Thursday, June 28, 2018

This Is The World Mitch McConnell Gave Us


Mr. MacGillis is the author of a biography of Mitch McConnell.

There is an unusual space in the basement of the University of Louisville library, in the large anteroom to the official archives for Senator Mitch McConnell. The space is called the Civic Education Gallery, but it is, essentially, a kind of shrine to the political career of Mr. McConnell, not unlike the exhibits on Babe Ruth or Hank Aaron you’d find at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The mere fact of the shrine is curious enough, given that it memorializes a politician who shows no sign of leaving the stage any time soon. What’s most unusual, though, is what it chooses to highlight. 

There are a few artifacts from Mr. McConnell’s youth — his baseball glove, his honorary fraternity paddle — but most of the exhibits are devoted to the elections Mr. McConnell won, starting with high school and on up through Jefferson County executive and the Senate.

When I visited the room while researching my 2014 biography on Mr. McConnell, I was struck by what was missing: exhibits on actual governing accomplishments from the Senate majority leader’s four decades in elected office. That absence confirmed my thesis that Mr. McConnell, far more even than other politicians, was motivated by the game of politics — winning elections and rising in the leadership ranks, achieving power for power’s sake — more than by any lasting policy goals.

Well, that was then. Four years later, it is becoming increasingly clear that Mitch McConnell is creating a legacy for himself, and it’s a mighty grand one.

Mr. McConnell has created the world in which we are now living. Donald Trump dominates our universe — and now has the power to fill the second Supreme Court seat in two years. Mitch McConnell, who has promised a vote on whomever the resident nominates “this fall,” is the figure who was quietly making it all possible, all along.

First, there was Mr. McConnell’s vigorous defense, going back to the early 1990's, of the role of big money in American politics, which would help Mr. Trump not so much in terms of funding his campaign, but in helping shape the conditions for his appeal.

While Mr. McConnell has long cast his defense of campaign spending as a First Amendment issue — money is speech — he made no secret of his motivation for fighting so hard on the issue. Namely, that he was well aware that he, as someone lacking in natural campaign talents, and the rest of the Republican Party, as more business-oriented than the Democrats, would need to maintain the flow of large contributions to be able to win elections. “I will always be well financed, and I’ll be well financed early,” he declared after winning his first race for county executive, in 1977.

His crusade against campaign finance reform culminated in the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling eliminating limits on corporate spending on elections, which Mr. McConnell followed up by blocking legislation to disclose the identity of large donors. Even before that ruling, the spread of big money in politics had done so much to sour the public on government, creating a ripe target for the Tea Party and, later, for a billionaire populist running against “the swamp.”

Mr. McConnell laid the groundwork for the right-wing insurgency of 2009 and 2010 in another way, too, with his decision to withhold Republican support for any major Democratic initiatives in the Obama years. This meant that Republicans had less influence on the final shape of legislation such as the Affordable Care Act than they would have had as fully willing negotiators.

But Mr. McConnell, prioritizing elections over policy, calculated that by blocking or delaying Democratic legislation, above all through aggressive use of the filibuster, Republicans would create a tedious gridlock that voters would blame the Democrats for. After all, weren’t they the ones in power?

Mr. McConnell was right. This strategy helped to foment opposition to the health care bill, and to drive huge Republican gains in the 2010 election. But it also fueled the rise of the Tea Party, which was motivated substantially by the notion that Mr. Obama was “ramming things down our throats” — that is, passing legislation on a partisan basis after Mr. McConnell withheld any Republican negotiation. Of course, Mr. McConnell proceeded to have plenty of headaches managing the far-right contingent in his own caucus, but it was a contingent he helped produce.

His role in the election of Trump was even more direct. Most notable was his refusal to hold a confirmation hearing, let alone a vote on Merrick Garland, Mr. Obama’s nominee to replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, despite the fact that the nomination was made a full 10 months before the end of Mr. Obama’s term. This refusal exploded norms and dismayed Beltway arbiters who had long accepted McConnell’s claim to be a guardian of Washington institutions. It also provided crucial motivation to Republicans who had grave qualms about Mr. Trump but were able to justify voting for him as “saving Scalia’s seat.”

Mr. McConnell’s other form of aid for Trump was more hidden. As The Washington Post reported a month after the 2016 election, Mr. Obama had been prepared that September to go public with a C.I.A. assessment laying bare the extent of Russian intervention in the election. But he was largely dissuaded by a threat from Mr. McConnell. During a secret briefing for congressional leaders, The Post reported, Mr. McConnell “raised doubts about the underlying intelligence and made clear to the administration that he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics.” The Obama administration kept mum, and voters had to wait until after Trump’s election to learn the depth of Russian involvement.

Now, with the retirement of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, it is evident just how much of a lasting legacy Mitch McConnell’s will leave the country: Donald Trump will have at least two lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court. The resident has — and will now enjoy — greater latitude in filling those seats as a result of Mr. McConnell’s doing away last year with the 60-vote requirement for Senate confirmation, to get Neil Gorsuch seated. In the day and a half before Justice Kennedy’s announcement, the impact of the Scalia seat was made plain again, as the court issued 5-4 rulings in favor of Trump’s “travel ban” and anti-abortion groups, and against public employee unions.

The abortion and union rulings had an ironic resonance, as far as Mr. McConnell goes. In the 1970's, when he ran for county executive in Louisville, he secured the pivotal endorsement of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. by pledging to back collective bargaining for public employees (a promise that went unfulfilled), and while in office he worked effectively behind the scenes to protect abortion rights locally.

But that was a long time ago, before Mr. McConnell saw the rightward swing of the Reagan revolution and decided to hop on board for his own political preservation as a Southern Republican. 

These days, Mr. McConnell has made explicit, with taunting tweets among other things, that he views long-term conservative control of the Supreme Court as his crowning achievement. It’s not hard to see why: Holding a long-term majority on the court greatly aids his highest cause — Republican victories in future elections — as recent rulings on voting rights and gerrymandering demonstrated once again.

Whether Mr. McConnell decides to add an exhibit in the Civic Education Gallery documenting his role in the rise of Donald Trump is another matter. The final historical judgment on that score will not rest with him, in any case.

Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) covers government and politics for ProPublica and is the author of “The Cynic: The Political Education of Mitch McConnell.”

Monday, June 25, 2018

The Baby Snatchers


Maxine Waters My Hero - We Need To Treat Trumpscum Like Trumpscum - Full Court Press

By PaulX2

Trump and his supporters are all upset because their whiteness is losing it's total control of our government. White racist men are being overwhelmed by women, demographics, and a culture shift. Brown people and women are actually doing things, and they don't like it one bit.

Trump's only option is to double down on Fascist behavior to impress his base of mentally retarded racist crackers, and hope they turn out in greater numbers in November. The more Trump mistreats the powerless the happier it makes them. Trump knows it. We know it. The world knows it.

Trump, and all his minions need to be opposed any and every way possible. From kicking a lying fake Christian out of a restaurant, to kicking any lying fascist nazi supporter out of anywhere. Trump supporters are scum and need to be treated like scum.



Full Court Press

We stand for good, and they stand for evil.

We act like christians, and they obviously serve Satan.

Get In Their Face.

They have never been nice, and I refuse to be nice to sickos.

Maxine, they are scumbags. Give it to them.

When they go low, I kick them in the chops with a 63 yard field goal kick.

No quarter.

Sunday, June 24, 2018

Protests are now planned in all 50 states. 523 of them.

The executive order that Donald Trump signed today is not a solution to the crisis created by his administration; it keeps kids imprisoned indefinitely, and doesn't reunite thousands of separated families. But it does show the administration is reacting to public pressure, so we will continue to increase our pressure for justice at hundreds of events on Saturday, June 30, to say that families belong together—and free.

Donald Trump and his administration are cruelly separating children from their families.

But we won't allow it to continue. On June 30, we're rallying in Washington, D.C., and around the country to tell Donald Trump and his administration to stop separating kids from their parents!

Trump and his administration have been systematically criminalizing immigration and immigrants, from revoking Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) to ramping up intimidating ICE tactics. 

Join us on June 30 to send a clear message to Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress: Families Belong Together! 

If there's not an event near you, keep checking back or create an event at the link below.

https://act.moveon.org/event/families-belong-together/search/

Saturday, June 23, 2018

Buckle Up?



Vote against the GOP this November

By George Will

Amid the carnage of Republican misrule in Washington, there is this glimmer of good news: The family-shredding policy along the southern border, the most telegenic recent example of misrule, clarified something. Occurring less than 140 days before elections that can reshape Congress, the policy has given independents and temperate Republicans — these are probably expanding and contracting cohorts, respectively — fresh if redundant evidence for the principle by which they should vote.

The principle: The congressional Republican caucuses must be substantially reduced. So substantially that their remnants, reduced to minorities, will be stripped of the Constitution’s Article I powers that they have been too invertebrate to use against the current wielder of Article II powers. They will then have leisure time to wonder why they worked so hard to achieve membership in a legislature whose unexercised muscles have atrophied because of people like them.

Consider the melancholy example of House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.), who wagered his dignity on the patently false proposition that it is possible to have sustained transactions with today’s president, this Vesuvius of mendacities, without being degraded. In Robert Bolt’s play “A Man for All Seasons,” Thomas More, having angered Henry VIII, is on trial for his life. When Richard Rich, whom More had once mentored, commits perjury against More in exchange for the office of attorney general for Wales, More says: “Why, Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world . . . But for Wales!” Ryan traded his political soul for . . . a tax cut. He who formerly spoke truths about the accelerating crisis of the entitlement system lost everything in the service of a resident pledged to preserve the unsustainable status quo.

Ryan and many other Republicans have become the resident’s poodles, not because James Madison’s system has failed but because today’s abject careerists have failed to be worthy of it. As explained in Federalist 51: “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place.” Congressional Republicans (congressional Democrats are equally supine toward Democratic presidents) have no higher ambition than to placate this president. By leaving dormant the powers inherent in their institution, they vitiate the Constitution’s vital principle: the separation of powers.

Recently Sen. Bob Corker, the Tennessee Republican who is retiring , became an exception that illuminates the depressing rule. He proposed a measure by which Congress could retrieve a small portion of the policymaking power that it has, over many decades and under both parties, improvidently delegated to presidents. Congress has done this out of sloth and timidity — to duck hard work and risky choices. Corker’s measure would have required Congress to vote to approve any trade restrictions imposed in the name of “national security.” All Senate Republicans worthy of the conservative label that all Senate Republicans flaunt would privately admit that this is conducive to sound governance and true to the Constitution’s structure. But the Senate would not vote on it — would not allow it to become just the second amendment voted on this year .

This is because the amendment would have peeved the easily peeved resident. The Republican-controlled Congress, which waited for Trump to undo by unilateral decree the border folly they could have prevented by actually legislating, is an advertisement for the unimportance of Republican control.

The Trump whisperer regarding immigration is Stephen Miller, 32, whose ascent to eminence began when he became the Savonarola of Santa Monica High School . Corey Lewandowski, a Trump campaign official who fell from the king’s grace but is crawling back (he works for Vice President Pence’s political action committee), recently responded on Fox News to the story of a 10 year old girl with Down syndrome taken from her parents at the border. Lewandowski replied: “Wah, wah.” 

Meaningless noise is this administration’s appropriate libretto because, just as a magnet attracts iron filings, Trump attracts, and is attracted to, louts.

In today’s GOP, which is the resident’s plaything, he is the mainstream. So, to vote against his party’s cowering congressional caucuses is to affirm the nation’s honor while quarantining him. A Democratic-controlled Congress would be a basket of deplorables, but there would be enough Republicans to gum up the Senate’s machinery, keeping the institution as peripheral as it has been under their control and asphyxiating mischief from a Democratic House. And to those who say, “But the judges, the judges!” the answer is: Article III institutions are not more important than those of Articles I and II combined.

Read more from George F. Will’s archive or follow him on Facebook.

ICE Spokesman Resigns, Saying He Could No Longer Spread Falsehoods For Trump Administration

By Jonah Engel Bromwich


James Schwab, who was an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman until last week, said that his decision to resign was prompted by the agency’s statements after the mayor of Oakland, Calif., warned about an immigration raid.

A spokesman for United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement has resigned, saying that he could no longer “bear the burden” of spreading falsehoods on behalf of the Trump administration.

The spokesman, James Schwab, who had worked for the agency’s San Francisco Division, told news outlets Monday that his decision was prompted by false statements made by the agency on Feb. 27 and repeated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions last week.

The statements criticized the mayor of Oakland, Libby Schaaf, for her decision last month to warn city residents that a raid by federal immigration agents targeting roughly 1,000 people was imminent. 

The agency’s deputy director, Thomas D. Homan, said that Ms. Schaaf’s warning had helped “864 criminal aliens and public safety threats” to evade capture in the raid.

Mr. Sessions, in a visit to California last week, condemned Ms. Schaaf, a Democrat, and echoed the agency, asserting that her actions had allowed hundreds to escape.


Mr. Schwab said in interviews, first with The San Francisco Chronicle and then with CNN, that he had been frustrated by the remarks, and had quit “because I didn’t want to perpetuate misleading facts.”

“I asked them to change the information,” he told The Chronicle, referring to the 864 people to whom the statement alluded. “I told them that the information was wrong, they asked me to deflect, and I didn’t agree with that. Then I took some time and I quit.”

He explained that the enforcement agency would have been unlikely to capture all of the roughly 1,000 undocumented immigrants in the area that it had targeted, and that it was incorrect to identify those who were not detained as threats to public safety.

“We were never going to pick up that many people,” he said. “To say that 100 percent are dangerous criminals on the street, or that those people weren’t picked up because of the misguided actions of the mayor, is just wrong.”

Mr. Schwab did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday. He resigned last week, according to CNN.

“I just couldn’t bear the burden — continuing on as a representative of the agency and charged with upholding integrity, knowing that information was false,” he told CNN, adding that in his 16 years of experience in government he had never been asked to deflect when he knew something was inaccurate.

In a statement, Ms. Schaaf, whom resident Trump criticized last week for alerting residents to the raid, praised Mr. Schwab “for speaking the truth while under intense pressure to lie.”

“Our democracy depends on public servants who act with integrity and hold transparency in the highest regard,” she added.

An official at the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE, briefed on the plans for the raid said last month that agents find only about 30 percent of their targets on average during large sweeps.

Mr. Schwab told CNN that he thought Ms. Schaaf’s actions were “misguided,” but that blaming her “for 800 dangerous people out there is just false.”

ICE responded to Mr. Schwab’s comments in a statement, saying, “Even one criminal alien on the street can put public safety at risk.”


“As Director Homan stated, while we can’t put a number on how many targets avoided arrest due to the mayor’s warning, it clearly had an impact,” the statement said. “While we disagree with Mr. Schwab on this issue, we appreciate his service and wish him well.”

“If anyone wants to have a public argument over precisely how many dangerous criminal aliens eluded arrest because of the mayor’s irresponsible actions, we are happy to have that debate,” Sarah Isgur Flores, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said in a statement.

In a 2016 interview, Mr. Schwab told The Marion Press, his hometown paper in Michigan, that he joined the Army after high school and was deployed to Korea for four years. His service lasted until 2005, according to his LinkedIn page, and he later joined the Department of Defense, where he became a public affairs specialist in 2011. He also worked at NASA for several years before joining ICE.

Follow Jonah Bromwich on Twitter: @Jonesieman.

Katie Benner contributed reporting.
A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A11 of the New York edition with the headline: Protesting ‘Falsehoods,’ A Spokesman For ICE Quits. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Wednesday, June 20, 2018

The Cold Political Calculus Of Taking Away The Children Of Migrants

Posted by Rude One

We are at a moment in our history that demands action. It demands that people fuck shit up. We hope they do it by protesting, by voting, or with legislation. But what the GOP hopes is that it leads to crazy shit, and Trump is going to keep pushing and pushing, with the ICE round-ups and the family separations, because they want congressional Democrats arrested, they want violence to occur at one of the concentration camps, they want protesters to riot, and they want it all filmed.  Trump is going to keep upping the intensity of his immigration crackdown until the left cracks.

This is the cold political calculus of Trump advisor and man most likely to own a suit made of human skin, Stephen Miller. It's beyond "annoy the libtards and make the snowflakes cry." We're now into "let's get good footage for campaign ads" territory. You can imagine it now: Evil music, low-pitch voice saying, "Nancy Pelosi and the crooked Democrat Party want to let MS-13 animals into the country" over footage of, say, a fight at a detention center or maybe Rep. Juan Vargas or other members of Congress getting led away by cops as the voice continues, "Tell Nancy Pelosi that you stand with Americans, not illegal animals." Or some such shit. That's probably too subtle. More likely it'll just be Trump braying something incoherent like a particularly brain-damaged jackass.

Trump's GOP (and it is Trump's GOP now) doesn't give a fat rat fuck about reaching out beyond his base. The election strategy is simple: get his idiot horde all fired up with a stream of Reddit-provided conspiracies and blatant lies; suppress the vote wherever and however it can be suppressed; and, possibly, look for an assist from hackers. In order for the first part to work, you've gotta be as confrontational as possible to draw Democrats and liberals into an act that can be portrayed as extremism. Sure, an action like blocking the roads to and from detention locations, like, fer the love of fuck, tent cities for children is a relatively mild form of civil disobedience, but as far as the whiners on the right are concerned, it'll be "terrorism the likes of which the nation hasn't seen" or whatever the fuck Fox "news" contorts it to be.

Unsurprisingly, Fox has gone all-in on supporting Trump on the savage child detention policy, so Tucker "Bitch Face" Carlson and Laura "My Kids Went to the Shittiest Summer Camps" Ingraham would orgasm constantly if they got to report on violence involving migrants or defenders of migrants. Sean Hannity's studio would be sticky for weeks.

Let's be clear that the family detention policy didn't start with Trump, but the "zero tolerance" part of it, which includes asylum seekers and the separation of children from parents, is totally Trump's.

They planned this shit specifically to deter people on the run from awful violence, including rape and murder, including forcing kids into gangs, to stop seeking asylum in the United States. And lying ogre of blonde doom, DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, can repeatedly insist, as she did at her belly flop of a press appearance yesterday, "DHS is not separating families legitimately seeking asylum at ports of entry. If an adult enters at a port of entry and claims asylum, they will not face prosecution for illegal entry. They have not committed a crime by coming to the port of entry." And Trump can assert in that goddamned moron voice of his that "We’re stuck with these horrible laws. They’re horrible laws" that are forcing the country to treat migrants this way, even going so far as to blame Democrats for the laws themselves.

But the motherfucking truth is that those "laws" have been in place since the 1950's, agreed to and signed off on by Congress members and presidents of both parties, including, most recently, in 2008, George W. Bush. And the mother fucking truth is that story after story is coming in about asylum seekers who have their children taken away from them. And the mother fucking truth is that none of what the Trump administration is doing, the written policy they have, is going to deter a mother trying to escape from a man who is beating her and her kids and threatening their lives. They don't have fucking Twitter on the path from El Salvador to the American border.

Today, in a tweet, Trump made clear the racist intent of his immigration policies, which is a refreshing change from the coded racism that Republicans usually use. Saying that "illegal immigrants...infest our Country" (incorrect capitalization courtesy of Trump), he is blurring the line between violent criminals and economic refugees and asylum seekers, which is exactly what a racist would want to do.

So what do we do? The left is obviously being baited into a fight. Yet that doesn't mean we shouldn't fight. Fucking hell, if traumatized kids doesn't get you fighting, nothing will. So fuck it. Let the ads fall where they may. They'll say we're shitty criminal lovers no matter what. Sometimes a big enough fish can grab the bait, yank the fisherman right into the water, and devour him.

Monday, June 18, 2018

When Did You Figure It Out?

By RfrancisR



CFC35EB2-31F8-426D-B4F3-07D4F9687070.jpeg
In a tweet, ABC News called Trump’s child concentration camps “shelters.”
 
When did you first realize that the Republican Party jumped the shark and began falling into a deep dark abyss of hostility to facts, reason, and empathy?

Was it when Nixon sent the National Guard to Kent State which resulted in that horrific massacre of anti-war protesters?  Maybe for some it was Nixon and Watergate?  Well, I get it. It would be fairly understandable to believe those were  just aberrations.

But why wasn’t it enough to come to that understanding when  Reagan decided to launch his 1980 campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi the city where some of the most brutal civil rights killings took place, but not to memorialize the dead and and send a warning to the future, but to embrace concepts like “reverse racism,” which was clearly a dog whistle to the “I will tell you who the REAL racists are”?

OK, maybe coincidence? What about his nomination of a deeply racist man in Jeff Sessions to a federal judgeship? Or the nomination of an equally racist man in Judge Bork to the Supreme Court who also called the Ninth amendment to the constitution an “irrelevant inkblot.”

No?

What about Reagan’s press secretary cracking jokes about gay men dying of AIDS during an official White House press conference?

What about Reagan’s cynical invention of the racist “welfare queen” stereotype of poor black women?

What about what remains one of the most hateful political conventions in history in the 1992 Republican Convention?

No? Just a few bad apples?

What about Bob Dole’s return of donations to the Log Cabin Republicans as to avoid offending his right wing base because he did not want to be seen as affiliating himself with LGBT who agreed with the Republican Party’s platform on all but one measure?

What about the subliminal confession of an absence of compassion for the suffering of others among the Republican faithful when George W Bush felt a need to coin the term “compassionate conservatism.”

No? What about when the Republican majority on Supreme Court decided to take the unprecedented step of reviewing state election law to shutdown attempts to have a proper recount in Florida?

No? Not then either?

What about when the Bush administration fabricated an excuse to go into a preemptive war in Iraq? What about Colin Powell’s fake vial of anthrax at the UN? What about Condi Rice’s mushroom cloud scare tactics to grow support for that illegal war? And it was an illegal war.

What about Abu Ghraib? Guantanamo? Water boarding? “Enhanced interrogation? No?

What about the cult of personality surrounding Sarah Palin who ran a smear campaign against Obama so awful that her own running mate had to refute her claims?

What about the threat of martial law in the USA if Congress did not give $800 billion to the big banks?

What about lies about “death panels?” What about “do not ask what good you could do?”

What about tea party activists waving guns at protests outside of events featuring Obama?

When did you figure it out? Was it when Republicans booed Rick Perry from uttering that very politically incorrect term “compassion” at a Republican debate? Did you figure it out then? Did you figure it out when mass shooting after mass shooting Republicans refused to act to protect the citizenry for the sake of the gun industry that lined their pockets?

What about the enthusiasm for Trump’s overt racism, xenophobia, islamaphobia?

If you just figured out the Republican Party is deep into an abyss of darkness, lies, mendacity, racism, and bigotry when they got to ripping babies from their mother’s arms, and refusing to give those children back to the mothers after immigration proceedings were over, you figured it out too late.

Breaking The News


Perfect Dark: GameShark Character Modification FAQ

Perfect Dark: GameShark Character Modification FAQ
Version 1.5
5-19-01
By William Mistretta
willmistretta@hotmail.com
http://www.geocities.com/willmistretta
Codes by Hackmaster 64 and J. Lint

The character mods are here! Now you can alter the heads and bodies of characters in both
multiplayer and solo missions!

For example, let's say you want to modify Joanna Dark to look like James Bond. Let's start with
the head. Trent Easton looks rather Bond-like, so we'll borrow his. Start by taking the
base head codes for both characters:

JOANNA COMBAT

8007CF56 0001
8007CF57 009C

TRENT EASTON

8007CFBA 0001
8007CFBB 00A1

Take the base code of the character you want to modify:

8007CF56
8007CF57

And add the modifier digits associated with what you're modifying it to:

0001
00A1

Resulting in your final code:

8007CF56 0001
8007CF57 00A1

Some heads aren't associated with particular bodies (or vice-versa) and only have modifier
digits.

Now for our body. We'll start with the base code for the Joanna Combat body:

JOANNA COMBAT

8007D5BE 0000
8007D5BF 0042

Now we need to modify it. Obviously, a Bond-like Dinner Jacket costume is in order. Looking
below, we see:

DINNER JACKET

0000
0047

Combine the two codes as above, resulting in:

8007D5BE 0000
8007D5BF 0047

And so, our efforts to turn Joanna Combat into James Bond have resulted in this final code:

8007CF56 0001
8007CF57 00A1
8007D5BE 0000
8007D5BF 0047

Give it a try!

Notes:

You cannot play as an invisible character, any kind of Skedar, Dr. Carrol, the CamSpy, or
a patrol robot.

In order to modify Simulants to look like Skedar, you must first create the Simulant(s) like
normal and save your settings. Then input the code to modify the Simulant bodies to Skedar
bodies, start up the game, load your settings, and play. Viewing a Skedar Simulant in the
character editor window will cause the game to crash. Follow this same procedure whenever
modifying a Simulant to resemble any non-human, non-Maian character. 

If you modify a character's body to a Skedar or other unusual, non-human or Maian thing, make
sure that that character is never displayed on the Combat Simulator character editor window or
the game will crash.

If you modify a character's body to a Skedar or other unusual, non-human or Maian thing, make
sure they don't show up on screen for any cinema scenes or the game will crash.

Not all head and body combinations are guaranteed to work.

**********Head Mod Codes**********

JOANNA COMBAT

8007CF56 0001
8007CF57 009C

ELVIS

8007CF6A 0001
8007CF6B 009D

CARRINGTON

8007CF92 0001
8007CF93 009F

MR BLONDE

8007CFA6  0001
8007CFA7  00A0

TRENT EASTON

8007CFBA 0001
8007CFBB 00A1

DATADYNE SHOCK TROOPER

8007CFCE 0001
8007CFCD 00A2

CASSANDRA DE VRIES

8007D01E 0001
8007D01F 00A6

MAIAN

8007D032 0001
8007D033 00A7

MAIAN SOLDIER WITH BLUE HELMET

8007D23A 0003
8007D23B 003B

THE PRESIDENT

8007D3CA 0005
8007D3CB 005B

VELVET

8007D3DE 0005
8007D3DF 0061

JONATHAN

8007D226 0003
8007D227 003A

JOANNA WITH MAKEUP

8007CFF6 0001
8007CFF7 00A4

BLONDE-HAIRED WOMAN #1

0001
00A5

BROWN-HAIRED MAN

0001
009E

BLONDE-HAIRED WOMAN #2

0001
00A8

RED-HAIRED MAN #1

0001
00A9

GRIMSHAW

0001
00B2

FOSTER

0001
00B3

RED-HAIRED MAN #2

0001
00BC

FREAKY HUMAN/MAIAN (SCARY!)

0001
00BD

FROWNING MAN

0001
00BE

AFRICAN AMERICAN MAN #1

0001
00C0

MAN WITH PONYTAIL

0001
00C2

BLOND WOMAN WITH GLASSES

0001
00C5

BIOTECHNICIAN

0001
00D0

MAN WITH MOUSTACHE AND GOATEE

0002
0062

SMILING MAN

0002
0067

ELVIS WITH SCUBA-GEAR

0005
0054

JOANNA ARCTIC

0005
005A

AFRICAN AMERICAN MAN #2

0005
000D

MIYAMOTO

0005
000E

DATADYNE SNIPER

0004
00AE

BLONDE WOMAN WITH PIGTAILS

0004
00A7

BROWN HELMET WITH MASK

0005
0011

MAN WITH LONG PONYTAIL

0007
00CD

HOWARD LINCOLN

0007
00C6

**********Body Mod Codes**********

JOANNA COMBAT

8007D5BE 0000
8007D5BF 0042

MAIAN

8007D5D2 0000
8007D5D3 004A

AREA 51 BROWN SUIT GUARD

8007D5E6 0000
8007D5E7 003F

OVERALLS

8007D5FA 0000
8007D5FB 0051

CARRINGTON

8007D60E 0000
8007D60F 0040

MR BLONDE

8007D622 0000
8007D623 004E

SKEDAR

8007D636 0000
8007D637 0053

TRENT EASTON

8007D64A 0000
8007D64B 0057

DATADYNE SHOCK TROOPER

8007D65E 0000
8007D65F 0045

MALE LAB TECHNICIAN

8007D672 0000
8007D673 004D

NSA BODYGUARD

8007D686 0000
8007D687 0054

JOANNA PARTY FROCK

8007D69A 0000
8007D69B 0043

JOANNA TRENCHCOAT

8007D6AE 0000
8007D6AF 0044

OFFICE SUIT

8007D6C2 0000
8007D6C3 004F

OFFICE CASUAL

8007D6D6 0000
8007D6D7 0050

SECRETARY

8007D6EA 0000
8007D6EB 0052

CASSANDRA DE VRIES

8007D6FE 0000
8007D6FF 0041

ELVIS

8007D712 0000
8007D713 0056

FEMALE GUARD

8007D726 0000
8007D727 004C

DATADYNE LAB TECHNICIAN

8007D73A 0001
8007D73B 0094

DATADYNE SECURITY

8007D74E 0000
8007D74F 0046

DR CARROL

8007D762 0000
8007D763 0048

CAMSPY

8007D776 0000
8007D777 004B

JOANNA PARTY FROCK (RIPPED)

8007D78A 0001
8007D78B 00B1

DATADYNE INFANTRY

8007D79E 0001
8007D 79F 00BF

DATADYNE TROOPER

8007D7B2 0001
8007D7B3 00C4

INVISIBLE

8007D7C6 0000
8007D7C7 0055

BIO TECHNICIAN

8007D7D7 0001
8007D7DB 00C8

FBI

8007D7EE 0001
8007D7EF 00C9

CIA

8007D802 0001
8007D803 00CB

AREA 51 TROOPER

8007D816 0001
8007D817 00CC

PILOT

8007D82A 0002
8007D82B 0031

PATROL ROBOT

8007D83E 0002
8007D83F 0036

STEWARD

8007D852 0002
8007D853 0037

STEWARDESS

8007D866 0002
8007D867 0039

THE PRESIDENT

8007D87A 0002
8007D87B 003B

HEAD STEWARDESS

8007D88E 0002
8007D88F 003C

SMALLER SKEDAR

8007D8A2 0002
8007D8A3 0040

NSA LACKEY

8007D8B6 0002
8007D8B7 0042

PRISIDENTIAL SECURITY

8007D8CA 0002
8007DBCB 0044

NEGOTIATOR

8007D8DE 0002
8007D8DF 0046

G5 GUARD

8007D8F2 0002
8007D8F3 0061

PELAGIC 2 GUARD

8007D906 0002
8007D907 0063

G5 SWAT GUARD

8007D91A 0002
8007D91B 0064

ALASKAN GUARD

8007D92E 0002
8007D92F 0065

MAIAN SOLDIER

8007D942 0002
8007D943 0066

PRESIDENTIAL CLONE

8007D96A 0003
8007D96B 0039

JOANNA STEWARDESS

8007D97E 0003
8007D97F 003C

JOANNA WETSUIT

8007D992 0004
8007D993 009E

JOANNA AQUALUNG

8007D9A6 0004
8007D9A7 009F

JOANNA ARCTIC

8007D9BA 0004
8007D9BB 00A0

JOANNA LAB TECHNICIAN

8007D9CE 0004
8007D9CF 00A1

FEMALE LAB TECHNICIAN

8007D9E2 0004
8007D9E3 00A2

DATADYNE SNIPER

8007D9F6 0004
8007D9F7 00A3

AIR FORCE ONE PILOT

8007DA0A 0004
8007DA0B 00A4

CI MALE LAB TECHNICIAN

8007DA1E 0004
8007DA1F 00A5

CI FEMALE LAB TECHNICIAN

8007DA32 0004
8007DA33 00A6

CARRINGTON EVENING WEAR

8007DA46 0004
8007DA47 0049

CI SOLDIER

8007DA6E 0004
8007DA6F 00AB

SKEDAR KING

8007DA82 0005
8007DA83 000B

ELVIS WAISTCOAT

8007DA96 0005
8007DA97 000C

JOANNA LEATHER

8007DAAA 0005
8007DAAB 0059

JOANNA NEGOTIATOR

8007DABE 0007
8007DABF 0096

BLACK DINNER JACKET #1

0000
0047

BLACK DINNER JACKET #2

0001
019B

WHITE DINNER JACKET

0001
0199

 GameShark Codes

Perfect Menu

Using Your GameShark With Perfect Dark
Enable Codes
High and Low-Resolution Codes
Low-Resolution Codes
High-Resolution Codes

Welcome to my Perfect Dark GameShark page. This is where I'll post my favorite GameShark codes. None of these codes are for "cheating" as such, but each one will help you to bend the rules a little to get even more out of your Perfect Dark experience.

Using Your GameShark With Perfect Dark

You'll need one of the newer GameShark Pro models to really hack Perfect Dark. A 3.3 or higher is highly recommended.

You'll need to enable the Zelda keycode before your GS will boot up with Perfect Dark.

There are two subdivisions of Perfect Dark GS codes: high and low resolution. Low-resolution codes can only be used in the Combat Simulator, because they only function when Perfect Dark fails to detect the N64 4MB Expansion Pak. High-resolution codes can be used in any game mode, but only with certain GameShark versions and the use of a special enable code (see below) to allow the game to detect the Expansion Pak and to prevent it from crashing upon startup or not starting up at all.

Please note that not all codes will work with all GameShark versions. Trial and error is sometimes the only way to determine which codes work with which GameShark versions.

Back to top...

Enable Codes

The appropriate code must be active if you wish for your GameShark to function with Perfect Dark.

GameShark Pro version 3.3 or higher high-res enable code:

FF1EAE00 0000

Or, if you can't get a code to work with that enabler, try this alternate one:

FF000220 0000

Now, on to the other codes!

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High and Low-Resolution Codes

Extra death animations in Combat Simulator. This code will add several very cool death animations that normally only show up in solo missions to your multiplayer games. These include choking, elaborate flips, wild limb-flailing, etc. Works in both high and low-resolution. Code by hack master with modifications by me.

80070769 0019
8007076B 0038
8007076F 0086
8007076D 0088
8007076F 0089
80070771 0091
80070773 00A7

Sky color modifier. These codes allow you to set the color of Perfect Dark's skies. They work in all game modes (solo, multiplayer, etc). The first line regulates the amount of red in the sky, the second green, and the third blue. Mix them to create any color you choose. The "????" represents a value of your choice. Setting all three color values to 0000 results in a black sky. Code by hack master.

80081060 ????
80081061 ????
80081062 ????

Custom weapon modification. A GameShark and a copy of this guide are all you need to begin creating your own customized weapons for Perfect Dark solo and multiplayer use. You can set just about everything. Primary and secondary functions, sound effects, clip size, zoom, whether your weapon can be “doubled up”, and more. Guide by SquareGuru.

Perfect Dark Weapon Modification Guide

As an example of what can be accomplished with the information in this great guide, here's a sample weapon. A silly little version of the Devestator that I like to call the Toilet Launcher:

8106D956 0186
8106D9BA 0186
8106D94E 805C
8106D9B2 805D
8106DA1A B100

New Falcon 2. This code will modify the Falcon 2 (scope) into a new version of the Falcon 2 fitted with both a silencer and scope! There are a couple tiny graphic glitches, but overall, the effect is perfect. Code by Wreck7.

8006B78F 0074
8006B7B6 00B3
8006B7B7 00BC

Slayer in all solo missions. This code modifies the standard Rocket Launcher to fire fly-by-wire rockets like the Slayer! Now you can use fly-by-wire rockets in any solo mission. Sometimes they explode right when launched, so invincibility is recommended. Note that aiming straight up as you fire seems to prevent this premature detonation. Code by Wreck7.

8106D6E2 D7C8

IR Scanner in multiplayer. The Perfect Darkness cheat is almost useless for multiplayer games because the Night Vision that you start out with disappears after you die once. The X-Ray Scanner is a poor substitute to say the least. This code will modify the X-Ray Scanner to work like the IR Scanner, making Perfect Darkness a much more viable option for multiplayer. Also great for spotting cloaked adversaries. Code by Wreck7.

8106F73A F520

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Low Resolution Codes

GoldenEye items in Perfect Dark. Thanks to a truly amazing GameShark code, we can now see that a number of unused items from Perfect Dark's prequel game GoldenEye 007 are actually hidden deep within the game! To see the items, you must enter and activate one of these three codes. Then, simply start a game in the Felicity multiplayer level. You will see that the ammo boxes at the top of the stairs (outside the outer bathroom door) have been replaced with an item from GoldenEye! Codes by SubDrag and Wreck7.

GoldenEye computer terminal:

811EED4C 0018
811EEDF4 0018

GoldenEye multiplayer flag token:

811EED4C 0016
811EEDF4 0016

GoldenEye "beta" metallic cube:

811EED4C 0003
811EEDF4 0003

Weird weapons.This code enables you to make your weapons look and function very strangly. You must be playing in the Temple level with no other players for the code to function. Basically, this code replaces whichever weapon that is set to slot one with an item simply called "." When you pick up a ., it will show up as a blank space on your inventory screen. Just equip one of your regular guns, then hit start and select the blank line on your inventory menu. Your regular version will be replaced by a glitchy weapon. Usually, the glitches consist of the weapon being held higher up than normal or the weapon's clip appearing beside it. The weapon loses its normal characteristics and acts like an AR-34 with no zoom, a 27-round clip, and a quick, GoldenEye-like reload animation.

801DC7E4 0059

Beta weapons! This code allows you to access some glitchy but very cool "beta" weapons that were used in programmer testing but never made it into the final version of Perfect Dark. You must be playing in the Temple level with no other players for the code to function. Basically, this code replaces whichever weapon that is set to the designated weapon slot with the item specified in the code. Codes by SubDrag and Wreck7. The beta weapons are:

Tester: Looks like a hovering grenade but fires like a Falcon 2. Quick, GoldenEye-like reload animation.

Rocket Launcher: This version looks and behaves very strange. The rockets it shoots don't explode, but instead hover in place when they come into contact with a solid surface. Reloads like normal.

Tester (Weapon slot one modifier. Temple.):

801DC62C 0033

Rocket Launcher (Weapon slot one modifier. Temple.):

801DC62C 0034

Both (Weapon slots one and two modifier. Temple.):

801DC62C 0033
801DC7E4 0034

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High-Resolution Codes

Character head/body modifiers. These codes will allow you to swap heads and bodies between different characters in both multiplayer and solo modes. You can do everything from changing dataDyne troopers into Pelagic 2 guards, to dressing Carrington in a ripped party frock, to turning every human enemy in a level into a Skedar, to turning Joanna Dark into James Bond! Plus just about anything else you can imagine. Just check this FAQ for details:

Perfect Dark: GameShark character modification FAQ

Codes by Hackmaster 64 and J. Lint.

Walk through doors. Pretty much what it says. This code allows you to walk through any door in the game as though it weren't there at all. One of the best ways to hunt for secrets in Perfect Dark. Code by Ructir.

80285798 0001

Walk through walls. A companion code to the one above, this will actually let you walk through almost any barrier. Even better for exploring every hidden nook and cranny of this fantastic game. Code by Ryan Toluchanian.

8002804B 0001
80028053 0001
80028057 0021
8002805B 0001
8002805F 0001
8002806B 00A1
8002806F 0001
80028073 0021
80028077 0001

Moon jump. Just get off the ground slightly by either falling off of something or running down a ramp or other incline, then hold the B button to fly. Release it again to drop back down. Another fantastic code for exploring Perfect Dark's many levels. Codes by Crocc.

Player One Moon Jump:

D009C7E4 0040
81206720 40F2
D009C7E4 0040
802066D3 0000
D009C7E4 0040
811ED720 40F2
D009C7E4 0040
801ED6D3 0000
D009C7E4 0040
811D4720 40F2
D009C7E4 0040
801D46D3 0000

Player Two Moon Jump:

D009C7EC 0040
81208390 40F2
D009C7EC 0040
80208343 0000
D009C7EC 0040
811EF390 40F2
D009C7EC 0040
801EF343 0000
D009C7EC 0040
811D6390 40F2
D009C7EC 0040
801D6343 0000

Player One Moon Jump (Multiplayer):

D009C7E4 0040
811BB720 40F2
D009C7E4 0040
801BB6D3 0000

Player Two Moon Jump (Multiplayer):

D009C7EC 0040
811BD390 40F2
D009C7EC 0040
801BD343 0000

Player Three Moon Jump (Multiplayer):

D009C7F4 0040
811BF000 40F2
D009C7F4 0040
801BEFB3 0000

Player Four Moon Jump (Multiplayer):

D009C7FC 0040
811C0C70 40F2
D009C7FC 0040
801C0C23 0000

Shield-penetrating weapons. This code allows you to shoot through some enemy shields that it is not normally possible to. Using this code, for example, you can blow up the patrol robot in Chicago or shoot the Skedar king to death. Fun. Code by Ryan Toluchanian.

80255108 0020

Lights out. This code automatically turns off all of the lights in the game that can be destroyed. Different from the Perfect Darkness cheat, the effect is quite different and creepy. Code by Ryan Toluchanian.

8022169C 0020

Weapons in the CI. Ever want to grab a machine gun from the Carrington Institute firing range and blast those rude CI employees? Well now you can! Simply enable this code, go to the firing range, start an exercise with the weapon you want, and then abort right away. You'll still be holding the weapon and will be able to take it anywhere in the building you want! Whenever you need more ammo or want to switch weapons, just head back to the range and repeat the process. Code created by Ryan Toluchanian.

802C92C4 0020

Kill CI employees. This great code will let you kill the normally invincible Carrington Institute employees in traning mode! Great fun! Combine it with the previous code to take weapons off the firing range and go on your very own workplace rampage with the weapon of your choice.

This code also has other odd effects. It makes all enemies inactive in solo missions and occasionally eliminates background music, environmental effects (like rain), and even cinema scenes.

Since this code also deactivates almost all enemies in solo missions, so it is also useful for setting up two-player Co-Operative and Counter-Operative deathmatches, since guards and other enemies won't harass players.

Code by Ryan Toluchanian.

8022EE80 0020
802C92C4 0020

Infinite Psychosis Gun ammo. Even with the game's two built-in infinite ammo cheats activated, you are still normally limited to four shots with the Psychosis Gun. With this code, you can brainwash your enemies into allies all you want and raise a virtual army. Have fun. Codes by Crocc.

Player One Infinite Psychosis Gun Ammo:

80207EA3 00FF
801EEEA3 00FF
801D5EA3 00FF

Player Two Infinite Psychosis Gun Ammo:

80209B13 00FF
801F0B13 00FF
801D7B13 00FF

GoldenEye Weapons in Combat Simulator. Using this code, all players will begin every multiplayer match with the classic GoldenEye guns already in their inventories! Furthermore, they will not be lost upon death. All you need to use them is ammunition. You can get this by activating either of Perfect Dark's infinite ammo cheats. In you haven't earned them, or simply prefer to pick up ammo off the ground like normal you can stock your levels with the following weapons, each of which comes with ammunition that the GoldenEye guns can use. Check the following chart for compatability. Happy deathmatching! Code by Crocc.

Falcon 2 (any), MagSec 4, Mauler, Phoenix - PP9i, CC13
CMP150, Cyclone, Laptop Gun - KLO1313, ZZT (9MM), ZMG, RC-P45
Callisto NTG, RC-P120, Dragon, K7 Avenger, SuperDragon, Sniper Rifle - KF7 Special, AR-53

D01BCF0F 001E
801BCF10 0007
D01BEB7F 001E
801BEB80 0007
D01C07EF 001E
801C07F0 0007
D01C245F 001E
801C2460 0007

CarrolSims. This one is great. This code will turn all the Simulant characters in multiplayer games into Dr. Carrol! They will even fight (unarmed only) and explode when defeated, making distinctive Dr. Carrol noises when shot or killed. Code by SubDrag.

800AC548 003E
800AC594 003E
800AC5E0 003E
800AC62C 003E
800AC678 003E
800AC6C4 003E
800AC710 003E
800AC75C 003E

Two player deathmatch in Carrington Institute! This code will let you play a two-player deathmatch in the Carrington Institute training level (not CI - Defense, so Carington and company will still be walking around and talking to you while you fight). Just input the following code, start up in high-res mode, and begin any solo mission.

For complete details, read my CI training deathmatch FAQ.

Main code by Ryan Toluchanian.

8009DFE9 0026
8009DFEB 0080
802C92C4 0020
D01BCF0F 001E
801BCF10 0007
D01BCF0F 001E
801BBEFB 00FF
D01BCF0F 001E
801BC69F 00FF
D01BEB7F 001E
801BEB80 0007
D01BEB7F 001E
801BDB6B 00FF
D01BEB7F 001E
801BE30F 00FF

Turbo Jo. This neat code will make Joanna Dark run at incredible speeds. Much faster than a hoverbike. It's a lot of fun. Code by Ryan Toluchanian.

8001AC0F 0000
8001AC1F 0080
8001AC4B 0081
8001AC5B 0001
8001AC6B 0081
8001AC7B 0001
8001AC8B 0081
8001AC9B 0001
8001ACAB 0081
8001ACB7 0001

Initial character placement. This is a very cool and very weird code. It lets you view every character in solo levels in their initial placement, including character that normally only show up in cinema scenes. This includes Elvis on Air Force One - Antiterrorism and Trent Easton in Air Base - Espionage. Every solo level in the game reveals strange new surprises with this code enabled. Code by Ryan Toluchanian.

8023E698 0020

Music modifier. This code will let you modify the music that plays on the Perfect Menu. Just change the "??" to any value of your choice. The digits 15, 75, and 3C correspond to previously hidden "beta" music tracks. Code by SubDrag.

800AA5FB 00??
800AA66B 00??

Sunday, June 17, 2018

Monticello Officially Recognizes The Rest Of Thomas Jefferson’s Children

Our founding father, my 6th great-grandfather, had 6 children with his slave Sally Hemings

Friday, June 15, 2018

Judge sends Russian spy Paul Manafort directly to jail

Paul Manafort will be jailed after being accused of witness tampering while awaiting trial on federal conspiracy and money-laundering charges brought by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

The order to imprison resident Trump’s former campaign manager came Friday in a federal court hearing after Manafort had been asking to post a $10 million bond and end seven months of home detention.

It was not immediately clear when Manafort would be imprisoned or where. Proceedings before U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the District of Columbia were ongoing.

The order marked the latest fall for the political power broker and confidant of Republican presidents dating to George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan.

Prosecutors alleged that by committing a new crime while on release, Manafort violated terms of his home confinement in Alexandria, Va., and they asked the judge to revoke or revise it. 

Trump tries to ‘steal the grief’ of fallen soldiers

Lawrence O'Donnell reacts to Donald Trump's lie about the parents of American soldiers killed in the Korean War, and explains that Donald Trump's lying is unique in American history.

Thursday, June 14, 2018

Baby Boomers Are Responsible For Unleashing Mad Man Trump On The World


Just look at what we’ve done to this poor country. Bill Clinton, the first Baby Boom president, is ours, complete with the cigar and stained blue dress and denial that he “had sex with that woman.”

On his heels came Baby Boomer president number two, George Bush, who along with Baby Boomer Vice President Dick Cheney, lied us into the most disastrous war since Vietnam and the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

Barack Obama was a reprieve, but look who’s in there now, flapping his tiny hands and tweeting his tiny tweets and disassembling everything from our federal government to the Western Alliance, but Donald J. Trump, Baby Boomer resident number three.

Trump is 72. I’m 71, and I’m ashamed. Every morning I wake up and realize that me and my generation unleashed this flaming madman on the world, and I want to crawl back under the covers and hide. WTF were we thinking?

I lived in New York during the years Trump was surfing the tabloid wave to fame and invented fortune, and we just sat there and lapped it up. Oh, look! Another photo of Trump boogieing at Le Club, the private watering hole in the 70’s on the Upper East Side where boomers went to show off and misbehave. I wasn’t a member, but I went to Le Club with friends who were. I saw Trump making a fool of himself in there, his arm slung over the shoulders of this hot babe or that one, tie flying as he pretended to do The Hustle, or whatever it was we were doing back then. I’d be sitting across the room at a table, sucking up bottles of champagne charged them to someone’s membership account, laughing at the big buffoon with the weird hair (even then!) acting like he owned the world.

That was the problem, see? We all acted like we owned the world. On any given night, me and my boomer pals and our boomer girlfriends and wives were swinging at Le Club, or bouncing from table to table at Elaine’s, chumming it up with Carl Bernstein and Nora Ephron and Gay Talese, or this week’s hot literary agent or last week’s hot movie star.

I wrote a story once called “Felker’s Fall,” about how Clay Felker, who owned New York Magazine and the Village Voice, lost his empire to Rupert Murdoch. The first paragraph was set in Elaine’s, describing the minions hovering around Felker at his premier table up front on The Row where the A-listers sat. They “pecked at him like ducks,” I wrote, because Clay was On Top, and he was at Elaine’s, and so was I, and Elaine’s was The Place to Be, and we Ran the World, or thought we did.

We weren’t princes of the city. We were princes of the fucking universe. We were forever ascendant. There was no place to go but up. Nothing was going to stop us. Our friends were running movie studios out in L.A. They were Senior Editors at the top publishing houses. They edited the big-time magazines. They signed pay checks to us, and initialed our expense accounts, and put us in First Class on planes to The Coast. We chowed down at The Palm. We lunched in the Grill Room at The Four Seasons, alongside the swells we were moving in on and taking over their fiefdoms in advertising and journalism and film and politics and finance.

Over there across the room too many times to count was Trump. My name was on The List at the Door at Studio 54. One night I went to Elizabeth Taylor’s birthday party there, the night she rode into the room on a white stallion, and you could practically hear the hoovering sucking noise of coke going up a hundred nostrils at once. There was Trump, standing with Roy Cohn and Halston and Calvin Klein, and it was all one big happy family. Shirtless waiters in short-shorts were passing by with trays of the bubbly. Trump was waving to this starlet, groping that one. Roy Cohn was watching it all with his lizard eyes, scanning the room for somebody who was an easy touch, somebody who would be impressed with meeting Donald Trump, somebody the two of them could take on a ride for tens of thousands or maybe a cool mil the next day.

And everywhere was our generation. We ran the list at the door. We got you into the VIP area. We dealt the coke. We owned the night.

Look at what we were doing! Trump was surfing the tabloid wave? Hell, the day after the Elizabeth Taylor party, Robin Leach, a tabloid hack who would go on to become the host of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” called me up and said if I didn’t mind, he was going to put me in his column as the date of some starlet a flack friend of his was pushing. I had a novel on the bestseller list. I was “hot.” What did I do? I said, go ahead! All grist for the mill. Long as you spell my name right.

There I was later that day, in a tabloid column, dating some starlet I’d never heard of. I didn’t grope her — hell, I didn’t even know her — but I was no better than Trump.

Just over the horizon: Clinton. We ran him, we elected him, and we stood by as he and his whiz-kid meritocratic oligarchs started running the SS United States aground. Years later, I realized that the apotheosis of the baby boom buffoonery was the so-called “Renaissance Weekends,” an invention of boomers, by boomers, for boomers. Do you remember those clubby clusterfucks? They were weekend “retreats” held at cushy resorts down on Hilton Head Island for “leaders” in finance, government, the media, religion, business, medicine, technology and the arts.

Even before Clinton took office as president, he and Hillary were regulars, and once he was president, the damn Renaissance Weekends turned into a Domestic Davos. In 1993, his first year in office, the retreat’s founder, Philip Lader (by then, deputy White House Chief of Staff) and President Clinton hosted a New Year’s Eve panel on “What I’ve Learned,” while Hillary and Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun led a discussion on “Choices.”

“What I’ve Learned?” “Choices?” Jesus. They may as well have had a bunch of boomer geniuses on a panel called “Whither Peace?” and probably did.

You know who else attended those intellectual circle jerks? Boomer luminaries like the journalists Wolf Blitzer, Howard Fineman, Joe Klein, and Andrea Mitchell; Senators Chuck Robb, Ernest Hollings, and Barbara Mikulski; Governor Evan Bayh of Indiana; and singer Mary Chapin Carpenter.

You get the picture. The goddamned things cost $1,500 a couple to attend, and that was a lot of money back then. Do you think any of the regular Joes and Janes who ended up voting Trump into office were invited, or could afford to attend? If they showed up, do you think Andrea, or Wolf, or Howard or any of the rest of them would have given them the time of day?

Not likely.

Boomers patched together this teetering edifice with “merit” and “achievement” and “elite education” and “expertise,” and it was such a gigantic fake that all it took to bring it down was a half-assed push by a certifiable goofball like Donald Trump. I’ve wasted literally thousands of words in these pages cataloging Trump’s lies, but the biggest lie of all was the ersatz boomer machine that begat him.

He didn’t come from nowhere. He came from our loins. We birthed him. We sat by and laughed while he piggy-backed on the baby boomer scam that what really mattered was graduating from The Right School, having your name on The List at the Door, getting The Best Table at the Hottest Restaurant, living at The Right Address, and finally, having the Coolest Guy as our president. For boomers, life has been high school forever.

The thing about Donald Trump is that he was never one of the Cool Guys. He was the schmuck over there across the room who was feeling up women and picking our pockets while we looked the other way. He ran a campaign that said, you know the club they would never invite you into? I’ve been there, and it’s all bullshit, and I’m going to tear it down, the whole stinking meaningless system run by these people who have looked down on you from their suites in Davos and the Renaissance Weekends, the places they kept you out of while they were making decisions about your lives and not listening to anything you had to say.

He sold it to the people we left out like a condo with marble bathrooms in one of his buildings, the kind of gaudy show places we laughed at while our pals at the elite levels of boomerdom pontificated on panels like “Whither Peace?”

I laughed at him while he was running back in 2016. I pointed at the TV screen and held my sides as he howled his gibberish at rally after rally after rally. He was the same buffoon he had been in New York when he ruled the tabloids with his marital exploits and buildings with stories he never built that we never bothered to count.

That was the problem. With the exception of a few intrepid reporters like Wayne Barrett, we never bothered to count the fake floors in his buildings he never built, or track his pay-offs to crooked pols, or catalog his chumminess with gangsters. But he was ours. We made him. We delivered him to you.

We sat there and laughed at him on his stupid reality TV show. We laughed at him as he told lie after lie about Obama’s birth certificate. We ignored him when he was sending us signals about what a racist he was with his war on the Central Park Five. And we laughed when he stood up there in 2016 and actually told us that when he reached the White House, he was going to tear the whole fucking thing down.

Donald Trump is our fault. He was in the headlines for decades pulling his scams, telling his lies, flaunting his fakery. He was one of us, and he was telling us exactly who he is, and we didn’t take him seriously.

We didn’t do shit about him. I, for one, am ashamed.

Wednesday, June 13, 2018

Conservatives Finally Speak: "He's Acts Like He's A King"

Posted by Rude One

Finally, at long last, Republicans could take no more.

Senator Ted Cruz said, "Undeterred, resident Trump appears to be going forward. It is lawless. It is unconstitutional. He is defiant and angry at the American people. If he acts by executive diktat, resident Trump will not be acting as a resident, he will be acting as a monarch.”

Lou Dobbs pronounced that resident Trump's actions are "evidence of his unilateral, even occasionally authoritarian inclination."

Senator Rand Paul claimed, "The resident acts like he's a king. He ignores the Constitution...These are not the words of a great leader. These are the words that sound more like the exclamations of an autocrat." Indeed, Paul went so far as to tweet out a photo of a crown, scepter, cape, and throne with the words, "The 'residentt who thinks he's a king' starter pack."

The Speaker of the House said, "The resident has said before that 'he's not king' and he's 'not an emperor,' but he sure is acting like one."

Chris Christie exhorted, "This resident wants to act as if he is a king, as if he is a dictator." And Jeb Bush added, "To use executive powers he doesn't have is a pattern that is quite dangerous." Texas Governor Greg Abbott said that Trump "is acting as a king, acting as a dictator" by doing what is "absolutely contrary to what the Constitution allows."

Conservative editorial writers finally got into the game, with one at USA Today saying, plainly, "The idea that resident Trump acts as if he is the king of the United States or a tyrant, instead of resident, has become a cliché." Asking for a restoration of the balance between Congress and the resident, Charles Cooke, in the National Review, opined, "The United States is a constitutional republic, replete with a set of rules that govern how power may be wielded and by whom. There exists no provision within its codified order that ties the power enjoyed by each branch to that branch’s transient popularity. If there is a constitutional problem with the scope of the administrative state, it obtains regardless of the opinion polls."

But, in honor of that valedictorian from a high school in rural Kentucky who, in his speech at graduation, said he was quoting Trump, to great applause, only to reveal that the line was really from Obama, obviously every single one of those conservatives was talking about President Obama and not Donald Trump.

They were upset about some executive orders by Obama, mostly the one that expanded immigration enforcement protection to the parents of kids born in the U.S., but also ones on guns and transgender rights, and they cried out that Obama was a king, which is something that the Tea Party had been saying from the second Obama was elected.

The difference back during Obama's presidency is that many on the left and center-left were uneasy with the executive orders, too. There is a consistency here that conservatives, who didn't give a damn when George W. Bush used signing statements and executive orders with alarming frequency, certainly lack when it comes to Trump's assertions of a tyrannical authority to proclaim himself innocent of crimes by self-pardoning.

Ted Cruz refused to answer a question about it. Rand Paul said such an action would be "condemned," but that Trump has the right to do it.

Some on the right were more consistent, having qualms about Trump's self-pardon. Cooke in the National Review again explained that Congress needs to act (which it won't). Christie at least admits it would be a political problem, even if he doesn't declare that Trump thinks himself a king.

At the end of the day, each president has pushed the limits of presidential power. Congress and the courts are supposed to keep them in check. But Congress hasn't done that. Now, we can argue about whether Bush blocking funding for stem cell research or Obama deciding how immigration law enforcement are valid exercises of executive power. Still, each was asserting their power in pursuit of a policy goal, which doesn't take away the troubling part of it, but, at the very least, the justification was for their view of the greater good.

But Trump is asserting something quite different than either of them, and it's of a piece with his entire residency. By saying that he can pardon himself and that it is impossible for him to obstruct a Justice Department investigation because he's the ostensible boss of it, Trump wants to contort executive power merely to protect himself (and, presumably, his family). He is above the law and has absolute and uncheckable power when it comes to federal laws, especially when he's in trouble.

In other words, everything that conservatives falsely feared about Obama is true with Trump. And their refusal to broadly condemn it means that they're just fine with a dictator, as long as he's a rich white guy who hates immigrants and cuts taxes.