(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To The Last Post Of The Week From The Blog’s Favourite Living Canadian)

I don’t think I can let the week go by without taking note of the excuse ginned up by Sarah Huckabee Sanders to explain the photograph of Chief of Staff John Kelly on the edge of projectile vomiting at the NATO breakfast this week, as the president* seemed to be reading the Western alliance out of the bill of fare. This is what SaraHuck tried to run out as an alibi to The Washington Post:

In a statement to The Post, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, "[Kelly] was displeased because he was expecting a full breakfast and there were only pastries and cheese."

This is a lie made more audacious by the fact that it is such an obvious one. She is not even trying hard anymore to disguise her contempt for the media and the audiences they serve, including the people who support this administration*. Maybe especially those people, because she clearly believes they’ll swallow anything.

It’s really time for her to enter the White House press room some day and find it empty. What would be the loss, to journalism or to the nation? The real work of covering this administration would go on, especially at the WaPo. The daily briefings are now something beyond worthless; they are acts of complicity in a gangster presidency. No journalist with any self-respect ever should appear in that room again.

The great Charlie Savage, talking with Chuck Todd on Friday, proposed the interesting notion that at least part of the motivation for the Russian ratfcking in 2016 was Vladimir Putin’s conviction that the United States was somehow involved in the massive Panama Papers leak of financial data from around the world. Putin, Savage explained, noted well that the leak contained remarkably few American names, but plenty of information about where the Russian oligarchs were parking their money. I also would point out that the Panama Papers have virtually vanished from the American media.

El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago, he of the golden commodes, has decided to pimp his ride, with the usual consequences. From Axios:

President Trump wants to update the paint job on the next version of Air Force One, ditching the iconic robin's-egg blue (which he calls a "Jackie Kennedy color") for a bolder, "more American" look.

I guess Jacqueline Kennedy wasn’t American enough? Jackie Kennedy? My brain hurts. Thank god for Lily Tomlin, who saw this doofus coming: “No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up.”

Pretty much every day, I walk to work on a public walkway along the Charles River. Once in a while, I used to pass over a bridge dedicated to the memory of Corporal Joseph Thompson, who died in France a few days short of the Armistice in 1918. It was crumbling. They opened the new one, which cost $1.5 million, and it still memorializes Joseph Thompson. This brightened my day. It made me remember why Big Government is really all of us.



Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: ”I Want A Lavender Cadillac” (Maurice King and his Wolverines): Yeah, I pretty much still love New Orleans.



Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: Seventy years ago, another president of the United States visited London. Here’s Woodrow Wilson from across the street. On this occasion, when the president left, we still were allies. History is so cool.

On Sunday, my Eurosport brain may melt down. The World Cup final, the Wimbledon final and, most important, the young guns of Kerry go up to Croker to play Galway in the GAA Super 8. I am not telling you my World Cup pick because I have been death to the teams I have supported—Iceland, then Nigeria, then Senegal, then Belgium. I am brain cancer to footie fans. Let’s just say I have thrown my favors on a country that is not enthusiastic about baguettes. Meanwhile, Roger Federer is worried that the WC final is going to knock down the ratings for the Wimbledon final. Rog, pal. If you’d just won your damn quarterfinal, this wouldn’t be such a big problem. As for The Kingdom, if the youngsters can avoid Croke Park stage fright, I say they win by a decent margin.

Also, after an entire day of watching that exercise in public embarrassment in the House of Representatives on Thursday, I was pretty down until Mookie Betts put together a German opera of an at-bat and then hit a grand slam into another dimension. Made the day ultimately bearable.

From Blog Official Music Archivist, the great and powerful Oz in Kansas City, comes the news that The Master’s grandson is now in the game. Interesting, and has a little of grandpop’s love for shaggy-dog lyrics.



Is it a good day for dinosaur news, BBC? It’s always a good day for dinosaur news!

A new dinosaur discovery from Argentina gives fresh evidence on the rise of the giants. The animal used a novel strategy to become super-sized, involving very fast growth spurts and efficient bird-like lungs, say palaeontologists. The fossil was found in the northwest of Argentina during a field trip. The scientists found four skeletons in all, one of a new species and three of related dinosaurs. "We could see that it was a new species that we named Ingentia prima," said Dr Cecilia Apaldetti of CONICET-Universidad Nacional de San Juan in Argentina. "That in Latin means the 'first giant'." The dinosaur dates back to the Triassic, about 30 million years before the iconic long-necked plant-eaters Diplodocus and Brachiosaurus appeared on the scene. It wasn't as large, weighing about 10 tonnes. But its discovery is a surprise, coming so early in dinosaur evolution.

Beasts grew big and fast. Evolution was working overtime. And here’s the best part.

And they suggest that there may be even bigger and stranger dinosaurs out there, which are yet to be discovered.

“Bigger and stranger dinosaurs” is one of the most hopeful phrases in the language, because dinosaurs lived then to make us happy now.

The Committee was very confident that this week’s Top Commenter Of The Week would be produced by the president*’s very excellent trip overseas. The Committee was not disappointed, and the winner came from a Top Commenter who, judging by the monicker, would not have been out of place in the House of Lords.

Lee Brimmicombe-Wood In London, a large crowd of people have gathered to demand that a different-coloured foreigner be removed from the country immediately. Sauce for the goose, and all that. . .

Pip-pip, my good chap. And 81.11 Beckhams for you.

I’ll be back on Monday as we prepare for whatever fresh hell will be visited upon us in Helsinki by Vladimir Putin and his very excellent friend. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line, and remember, when all else fails, dinosaurs always can get stranger.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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