This just in: peace in our time

From Ida Tarbell
Spy Washington Bureau

Pulling back from the brink of all-out war, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer today accepted assurances from Senate Leader Mitch McConnell that Sen. Schumer predicted would bring “peace in our time” to Capitol Hill.

Chuck Schumer, shown at his moment of triumph

For days the nation had been transfixed on watching the Patriots pull another championship out of their helmets [Surely, the ominous news from Washington? – Ed.], increasingly fearful over the prospect of a government shutdown that could destroy everything from admission to National Parks before fracking begins to concealing overruns on future weapons that will never work.

Summoned to the Leader's office for last-minute negotiations, and pressured by allies who could not stomach the idea that they might have to work consecutive weekends, Schumer emerged, weary but triumphant, clutching a pizza box that he said contained binding commitments from the Leader that would avoid “the outbreak of further hostilities that could threaten the peace and harmony of the Senate Gym.”

A few bitter-enders, apparently eager to send their aunts and uncles back into the legislative trenches, complained that the so-called agreement was little more than a sell-out of the legitimate aspirations of the 890,000 young men and women who had had their tenuous legal immigration status snatched away by the Supreme Leader in yet another savage act of cruelty and bigotry.

The extreme left-wing pro-war organ The New Yorker complained that “This afternoon, the prospects for the Dreamers look worse: the immediate crisis of the shutdown has passed, the President no longer seems a plausible ally, and their status has not been secured.”

But such captiousness was by far the minority opinion, with almost all the wisest leading figures in Washington celebrating the last-minute peace agreement. Senator Blanche du Bois (R – Fort Sumter) rhapsodized, “if we can solve the question of the Dreamers without conflict, it could be a turning point in relations between the Democrats and the Supreme Leader.”

Schumer has told his incredulous caucus that he “believes the Leader” when he says he has no further demands to terrorize non-citizen residents of the United States.  He said that the Leader had spoken to him “with great earnestness.”

Referring to the Supreme Leader's rants demanding $60,000,000,000 for a 28-foot-tall see-through border wall running along the Mexican border from the Pacific to the Rio Grande,  a 50% cut in immigration quotas, and preventing reunification of American citizens with their immigrant families, Schumer would only say, “I have read the Tweets of the Supreme Leader and appreciate his references to the efforts I have made to save the peace.”

Only a few illegals dissented from the general relief

This afternoon, the Senate, after hearing Schumer's announcement that he had reached an historic agreement with the Leader, erupted in cheers.  Exulted Sen. Susan Collins: “Thank God for Senator Schumer and our Leader!”

Echoed Sen. Jeff Flake (R – Situation Wanted): “It is inconceivable that we should be plunged into war over a quarrel between faraway people of whom we know nothing.”

The pro-war party was left near speechless, reduced to sputtering that the so-called “assurances” from the Leader were a mere scrap of paper that made no commitment to protecting the Dreamers from life in the shadows or prison in contemplation of deportation to countries they never knew, all at the whim of the Supreme Leader's dreaded ICE squads.  They noted that the assurances did not bind the Supreme Leader or his thug-like “Representatives.”

Some like California Senator Kamala Harris were near tears.  She told a few bored reporters milling about the corridors that the agreement was “sordid, squalid, sub-human, and suicidal.”

Senator Kirsten Gillebrand spoke of her final discussions with a small group of despairing Dreamers huddled in her office: “They wished to register their protest against a decision in which they had no part.”

With the dreaded specter of political war put off for a full three weeks, Schumer and his embattled allies are placing great weight on an agreement with the Leader that says no more than the two sides will “continue our efforts to remove possible sources of difference” that might vex the peace of Washington.

A Spy exclusive: Top-secret guidance re shithole inquiries

Editors' Note:  Apparently some whiny foreign countries are protesting being called “shitholes” by the President of the United States. When did we start being so PC we couldn't call shitholes “shitholes?”  That's the question, at least if you're bilious white man Tucker Carlson.  Some real journalists have asked what any remaining U.S. diplomats are supposed to say if called in by the governments of such “shitholes.”  Only the Spy has obtained from its sources within the Burning Clown Car [Surely, West Wing? – Ed.] the carefully crafted diplomatic talking points approved by POTUS himself. 

FROM: SECSTATE WASH DC TO: ALLPOSTS SUBJECT: GUIDANCE RE RESPONSE TO SHITHOLES CLASS: TS NOFORN/NOSTEVE/NOFLOTUS/OKFOX/  DRAFTEDBY: HHICKS EOP/COMM FOLLOWING TALKING POINTS HAVE BEEN APPROVED BY ALL USGOV AGENCIES INCLUDING POTUS AND JARED FOR USE RE ALL MTGS WITH FOREIGN GOVOFFS RE POTUS RECENT COMMENTS RE SHITHOLES. 1.  POTUS DENIES USING WORD SHITHOLE.  OR SHITHOUSE.  OR SHIT CITY.  OR SHIT STORM.  REPORTS TO CONTRARY ARE FAKE NEWS AND/OR TREASON AND/OR HILLARY'S FAULT 2.  USG PLACES GREAT WEIGHT ON MAINTAINING GOOD RELATIONSHIP WITH [INSERT NAME OF SHITHOLE COUNTRY] 3.  POTUS SAYS SOME OF THE BEST WAITERS BUSBOYS AND GROUNDSKEEPERS  AT MAR-A-LAGO COME FROM [INSERT NAME OF SHITHOLE COUNTRY] 4.  POTUS EXTENDS LARGE STRONG MASCULINE HAND OF FRIENDSHIP TO [INSERT NAME OF SHITHOLE COUNTRY] 5.  POTUS INVITES HEAD OF GOV TO GOLF WITH HIM AT WORLD CLASS TRUMP GOLF COURSE OF POTUS'S CHOOSING AS GESTURE OF GOOD WILL BUT REGRETS UNABLE TO WAIVE GREENS FEES AND CART RENTAL. 6.  IN EXTENDING GOLF INVITATIONS EMBOFFS SHOULD EMPHASIZE POTUS IS A GREAT GOLFER AMONG THE BEST.  RUMORS THAT POTUS DOES NOT COUNT MULLIGANS OR KICKS BALL ONTO FAIRWAY FAKE NEWS 7.  IF HEAD OF STATE IS MALE OFFER ASSISTANCE OF POTUS IN OBTAINING TOP CLASS PORN STARS WITH BIG BEAUTIFUL JUGS TO JOIN FOURSOME BUT DENY POTUS HAS EVER PAID BLACKMAIL TO SUCH PORN STARS 8.  FOR UK ONLY: POTUS REGRETS UNABLE TO ATTEND WEDDING OF PRINCE TO BLACK GIRL BECAUSE HE IS VERY BUSY THAT WEEKEND IN IMPORTANT NEGOTIATIONS AT GOLF CLUB WITH FOREIGN HEAD OF STATE AND HOT PORN STARS WHO ARE NOT FLAT CHESTED LIKE YOUR BLACK GIRL AND TELLS PRINCE NOT TO BEG LIKE LITTLE BITCH 9.  FOR REAL COUNTRIES IN EUROPE LIKE NORMAY, OMAY, OR ARRYLAY: OF COURSE POTUS WASN'T REFERRING TO YOU 10.  FOR RUSSIAN FEDERATION:  EYES ONLY TO V PUTIN: COMPARED TO STORMY DANIELS THOSE BROADS YOU SENT TO MY ROOM LOOKED LIKE MEN - DON 11.  SECDEF AND SECSTATE DID NOT DRAFT TALKING POINTS 1-10 AND WILL DENY KNOWLEDGE THEY EXIST 12.  REMIND ALL FOREIGN OFFICIALS THAT EXXON GASOLINE CONTAINS INGREDIENTS THAT HELP KEEP YOUR ENGINE RUNNING LONGER. TILLERSON (IF CABLE SENT BEFORE 0000Z 01152018)

A Connoisseur's Guide to White Men, courtesy of David Brooks

By A.J. Liebling
Meta-Content Generator

Another year and we're still talking about white male bloviators for The New York Times.  It's good to know that some things, unlike the American constitutional order, never change.

Today the Old Perfesser himself, David Brooks, takes on a searching examination of two kinds of white men: good and bad.  More specifically, the good kind of U Bum critic (himself) and the bad (Michael Wolff, who apparently wrote a book based on his reporting inside the White House of Grift).

What distinguishes the white bread from the chaff?  After slogging through the mansplaining, we haven't a clue:

 . . .the anti-Trump movement, of which I’m a proud member, seems to be getting dumber. It seems to be settling into a smug, fairy tale version of reality that filters out discordant information. More anti-Trumpers seem to be telling themselves a “Madness of King George” narrative: Trump is a semiliterate madman surrounded by sycophants who are morally, intellectually and psychologically inferior to people like us.

Not sure what facts he can adduce that undercut this conclusion, but OK.   It takes a couple more paragraphs for him to come to what passes for his point:  Michael Wolff bad!

We anti-Trumpers have our lowbrowism, too, mostly on late-night TV. But anti-Trump lowbrowism burst into full bloom with the Wolff book.

Let the World's Greatest Authority, David Brooks,
explain it all to you

It's bad enough that Stephen Colbert tears the Groper-in-Chief a new one every night, but now we have a journalist who wrote a book based upon a year of reporting that demonstrates the reality of the narrative the Old Perfesser was so contemptuous of.  What did Wolff do that was so terrible?  Did he make a bunch of stuff up?  Good white man David Brooks alleges he did but unlike Wolff he doesn't present any facts to buttress his case.  As we once said about Col. McCormack, Brooks cites no authority, being it.

We've read a bit here and there about Wolff's supposed disregard for the facts, and thus far as we understand exactly one person has disputed one quote attributed to him.  Whether we should believe Mr. Loose Lips remains to be seen.  And the lawyer for Wolff's publisher notes that U Bum's latest fulminating mouthpiece, not-80's-porn-star Charles Harder, cites no factual errors in his 11-page screed. 

Just in case the any particularly dim Times reader fails to get his point about the difference between good and bad white men, Brooks concludes with:

There’s a hierarchy of excellence in every sphere. There’s a huge difference between William F. Buckley and Sean Hannity, between the reporters at this newspaper and a rumor-spreader. 

William F. Buckley?  Who he?   And what was his excellence?  To learn about His Excellency, you need go no further than the exact same op-ed page, where  another Times columnist, not-a-white-man Michelle Goldberg, writing about the Likud dream of permanently disenfranchising the indigenous Palestinian population, said:

Israel’s apologists will be left mimicking the argument that William F. Buckley once made about the Jim Crow South. In 1957, he asked rhetorically whether the white South was entitled to prevail “politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically.” The “sobering answer,” he concluded, was yes, given the white community’s superior civilization.

That must have sounded more excellent to David Brooks than it does to us.  In fact, we seem to recall that Excellent Bill opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 based on the "superior civilization" that brought us George Wallace then and Roy Moore now.

Now that Michelle Goldberg has reminded us what a loathsome racist William F. Buckley was, we'd be inclined to put him and lying sack of s**t Sean Hannity on the same rung of the hierarchy of excellence.  And what about David Brooks?

Let's just say he's in a class by himself.

Our Darkest Hour

By Isaiah Thomas
Board of Editors

Around these parts we're bundling up and heading out to the movies to watch a stirring tale of resistance against overwhelming odds.  No, not the one with the light sabers; the one with Winston Churchill chomping on his cigar and inveighing against Nah-zis.

The Churchill film (Darkest Hour) recounts with reasonable accuracy the struggle of Winston Churchill and the British people in the dark days of late May 1940, when it appeared that the entire British Expeditionary Force might be trapped and captured by the Wehrmacht in northern Belgium, leaving Britain without any meaningful land defense against a potential German invasion.

Not pictured here: President U Bum surveys
damage in Puerto Rico

With the BEF fighting for its life toward the Dunkirk beaches, Churchill had to face a revolt in his own cabinet, led by Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax, né Murray Feigenbaum [Louise, please check – Copy Desk].  Halifax, unnerved by the collapse of the French Army and the scale of the defeat on the Continent, urged Churchill's War Cabinet to take up an offer by a stooge of Italian Fascist strongman Benito Mussolini to mediate a negotiated peace with Nazi Germany.

The odds against Britain were staggering and the forces arrayed against her were immense.  Yet Churchill refused to countenance a loser's peace and rallied his country to fight Hitler to the end.

Anyone surveying the wreckage of American institutions wrought since the last election and the installation of President U Bum could scarcely come to a conclusion other than that Churchill and the British were in better shape in May 1940 than we are now, even as we know that Britain's wartime ordeal had by then hardly begun.

Yet the British possessed strengths that the fragmented American Resistance could only hope for.  Churchill led what was truly a United Kingdom, if the contemporaneous accounts of British morale are to be believed.  The Brits understood what they were up against and mobilized all their resources to fight back.  They had a fleet.  They had an air force.   They had quasi-independent allies like Canada and Australia who fought by her side.  By June, they had an army.  And they had Franklin Roosevelt, a canny supporter held back only by the isolationism and stupidity of his own people.

Sound familiar?

Not pictured here: mass media protecting
corrupt President by smearing law enforcement

And although our adversary is every bit as destructive and dangerous as the one faced by Britain, we have by comparison so much less to fight it with.  Britain's enemy was on the Continent, with no obvious way to get across the Channel.  By contrast, our enemy is not only at the gates, it has occupied Washington, D.C. and both political branches.  It has besieged and possibly taken the Supreme Court and is slowly but surely subverting the remainder of the Article III judiciary.

While the British people were not fully informed of every scrap of grim news, in general they were getting a reasonable approximation of reality from mass media who pretty much saw the world as it was.  Although the BBC in the thirties had shamefully served the cause of appeasement by among other things barring Churchill from its airwaves, by 1940 it was out of the disinformation business.  The English-language services of the Nazi Deutsche Rundfunk were widely ridiculed.  Even Joseph Goebbels lacked the balls to pass off Lord Haw-Haw as “fair and balanced.”

When Winston Churchill, having told Parliament to prepare for “hard and heavy tidings,” vowed to fight on to final victory, no matter the odds, he was not greeted by an opposition party who questioned his nationality or sought to deflect attention from the crisis at hand by smearing Britain's law-enforcement and counter-espionage agencies.  Instead, they joined Churchill to fight what they understood correctly to be the common menace.

And Churchill, whatever his faults, did not regard His Majesty's Government as a source of financing for his private financial interests or free advertising for his busto golf clubs.  Nor was he subject to nobbling by foreign adversaries through bribery, blackmail, or flattery.

But, like Churchill's Britain, the American Resistance is not without resources.  It has access to generally accurate information.  It has financial means and some legal protection.  What it lacks thus far is the one indispensable requirement for victory that the British possessed in May 1940: the quickening realization of the people, in Mollie Panter-Downes's words, that they are fighting for their lives.

Happy New Year.