the day I met him, that’s all he ever talked about.”

Jackson went into the building where the dance class was being held and saw another of Owens’ high school pals, who was also waiting for a kid in the class and who had also just received the terrible news. They looked at each other.

“You got to keep it together,” Jackson later said.

The kids were dancing as if the world were only a free and wonderful place. Jackson later said that this is what Owens and his fellow SEALs risked all to make possible.

“The things that people take for granted are what they’re fighting for,” Jackson told The Daily Beast.

Owens had done so for year after year even though he had four kids of his own at home. Jackson spoke of his fallen friend just as his fellow SEALs do.

“Always a great friend, always had your back willing to do anything for you, always a good guy,” Jackson said.

And much the same was said about the onetime Grey Ghosts catcher by the present-day Giants catcher.

“For me, it is easy to take for granted the life that my family and I get to live every day,” Posey posted on Instagram. “Words don't do justice for the gratitude that I have for people like Ryan that sacrifice their lives fighting against evil, so that we may live with freedom.”

Nobody would forget that an 8-year-old girl and a number of other civilian non-combatants had been reported killed during the fierce gunfight, in which women as well as men are said to have fired on the SEALs.

And nobody could regret the child’s death more than did Seal Team 6, which had added to its own risk during the 2011 raid on the Osama bin Laden’s compound when it paused to move a group of women and children out of harm’s way before detonating explosives to destroy a downed helicopter that had classified stealth technology.

Trump and his daughter Ivanka flew to Dover Air Force Base to stand with Owens’ family as an honor guard carried his flag draped coffin from a C-17 transport plane. The same credit was due Obama when he twice stood on this same tarmac to witness this somber ritual known as a dignified transfer.

At that moment, Donald Trump represented the United States of America. He also was the man who ordered the flawed execution of the failed Yemen raid.

God Bless and protect the family of Chief Petty Officer Ryan Owens. Now, as a result of this fiasco and the preventable loss of lives, the Yemen government has denied the United States the right to access any more special operations missions. Apparently, the potential goals associated with ordering this failed raid were not worth the risks. It makes no sense to me that the US Congress has not launched an investigation into this failed operation.  

+We mourn.

Media thrives on Donald Trump buffoonery

“What does every kid want for his birthday? A clown!”- Bill Mayer

Honestly, it's not fun to be "funny" anymore about Donald Trump. He now has access to nuclear codes and Russians are "vodka toasting" his failed inauguration event.

Nevertheless, although I wish it weren't the case, the facts clearly show how Donald Trump, when presented in any capacity, is a subject that attracts attention, like garbage attracts rats.

Comic news pundit Bill Mayer "got Trump for his birthday"

Bill Mayer can verify this observation, even though, it doesn't need much fact checking. He's a comedian, writer, producer and political commentator, who asked for "Donald Trump for his birthday". Unfortunately, he described the proverbial cliche of "getting what you wish for". 

The Daily Beast: NEW ERA
Bill Maher Denounces Trump’s ‘Joyless, Ugly, Divisive’ Inauguration- In the first ‘Real Time’ of the Donald Trump presidency, Bill Maher told us how he really felt about the inauguration- by Matt Wilstein

In fact, Bill Maher joked earlier in the week, he got Donald Trump for his birthday. Yes, Friday, January 20th marked both the inauguration of the 45th president of the United States and the Real Time host’s 61st birthday. He wasn't exactly in the mood to celebrate when his show returned to the air for the first time since the week of the 2016 election.

With a new theme song, new opening credits and a brand new stage set, Maher took the spotlight and made one more joke about getting Trump for his birthday. It made sense, he said, because, “What does every kid want for his birthday? A clown!”

“It happened. It really happened,” Maher said. “We Americans have a new leader: Vladimir Putin.” While some Trump fans are calling this election a “reckoning,” Maher agreed, adding, “I reckon we’re all fucked.”

Instead of “raise your right hand,” he joked that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts told Trump to “raise your right pussy-grabber.” And despite promises from the Trump transition team, Maher didn’t find the inauguration “classy” or “uplifting” and “unifying,” but rather, “joyless and ugly and divisive.” 

If there was a theme, he said it was, “Once you go black, you can go back. Mic drop!”

Amid all the “hoopla,” Maher reminded viewers that Trump was inaugurated as the FBI and five other agencies are reportedly probing ties between his campaign and the Kremlin. 

For the record, Maher said, “I do not believe our new President Donald Trump paid Russian prostitutes to pee on him.” After a pause, he added, “I believe they did it, I just don’t believe he paid them!”

Following a chat about the “predator-in-chief” with “the most gorgeous old lady in the world,” Jane Fonda, Maher welcomed his panel for the night. And on this night, he decided he didn’t need any Trump supporters with him.

Things didn’t really heat up until he brought on his mid-show guest, Keith Olbermann, who has clearly been itching to get back on TV to talk politics. 

Comparing the “inauguration” to a “coup d'état” by a “Russian puppet,” Olbermann urged those who oppose Trump to “fight” everything he does at all costs.

Olbermann confirmed that he agrees with Congressman John Lewis, saying “I am on that page, because he’s not a legitimate president.” And he went even further: “We were invaded,” he said, adding, “just because there’s not blood on the streets” doesn’t change that fact. While Maher was not willing to call Trump a “Russian puppet,” he did say, “He’s acting exactly like a man who they do have a pee tape of.”

Maher also had a message to Bill and Hillary Clinton, who graciously showed up at the inauguration despite everything they’ve been through over the past two years: “Thank you for 30 years of service, and now I never want to see either of you ever again.” He marveled at the fact that the Democratic candidate showed her face in public after Trump and his followers threatened to put her in jail. (MaineWriter: Love Hillary! #I'mstillwithher)

For his final “New Rule” of the night, Maher implored liberals to stop calling Trump voters “idiots and fools” and instead “call them what they are: fucking drug addicts.” Then he said something he never thought he’d have to say: “Kids, don’t do heroin, it’s a gateway to being a Republican.”

(MaineWriter- it's ironically true, I might eventually be writing about +Realdonaldtrump Official from a prison cell in Guantenamo, but wherever I am, there will plenty of people ready to read about this dangerous baffoon.)