Weekly Roundup
It was a wild week of news. A small subset of what triggered my fuckery threshold...
It has been a hell of a week for me personally and in the news. So much insanity has transpired that it is nearly impossible to keep up with. On the work front, life is beyond hectic. My team is going to grow, and I might finally get some backfill help. But you don't care about that triviality.
First up: The Guitars and Gear channel
I have a sub newsletter that I have been writing to. This one is opt in, because from my time on Substack, once I started getting a real audience, I noticed that whenever I wrote geeky things about guitars, or other tidbits on the making of music as I rekindled my love of playing, I would lose a bunch of subscribers.
My latest there is this on how great it is to get into guitar today:
Geoff Anderson
If things like this are interesting, click on that, and from the website, go to your account and the email options and turn on notifications. Or not.
My next post is going to be on a new amp I bought, a Yamaha THR-30II that is an amazing piece of kit.
The Harris Book drops. Pundits lose their shit.
Week before last, some excerpts dropped, and that led to a frenzy among the political pundits. It was a "burn" book, it was score settling. Yada yada yada.
I don't know what headspace Kamala is in, but if I was her, I would be "fuck all y'all", if you catch my drift.
I heard many shit-takes, but the worst that I heard with my ears was on The Bulwark's Wednesday podcast, The Next Level. That has their two resident "conservative" gays, and this episode had a segment where Tim Miller and Sarah Longwell pined for why Kamala didn't trust her gut and select Pete Buttigieg. Their reasoning was a bit odd. Basically, because she was already ticking identity boxes like they presume all Democrats demand, why not select Mayor Pete? Like "What's the big deal".
Uh, that is some fucking tone-deaf former Republican thinking that allowed them to remain in the party in the closet for so long. They truly believe that the Gay marriage issue is behind us and that the general population is accepting.
Uh, that is just fucking wrong, and they're gonna be shocked when the Supreme's undo Obergefell, Lawrence, and ultimately Griswald (with a detour to Loving) to revert us to the white-male patriarchy.
Anyhow, the best I've read on this is from Susan Bordo. You should read this, and if you haven't subbed to her, toss her your love.
Susan Bordo
We gotta talk about James Comey
Look, I fucking hate that smarmy motherfucker as much as anyone. He put a Thor sized finger on the scale in the 2016 election late in the cycle that almost certainly drained enough support from Hillary to toss the election to the Mango hued Mussolini, and he didn't cover himself in glory in the aftermath, but this selective, vindictive prosecution that Trump's personal lawyer, a woman who has only been an insurance company counsel, with no known trial experience is just nuts.
It started with the firing of the confirmed US Attorney of the Eastern District of Virginia, who declined to file charges and pursue a grand jury indictment because there was no "there" there.
After firing Erik Siebert, Trump publicly instructed the Attorney General to install Lindsey Halligan to acting US Attorney. This was urgent because the statute of limitations was rapidly expiring (on September 30), so of course, Ms. Bondi complied.
I fucking hate to quote Charlie Sykes. While Sykes has seen the light, and has paid penance, he still is part of the cadre that helped shift Republican politics to where they are today.
Charlie Sykes
Still, he does make a good point:
Trump’s escalation of his revenge campaign pushes us into uncharted wastelands. It is as if, on his sojourn through Hell, Dante had said, “Cavolo! There are even more circles down here.”
NBC’s Ken Dilanian’s DOJ sources are telling him: “The Comey indictment is among the worst abuses in DOJ history. Shocking. It’s hard to overstate how a big a moment this is.”
Indeed, it is. The indictment comes days after Trump’s social media bleat ordering Attorney General Pam Bondi to go after Comey as well as Letitia James and others who had crossed him. When the acting US Attorney Erik Siebert refused — because there was no evidence they had committed a crime — Trump fired him and installed a loyal mediocrity who ignored the facts and the findings to do Trump’s bidding, the law be damned.
I am sick and fucking tired of pundits and reporting in the legacy media being shocked that this is happening.
Where the FUCK were you throughout the campaign? For fuck's sake, Trump explicitly ran on "REVENGE". What the fuck do you think that meant? That it was some abstraction? That it was just empty rhetoric? After 9+ years of this fucking lunatic, you still think he's a normal pol?
Christ on a Pogo Stick, it is far too late to get your head out of your asses.
Anyhow, I am worked up over this. How about the visit to the UN General Assembly to relax?
Trump has a normal day and shits himself on stage at the UN
Here, I have read so much, I am going to quote extensively from Heather Cox Richardson's "Letters from an American". But before I drop that text, I have to comment on the cabal that fucked with the escalator that made Mr. Cankles trudge up the not moving escalator, and that his teleprompter that failed.
There was a hue and cry on the usual MAGA Media ecosystem, but it turns out that a videographer who was going the wrong way to capture Trump's triumphant entry triggered the emergency stop, and the teleprompter was just the Trump media team failing to operate it properly.
Regardless, without the prepared remarks, Trump did what Trump does, he riffed:
He began by complaining that the teleprompter wasn’t working, and also mentioned that an escalator on which he and First Lady Melania Trump had been riding had stopped shortly after they stepped onto it.
Trump’s speech went on to depict a fantasy world in which he had single-handedly saved the world. He claimed to have forged peace on two continents during his first term but said that “era of calm and stability gave way to one of the great crises of our time.” He then turned to the United States, claiming that “four years of weakness, lawlessness, and radicalism under the last administration delivered our nation into a repeated set of disasters. One year ago,” he said, “our country was in deep trouble, but today, just eight months into my administration, we are the hottest country anywhere in the world and there is no other country even close. America is blessed with the strongest economy, the strongest borders, the strongest military, the strongest friendships, and the strongest spirit of any nation on the face of the earth.”
And that was the frame for the next hour of rambling boasts and insults.
Trump claimed that he had reversed the “economic calamity” left by former president Joe Biden. He had brought down costs and inflation, he said, and economic growth and manufacturing were both booming. He claimed that in his four years, Biden had attracted less than $1 trillion in investment while he had secured $17 trillion. Tax cuts and deregulation had, he said, made the U.S. “the best country on earth to do business.”
“In my first term, I built the greatest economy in the history of the world,” he said. “We had the best economy ever, history of the world, and I’m doing the same thing again, but this time it’s actually much bigger and even better. The numbers far surpass my record-setting first term.”
Ok, that's enough of that. The rest of the world now knows what unfiltered Trump is, and it ain't pretty. They also know that any American leadership on the world stage is in the past, and clearly geo-political ties are shifting to avoid having to deal with us.
Fuck, that didn't help.
Disney blinked, Kimmel is back, and the two conservative networks of local stations back down
The big news on Monday was that the Jimmy Kimmel Live show would return to air on Tuesday night. That led Trump to go into full melt-down mode, because he was assured that Kimmel was fired, and that next would be Fallon and Seth (sorry, don't know his last name).
Of course, the two uber conservative conglomerates of local stations Sinclair and Nexstar, said they would still not air Kimmel. That meant that in the DC market, Kimmel was not broadcast.
But first Sinclair folded and said they would return Jimmy Kimmel Live to the airwaves, and late on Friday, Nexstar also relented, agreeing to restore Kimmel.
Rumor has it that ABC (and Disney) played their trump card. Reportedly, both networks were told that if they didn't restore Kimmel to the airwaves, ABC would pull all their sports programming access.
The one area that local stations can make money is from Football, Basketball, and Baseball carriage. Removing that, and even the evil fuckers at Sinclair would realize that their goose would be well and truly cooked.
Ugly (if true, this what I heard whispered in side channels) but effective.
Wrapping up
I could probably write a lot more. The Tik Tok deal is a massive wall of fuckery and nest feathering, the pending bailout of Argentina to protect Crypto Bros, and much more happened.
Did I miss anything you think I should write about? If so, reply to this email, or drop me a note below.
