I’ve just spent a few weeks almost entirely offline, paying almost no attention to the news (except for John McCreary’s weekdaily NightWatch digest, that is). Each day’s news being, in general, a reeking bucket of offal, the hiatus was pleasant — but old habits die hard, and I’ve had my nose back in the bucket again this week.
Of particular interest (unless you are the New York Times or other like-minded outlets) has been the story of the Awan family, a bunch of Pakistani grifters who, acting as IT specialists, wormed their way into the inner circle of various Democratic members of Congress, managed to get themselves top security clearances, sluiced millions into their pockets (and off to Pakistan), gained access to all sorts of privileged information, and generally played cat-among-the-pigeons until very recently, when Mr. Imran Awan was arrested for bank fraud as he attempted to flee the country, his wife having already absconded to Pakistan with a wad of cash (and a $283,000 bank transfer). At the center of the storm is the utterly unlovable Congresswoman and former head of the DNC, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, whose connections to Mr. Awan are deep and dark. It appears that she may be getting into some serious hot water over this. (One can only hope: with Anthony Weiner gone, Ms. Schultz is a strong contender for the vacated position of Ickiest Member of Congress. I do not wish her well.)
Andrew McCarthy has a good summary of the Awan story here.
Meanwhile, it appears that Donald Trump’s new communications director, a man by the name of Scaramucci, is a vain and loathsome little potty-mouth with, so far as I have been able to tell, no redeeming qualities whatsoever. (He gave a dismally revealing interview to Ryan Lizza at the New Yorker a little while ago that plumbed, for a senior White House official, new depths of public vulgarity and general odiousness.) Why on Earth did Mr. Trump choose this man, when no less than John Derbyshire himself had declared his own availability for the position?
Ah well, we already knew these were dark times. I’m afraid, though, that at this point I must put down the bucket; after all this time off I still find the stench rather more than I can bear for very long at one sitting.
7 Comments
Good news! Scaramucci is outta here, making Mike Flynn’s 24 days on the job look like the tenure of a grizzled veteran. Regrettably, we probably won’t hear much more about Steve Bannon’s amazing dorsal flexibility.
Besides Scaramucci’s rant, last week was notable for the painful death of Trumpcare, the food fight with Sessions, the firing of Priebus, the 97-2 Senate vote which showed their distrust of Trump’s affections for his patrons in Moscow, Trump’s endorsement of police brutality, and his political rant at the Boy Scout Jamboree. (It’s a sad day when the Boy Scouts have to apologize for the behavior of the President of the United States.) I believe the phrase for this starts with the word “cluster.”
Whether or not there is anything to the latest right wing bright shiny object – “it appears that she may” has two qualifiers – the importance of the “bunch of Pakistani grifters” pales into insignificance besides our bumbling president and his own family of grifters, who shame the nation on a daily basis.
Let’s get real. We have an ignorant and childish president who cozies up to autocrats and dismisses allies, lies through his teeth, is enmeshed in scandal, uses the presidency for self-enrichment, has obstructed justice in the criminal investigation of his family and staff, and who is justifiably and widely reviled in America and throughout the world. But hey: let’s focus on some IT guy instead. It’s a great way to whistle past the graveyard of the Trump administration.
LB’s been keeping, pretty much, up on the Awan shenanigans.
Sadly I’ve no experience (such as I have here, Duff’s … some others) with her archives. But I do know she’s thorough.
Well One-Eyed there is, at least, some real consolation.
Hillary’s not President.
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I’ve been using your sidebar Malcolm to, get over to LB’s. Inconvenient but its better that way. And, as expected:
https://libertybellediaries.com/2017/07/29/awan-story-is-stranger-than-fiction/#comments
Hmmm. Shoulda checked which post I pointed to:
https://libertybellediaries.com/2017/07/31/more-on-the-awan-scandal/
The Mooch is out? Guess he communicated a little too much. Money won’t buy you class.
Speaking of no class, how does the present day “Democratic” Party hold on to power whether in the majority or not? They own the culture and the media and that is their foundation, otherwise this mob of criminals would be dust in the wind. As a result, America gave us Trump. He is a symptom, not a solution. He is attacking the media and the gods of our sewer culture. Republicans are SHOCKED! and Dems are outraged!
Plenty of people see the truth of our dysfunctional culture and politics but few will speak it. Daniel Patrick Moynihan saw it: “Liberalism faltered when it turned
out it could not cope with truth. . . The liberal project
began to fail when it began to lie. That was the mid
sixties…the rot set in and has continued since.”
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2017/08/media-ignores-fed-lawsuit-dems-accusing-dnc-wasserman-schultz-fraud/