DDD EXECUTIVE SUMMARY JAN/15/2017

THE MAIN EVENT

• Charlie Brotman, the 89-year-old who has served as the official announcer for Presidential inauguration parades since first getting the job in 1957, was fired by email this week after the Trump camp decided to hand the job over to some absolute fucking nobody who also just happens to have been a Trump campaign volunteer. I guess that "trumps" having done the job for Ike, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Carter, the Gipper, Poppy, Clinton, Dubya and Obama in Trump's New Model America.
• Israel, apparently feeling left out of the fun in Syria, allegedly shot some missiles at a military base there. Nobody seems to know why.
• A number of Democrats are choosing to emulate pretty much every entertainer of note by not attending President Electoral Donald Trump's inauguration on the 20th. At this point, considering all the traps poised to snap on The Donald in coming weeks and months (you heard it here first!), I think it's a pretty safe bet that boycotting this event will increase their standing among constituents and improve their chances in future elections.

A DEEPER DIVE

• Well wouldja look at that? Seems Penthouse Magazine may be in possession of video confirmation of the Trump "Golden Showers" story. Glory glory, will wonders never cease?
• Those helpful buggers over at TheEstablishment.co have put together a handy primer to inform you just exactly what the Republicans are doing to the Affordable Care Act against the wishes of the vast majority of those who understand what's going on, and a sizable plurality of those who don't.
• The Wall of Tweets at the top of today's edition is a collection of President Electoral Trump's reactions to various individuals, media outlets and organizations who have made statements with which he disagrees, to various degrees. It is meant to illustrate how, to a greater and lesser degree, how he has historically reacted to dissent.

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SUGGESTED READINGS

1. Over at the N+1 journal, Corey Robin asks a question you might never have thought to ask: What do Donald Trump and former President Jimmy Carter have in common? The answer to that question--and many more, all covered in this excellent essay--may surprise you! 

2. Hey, yer old pal Jerky doesn't want you to only be reading stuff that agrees 100 percent with your pre-conceived notions. And so in the spirit of keeping you on your intellectual toes, I present Ryan Cooper's essay from The Week, entitled This is How the American Republic Ends. And even though he name-drops currently radioactive leftier-than-thou ass-hat Glenn Greenwald, an analysis of Trump vs Clinton as a proxy war between the FBI and the CIA--and all the horrific potentialities such a situation would entail--is not wholly without merit. So go read it, but remember... Glenn Greenwald has recently been saying the kind of things that make me think he's either too locked in to his worldview to change it when the facts change, or else there's a folder full of Glenn Greenwald "kompromat" in the Kremlin someplace.

3. Three very weird, very Russia-related media "glitches" took place across American TV last week, and they've been collected in one concise and entertaining video by our pals over at The Majority Report, which has become appointment listening for yer old pal Jerky lately. So after you're done watching the video, below, why not head on over to Youtube and subscribe to their channel?

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

"They're going to go on trying to de-legitimize the media, one by one, piece by piece, to make it impossible for anyone to try to get out critical news analysis about what his administration is doing. This was the first step, and it's going to keep getting worse. Trump bragged on the campaign trail that he could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and could shoot somebody and he wouldn't lose voters. Rhetorically speaking, that's what he basically did to Jim Acosta. He basically took him out in front of the entire press corps, humiliated him, pretty brutally, and other reporters just sort of moved along."

- In this excellent blog entry for Media Matters, entitled "In One Day, 17 Signs of How Bad Press Treatment Will Be Under Trump", analyst Matt Gertz dissects, point by point, Trump's first press conference since Summer of 2016. His forensic findings? Not good.

DDD EXTRAS

• If you want to learn about some cool and/or weird things that happened on the 15th day of January, check out our sister-site, Useless Eater Blog.

THE TAKEAWAY

Finger still hurtin', so still comin' up short on content. Hope you guys can forgive, and will stick around for the meatier offerings currently in the pipeline!