In a rational world, I’ve been reminded, the executive head of the world’s most powerful nation would not be the person assigned to grip’n’grin with pop stars. On the other hand, President Biden seems to have enjoyed himself… and so did the BTS kids!
South Korean group @BTS_twt, a fundraising juggernaut for U.S. social justice causes, met with President Joe Biden at the White House to discuss hate crimes targeting Asians https://t.co/bXMsG0MJFu pic.twitter.com/ZOj3ElYCBH
— Reuters (@Reuters) June 1, 2022
As Asian-American/Pacific Islander Heritage Month wraps up, and LGBTQ+ Month begins, the top-selling global pop stars stand at the WH podium to say that differences are to be celebrated, not feared. Per the Washington Post:
… [S]cores of interested journalists, many of them of Korean descent, packed the aisles at least a half-hour before the briefing was supposed to begin — making the already cramped room even more stifling. Veteran journalists quipped that the briefing room hadn’t been that crowded since the days of Sean Spicer as press secretary, when the sessions became must-see TV for all the wrong reasons, at least for the Donald Trump administration.
Tuesday’s live stream of the White House briefing usually attracts a few hundred interested viewers. But well ahead of the start of the 2:30 p.m. session, about 11,000 had settled in for the show. Ten minutes before the briefing, about 71,000 were online. A couple minutes after the official start of the briefing — which started a few minutes behind schedule — a whopping 197,000 were watching.
More than 300,000 were still on the live stream as Deese, the White House’s director of the National Economic Council, stepped up to the lectern and began to speak. (The viewership numbers declined precipitously the longer Deese talked about inflation.)
“Okay, so I get to go home and tell my kids that BTS opened for me,” Deese said, as reporters laughed. “I did not expect that when I woke up this morning. And I know that you’re all here to talk about trimmed mean inflation, and you’re as excited about that as you are for them.”
It was great to meet with you, @bts_bighit. Thanks for all you’re doing to raise awareness around the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes and discrimination.
I look forward to sharing more of our conversation soon. pic.twitter.com/LnczTpT2aL
— President Biden (@POTUS) June 1, 2022
.@JoyAnnReid on Korean pop mega stars BTS joining the White House daily press briefing on Tuesday to make remarks, with the help of a translator, about Asian inclusion and the ongoing crisis of attacks against Asian-Americans. pic.twitter.com/mhTWnjjXSG
— The ReidOut (@thereidout) June 1, 2022
More evidence Biden made the right choice:
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Tuesday / Wednesday, May 31 – June 1
Baud
Meh. I prefer Nixon meeting Elvis.
Shalimar
Waiting for Tucker to spontaneously combust from incandescent rage.
Shalimar
@Baud: The only two things wrong with that are Nixon and Elvis.
Ken
I’m having one of those checkout-line moments where I look at the tabloids and feel old because I have no idea who most of those people are.
Mind you, I don’t feel any younger when I do recognize the names, because they’re all in Life or Time or People special editions with titles like “Remembering Audrey Hepburn” or “50 Years of the Godfather”.
debbie
Considering Carlson does nothing but whine about perceived crimes against the white man, his response is even more ridiculous. If that were possible.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I love this. Those young men are so engaging
Matt McIrvin
It actually makes sense–the BTS Army are a significant force for good.
Baud
That’s why you never cross the streams.
Princess
Brilliant move by Biden’s people. BTS are mind-bogglingly popular and their followers see themselves as a community. I’m not a fan of their music, but this is like having the Beatles turn up.
Baud
Biden has been having events with young pop stars for a while now.
NotMax
Unknown to me until watched it the other day on Tubi is 1984’s The Naked Face. A popcorn fare crime thriller that, unfortunate to relate, flops around like a dying fish on a boat deck (Roger Moore and Elliott Gould shuffle through it strictly by the numbers), with two exceptions. Nobody emanates barely constrained apoplexy quite like Rod Steiger and although Art Carney is relegated to limited screen time overall, what he does have is ‘cherce.’
Not a recommendation so much as a notation for the two performances mentioned.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Ken: I’m just going to assume that, despite this, you did know who BTS was
Old Dan and Little Ann
@Shalimar: Elvis sightings used to be a nice bat signal for crazy. Then the internet happened.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: That explains why I haven’t been invited.
dr. bloor
Looks like a good time was had by all. I guess you go to war against fascism with the army you have, not the one you wish you had.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone
lofgren
In a rational world, the executive leader of the world’s most powerful nation should be gripping and grinning with pop stars. What the fuck kind of pompous virtue signaling is this, anyway? “Ugh, the lord liege, debasing himself by pressing his flesh against the bare skin of mere minstrels?! I am shocked and appalled at this egregious violation of etiquette! Don’t these ribald performers know that they are nothing more than stains upon the heels of society?”
O. Felix Culpa
That first photo with Biden and the BTS boys is priceless. They look happy together and like they’re actually enjoying themselves. Never would have happened with you-know-who.
O. Felix Culpa
@rikyrah: Good morning!
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
NotMax
Speaking of presidents, what hath AI wrought? Kind of creepy, innit?
raven
Oh no. no masks!!!!!
Nicole
I like BTS (I’m aware I only know of them because I have an 11-year-old, but I like their music).
Dorothy A. Winsor
@NotMax: That is very cool
Steeplejack
Making a gang sign with a bunch of Asian yoots?! This is bad news for Joe Biden.
Steeplejack
@rikyrah:
Good morning! It has been a while.
NotMax
So, reservations made for sojourn to NYC to visit Mom in late August/early September. Skipped going in ’21 and in ’20.
On the one hand, still prudently skittish about any long flight air travel at all. On the other hand, with accumulated credit card points the total airfare came to (ready for it?) $0.
Tony Jay
The Secret Service have definitely taken a step in the right direction with their Youth Recruitment Policy. For a start I don’t think any of these guys are MAGAts.
raven
@NotMax: That’s pretty good, we didn’t go to LA for a graduation party because they scheduled it so late it would have cost a couple of grand to go. Then I got covid so it’s really good we didn’t pop for the tickets.
O. Felix Culpa
@NotMax: A most excellent price! I hope you have a great time visiting your mom.
eclare
@Nicole: BTS’ songs and videos are really catchy.
Gin & Tonic
@NotMax: Huh. I used points to pay for our trip to Mexico City two months ago, and still had to pay some cash. No way to get it to $0.
O. Felix Culpa
Perhaps this has been covered already, but in more water is wet news, it appears that the police
got it wronglied about the Uvalde school door being propped open too. (NPR) So maybe the problem isn’t too many doors.Kay
Andrew Sullivan fell for a fake Right wing story that an Illinois school district was putting in “race based grading” and a lot of the other anti-wokeists (idiotically) followed him.
It’s so funny they chose “education” as their area of (fake) expertise because they are the dumbest and most gullible people on the planet.
Steeplejack
Morning respite moment: I came over to Sighthound Hall to wait for a cabinet guy (Bro’ Man is doing school field trip chaperone duty and no doubt explaining repeatedly, “I’m her father, damn it, not her grandfather!”), and on the way I passed this woman doing a jaunty model pose at an intersection. Not intentional, I’m sure, but she had her elbow propped on the crosswalk-button box, like “Yeah, just hanging out in these cool clothes in this place where no normal person would ever stop for five seconds.” As seen in whatever is the edgy, sinister alternative to Elle. I found it oddly uplifting.
NotMax
‘@O. Felix Culpa
Fervently hope it turns out NOT to be a case of “you get what you pay for.”
:)
Did discover that the credit card companies’ data are more up to date than are some of the online fare aggregators. First attempts, although the flights remained clearly listed online, brought the news “oh, that flight has already been cancelled (as opposed to sold out) but there’s another one that day if you don’t mind a five hour layover.”
jnfr
Huge BTS ARMY here. My Twitter timeline yesterday was filled with so much love.
ARMYs are all ages and everywhere around the world. I wish everyone would stop with the “pop music for little girls” schtick because their music is much more.
Yesterday after this event the fans immediately started fundraising threads for groups who support Asian-Americans against hatred and violence. It’s just what they do. Kind of reminds me of BJ really.
TaMara
Having kept an eye on the BTS-Army and seen what they are capable of…Tuckems better sleep with one eye open.
Soprano2
@Kay: I read about that, evidently none of them even tried to contact the school to verify anything, and the story was quickly debunked, but they all promoted it anyway because it fits their conception of what “woke” schools would do. They really think parents would be OK with something like that.
Kay
I know Andrew Sullivan and the rest of the antiwokists are too lazy to do any real reading or investigation, but they don’t have to!
There are real, working education reporters they could read. Here’s one correcting some other bad information they sent out to their millions of followers:
Matt Barnum, the real education reporter, works for a nonprofit outlet called Chalkbeat. I wonder what Barnum makes for his real reporting versus what Andrew Sullivan makes for the sloppy junk he churns out. It’s a merit issue. Frankly, our elites are low quality and overpaid.
Baud
@Kay:
@Soprano2:
“fell for”?
When it keeps happening, the people it keeps happening to are perpetrators rather than victims.
Kay
@Soprano2:
Now they’ll all sashay away to gin up the next panic and leave that poor school with tens of screeching wingnuts convinced that their white children are being discriminated against. Over and over and over.
How many fucking times are they going to do this? Why can’t they do the bare minimum work? These people make half a million dollars a year or better. In what sense are they earning it?
Tony Jay
In honour of the return of The Big Juice, and because Anne-Laurie ain’t my goddam secretary, but also because the mottled slackneck I’m ashamed to admit was ever the elected Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland might not last much longer, I’m just going to drop this enormous load here.
Please feel free to scroll on by if other people’s rantings aren’t for you. Replacement scrolling fingers are available in the kiosk situated at Reception.
A LETTER FROM BREXITANNIA
‘Craven Clown and the Greywash Hogwash!’
Muellered (verb)
– To be stripped of all meaning and context in order to reach a conclusion directly contrary to that intended.
Where Tory bullshittery is concerned my capacity for surprise was long ago drained drier than a Mummy’s jockstrap. 100% proof full-spectrum knobjockeying has become endemic in all modern Conservative parties, an ever-present stench emanating from the rotted black heart of their shared ideology. So, it was with jaw very firmly secured in an upright and unshocked position that I greeted Flobalob Johnson’s entirely predictable response to the findings of the Grey Report into his Partygate revelry.
Let me first just clarify for anyone who (quite understandably) stamps a tl:dr on the released text of Grey’s report. While it is couched in the frictionless patois of Westminster bureaucratese and suffers from gaping holes around certain high-profile incidents of blatant lawbreaking, it’s still absolutely damning.
Over 30 odd pages she outlines a boozy, arrogant culture where numerous senior officials in Johnson’s inner circle of disposable cut-outs not only encouraged the routine breaking of strict Covid guidelines, but also colluded in keeping it on the hush-hush. A culture where parties were organised at the drop of a hat and late-night drinking sessions were part of the Comms Team schedule, staff were allowed to barge around drunkenly fighting and trashing the place, leaving dirty glasses and paper plates smeared with party food lying around in meeting rooms, empty bottles spilling out of bins, wine stains splashed up the walls, pools of vomit deposited in corners for the minimum-wage Help to clean up the next morning. Flobalob himself appears in the text as a gurning, wine-guzzling presence, habitually popping in and out of these parties to make ‘witty’ speeches and bask in the cheers of his favoured underlings, acting much more like the Guest of Honour at a frathouse orgy than a genuine national leader, happily encouraging the frenzy of permanent bacchanal while showing not the slightest concern for or appreciation of the Lockdown rules his own Government was two-facedly ordering the rest of the country to follow on pain of fines of up to £10,000.
Which is a very relevant point that the UK News Media are somehow (is that sarcasm? sounds like sarcasm – Ed) failing to get across in its reporting. All of this mayhem was taking place during a global pandemic where a dangerous virus that circulated through close contact was reproducing so quickly that the only choice remaining to Governments worldwide was to close down entire countries and confine 99% of people to their homes. Tens of millions of people outside of Bullingdon Bunter’s bubble followed the rules he set because the best scientific minds in the country were saying that they had to. But in Downing Street? No masks. No social distancing. No acknowledgement whatsoever that this ‘vital nexus-point of national and international decision making’ was deliberately operating without reference to even the most basic Covid safety guidelines.
I know the News Media in this country is 100% on the ‘Covid is Done’ bandwagon, but FFS, people. Context. Downing Street during Lockdown was a plague colony, a mass-infection event just waiting to happen. Fuck only knows how many staffers and officials actually came down with Covid during this period (because the Tories aren’t going to tell us) but for months the UK was only one roll of the dice away from having its entire Government hospitalised and put out of action for weeks. Granted, given the make-up of this Government that would probably have been a win-win for the country, but that’s hardly the point, is it?
And let’s not forget that through it all, the cleaners and security staff employed at Downing Street were not only expected to work for buttons and be treated like shit by the pissed-up yobs and snobs of Tory Party Central, but they were also made to do it without very much in the way of PPE or workplace protections. How many of them got sick because Johnson’s Party-Pad was a restriction free zone? Was Emmanuel Gomez the only low-paid cleaner whose life and death were judged to be of considerably less importance than the freewheeling social fun-time embraced at the World King’s Court? Maybe someone like Laura ‘True Blue, BoJo, I Luv U’ Kuenssberg could take some time off from making risible Panorama documentaries about her crush being “the most talented politician of his generation” (gurgle – spit) and do a little bit of journalism for a change? Ask around the zero-hour job agencies, perhaps, or just check the obituaries?
Ha! No, of course not. Tory spokesthings like Kuenssberg and Chris ‘Just here to help, Prime Minister’ Mason (her replacement as BBC Political Editor) didn’t get where they are today by causing imaging problems for the Conservative Establishment. Their role is to cock an oh so savvy eyebrow at ‘kneejerk reactions’ and help to guide the ‘serious’ narrative around any problematical issues so that it can arrive, as if by magic, at the conclusion that there’s never really much to these claims of scandal, and in fact it’s always better for the country if people would just stop probing for non-existent chinks in the armour of (Tory) Government and simply acknowledge that it’s his amazing charisma and down to earth relatability that makes their mate Flobalob one of those “Love them or hate them, you’ve got to admire them” Houdinis of political survival.
To which I say, no, fuck the fuck off with that tired bilge and show some self-respect you third-rate, self-reverential, propaganda-parroting cum-buckets.
Anyway, screw that noise, what’s important is that every single Partygate denial made by Johnson and his minions over the last six months has been exposed as a flat-out lie. Every one of them. In Parliament, at Press conferences, outside 10 Downing Street, on TV News, all complete, unadulterated, organically farmed horseshit. The Flaccid Flobulator’s official spokesman made it waspishly clear last week in a swiftly arranged confessional outside the scene of the crime, bluntly telling the assembled stenographers that, while he was there to provide a (checks notes) “A-Pollo-Gee, is that how you say it?” for “misleading the Media in repeatedly denying any parties took place inside Downing Street during lockdown”, the scribbling classes were under strict instructions to understand that “this was entirely inadvertent”.
Got that? They lied to the News Media, they lied to Parliament, they lied to the Public and for all we know they lied to their My Little Pony diaries and Mr Snuggles plush toys before dropping off into the dreamless sleep of the truly sociopathic, but it wasn’t their fault. On the contrary, this was all a perfectly forgivable accident that rational people just should chalk up to the Government’s completely inadvertent failure to check whether or not anything they were saying over the last six months or so was actually true.
Once again, with feeling, fuck right off.
It’s the tacky gobshite himself, of course, who reached out a pudgy hand to take the biscuit. From the very moment he emerged from his mid-morning bath of curdled milk and orphan’s tears to digest the findings of the report he was lying like a piss-stained rug in a Festival portaloo. Where to even begin?
Assume bullet-point mode!
He took ‘full responsibility’, but then immediately pivoted to blaming everyone around him for not informing him about the rules he’d supposedly written.
Insisted that the fact he’d only received one Fixed Penalty Notice from the rolled-up trouser leg brigade at the Metropolitan Police meant he’d been vindicated.
Claimed that it was an important part of leadership to attend leaving parties, and that since the Police agreed, he’d done nothing wrong.
Claimed that staff partying until the early hours of the morning were innocent of any wrongdoing because they were entitled to believe that that constituted ‘work’.
Claimed that the rules didn’t specifically specify that leaving parties were banned, so of course he (and everyone else in his circle) were right to believe they were allowed.
Insisted that, since he’d already sort of apologised once, that that act of contrition should be used as a blanket response applicable to any and all misdemeanours in office that people may choose to take offence at.
Went from “I have received the report” to “I therefore consider the matter closed and we should move on” in 30 seconds.
There’s shameless and there’s really, really #fuckingshamelessdotfuckingcom, but Bully Bunter’s performance over the last few days has blown right through that paradigm quicker than The Flash in a Vaseline factory. Taken as a whole and judged purely on its merits, it’s reached standing in a pool of piss wearing a ‘Nickelbacker 4 Life’ t-shirt shouting random ‘Nicholas Cage in Con-Air’ quotes at imaginary critics while shooting lit ping-pong balls out of your arse on a crowded commuter train filled with children from the Make A Wish Foundation levels of shameless. In Parliament, where our ancient constitutional traditions are ‘guarded’ by Linsday Hoyle (the most spineless Speaker of the House since Sir Everard Lancelot Leodegrance d’Aubigny MP (1826-1891) actually had his vertebrae wrenched clean out by an over-stimulated suffragette during the brief and unlamented Premiership of Sir Edward Hyde) Flobalob ruffled up his thinning hair and delivered a glib, ‘playing to the stalls’ show of contempt for the very concept of humility that should have made it entirely clear to even the dimmest bulb on the Infotainment circuit that any claims he was making about contrition were as genuine as his mouthing of marriage vows.
Sir Beer Korma? Really? Vladimir Corbyn? From the guy whose Party couldn’t afford a pot to piss in without its Russian sugardaddies? It’s an embarrassment on every level. The people who voted for this flailing bell-end must should be cringing in their Union Jack onesies, and as for the people who were supposed to be campaigning against him but instead spent the vast majority of their time smearing and sabotaging the only viable alternative, not much gratitude on show for your years of hard work, is there? But anyone dunderheaded enough to expect gratitude from the Prince of Porkies is the same kind of person naïve enough to believe that all the frontpage credibility they received when they were trashing their own brand would continue once they became the official opposition to the Party of Billionaire Ballwashing.
Apples? Do you like them?
But I digress.
It’s obvious that Flobalob was just following the template Bob Barr used after the Mueller Report dropped. He’s got Lynton Crosby advising him, after all, and that one-trick Antipodean horsecock has never been shy of doing the absolute minimum of work for his paychecks. Sure, just do whatever worked for the Toad of Choad Hall when he was up to his wrinkled neck in consequences. Claim the report cleared him, claim any revealed failings were all in the past and someone else’s fault anyway, claim that everything had already been fixed and ‘the country’ wanted to move on, then cast any factually based counter-opinion as purely partisan in nature. Do it loudly. Do it frequently. Do it with enough hate-baiting asides and rhetorical cul-de-sacs to keep the News Media fat and happy and well away from anything resembling a pause for introspection until the narrative that he was in the clear had had time to bed in and solidify.
Yeah, that strategy survived about as long as a prison snitch in main population.
The problem for Johnson and Crosby and their clever, clever shenanigans was that they’re still fighting last year’s war with weapons ill-suited to today’s battlefield. The truth is that most people were already fairly clear on what was going to be in Grey’s report, and it was being released just a day after the Metropolitan Police’s astonishingly tone-deaf whitewash of Flobby’s blatant acts of lawbreaking had scoured the mud off everyone’s bullshit detectors. According to the polls the only people left in Britain who don’t think Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is a totally shameless lying smeghead are the same people who think that the Prussians are after our steam-clad airboat designs and ‘Zulu’ is a blueprint for 21st century race relations. It takes pretty deep reservoirs of credibility in office to sell the kind of “Okay, okay, we’ve all had fun but the party’s over now, time for the adults to get back to work” narrative they were pushing, and, uh, yeah, the dregs left at the bottom of that well wouldn’t lubricate a skin-mite’s lower lip.
So, while the usual News Media idiots began their day by applauding the greased piglet’s rakish disregard for stale political convention, it didn’t take very long at all for the grisly truth to start emerging. Tory MPs might still be terrible cowards frozen in indecision between taking a stand against Flobalob and keeping their head down until the coast is clear, but no one could fail to notice how few were willing to back up Flobalob’s claims of victory with the usual emulsive praise. There’ll always be the likes of Michael ‘It’s not a Tribble, it’s an authentic Epsom Weave’ Fabricant, of course, but when you’re down to the relying on the most cartoonish of Scooby Do villains for a character reference, you know you’re in trouble.
It’s also been a well-worn tactic of this Government to parade a circuit of increasingly less authoritative Ministerial talking-heads through the TV News rooms and Talk radio studios to back up the Downing Street line and soak up any residual counter-battery fire from off-message journotwits, but even the BBC appeared to be getting bored with the millionth go-around of Kwasi Kwarteng slavishly affirming that the Clown Prince was not only entirely vindicated, but also remained fit and well and capable of hitting multiple holes-in-one while personally keeping the sacred Fatherland safe from Prince Vultan’s Hawk People.
While Downing Street swanned around with a fake grin of unconcern plastered across its collective face, in the background the scenery kept on falling over to reveal the chaos erupting backstage. Sue Grey’s report, it turned out, hadn’t got as far as covering the infamous Abba-themed party strategy meeting held in the Prime Ministerial residence to celebrate discuss Dominic Cumming’s ousting (he and Flobby’s current babymomma didn’t get on). She stopped collecting evidence about it when the Metropolitan Police started their investigation and for some reason thought it would be neither “appropriate nor proportionate” to pick it up again after the Met released concluded their own hilariously blatant whitewash in depth criminal investigation.
Had Downing Street intervened to convince Grey not to press on with evidence gathering? Had they, in fact, edited the report to remove incriminating evidence about the party in question? Denials were instant and firm… while carefully skirting away from actually answering the questions posed, which is always a clear tell with these jokers. The inevitable leaks soon started, with annoyed insiders telling their Fleet Street contacts that Flobalob’s people definitely had stripped some parts out of Grey’s report, and in addition to that, did they know that there had been another party that neither Grey nor the Met had ever got around to investigating? This one held on the very evening of Johnson’s birthday, also in the Prime Ministerial residence? Sounds almost like a birthday party, doesn’t it? Couldn’t be though, could it? Not after Johnson had stood up in Parliament and repeatedly told the country that there had been no parties at Downing Street, only (checks notes) work events with music, alcohol and cake.
Uh, oh, spaghettios.
The general mood of sour distaste intensified when Stephen House, the acting Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and highly experienced defender of all types of Blue Crew misbehaviour, had the unmitigated gall to sit in front of the London Assembly (The Met is officially answerable to the elected Mayor of London, even though it’s central Government that controls their budget) and regurgitate the same bland twatwaffle that previous Met Commissioners have used every time their Force has shat the bed. Wearing a short-sleeved white shirt with no tie (translation – “I’m a working copper who could be saving lives right now so you interfering plebs should respect my manliness”) and oozing the self-satisfied disinterest of a man who knows his future ennoblement is guaranteed, he dismissed every charge of Police complicity with Downing Street and lectured the Assembly on how exemplary the Order of Uniformed Freemasons were at their job. Everything about Operation Hillman was above board and on the level, the Met had done everything within its compass to deal squarely with the evidence (stop that – Ed) and the investigation into Partygate had, of course, been carried out without fear or favour and reached its conclusions honestly. He was likewise confident that Johnson was not tipped off weeks ago by The Met that he would get just one fine, even though he was tipped off, and only The Met could have known that information in advance.
It was the kind of wagon-circling stonewalling that everyone has come to expect from The Met and showed how badly the pro-Tory Establishment has become at concealing their privilege. House straight up admitted that The Met only handed Fixed Penalty Notices to people who had already copped to their role in lawbreaking and gave complete benefit of the doubt to anyone who both denied their crimes and had the money to hire competent legal counsel, no matter how ‘bad’ the actual evidence made their claims of innocence look. The amazing thing is that ouse HHouse seemed to believe that his position gave him the authority to end the matter there, as if the rest of the country couldn’t look at the same evidence and conclude that The Met was simply continuing its inglorious policy of protecting the well-connected and lying about it afterwards.
Read the room, you prick.
The combination of Police arrogance, Grey’s post-Report compliance and continued leaking from within and without the Tory Party has just made things exponentially worse for Flobalob. At its core, his problem is that he no longer has anything like the necessary credibility to bull his way through all the accumulated evidence of his crimes. Everything, and I mean everything, is being repurposed to shield his mottled hide from consequences, up to and including the wholesale rewriting of the Ministerial Code to strip out any guff about “integrity, objectivity, accountability, transparency, honesty and leadership in the public interest” and to remove the obligation for Ministers to resign when they are found to have violated the Code.
Talk about obvious. What’s next? Taking away the authority of his own Ethics Advisor to open investigations without getting his permission first? Oh, he has, has he?
It’s apparent to absolutely everyone that Flobalob knows he’s guilty as fuck and no longer trusts the Tory majority on the Parliamentary Privileges Committee to cover for him when their inquiry starts into whether he lied to Parliament (spoiler – he did), plus the Greater London Authority’s oversight committee is on the verge of releasing the findings of its own inquiry into Johnson’s mishandling of public funds when he was London Mayor and his relationship with super-chatty American pole-dancing grifter honeytrap for the U.S. far-Right businesswoman and I.T. entrepreneur Jennifer Arcuri. There are Parliamentary bye-elections coming up (both caused by the sexual misconduct of Tory MPs) that could see the last shreds of his threadbare ‘electability’ argument torched, and though he’ll go all out to try and wrap himself in the flag during this week’s very, very forced ‘national celebrations’ for Rich-Bitch Lizzy’s Platinum Jubilee, it’ll be pretty easy for detractors to counterpoint his Charity-Shop Churchill pose with images of an elderly monarch forced sit alone in a cold chapel mourning her dead husband while ‘Her Government’ were having drunken piss-ups behind locked doors.
Tory grandees started briefing openly against him over the weekend, accusing him of trashing the Tory brand with incoherent policy yo-yoing, and it’s true. He’s been trying to balance paying off the Party’s most right-wing crazies with Libertarian economics and Brextremist ‘threatorics’ over Northern Ireland with committing U-turn after U-turn on firm Tory Party manifesto promises (ransacking Corbyn’s 2019 policy portfolio for ideas in the process) in a doomed attempt to fend off the massive Cost of Living crisis Brexit and decades of Tory cuts have inflicted upon the country. Tory MPs, who have learnt to imitate church mice when under the eyes of the Party Whips, likewise used the freedom afforded by Parliament’s recess to return to their constituencies and lock themselves in the toilet to join secret WhatsApp groups where they could share stories about the anger of their constituents and the pressing need to get this hairless albino monkey off the Party’s back as quickly and quietly as possible.
If I had to guess, I’d say that the Tories want to get the whole Jubilee things out of the way and, if possible, wait for the inevitable butt-reaming they’re likely to suffer in the Tiverton and Wakefield Bye-Elections before they risk removing The Carcass from office. They’ll want to be able to point to Flobalob costing them seats as the reason they need new leadership, not wait for the Privilege Committee to come down with a ruling that makes them take a stand on ‘principle’. OTOH, individual pebbles have a way of imparting their own momentum to massive avalanches, and it could already be too late for gaming out strategies. It could even be that there are already 54 Letters on the desk of the chairman of the 1922 committee calling for a leadership challenge to Flobby, but many of them have a “Not until such-and-such a thing happens” addendum to give them cover. We just don’t know.
Correction, we do know this much, he’s fucked. Actually, the whole country is fucked, but he’s extra fucked. When you’ve got someone like Dame Andrea ‘Theresa May, but dumber’ Leadsom calling you out from the (far-Right) backbenches for your “unacceptable failings of leadership“, moronic MPs ‘showing support’ by claiming the electorate already knew you were a dodgy fucker when they voted for you, staff at the Prime Ministerial country retreat Chequers going on record slamming you and your tasteless First Concubine as the Tom and Daisy of these Not So Roaring Twenties, your own (recently humiliated) Ethics Advisor being surprisingly comfortable telling journalists that you’ve broken the Ministerial Code, and you yourself are reduced to phoning round wavering MPs and offering them non-existent Government jobs if they’ll only stay with you, the fat lady isn’t so much singing as howling “DIE YOU GASEOUS FUCKTARD!!” into your ear.
Never mind, eh. If he is kicked to the kerb (which BTW isn’t guaranteed, given how ferociously fascist-adjacent a fair chunk of the Tory Party’s MPs are, and surviving a leadership challenge means he’s safe on the top of the Tory totem-pole for a full year) he’ll have more time to spend with his loving wife… if he can get through the gate of his ‘good friend’ Zach Goldsmith’s private estate, that is. Or maybe that’s just another rumour.
Allons Y, eh? Got to find something to occupy the masses now that the Football is over.
Soprano2
@Baud: True, I think it’s more like they mindlessly share anything that fits with their world view regardless of how dubious it sounds. I have friends on FB who do the same thing, where with a couple of minutes with Google I can find out that what they posted isn’t true, or at least is a misrepresentation. I’ve found that most of them aren’t interested in knowing that, though.
jonas
One reason I think the right-wing trolls are losing it over the BTS visit to the WH is that the #BTSarmy was responsible for blowing up Trump’s big comeback rally in Tulsa, OK back in 2020 by hoarding all the tickets so that when Trump showed up, the arena was at like 10% capacity.
Plus, they’re the most popular band in the world right now and the only celebrities Trump could get to the WH for a photo-op were washed-up acts like Kid Rock and a clearly off-his-meds (Kan)ye West.
germy
Kay
@Baud:
We need to have a “hard conversation” about merit. Not merit as far as race based equity efforts. Merit as far as the quality of the work of the people who have these huge profitable platforms. Something has gone badly wrong. They’re dumb and lazy. My own personal theory is it’s tied to income inequality and a lack of strivers from below moving up to knock them out. They’re insulated from competition so we’ve seen a decline in quality. I think this is a “market based” theory and therefore Andrew Sullivan should consider it.
Baud
@Soprano2:
To be frank, that happens on our side too, and even on BJ. But Sullivan is supposed to be a professional. He should be held to a higher standard than a pseudonymous blog commenter.
O. Felix Culpa
@Baud: Agreed. This is deliberate propaganda to fan the flames of right-wing rage, not a case of naïveté.
Soprano2
@Kay: I think Sullivan believes he’s “earned it” because he’s a conservative white Brit, full stop. He thinks that’s enough, there’s no requirement for him to do more. He still hasn’t taken that story down from his feed either, even though scores of commenters have told him it’s not true. He wants it to stay up there, because it feeds into what he already believes.
Baud
@Kay:
I’m not sure. I think they produce quality, meritorious work, except the measurement of quality and merit is based on how it promotes the GOP agenda and harms anti-fascist forces. In that sense, they earn their keep.
O. Felix Culpa
@Kay:
You miss the point. They are doing exactly the work they are supposed to be doing: stoking right-wing rage. Facts don’t matter in service of that goal, and there’s no merit in treating them as if they are serious (i.e. fact-based) journalists and pundits.
ETA: What Baud said at #51.
NotMax
‘@jonas
Diamond and Silk!
Um, never mind.
//
Soprano2
@Baud: I know it does. I can only speak for myself, but when something seems to be too good to be true I try to research it so I don’t get taken in. I know a lot of people don’t do that, though.
Baud
@Soprano2:
Yeah, while there’s no comparison between liberals and conservatives, there’s enough bad info floating around in our spaces that we have to have a mental radar about when to be cautious and skeptical. It sucks, because it steals time and mental energy.
Kay
@Soprano2:
Could they have picked something else to fake expertise in? Jesus Christ. Haven’t public schools taken enough hits over the last 3 years without these idiots deciding to focus on them?
Can’t they all go back to faking expertise on health care or covid or something? I don’t know “trade” or “energy” or “taxes”- something where ordinary people don’t get hurt?
Elizabelle
What fun that BTS stars in this morning’s post. Was reading the LA Times earlier, and came across the concept of “Namjooning.” (Kim Namjoon is BTS leader, who goes by RM — which previously stood for Rap Monster. Anyway, I am one of his many fangirls.).
And then come over here to — more BTS! With Biden, looking relaxed and happy. [And you know this band would not have been caught dead with the previous occupant of the Oval Office.]
Definition of Namjooning:
https://twitter.com/modooborahae/status/1436838901805617155?lang=en
LA Times:
BTS inspires its ARMY to show off fan-made fashions at SoFi Stadium
ArchTeryx
My BTS story:
I actually got to attend the Billboard Music Awards in Las Vegas prior to the COVID pandemic. Front row seats, too, as I and my fiancee were corporate guests of (spit) Comcast.
BTS was one of the featured guests. And they brought their fans. OMG, did they bring their fans. Shreiking tweens that basically seemed to be EVERYWHERE looking to catch a glimpse of BTS either backstage or their limo pulling up. (I actually saw the band arriving, but security surrounded them and they got in through a back way to avoid the crazies).
During their live performance the shreiking in the auditorium was about deafening. I could barely hear the band!
I commented that the whole thing reminded me intensely of Beatlemania. Even the Lads from Liverpool were a boy band at one time.
Tucker Carlson is a platinum-plated moron to want to take THAT fanbase on. They’ll eat him alive and leave only the bones, and the rest of humanity will be better off for it.
Soprano2
I wonder if the BTS Army could figure out how to make the Bixby on my Samsung phone go back to English from Korean? I’ve Googled fixes, but none of them works for my phone’s set up – the instructions I get are useless. I think I’m going to have to go to the Verizon store to see if they know how to fix it.
Steeplejack
@Baud:
Which is why I am an asshole about bugging people for links and sources.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Yep. There are multiple crises happening in the education sector. But the real stuff doesn’t reinforce the elite Substackers’ preexisting beliefs (black people and women are inferior, teachers are indoctrinating students, etc.), so they go with the lies instead. They’re functionally Republican propagandists.
eclare
@Tony Jay: Thanks for the update from across the pond! Righteous rant, as always.
NotMax
‘@Soprano2
Dunno if anyone else has watched How To Become a Tyrant on Netflix.
Cognitively dissonantly lighthearted* (and resolutely shallow), also has the added detrimental distraction of bringing on Sullivan for interspersed commentary.
On the plus side, Peter Dinklage is a superb narrator.
*They aimed for sardonic but shot well wide of that mark.
citizen dave
@Ken: The other day at the big box grocery checkout I saw one of those special editions with Tricky Dick on the cover, title was either “Nixon” or “Watergate”. Couldn’t believe it would sell in 2022. Maybe if the title had been “Man, that creep could roll “…
Tony Jay
@eclare:
Better out than in, as they say. 8-)
Betty Cracker
@Tony Jay: I watched an episode of “Gentleman Jack” last night that featured a politician standing on a balcony speaking to a crowd, members of which started hurling produce at him. Maybe it’s time to bring that back. I’ve got lots of overripe tomatoes!
NotMax
‘@citizen dave
Must link.
;)
Tony Jay
@Betty Cracker:
Already dealt with. The recently passed Protest Bill makes it illegal for crowds to get anywhere near the people they’re protesting about, and the huge spike in food prices ensures that no one is going to throw away any food regardless of how rotten it is.
Really, they’ve thought of everything
ETA – You could sell your ripe tomatoes here… if it wasn’t for the fact that they’re ballsing up any chances of a US/UK trade deal with their attacks on the Good Friday Agreement.
Really. Everything.
eclare
@Betty Cracker: A *lot* of people should be pelted with rotten fruits, vegetables, and fish when they venture out in public.
NotMax
‘@Tony Jay
Real Brits fling suet.
//
Steeplejack
Commenter: “An armed society is a polite society.”
Peale
Ugh. My YouTube algorithm is messed up. I’ve been so careful. I don’t click on the links ya’ll post tempting me with examples of right wing loonies. But now, they’ve decided that what I want instead of 15 second ads interrupting Tasting History with Max Miller are 30 minute infomercials about Praeger U, Glenn Beck episodes, and some ninny ranting about transsexualities interrupting Tasting History with Max Miller. What gets me is the length of the inserts that they are paying for. 30-40 minutes, sometimes 90. Fortunately, I only have to wait 5 seconds before skipping. But its rather obnoxious for them to basically pay YouTube to attempt to insert another full video in place of the one I am watching.
germy
Soprano2
Here’s another thing to give Melania heartburn https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/jill-biden-makes-history-harpers-bazaar-cover-193931234.html
eclare
@Soprano2: I saw that. So proud to have her as FLOTUS.
OzarkHillbilly
@Steeplejack: Gunman C did apologize after shooting gunman B for not shooting him earlier. That’s pretty polite for Wellston.
Brachiator
For Trump, BTS means a bacon and tomato sandwich.
NotMax
‘@OzarkHillbilly
Missouri loves company.
//
MisterForkbeard
@Soprano2: None of them appear to be admitting they’re wrong, either. That’s the scary thing.
it’s a cult that sics clueless and dangerous people on innocent people. In this case, teachers.
Steeplejack
Still waiting for cabinet guy, who was supposed to be here at 9:00. ⏳️ Not even a call to explain.
Did get a selfie of my brother being mauled by grade-schoolers. There was somebody in a park ranger hat in the background, so I guess they’re at one of the memorials downtown.
Matt McIrvin
@ArchTeryx: Yep, I’ve emphasized that talking to my kid about music history–the Beatles started out as a boy band with all the boy-band characteristics.
When I mentioned that she said “oh, did they do the thing where there’s the cute one, the smart one, the bad boy, the quiet one…” Oh yes, yes they did
(though “the smart one” and “the bad boy” were the same one in that case)
jnfr
@Elizabelle:
@Namjoonbug1138
Replying to @POTUS and @bts_bighitOmg Biden got to speak to the President!
9:42 PM · May 31, 2022·Twitter for AndroidElizabelle
@jnfr: Perfect. LOL.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Andrew Sullivan fell for an actor doing a parody where the actor said people should go to playgrounds and “start conversations” about gender.
I mean, come on.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Matt McIrvin: Seems like the Fab Four were the original “boy band”!
BTS has earned a lot of goodwill and respect.
Brachiator
@Tony Jay:
I think it’s a good thing that anyone can download the Grey report and not depend on media filters. And the report is short and to the point, and even has photos. This is an area where there actually is some transparency.
I agree that Boris Johnson might be ignored when he asks people to just move on. People may not forget the fines they had to pay, or the funerals they could not attend while they were obeying the rules.
And the Tories keep reminding folks that they hold ordinary people in contempt when they admit in interviews that deeply held Conservative Party values means not that hungry people should be fed, but that taxes must never be raised.
It will be interesting to see if the Tories actually have the will to dump Boris. Of course the problem is that the possible replacements are more of the same.
Kay
In real news that is also good news, Christoper Rufo and Betsy DeVos are going to lose in Michigan:
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: I have never bothered to use Bixby, despite there being a non-remappable button on my phone specifically to summon it, so I can’t help you there.
SiubhanDuinne
@Soprano2:
@eclare:
One of the things I most love about both Michelle and Jill is their realness, their core-deep authenticity. Spontaneous. Passionate. Full of laughter, full of compassion.
And the two of them bracketed perhaps the haughtiest, most arrogant, most detached presidential spouse in the history of FLOTI. The contrast is almost painful. So glad we have Dr. Jill now.
Ken
To think that I got a little upset when, in one of Charles Stross’ Laundry Files novels, the UK PM drew a summoning circle on an antique carpet in the 10 Downing residence. At least he has the excuse of being an ancient Lovecraftian outer god.
Steeplejack
@Matt McIrvin:
I also have never used Bixby on my S10e. There is a way to remap the button, but you have to boot up Bixby at least once to do it. I have not done that. My muscle memory has adapted to never touch the Bixby button.
Tony Jay
@Brachiator:
They’ve got no choice. The beatings will continue until he’s turfed from office, so they really have to chuck him. Their problem is that they purged the Party of what passed for Tory centre-right folks in 2019 (a real scandal the News Media glossed over because they were too busy making shit up about the Opposition) so they might not have the votes to actually do the job.
Flobalob humiliated or the Tories forced to stagger onwards with a crippled leader. Ooooh, choices.
And one correction, Tory Party values are that taxes must never be raised on the wealthiest people. As in the US, the people at the bottom of the heap find their tax burden increasing all the time.
@Ken:
They haven’t tried that excuse, not yet anyway, but I wouldn’t put it past Dorries or the Member of Parliament for Upper Innsmouth himself.
Soprano2
@SiubhanDuinne: Yes, people can relate to them – they’re real people! Melania is the kind of wife wealthy men want – beautiful on the outside, haughty and groomed but unable to relate to most real people. They think this kind of wife is a symbol of their status – see, I can afford to have a wife with these kind of monetary demands, I’m wealthy. It burns Trumpers to no end that even though she was beautiful on the outside, most people could see through the facade to see what Melania was really like, and they didn’t want anything to do with her. With them it’s all about shallow outside appearances.
Suzanne
@O. Felix Culpa:
Arrrrrrgggghhhhh.
This whole line of inquiry (not sure it’s really inquiry and not better characterized as bad faith demagoguery) just makes me crazy. It took decades of regulation, informed by research and real-life events, to get to the building code we have today. Active shooters are not the only problem. And doors ALSO HELP PEOPLE ESCAPE!!!
God.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: We haven’t had a school fire that killed more than 10 kids in decades. Clearly fire is such an obsolete problem that the usefulness of fire codes has run its course and we can invalidate them all, just like the Voting Rights Act.
Shana
@jnfr: Was it the BTS Army or some other KPop group’s fan base that snapped up all the tickets for TFG’s rallies in 2020?
O. Felix Culpa
@Suzanne: Agreed. My comment was sarcastic, if that wasn’t obvious. The door thing was clearly a bad faith argument.
@Matt McIrvin: Heh.
Shana
@Suzanne: I’m with you on the idiocy of the whole Cruz-led door suggestion but I also keep imagining how long it would take a school of 600 students to go through one door on the way in to school every morning, which is about the size of our elementary schools. Middle schools can easily have 1,000 students and most of the high schools are at least 2,000 students. It would be hours, literally, on a daily basis to get into the building.
rikyrah
@Tony Jay:
I have missed you :)
Tony Jay
@rikyrah:
You obviously didn’t have to suffer through the 10,000 word blabathon I inflicted upon those poor Jackal-Action refugees. 8-)
Paul in KY
@NotMax: I hope they checked it against Preses who had childhood pics. They all look too ‘sweet’ to me.
jnfr
@Shana:
I wasn’t part of it, but my vague memory is that it was reported as “kpop” generally. I don’t know how much the media knows about that ecosystem generally. They barely understand BTS fandom anyway.
Paul in KY
@Tony Jay: I sure hope you’re right, Tony (about him being fucked, etc.). Have not seen anything in our big media about it, though.
Sorry about last Saturday. You can teach alot of things, but you can’t teach height…
Still a mighty team, though!
Peale
@Suzanne: Was thinking about the doors in the classrooms. My guess is that they were “hardened”, which is why they needed to wait to get a key to unlock them. So once the shooter was “locked in” the classroom, he was protected. I’m sure someone thought that was a good safety measure. But it turns out that there’s lots of reasons to have a school classroom door that is easy to break open.
Paul in KY
@Steeplejack: Surprised this hasn’t happened more. I’ve been in line at the convenience store behind a dipshit open carrying his nice sig sauer and I would think about how easy it would be to take some good ole 16th century technology (a blackjack) and kosh him right in the back of his stupid head & relieve him of his $700 penisubstitute. So far, I have been able to resist…
Tony Jay
@Paul in KY:
Ah well to be honest I was disappointed with how it turned out, but not depressed. It’s been a hell of a season and I’m fully confident that next year we’ll pick up the titles we want and deserve.
Tony Jay
@Paul in KY:
Ah well to be honest I was disappointed with how it turned out, but not depressed. It’s been a hell of a season and I’m fully confident that next year we’ll pick up the titles we want and deserve.
And as for Flobby, he’s doomed. England’s version of Radical Conservatism though, that will take a much bigger effort and a very different breed of Labour Party to put in it’s well deserved grave.
Tony Jay
Ah, dunno what that was.
Edit button?
Laura Westberg
Fantastic, they are really very cool
Paul in KY
@Tony Jay: I hope you can keep Mane. He’s a wonderful talent. But if he goes, who wouldn’t want to come kick ass with The Klopper?!