El muro de Trump: ¿Grande? ¿Hermosa? ¿Impenetrable? ¡No, no, no! (Trump's wall -- Big? Beautiful? Impenetrable? Not, not, not!)

Satire from Ted Block

AROUND THE BLOCK

News with a Twist

Smugglers are sawing through new sections of Trump’s border wall

Using $100 cordless saws from Home Depot

The Washington Post reported today that smuggling gangs in Mexico have repeatedly sawed through new sections of President Trump’s border wall in recent months by using commercially available power tools, opening gaps large enough for people and drug loads to pass through, according to U.S. agents and officials with knowledge of the damage.

According to the Post, the breaches have been made using a popular cordless household tool known as a reciprocating saw that retails at hardware stores for as little as $100. When fitted with specialized blades, the saws can slice through one of the barrier’s steel-and-concrete bollards in a matter of minutes, according to the agents, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the barrier-defeating techniques.

Consulting engineers told the Post, “After cutting through the base of a single bollard, smugglers can push the steel out of the way, allowing an adult to fit through the gap. Because the bollards are so tall — and are attached only to a panel at the very top — their length makes them easier to push aside once they have been cut and are left dangling.”

While Trump’s taxpayer-funded barrier has cost $10 billion so far, and has been described by the president variously as “a big beautiful wall,” “a great wall, because I know how to build,” “virtually impenetrable,” “the Rolls-Royce of walls,” it appears not only not great and beautiful, but “penetrable.”

In an interview with Around the Block, Carlos Diego Garcia y Vega, a noted smuggler using a pseudonym to protect his identity, said, 

"No puedo creer lo fácil que es atravesar este muro. Simplemente compramos las herramientas en Tijuana Home Depot y simplemente cortamos, cortamos, cortamos. Lo único que le digo a mi tripulación es que no compre esa basura estadounidense Black & Decker. Compramos Makita. Ahora los japoneses, saben cómo construir cosas."

(“I can’t believe how easy it is to cut through this wall. We just buy the tools at the Tijuana Home Depot and just cut, cut, cut. The one thing I tell my crew, don’t buy that American Black & Decker junk, We buy Makita. Now the Japanese, they know how to build things.") 

Garcia y Vega added:

"Gracias a Dios, México no pagó el muro; si lo hicieran, habrían exigido un muro más fuerte y una garantía de devolución de dinero. Nunca podríamos ver a través de un muro financiado por México.."

("Thank God Mexico didn’t pay for the wall; if they did, they would have demanded a stronger wall and a money-back guarantee. We would never be able to saw through a Mexican-funded wall.")  

25 years ago, Bryant Gumbel and Katie Couric debated @. And how odd "Violence at NBC sounded"

AROUND THE BLOCK

Flashback Edition

TODAY discovers the internet

What is Internet?

Back in 1994, the TODAY anchor team of Bryant Gumbel and Katie Couric asked an honest question: “What is Internet?”

Way back in 1994, 25 years ago, then Today Show anchors Bryant Gumbel and Katie Couric were flummoxed by “internet.”

And, what “@” meant.

Bryant: That little mark, with the “a” and the circle around it. "At?" Katie thought it was “about."

Katie: Or “around.”

Do you remember? If you do remember, did you know what they were talking about?

But, in the most prescient part of the segment, given what’s going on at NBC now (Matt Lauer, Ronan Farrow’s new book “Catch and Kill”), Bryant exemplified the “@” with this:

Bryant: And then it sounded stupid when I said it, “Violence at NBC. See there it is, violence at NBC GEcom." I mean, what is internet anyway. 

Bryant, I don't know where you are now (wait, wait, don't tell me, HBO's Real Sports), but you'd be interested in this: today (no pun intended) we have "#NBCcoverup."

Here's the link to that 1994 segment: 

https://www.today.com/video/today/56868116

Trump, World Series, Nationals and Chief Wahoo

Satire from Ted Block

AROUND THE BLOCK

News with a Twist

Trump says he’ll attend Game 5 of the World Series at Nationals Park

Nat’s management working on plans to avoid presidential appearance

**Alert -- This Around the Block contains "Twisted News" that some may consider politically incorrect, insensitive and offensive.**

The Washington Post reported today that President Trump plans to attend Game 5 of the World Series at Nationals Park on Sunday if the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros are still playing.

Given Trump’s dismal approval ratings in the Washington DC area: Approve 21%/Disapprove 76%, Nationals’ management is making contingency plans to help ensure that Trump’s appearance will not occur and spoil the Nationals magical World Series run.

According to our sources, Nationals’ assistant general manager for presidential attendance, Whitey Whitehouse, is working on two potential tracks, both requiring help from Washington’s NFL team, the Redskins.

The Redskins, whose owner, Dan Snyder, has stated that the team will never change its name despite the fact that the name is considered offensive, disparaging and insulting, doubled down recently by hiring Chief Wahoo, the recently fired symbol of baseball’s Cleveland Indians, and a board-certified Medicine Man. Snyder has indicated that he will lend Chief Wahoo to the Nationals this one-time only to allow him to do his Medicine Man magic and help his neighboring team.

The preferred track, both for the team and its fans, is for the Nationals to simply sweep the Astros by winning Games 3 and 4 at Nationals Park, making Game 5 unnecessary. In that regard, prior to Games 3 and 4, Chief Wahoo will perform the Sun Dance and offer prayers for a Nationals win to the Great Spirit of Victory, Wakan Tanka.

Since even Chief Wahoo’s chants and prayers can’t guarantee a Nationals sweep, and if Game 5 becomes necessary, the second track will have Chief Wahoo on Sunday morning go to the War God Spring where the clouds are born and give offerings and request rain. A rainout will move Game 5 from Sunday to Monday when Trump will not be available because he will be spending the whole day in "Executive Time" (aka, watching Fox News).

“One way or another, we’re counting on Chief Wahoo to come through and avert what would be a very unpleasant and unpopular appearance by the President,” Whitehouse said. 

Trump, Giuliani, Lev Parnas, Executive Privilege and Kevin Bacon

Satire from Ted Block

AROUND THE BLOCK

Commentary

Indicted Giuliani Associate Ties Case to Trump

He can’t talk because…you guessed it: EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE!

Lev Parnas leaving Courthouse with 4th Wife Honey (or Bunny)

The New York Times reported today that, “one of the two indicted associates of President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, on Wednesday tied the case to the president himself, saying that some of the evidence gathered in the campaign-finance investigation could be subject to executive privilege.”

Lev Parnas, a Ukrainian-born U.S. “businessman” and Palm Beach County neighbor (Boca Raton), through his lawyer, Ed McMahon (really, I kid you not…wait that was Jack Paar’s line, not Johnny’s) told the judge in the case that “the potential for the White House to invoke executive privilege stemmed from the fact that Mr. Parnas had used Mr. Giuliani as his own lawyer at the same time Mr. Giuliani was working as Mr. Trump’s lawyer.” 

Interestingly, Trump claims he doesn’t know who Parnas is despite the dozens of pictures with Parnas and Donald “Everyone Wants a Picture with Me” Trump.

Our sources have indicated that McMahon’s argument is based on the Kevin Bacon Department of Justice “Six Degrees of Separation” rule recently written by Attorney General and one of Trump’s “Three Toadieteers*,” William “Lower the Bar” Barr. 

To lend more credence to the argument, McMahon has directed his paralegal, Doc Severinsen, to subpoena Bacon and have him appear as a friendly witness.

Bacon, coming off his recent success as Jackie Rohr, the profane, corrupt Boston-based FBI agent in the hit Showtime series, City on a Hill, told Around the Block, “What, are you f-ing kidding? I ain’t testifying for anyone. I’m claiming my own executive privilege – I was in Oliver Stone’s JFK for God’ sake; that qualifies, doesn’t it.”

*The Three Toadieteers: Mike "Can I Stop Standing Behind Trump Looking Like a Toadie?" Pence, Mike "I Don't Understand Why Everyone in the State Department Hates Me" Pompeo, and, of course, William "Lower the Bar" Barr.

We should be storming the barricades not GOP Congressmen

AROUND THE BLOCK

Commentary

Republicans Grind Impeachment Inquiry to Halt as Picture Darkens for Trump

House Republicans storm secure suite on Capitol Hill where the impeachment inquiry was being held

The New York Times reported today that, “House Republicans ground the impeachment inquiry to a halt on Wednesday, staging an attention-grabbing protest at the Capitol that sowed chaos and derailed a crucial deposition as they sought to insulate President Trump against mounting evidence of misconduct.

“The day after the most damning testimony yet about Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign to enlist Ukraine to smear his political rivals, House Republicans stormed into the secure office suite where impeachment investigators have been conducting private interviews that have painted a damaging picture of the president’s behavior — and refused to leave. 

“Chanting ‘Let us in! Let us in!’ about two dozen Republican lawmakers — most of whom are not on the committees conducting the inquiry and are therefore not entitled to attend their hearings — pushed past Capitol Police officers to enter the secure rooms of the House Intelligence Committee, which is leading the investigation. Republicans who are on the committees have been in on the hearings from the start and have heard all the witnesses.

“’This is a Soviet-style process,’ declared Representative Steve Scalise, the No. 2 Republican. ‘It should not be allowed in the United States of America. Every member of Congress ought to be allowed in that room. The press ought to be allowed in that room.’”

Wait, what? 

We're talking about Trump. Aren’t we the ones who should be storming the barricades?

Yes we should. But truthfully, this is the only thing Republicans have left…attacking the process and diverting attention. They want everything out in the open, even though Republican Congressmen from the appropriate committees are attending the closed-door hearings…and coming out of those meeting lying about what they heard or read (can you say Devin Nunes?). 

What the Dems are doing now, like it or not, is gathering evidence to determine whether to bring charges or not. As has been written many times before, and as Chuck Rosenberg, former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia and Chief of Staff to the Director of the FBI agreed today, impeachment is like a trial and evidence gathering is part of the process. 

It works like this…impeachment in the House is like a grand jury gathering evidence. An important part of that evidence gathering is deposing potential witnesses. Should it be done in private? Debatable, perhaps, but depositions are generally done privately with both sides present, as is happening now. Then, once the decision is made to bring charges, in this case, open impeachment hearings in the House, the people being deposed will testify in public.

So the GOP can storm all they want, but eventually they’ll get what they want: open hearings. I trust they’re smart enough to realize that they should really be careful about what they wish for.

Oh right, Republican Congressmen. Probably not smart enough.

Trump's hated liberal media is, if you can read and think, "Fair and Balanced."

AROUND THE BLOCK

  

Commentary

Trump is constantly deriding liberal media bias 

Wait, what? – Eugene Robinson’s Washington Post column

links to four other opinion pieces; 3 are from conservative observers

The other day I turned Around the Block over to the New York Times Frank Bruni whose column, How low will Trump go? suggested that “The president is unabashed, unapologetic and out of control.”

Today, I’ll turn Around the Block over to Eugene Robinson, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist of the Washington Post. But, unlike my Bruni post, which was very long, I’ll just provide the link to Robinson’s column, "Trump is spinning out of control. We must stop pretending otherwise." Your choice to read or not.

Of particular note, beyond Robinson’s excellent observations, is the Post’s decision to link his column to four other editorial observers – three of whom are bona fide conservative thinkers and writers. Given that, I think it is appropriate to shamelessly borrow Fox News’ bankrupt tagline, “Fair and Balanced,” to Trump's prime example of the liberal media, the "Bezos" Washington Post. This is the media at its “Fair and Balanced” best! 

Trump is spinning out of control. We must stop pretending otherwise – by Eugene Robinson.

(I’ll only quote Robinson’s closing paragraph: “Senators, pay attention. You may prefer to let voters judge Trump in next year’s election. But you must realize, at this point, that we may not have that long.”)

Trump is turning American ideology into a sham – by Michael Gerson. (Until 2006, Gerson was a top aide to President George W. Bush as assistant to the president for policy and strategic planning. Prior to that appointment, he served in the White House as deputy assistant to the president and director of presidential speechwriting and assistant to the president for speechwriting and policy adviser.)

Trump’s puerile letter to Erdogan should give every American the chills – by Henry Olson. (Henry Olson joined the think tank world where he spent eighteen years as an executive at a variety of institutions, serving as the President of the Commonwealth Foundation, a Vice President at the Manhattan Institute, and as Vice President and Director, National Research Initiative, at the American Enterprise Institute.)

Trump and lost Syria - And his mind – by Max Boot. (Max Boot was a senior foreign policy adviser to John McCain’s presidential campaign in 2007-2008, Mitt Romney’s campaign in 2011–2012, and Marco Rubio’s campaign in 2015-2016. He served as an adviser to U.S. commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan.)

What to expect when you're expecting impeachment – by Doug Sosnik. (Doug Sosnik, a Democratic political strategist, was a senior adviser to President Bill Clinton from 1994 to 2000.)

Times' Frank Bruni: How Low Will Trump Go?

AROUND THE BLOCK

Commentary

How Low Will Trump Go?

I have had long and interesting debates about a Trump impeachment. Many people believe that impeachment is a non-starter. Yes, he will be impeached -- the votes are already there. But it is still questionable whether he will be removed from office by the Senate. And, without removal, my anti-impeachment friends say, Trump will do a "witch hunt" victory dance which will embolden him and his pack.

Today removal advocates were dealt a significant blow if you believe some GOP senators might come around and vote for removal; the two GOP senators from Florida opined on the Trump's announcement that the the 2020 G7 will be held at Trump Doral:

Sen. Rick Scott:“There’s no conflict of interest in holding anything in the great state of Florida.”

Sen. Marco Rubio : “I understand the arguments others are going to make about whether it’s lining his pocket at this event and so forth, but as a Floridian, you know, I think it’s good for Florida to have that event.”

After reading Scott's and Rubio's statements (and one more by Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart whose district includes Doral), I wrote to my own Florida Representative, Democratic Congresswoman Lois Frankel:

"I'm aware that you're busy this week what with impeachment hearings, Syria, Kurds, Executive Branch scandal after scandal..., but perhaps you might carve out a little time to give your incredulous Congressional 'friends' (Scott, Rubio and Diaz-Balart) a lesson in the Constitution. Do you think they've actually read the document they've sworn to uphold? Can they say Emoluments? Can they spell Emoluments?"

The answer to our current Trump dilemma my non-impeachment friends suggest is to "let the voters decide." Yes, let them decide -- in the face of voter suppression, foreign influence, an anachronistic Electoral College system and who knows what else. And, while we wait for the voters to decide, we'll have to endure 18 more months of Trump wreaking havoc on the country and the world. 

So, with those 18 months in mind, I turn Around the Block today over to Frank Bruni of the New York Times.

How Low Will Trump Go?

By Frank Bruni

Oct. 19, 2019

The wonder of the Trump administration — the jaw-dropping, brain-exploding phantasmagoria of it — is that it doesn’t bury its rottenness under layers of counterfeit virtue or use a honeyed voice to mask the vinegar inside. The rottenness is out in the open. The sourness is right there on the surface for all to see.

It’s at the president’s rallies, where he plays a bigot for laughs, a bully for applause.

It’s in the ballrooms and beds at Mar-a-Loco, where he mingles official government business with free marketing for his gilded club.

It’s in the transcript of his phone call with the president of Ukraine, for whom the quid, the pro and the Biden-ravaging quo couldn’t have been clearer.

It’s at the microphone in the White House briefing room, where his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, showed up on Thursday, announced that President Trump would host the next G7 meeting at one of his own golf resorts, and conceded that, yes, aid to Ukraine had been tied to that country’s indulgence of the president’s political obsessions.

“Get over it,” Mulvaney told the assembled journalists.

“Elections have consequences,” he also said.

Allow me to translate: American voters gave Trump the presidency, so it’s his to use and abuse as he wants. If you’re looking for an apology, you might as well be looking for the yeti. What you should really be doing is looking the other way.

Mere hours later, Mulvaney changed his tune, whining that the media had “decided to misconstrue” his words as some kind of confession. Um, no.

Our hearing was just fine, our construing was just right and our sole arguable failure was that we didn’t instantly grasp and immediately communicate the overarching import of his remarks: He was telling us that in the minds of the president and his unscrupulous minions, he from now on possessed and planned to revel in carte blanche. And the White House has a new public relations strategy, much evolved since the days of Robert Mueller.

Those revelations of rottenness that I mentioned before? They’re no longer an inadvertent tic. They’re an advertent tactic. Done with denials of wrongdoing, administration officials are reframing it as right-doing — as a president’s prerogative, even his entitlement, pre-emptively authorized by voters themselves.

Get over it, media. Get over it, America. This is Trump’s country. You’re just squatting in it.

Trump’s presidency was scary from the very start, when he summoned “American carnage” and hallucinated inauguration throngs. But the past several days have been something else: a clarifying, terrifying descent.

How low will Trump go? Leagues lower than you ever imagined, and probably several hundred feet below your current nightmares. Officials with Trump’s re-election campaign apparently plan to use “get over it” as a slogan on merchandise, but I think that the White House’s real new motto comes from Tacitus, a celebrated historian in ancient Rome: “Crime, once exposed, has no refuge but in audacity.”

That audacity animated Mulvaney. It was manifest when Trump publicly beseeched China to get in on the action and do its own investigation of Hunter and Joe Biden. It helps explain the planned convening of the G7 at Trump National Doral Miami, a gesture of such perverse defiance, such profound contempt, that it takes the breath away.

With the gaslighting logic that is his greatest gift, Trump is asserting that no real crook would be this nakedly, flamboyantly criminal, and he’s giving anyone in America who isn’t aboard the Trump train the middle finger. It, not his brain, is the body part with which he governs.

This is all about impeachment, to which he has responded — predictably — with a puerile rage. The first, second and third laws of Trumpian psychology are that for every action, there’s an unequal and hysterical overreaction, and ever since impeachment took on an air of probability, he has been overreacting all over the place.

He’s at his most dangerous when he’s most vulnerable and impotent, because he’s compelled to project command and potency. He has to convince everyone that he’s unflustered and unafraid.

That, as much as any promise to voters, motivated the disastrous pullout from Syria and abandonment of Kurdish allies. Precisely because it was what might undermine the loyalty of his Republican saviors and leave him exposed, he did it. It was a pantomime of fearlessness, a pretense of invincibility.

Ditto the Doral decision, which Mulvaney, saying goodbye to any shreds of credibility and integrity that he was still clinging to, insisted would not turn much if any profit for Trump. Whatever the actual revenues from the G7 meeting itself, it would amount to the kind of advertising that money can’t buy. Doral would be better known afterward, just as Mar-a-Loco, Bedminster and other Trump properties have skyrocketed in visibility since he took office. He has made sure of it, by visiting them in a constant rotation that repurposes the presidency as a promotional tool and branding exercise.

The G7 at Doral is just the cherry on a rancid sundae. But the timing of it: That’s what’s so chilling. It comes as the sword dangles ever sharper and more threatening over his head, and it makes clear that he won’t be answering the accelerating revelations about him with good behavior that coaxes Americans to wonder if he could really have been that bad.

No, he’ll ratchet up the badness, intensify the insolence and lash out more provocatively and ruinously than ever before. He’ll be worse. Virtue is for suckers, who don’t have the nerve for vice. Look, Ma, no morals!

The miserable Mikes, Pence and Pompeo, will race around the world trying to forestall or clean up his messes, because “get over it” doesn’t really translate to geopolitics, where the “it” can be terrorism, slaughter and an American image soiled beyond repair.

Ivanka and Jared Kushner will lay low, as they’re doing now, unable to peddle the pretty fiction that they’re keeping a lid on the combustible patriarch, who keeps setting himself on fire.

He has finally arrived on the Fifth Avenue that he conjured long ago. Remember that — when he said that he could shoot someone there, in view of all the passers-by, and not lose any of his loyal supporters?

Metaphorically speaking, he’s now striding down that busy thoroughfare, gun in hand. Take cover, America.

Yes, take cover America -- unless 25 or so GOP senators show some courage, we are potentially facing the worst, most unendurable 18 months in our history.