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| Alec Baldwin as Trump being visited by the ghost of Michael Flynn on Saturday Night Live |
Ronan was really impressive (and earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination) in the critically-acclaimed and genuinely touching 2015 romantic drama Brooklyn, but she displayed a genuine natural talent and flair for comedy and improv on SNL that was impressive - not all actors have that gear.
The opening skit with Alec Baldwin returning to skewer Trump in a twisted political take on "A Christmas Carol", in which 45 is visited by a chained Michael Flynn as "the Ghost of Witness Flips" as well as former Access Hollywood host Billy Bush, Vladimir Putin and Hillary Clinton, must have had the real Trump seething.
The faux girl-group video performance of "Welcome to Hell" was a pretty brilliant use of biting social satire to highlight the shocking absurdities and prevalence of sexual misconduct in American society.
It certainly didn't hurt that U2 played two live songs either.
Like the millions of other people who tuned into SNL last night, I really needed a few good laughs for a change, and welcomed a light-hearted break from the mind-numbing cacophony of ethical corruption and devise politics that have become the hallmark of Republican politicians this week.
In Washington, Alabama and beyond.
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| Trump using a racist slur in front of members of the Navajo Code Talkers in the White House |
He decided to honor surviving members of the Navajo Code Talkers by setting up the podium in front of the portrait of the controversial 7th president of the United States, Andrew Jackson.
Don't think it was some kind of random coincidence that he used the occasion to (once again) derisively refer to Democratic Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren as "Pocahontas" either.
An offensive racial slur that, according to a CBS News article lastTuesday, left families of the Navajo Code Talkers totally "dumbfounded" after Trump said it at a ceremony meant to honor Native American Marine Corps veterans .
Decorated heroes whose ability to use the Navajo language to send and receive indecipherable classified radio transmissions in combat were critical to American military victories against the Japanese Army in the Pacific during World War II.
Trump's use of the slur in front of the portrait of Jackson earned him widespread criticism.
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| An artistic rendering of the "Trail of Tears" |
In 'A People's History of the United States', historian Howard Zinn notes that, "Jackson was a land speculator, merchant, slave trader and the most aggressive enemy of the Indians in early American history."
Jackson's decision to sign the Indian Removal Act of 1830 into law engineered the systematic ethnic cleansing of multiple Native American tribes from their ancestral lands in the southeastern United States to lands west of the Mississippi River between 1830 and 1850.
A blight on the tapestry of American history commonly known as "The Trail of Tears" during which members of the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Seminole, Cherokee and Muscogee tribes were systematically removed from their lands and forcibly-marched hundreds of miles west in a brutal, mass forced-exodus that lead to the deaths of approximately 3,000 - 4,000 indigenous people along the way.
As in many examples of the displacement, enslavement or slaughter of indigenous peoples the real number will never be known.
But that portrait of Jackson was apparently a small but sketchy part of Republican efforts to ram through a "tax reform" bill which is essentially one of the largest transfers of wealth to the richest 1% and corporations in U.S. history.
One which will add a staggering $1.4 trillion to the deficit over ten years and eventually force serious cuts in bedrock social spending programs like Medicaid, it's hardly surprising Trump would try and use his own bigotry to shift media attention away from what Republican Senators are trying to do behind closed doors.
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| Good governance? Handwritten notes on a page of the Republican tax bill |
They're actually trying to hide what's in it from the American people.
The version Republicans brought to the floor late Friday night actually had hastily-scribbled and almost indecipherable handwritten notes scrawled on some of the pages concerning obscure provisions like modifications to s-corporations.
S-corps are just one of the sketchy ways the super-wealthy in America pay tax on their income at a rate far below the rate at which the average Joe or Jane pays tax on his or her job income.
As defined by Investopedia, S-corps "allow a corporation with 100 shareholders or less the benefit of incorporation while being taxed as a partnership. The (S) corporation can pass income directly to shareholders and avoid the double taxation that is inherent with the dividends of public companies."
Like other experts, I sure can't decipher exactly what those notes (pictured above) mean, but you can bet some high paid lobbyist or corporate tax attorney wrote them to throw in a little something extra for America's struggling top earners.
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| Edgar Welch, the man who stormed Comet Ping Pong in D.C. based on the fake Pizzagate story |
It's the reason he continually uses the words "fake news" over and over and over in order to sew distrust of fact and information among his supporters.
It's the same Russian counter-intelligence strategy that pro-Trump conservative organizations, big Republican donors and Russian operatives, who used technology and social media to turn a fake news story about Hillary Clinton being part of a pedophile ring that conducted satanic rituals in the basement of a family restaurant in Washington, D.C. called Comet Ping Pong, to stoke anti-Clinton sentiment to manipulate voters.
A bogus story re-tweeted millions of times by thousands of gullible Trump supporters including Michael Flynn, Jr. and comedian-actress Roseanne Barr - who Tweeted about it to her 400,000-plus followers on Twitter back in February.
If you get a chance, take some time to check out journalist Amanda Robb's in-depth analysis of the unfolding of the fake "Pizzagate" story, "Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal" published in the November 30th issue of Rolling Stone.
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| Inside the real Comet Ping Pong |
The story, which was stoked by kooky conspiracy theorists like Douglas Hagmann, Blackwater USA founder Erik Prince (the brother of secretary of education Betsy DeVos), and InfoWars host Alex Jones.
As Robb reported in her RS article, after Prince falsely accused the NYPD of investigating claims that the Clintons "went to this sex island with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein" during an interview on Breitbart Radio, an enraged Alex Jones seized on it as evidence and told his audience that "Hillary Clinton has personally murdered and chopped up and raped" children.
Which would be funny if it hadn't prompted 28-year-old Edgar Maddison Welch to pack a loaded assault rifle and a handgun and drive from his home in North Carolina up to D.C. and walk into Comet Ping Pong to "self investigate" last December.
Fortunately there was no actual basement, no children being held prisoner and no one was hurt when he fired his gun - Welch was eventually taken into custody without incident - he was sentenced to four years in prison this past June.
And that's where he'll languish, a disturbed and gullible by-product of a fake internet conspiracy story that was a part of a massive international effort to manipulate the outcome of the 2016 elections, elect Trump president and undermine American's faith in democracy in the United States.
All with the help of members of the Trump campaign in violation of U.S. law.
Almost sounds like something out of an overly long Saturday Night Live skit, but it's straight out of the Republican playbook.
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