Category: Foreign Affairs

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Stumping for Beni – Trump disgraces himself, again

April 6th, 2019

A lot of American Jews will doubtlessly be surprised to learn that Donald Trump considers Benjamin Netanyahu to be their “Prime Minister.” He was talking to the American Republican Jewish Coalition Leadership, but in fairness, Trump may not have been entirely aware that these were supposed to be American Jews and not Israeli Jews, as he went on to say, “If implemented, the Democrats’ radical agenda would destroy our economy, cripple our country, and very well could leave Israel out there all by yourselves. Can’t do that.”

Yeah. “Yourselves.” It isn’t the first time Trump has used the trope that Jews all have divided loyalties and it won’t be the last. Even as he, and the Republican party at large, condemn Ilhan Omar, the Islamic Congresswoman from Minnesota for hinting that Jews have divided loyalties for saying that AIPAC has undue influence on Congress.

He was promoting a GOP strategy called “Jexit.” It’s a clever-ish play on words, based on “Brexit” and the reasoning is that because Trump says Democrats hate Jews, there is a mass migration from the Democratic Party to the GOP. Must be true: in 2016 the Democrats got 72% of the Jewish vote, and in 2018 they got 78%. See? Oh, wait.

Then there’s that term: Jexit. Republicans may be the only carbon based lifeforms on Earth that think Brexit was a sound strategy and something desirable for their allies to emulate. Right now the UK is staggering, red-eyed, pasty, doughy and slurring her words, and town drunks are stopping her in the street and saying, “Are you OK? You really should see a doctor, you know?” And Brexit hasn’t even happened yet. The UK could go from being “the poor man of Europe” to “the Somalia of Europe.”

I think it’s a safe bet that a very large majority of American Jews do not consider Netanyahu to be their prime minister, and aren’t eager to pursue a strategy named for the biggest national own goal in history. Yes, even worse than America electing Trump.

Even Steve Wynn and Sheldon Adelson, perhaps the only two Jews in Las Vegas that Trump actually gives a wet shit about, have to be looking at today’s performance and wondering how far this can ride this spivened old nag of a President before he finally collapses from dementia or gets kicked out of office.

Trump apparently was advised that his father was not born in Germany, but in New York City, and people were wondering about his mental faculties as a result of his recent claims. So he put the rumors to rest by noting his father was born in Brooklyn. The only problem was that Fred wasn’t born in Brooklyn. He was born in the Bronx, just as Donald was.

“Are you OK? You really should see a doctor, you know?”

By now convinced that the speech was going swimmingly and he had his audience in the palm of his hand, he decided to do a little bit of hate mongering, and told the crowd, “A special thanks to Representative Omar of Minnesota.” The audience of Republicans obligingly booed. Trump continued,

“Oh, I forgot. She doesn’t like Israel, I forgot, I’m sorry. No, she doesn’t like Israel, does she? Please, I apologize.”

At least now we know under what circumstances Trump will say, “I apologize.” It’s when he is doing a heavy handed and lame effort at sarcasm, not a good look on a man who possesses no actual sense of humor.

His timing was a bit off, though. A New York clown, one Patrick W. Carlineo, was arrested today for calling Omar’s DC office and saying, “Do you work for the Muslim Brotherhood? Why are you working for her, she’s a fucking terrorist. I’ll put a bullet in her fucking skull.” Carlineo then proceeded to leave his contact info, because, you know, it’s OK to threaten to assassinate members of Congress if they happen to be non-Christian.

I’m guessing this brain donor is a) aTrump fan, and b) not Jewish. Any takers?

But it reminds people that the hateful crap Trump spews is putting lives at risk. Hell, the stupid bastard can’t even ingratiate himself with groups he wants as allies without indulging in harmful stereotypes. Hint, Donald: American Jews are not secret agents of Israel. They don’t drink the blood of Christian babies, either. You might want to write that on the back of your hand, along with the word “Bronx.”

I don’t think he advanced the cause of Jexit. If only Britain had called the Brexit referendum, ‘Gallipoli II.’ Same positive connotations, you know.

The executive director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America (JDCA), Halie Soifer said: “We strongly denounce President Trump’s continued assault on decency and truth, as was evident in his speech earlier today before the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas.”

I suspect he was speaking for what now has to be more than 78% of Jewish voters in America.

As for Trump, a lot of people wondered why he would schedule a speech to a Jewish audience on a Saturday morning. It was, after all, Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath. It occurred right after sundown in Israel, when television stations could broadcast his speech live. Israel has a general election in three days.

It’s possible that there were some Jews in the audience who DO have divided loyalties. They would be a tiny minority of the American Jewish population, but they do exist. The GOP tends to attract people like that.

But it’s certain that one person in that room does have divided loyalties, and with many different counties. Including, despite his well-known distaste for Jews, Israel.

That would be Donald Trump, once again accusing others of things he does.

Maybe he thinks Netanyahu was born in Brooklyn. Or Germany. You know, one of those New York resorts.

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An Evil in Christchurch – And Trump can’t even comfort the victims

March 16th 2019

Forty nine dead, eleven in critical condition, another ten or so with lesser injuries, the type that will ache on rainy days decades from now. And an entire nation emotionally scarred, also for decades.

New Zealand has always been a somewhat isolated nation, with Tonga and the Cook Islands about the only land within 1,500 miles. Australia is the only significant nation that comes within 2,500 miles. Most of the world’s problems, even nuclear war, seemed remote. The only exceptions were the World Wars, where New Zealand took the highest human toll in relation to the population of just about anyone except Scotland. Even natural disasters, except for earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, were remote events, well over the horizons. Until ozone depletion and climate disruption, even the impact of humanity on the planet seemed distant.

New Zealand had fairly lax gun laws, but this didn’t raise any alarums because New Zealand didn’t seem to have a big gun problem, at least by American standards. Since the turn of the century, the annual gun toll hadn’t exceeded 60, and was gradually declining. The low numbers did hide a disturbing fact: New Zealand only has about 3.6 million people, roughly 1% of the United States population. Multiply the gun casualty totals by a hundred, and you find that it’s actually a quite high rate, nearly a half that of the US.

Yesterday’s attacks on those Christchurch mosques and that hospital may exceed the gun death total for New Zealand in some recent years. While it’s not exactly an identical set of circumstances, the sheer bloodletting was, for NZ, worse than 9/11 was for the States.

Apparently a lot of kids and old folks died. Just because they went to service on their holy day.

The Right Honourable Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister, noted that the killer had obtained all five guns legally, and said, “I can tell you one thing right now: our gun laws will change. There have been attempts to change our laws in 2005, 2012 and after an inquiry in 2017. Now is the time for change.”

Given the magnitude of the terrorist attack, and the fact that New Zealand doesn’t have a treacherous gun lobby group standing on its collective throat, I believe her. The NZ Attorney General, David Parker, has been warning of the hazards extremist white nationalism presents (“There is a dimming of enlightenment in many parts of the world”), and vows to ban semi-automatic weapons within weeks. I hope he succeeds.

The accused is an emigré from Australia, a land beset by vicious racists and bigotry in its dominant right-wing political party. (Sound familiar?) One utter piece of shit, a member of their Senate, one Fraser Anning tweeted: “Does anyone still dispute the link between Muslim immigration and violence? As always, leftwing politicians and the media will rush to claim that the causes of today’s shootings lie with gun laws or those who hold nationalist views, but this is all cliched nonsense. The real cause of bloodshed on New Zealand streets today is the immigration program which allowed Muslim fanatics to migrate to New Zealand in the first place.”

OK, Anning is bigoted filth, and obviously he doesn’t represent many Australians or the whole country would be one vast death camp by now.

Murdoch’s media, classy as always, delighted in showing the footage the accused murderer shot while killing innocent men, women and children. Murdoch would have loved the concentration camps, especially the firing squads. New Zealand shut his channel down for the interim until his blood lust settled a bit.

With Parker’s “dimming of enlightenment” there are Nazi politicians in many parts of the world now, including the United States.

Ardern contacted Trump and asked him to convey condemnation of the bigotry and terrorism of the attack. Trump could manage to do neither, instead tweeting, “My warmest sympathy and best wishes goes out to the people of New Zealand after the horrible massacre in the Mosques. 49 innocent people have so senselessly died, with so many more seriously injured. The U.S. stands by New Zealand for anything we can do. God bless all!”

Warmest sympathies from a man who has never shown any signs of sympathy in his entire wastrel life. Wow. Must be thoughts and prayers time.

Even John Bolton worked up the intellectual honesty to call yesterday’s attacks an act of terrorism, and he is no friend to Moslems.

Trump couldn’t manage that. He did refer to immigration as an invasion, just as the Australian immigrant did in his 70+ page screed that served as his case for hate-filled losers to fire weapons-grade weaponry at small children and grandparents.

Well, Hitler probably wasn’t too sympathetic to the Jewish victims on Krystallnacht, instead bleating about how the poor innocent brown shirts were driven to acts of violence by the depredations of the Jews.

There may still be a difference between Hitler and Trump, but that difference exists only because Hitler was faster to consolidate power. When Trump can’t even acknowledge that this was a specific terrorist attack against a select group of people because it’s the same people he’s been vilifying for years (along with African Americans and Hispanics and Jews) then emotionally he isn’t far from Hitler. In the end, Hitler may simply have been more intelligent than Trump.

So New Zealand will try to make amends and make things right. Here in America, Trump will encourage similar attacks.

Don’t believe me? Just watch.

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Zionist Fascists – Opposing Netanyahu is not anti-Semitic

March 5th 2019

For the second time in as many months, Rep. Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, has raised the issue of the undue amount of influence Israel has in Congress. Republicans, already under immense pressure as the Trump administration implodes in a fog of criminality and incompetence, have decided that Omar, a Somali-born Moslem, is a Jew-baiter and must be punished for the transgression of asking about Israeli influence. She has also raised the issue of influence of the NRA and major corporations, and for less reasons.

Nobody objected to her questioning the undue influence of lobbies and corporations, except, of course, for AIPAC.

The object raised was the “The Jews run everything” meme, long the province of neo-nazis and various other hate mongers. Omar, it was claimed, was raising the spectre of international bankers and vast secret Zionist cabals. If she were, that would be contemptible.

Only she wasn’t. She was talking about the influence of AIPAC, that that is a very legitimate point to raise.

For all the pressure it applies to public discourse, the NRA has never tried to make it illegal to criticize the sale of guns. Major corporations have a variety of ways of dealing with negative public sentiment, ranging from ignoring it to spending significant amounts of money on elevating their image and making their critics look like malcontents. It’s not against the law to say, “WalMart is bad for communities, so please buy somewhere else.”

With Israel, it’s different. Back in 2017, AIPAC managed to get 43 Senators to cosponsor SB 720, the Israel Anti-Boycott Act. This extraordinary piece of legislation made it a felony to espouse a boycott against Israel, and even Israeli products made in the settlements, which nearly the entire world views as an illegal occupation. The US government itself maintains a list of companies operating in the settlements and avoids doing business with them.

To say the bill was draconian is an understatement. The MINIMUM penalty for advocating a boycott was $250,000. If you wore a T-shirt reading, “Don’t buy Bezeq telecommunications equipment, Teva Pharmaceuticals or Coca Cola products made in the settlements, it would cost you at least a quarter-million dollars. If you explicitly said, “Don’t buy Israeli products from the settlements,” the possible penalties would be one million dollars and twenty years in federal prison.

That would be one expensive T-shirt. For advocating a buying decision that, under all other circumstances, is not only legal, but a constitutional right.

Forty three Senators co-sponsored that constitutional abortion, including, shamefully, 13 Democrats. Fortunately, in the highly dysfunctional zoo that passes for America’s higher legislative council, it never made it to a floor vote. America was saved from this, not by patriotism and courage, but simple incompetence.

Merely arguing that the bill was an assault on American freedoms could get you branded an anti-Semite, an anti-Zionist, and a Jew-hater.

The terms are not interchangeable. Semites are a cultural and linguistic classification that includes Jews, Turks, Kurds and Arabs. The term anti-Semite as an adversary of Jews is a semantic null. Zionism favors the re-establishment of a Jewish homeland in the territory defined as the historic Land of Israel. Many distinct groups of people have similar cultural tropes, including many Native Americans and entire populations throughout much of the rest of the world. Zionism is neither less nor more valid than other such claims, and the desire to return to a home, mythical or otherwise, is understandable.

Israel was established after the horrors of Hitler, and human guilt over what happened and outside of the people displaced by the establishment of the state, few objected. But over the years, Israel has metastasized into a dark parody of itself, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, who hobnobs with some of the most vicious right-wing fascists in Europe, bonded by a common love of authoritarianism. His son has been known to retweet nazi propaganda when it suits his purposes.

Zionism may have begun as a simple desire to “go home”, but it, too, has metastisized. Zionism has become a cult movement in the US, and the vast majority of adherents are not Jewish, but rather part of a toxic sort of Christianity that view the establishment of the Jewish state as a necessary component of the End of Days. God must destroy the Jews in order to rapture the Christians. Yes, you read that right; they want the Jews destroyed in order to go to heaven. And they call their opponents haters of Jews!

The other day, some trash Republicans in West Virginia, as a fund-raising ploy, put up a poster that showed a picture of the second airline smashing into the World Trade Center with the words “‘Never forget’ – you said… ” followed by a picture of Omar with the words, “I am the proof – you have forgotten.” It was horrific, and greeted by silence by Republicans on a national level. No surprise there: it’s newsworthy when a Republican acts like a decent human being these days. But a lot of Democrats also cringed and remained silent.

Let’s put this in context: suppose, instead of 9/11 and Omar, a similar poster had the gates of Auschwitz, and any prominent American or Israeli Zionist—or any of the 43 Co-sponsors of SB720. The uproar would be immediate and vociferous—and utterly deserved. It’s a vile correlation to make.

But people aren’t attacking that; they are attacking Omar for the mild action of criticizing the influence of AIPAC. I wonder how many politicians condemning Omar for a polite demurrer also supported SB 720, and argue that only a bigot thinks Zionists, and AIPAC, have too much influence in Congress?

The West Virginia Republicans are vile haters. Omar is not.

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Kim & Cohen – Trump didn’t have a chance

March 1st 2019

It’s pretty easy to see how desperate and panicked the Trumpkins in the GOP are by the shrill screams of “liar!” they keep hurling at Michael Cohen. Two of the more prominent whores in Congress, Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows, asked the Justice Department to investigate Cohen for perjury, saying he lied during his appearance about his efforts to land a White House job and his work for foreign companies, among other topics. Most Republicans settled for screaming “He lied before! He lied before!” while carefully forgetting to mention that he lied at the behest of Party Leader Donald Trump.

The Republicans all attacked Cohen for attacking Trump. None of them could think of a way of defending Trump against any of the allegations.

Cohen testified today behind closed doors, and the reports leaking out are that his testimony was even more detailed and damning than the testimony he gave in public.

Some of the Trump whelps, Don Junior and Ivanka, may be called it to testify under oath as early as next week. I’m sure fearless leader does not regard that as a happy thought. Maybe he can get Congressmen Gaetz to arrange for them both to have skiing accidents before they appear before the Committee. And yes, I can say something like that: it isn’t a threat, it’s just “witness testing.” (Note to FBI: There’s also the fact that I want the whelps to appear before Congress, preferably in open session.)

Joe Scarborough, not exactly a gleaming bastion of liberalism, had this to say about the pathetic performance of House Republicans: “Republican members of the House Oversight Committee exposed themselves in plain sight…in plain sight…as a political party whose goal, whose purpose and whose central organizing principle…is to cover up for the illegal and immoral misdeeds of Donald J. Trump.” Scarborough considered this a giant step toward political oblivion by the GOP. I hope he’s right. The GOP ceased to be a legitimate political party after the Ford pardon.

In just three sessions, the Democrats uncovered more illegalities and malfeasance on the part of the administration than were found by all the thousands of hours of Congressional time wasted on White Water, Benghazi, the emails, Paula Jones and Monica, combined.

The irony of Republicans attacking Cohen for lying on behalf of Trump wasn’t lost on Cohen, who told them, “Republican members of the House Oversight Committee exposed themselves in plain sight…in plain sight…as a political party whose goal, whose purpose and whose central organizing principle…is to cover up for the illegal and immoral misdeeds of Donald J. Trump.”

This won’t stop the Republicans from their smear efforts, though. They are a party that lives in a world of lies, self-delusion, and the belief they can say anything and get away with it. They can’t even see the pieces of the temple falling around their own heads.

Perhaps the most horrifying thing Cohen said was after the second, public day of testimony: “Given my experience working for Mr. Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020, that there will never be a peaceful transition of power.” He knows Trump well. He probably knows whereof he speaks.

Trump must never be permitted to be in a position of trying to consolidate power in 2020. He must be gone from office before then.

It’s a deep shame that America must have to rely on the courage and patriotism of Republicans to ensure that. It’s like hoping the sewer rats will save your child from drowning.

Trump went to Vietnam to meet with Kim Jong Un, putatively to lend some credence to the vague and genial almost-agreement made in the first meeting but realistically to try to detract from the damage the Cohen hearings were sure to inflict.

Kim let Trump know that he would be willing to consider partial denuclearization in return for the US dropping all trade and economic sanctions against his country. Even Trump, hungry for any kind of event he could twist into a triumph of some sort, knew that was a non-starter and stalked away from the meeting.

It was, perhaps, the most total and abject humiliation of an American president in any international meeting. It was obvious to everyone that Kim knew exactly what he was doing, and that his intended aim was to humiliate Trump. There was no “misreading of signs” or any of that balderdash: it was deliberate.

Kim wanted to show the world that he could ride the paper tiger named Trump. He sent the seething American president away with the studied indifference of a hiring officer for a large corporation who invites someone to cross the country to apply for a position, only to tell him the job had been filled.

Korean attitudes toward “face” are quite similar to those of the Japanese, and even in South Korea, where people desperately wanted Trump to succeed with the reclusive dictator, respect for Trump all but vanished in the wake of this travesty. Even as they condemn the perfidy of Kim, South Koreans are asking why the American president didn’t come prepared for something like this—it wasn’t like Kim didn’t already have a track record—and counter measures beyond stalking away in a huff as a weak pretense that is was anything other than a shambolic retreat.

Trump went in needing a big, splashy win against a man whose record for bad-faith dealing and viciousness are about as bad as…well, Trump’s. But Trump was in the position of supplicant. Kim had nothing to lose from blowing up the talks. Trump had everything to lose.

China and the Japanese were secretly laughing and shaking their heads in disbelief. And 6,000 miles to the west, Putin was watching his morning news and smiling. America was weakened further.

Of course, it didn’t help that, in an effort by Trump to ingratiate himself with the North Korean dictator, he absolved Kim of any responsibility for the torture and subsequent death of the US student Otto Warmbier in a North Korean prison. Even Republicans were outraged by that.

And the great unraveling of the Trump regime continues.

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Unreality Show I’ll Take Door Number i for $100, Alex

October 12th 2018

Who would have thought, three years ago, that we would have a black entertainer meeting with the President in the Oval Office and arguing for the repeal of the 13th amendment?
Trump has achieved the trifecta of crazy: Sarah Palin, Ted Nugent, and now Kanye West. A pity Charlie Manson is dead: he could have visited and argued for lowering the age of consent to six.

This spectacle would have been grotesque and awkward under the best of circumstances, but it occurred almost to the minute that a major hurricane was devastating the Florida panhandle coast, completely leveling one town and inflicting major damage from Florida to North Carolina. Even as the Trump administration was arguing that 4C increase was inevitable, so we all might as well get used to it.

At least this time touring Melania Trump didn’t show up wearing a coat that proclaimed her lack of concern; she was off in Africa, wearing a British RA-style pith helmet, recreating “Call Me Bwimbo”. Oh, wait, that’s Bwana. Second look. No, it’s Bwimbo. The woman has a gift for wearing “Fuck You” as a fashion accessory. After getting some light criticism over that, she flounced off, calling herself the most bullied person in America. Easy solution, babe: file for divorce.

Was it really just 23 months ago that people were saying in hopeful tones that Republicans in Congress could keep Trump in line and blunting his more egregious impulses?

Nah. They saw Trump apparently getting away with the most blatant lies and viciousness, and decided they knew a winning approach when they saw it. Now they’re all lying their heads off. As the election nears, it’s a race to the bottom.

You see campaign ads all over the place swearing up and down that Republicans want to protect Medicare, and that Democrats are goddless commie Muslims who want to allow billions of Mexicans to come in and take over the country. They boast about how Trump saved the economy by maintaining employment and growth trends previously seen over the past six years under Obama, and carefully don’t mention the trillions in new debt for the latest tax giveaways to the rich (including the additional $3 trillion last week that the same Republicans who voted for it last week aren’t mentioning now), or the fact that despite the fact that they are fracking and drilling the living shit out of America and working to turn national parks into oil reserves, the price of gasoline is a dollar fifty above what it was last year.

It got so bad that NY Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote a piece yesterday effectively calling the entire party liars. Such a column would never have seen the light of day a few years ago, but that was before the GOP went mad and abandoned all principle. At least the NY Times belatedly remembered they were a newspaper and what that meant.

Trump had an ‘op-ed’ in the disreputable USA Today that has to be read to be believed. The Washington Post stated that nearly every single sentence included a misstatement or flat-out lie.

In Georgia, the Republican Secretary of State, Brian Kemp, is running for Governor, but as SS he retains the power to purge voter rolls. Which he is doing with a vengeance, some 26,000 names over the past few weeks, over such criteria as whether a middle initial is included on the written name but not in the signature. While African-Americans make up 32% of Georgia’s population (and a somewhat lower proportion of the voting population for obvious reasons) they make up 70% of the voters being purged. Oh, and the SS office isn’t bothering to tell the voters they have been purged. Let it be a surprise on election day. Similar, if less egregious stories abound in other states saddled with Republican rule.

Of course, Trump hates a free press, but isn’t above using the more whorish and lower segments of that press to attack the rest. The National Enquirer has been prostituting itself for him for years now, and Fox News is nothing more than the propaganda arm for the GOP. It’s a shameful thing to see in America, which once was proud of its free and independent press. Now the government has fascist whores pretending to be reporters to spread lies and stifle dissent.

It’s no surprise that news that Saudi Arabia lured a journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, into the Saudi embassy in Istanbul and proceeded to torture, murder and dismember him. It’s widely believed that it was ordered by the vile despot Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who seized power last year with the somewhat clandestine help from the Trump administration (Chief Wastrel Jared Kushner was on hand to oversee the coup and possibly offer friendly advice and hidden funding).

Trump’s reaction to this was muted, partly because he doesn’t mind seeing journalists being killed for doing their job and partly because his business interests are heavily intertwined with bin Salman’s. Even as most of the corporate world pull away from the swinish and vicious Sauds, Trump is going ahead with another arms deal so Saudi Arabia can massacre a few thousand more Yemanis.

Iran is a vile theocracy, but it’s only the third worst in the region, behind Israel and Saudi Arabia. Guess which of the three the US condemns solely?

Kavanaugh, perjurer, liar and partisan ratfucker, has already established a new precedent, becoming the first sitting justice in Supreme Court history to be under active investigation for violation of judicial practices and ethics, based on his sworn Senate testimony. He managed this odiferous distinction on just the second day on the court. It will get worse.

Trump is submitting written answers to Meuller’s investigative team, about his only remaining constitutional recourse. His lawyers knew he can’t go a minute without lying, so spoken testimony under oath would be a legal death trap, and this at least gives the lawyers time to write and finesse the answers, in the hope they can make Trump at least technically not liable for perjury. We’ll know soon enough if these lawyers, not the most brilliant legal team over assembled, can come up with anything that won’t result in immediate indictments.

OK, admit it: after all that, Kanye West sounds pretty sane, doesn’t he?

At least harmless, right? Right?

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Nothing to Fear but…: A review of Fear

Fear: Trump in the White House

Bob Woodward

Simon & Schuster September 2018

Yes, I know the title of the book is Fear, and I should have regarded that as fair warning.

But FFS, I thought I would at least get through the Prologue without being reduced to mindless, numbing, existential terror!

In a well-reported vignette from the book, “On the desk was a one-page draft letter from the president addressed to the president of South Korea, terminating the United States–Korea Free Trade Agreement, known as KORUS.” Woodward goes on to relate the immense strategic, tactical, economic and diplomatic damage the United States would suffer as an almost immediate result of a sudden, unilateral withdrawal from KORUS.  

Gary Cohn, the former president of Goldman Sachs and the president’s top economic adviser, spotted the draft and stole it from the President’s desk, counting on Trump’s sparkler-like mind to forget about it. And in fact, he did.

Woodward writes, “It was no less than an administrative coup d’état, an undermining of the will of the president of the United States and his constitutional authority.”

That’s pretty scary right there.

Woodward goes on to relate a power struggle, with Trump and Kushner on one side, and Mattis, Cohn, and Porter on the other. Trump was determined to destroy KORUS, but only intermittently, and Kushner’s agenda was focused on real estate and Israel, so he didn’t seem to be behind the memos to destroy the pact.

So who was behind it? Woodward doesn’t know. Possibly even Trump doesn’t know.

That’s very scary. An unstable, mercurial president who is easily manipulated is bad enough, but when nobody even knows who is pulling his strings, that is truly terrifying.

Fear is a surprisingly easy read, broken up into 42 easily-digested chapters. A lot of them won’t taste very good, but that’s not Woodward’s fault—he just reports what he saw. And he saw a lot.

Just how crass, craven, amoral and reckless with the truth is Trump? This vignette, from the Chapter detailing Trump’s contentious relationship with NATO, sums it up nicely:

A staffer who sat in on several calls that Trump made to Gold Star families was struck with how much time and emotional energy Trump devoted to them. He had a copy of material from the deceased service member’s personnel file.

“I’m looking at his picture—such a beautiful boy,” Trump said in one call to family members. Where did he grow up? Where did he go to school? Why did he join the service?

“I’ve got the record here,” Trump said. “There are reports here that say how much he was loved. He was a great leader.”

Some in the Oval Office had copies of the service records. None of what Trump cited was there. He was just making it up. He knew what the families wanted to hear.

It’s been a week since the pre-release reviews of this book rocked the Trump White House. Since then, the op-ed by Anonymous came out, Trump called Woodward a liar and Woodward promptly produced a tape showing he talked to Trump, Trump made fist-bumps to celebrate 9/11, and his son Eric, poster child for post-partum abortion, made a stunningly anti-semitic remark about Woodward. Trump declared the catastrophe of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico an “unsung sucess” and promised to bring that same high level of preparation and competence to the Carolinas when Florence makes landfall late tomorrow.

I feel sorry for the Carolinas and wish them well.

It seems like in any given week, Trump manages to recapitulate the worst of Nixon, Reagan and Bush the Lesser.

As I finish Woodward’s latest and perhaps greatest, I’m reminded of another President: “…let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory.”

In those dark days, reality was what we feared, and Franklin Roosevelt was what stood up to it.

In these dark days, Trump is what we fear, and we have to stand up to him. Woodward is one of the strongest voices yet to do so.

We have nothing to fear but Trump himself.Nothin

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Send Out the Clowns — Trump in Europe, Congress in Sane

July 12th 2018

“I can’t help but wonder when I see you looking there with a little smirk how many times did you look all innocent in your wife’s eyes and lie about Ms. Page.”

And with that, Louie Gohmert, well known as being the most vicious clown in Congress, managed a new personal low, talking that august body, the House of Representatives, with him.

Wait, did I say ‘august’? Silly me. It’s only July. Although a case can be made for Congress being August; after all, that’s the dog days, and Congress has no shortage of curs.

Gohmert was attacking Peter Strzok, the FBI employee who wrote emails to his girlfriend disparaging then-candidate Donald Trump. Gohmert was exercising whatever it is that passes in him for moral outrage to defend the honor of serial adulterer Donald Trump.

It was a low point, but not by much. The Republicans were doing everything in their power to discredit Strzok, the FBI, the Justice Department, and anything and anyone that might bring Donald Trump and much of their own criminal party to justice.

The ones that weren’t vicious were almost preposterously stupid. Paul Gosar, an Arizona dentist who got tired of working for a living and ran for Congress, said to Strzok, “I’m a dentist, OK? So I read body language very, very well. And I watched you comment in your interactions with Mr. Gowdy. You got very angry in regards to the Gold Star father. That shows me that it’s innately a part of you and a bias.”

Well, OK, then. Let’s see if we can recreate the situation in that air conditioned dentist’s office that made Gosar such an expert.

“Observe, Watson. The patient has his hands drawn into claws. His back is arched, his face is red, tears are streaming from the sides of his eyes, and he is emitting a loud, shrill, unpleasant noise. Do you note?”

“Amazing, Gosar. I have observed, and noted none of these things. How do you do it?”

“Acute powers of observation, Watson. Nothing more. But what do you deduce from this?

“The patient is, perhaps, a Democrat.”

“That is possible. Likely, even. But it suggests something a more immediate nature, Watson.”

“What would that be, Gosar?”

“That I forgot to administer the novocaine.”

Yes, he’s a member of Congress. Three terms now. The tide brings him in every two years, and the voters keep throwing him back. Bad teeth must be a small price to pay.

Republicans actually tried to threaten Strzok with contempt of Congress for refusing to divulge FBI investigation details that he is forbidden by law to answer. It happened like this: After declaring a motion to adjourn out of order, Chairman Goodlatte, who will never be associated with a tasty coffee drink, erupted in fury that Strzok refused to answer questions pertaining to confidential or secret FBI matters and threatened him with Contempt, despite an existing agreement that the committee honor such restrictions on what they could demand of him. Gleeful Democrats demanded the committee recall Steve Bannon, who also refused to answer some questions, but his basis was that to do so might embarrass President Trump.

They even tried accusing Strzok of claiming Trump supporters stink because he went to a Walmart in the sticks and “could smell the levels of Trump support.” Apparently metaphor is beyond the intellectual capabilities of the moral giants and magic dentists of the GOP.

The Republicans were betting the farm that they would find something, anything, to suggest that a) Strzok was tring to influence the 2016 presidential election and b) that the Russians were not. It’s safe to say they failed miserably, managing in front of a huge television audience, to thoroughly cover themselves in shit. Contempt of Congress isn’t a crime; it’s a sign of mental health.

Congress wasn’t the only branch of government making a complete ass of itself, of course. Trump barreled through Europe, doing all he could go blow up NATO. (Ironically, at the same moment that Strzok was explaining to the Committee that his remark that Trump must be stopped was based on Trump’s campaign pledge to make defense of NATO allies conditional on how much vig they put up.) He deep-sixed his own ally other than Putin by telling Prime Minister Teresa May publicly that she handled brexit all wrong.

(Remember the howls of outrage when Obama told the Brits that Brexit would move the UK down a notch as a trading partner to America? “Monstrous outrage” was one of the terms they used. According to Faux News, “Trump slams British PM over Brexit plan, warns US trade deal ‘probably’ dead in the water.” with the sub header, “Despite anger in London, Trump finds support in England’s pro-Brexit working“-class towns.” Oh, well, that’s OK then. He has support in Sheffield, so who cares what London thinks? )

Obama said Brexit was a mistake, and was clearly trying to interfere in someone else’s election, and that’s not a bit like Trump’s best budyy, that nice Mister Putin, who wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing.

Speaking of which, Putin and Trump meet in Finland next. No staffers, no aids, no interpreters. No witnesses.

It’s a truly terrifying prospect.

But perhaps Congressman/Dentist Gosar will read their body language as they leave the meeting, and tell us just how badly Trump has sold us all out.

NOTE: Article corrected to reflect that Putin and Trump are meeting in Finland, not Iceland as I originally stated.

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Blame Canada — Or maybe it’s Canadian Bacon

Blame Canada — Or maybe it’s Canadian Bacon

By on Sunday, June 10, 2018

June 10th 2018

Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) just defined the term “custard head” by agreeing that if the summit between Pissmop and Little Rocket Man blow up, it’s all Canada’s fault. The only reason he won’t replace “custard head” in the dictionary is because it’s much easier to spell and pronounce than is Krishnamoorthi. Still, his constituents, in a deep blue district, need to peer closely at their Congressman and ask themselves if the man is secretly an idiot, or maybe just had one too many that morning.

You expect this sort of lunacy from the Trump administration, and most of the Republicans in Congress, who are so busy trying to conclude their coup against the United States that they basically don’t give a wet shit how crazy Donald is, so long as they can finish off the New Deal and those pesky Civil Rights that they hate so much.

It’s easy to dismiss Krishnamoorthi as a custard head. It’s kind of the default state of Trump supporters these days. There’s also the crooks and the traitors, but they tend to be a subset. Most Trump supporters are fools. Either they know what he is and don’t care, or they don’t know what he is. Either state requires a heroic amount of stupidity.

“Krishnamoorthi was cuing off shameless Trumpenflak Peter Navarro, who actually said out lout, “There’s a special place in hell for any foreign leader that engages in bad faith diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump and then tries to stab him in the back on the way out the door, and that’s what bad faith Justin Trudeau did with that stunt press conference…That’s what weak, dishonest Justin Trudeau did, and that comes right from Air Force One.”

OK, I immediately thought of the song, “Blame Canada” from the animated movie “South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut.”

But I also thought of Michael Moore’s foray into fictional satire, the movie, “Canadian Bacon.” In it, a US president (Alan Alda) is tricked into a near-nuclear war with Canada by a lunatic businessman (GD Spradlin) whose business failure he blames on Canadian tariffs. As the crisis mushrooms (so to speak) Alda’s character tries to phony up a new cold war with the Russian president, a fellow named Vladimir, and when that fails, proposes an international war on terrorism, a concept his cabinet dismisses as too absurd for words. He doesn’t want a war with Canada; he is educated, and knows what happened whenever the US tried messing with Canada. It never went well.

It’s depressing how sane and intelligent the characters, even Spradlin’s, are, compared to what we have in reality now.

Michael Moore made that movie 23 years ago. Obviously this is all his fault.

OK, so if Trump screws up in his meeting with Kim Jung Un, it’s Trudeau’s fault. He made Trump look weak, foolish and brittle, qualities nobody had ever suspected of Trump before the all-powerful Trudeau destroyed him.

I suspect that Trudeau, who is widely viewed in Canada as a kitten with some housebreaking issues, is Trump’s go-to foil, someone he can blame for if the talks are so catastrophic that even Trump can’t put lipstick on it. Trudeau is a lightweight who is a bit too cozy with oil and some other vested interests. He does great photo op, and has a knack for crowd-pleasing moves. Machiavellian and possessed of great personal power he is not. If his last name was “Smith” he would probably be in the Civil Service, in charge of teaching French in Newfoundland and Labrador. Yes, Canada has a province called “Newfoundland and Labrador.” It used to be just “Newfoundland” but someone decided a mouthful like that needed four more syllables. It’s not quite as goofy as “The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim”, but it is in the same league. Oh, wait. No, it’s in the Canadian League. But I digress.

I spent some time trying to think of historical parallels to this. I’m sure there are some, since many leaders in history have been childish, bratty, and incapable of normal human relationships. Most of them have been (wisely) forgotten by history. A fellow named Dr. Robert Sternberg wrote a book called Why Smart People Can Be So Foolish, and identified five fallacies associated with bad or unwise leadership. These fallacies were, in order given: Unrealistic Optimism; Ego-Centrism; Omniscience; Omnipotence; and Invulnerability. All involve large amounts of self-deception, slopping over into delusion.

Hmm. Looks like Trump is what the baseball scouts call “a five-tool player”. He makes Louie Gohmert look sane. That’s terrifying. He makes Krishnamoorthi look smart, even as he makes him sound stupid. That’s pretty scary, too.

Now, I’ve said in the past that I never expected this summit to take place. I figured someone in the Trump administration would figure out a way to put the brakes on this diplomatic disaster. But I keep underestimated the Republican capacity for servility and cowardice when it comes to Trump. They really are pathetic.

Trump, barring a massive political insult even he can’t ignore, will come back, gloating over his great victory. He will have convinced North Korea to destroy its nuclear arsenal, and in return, all America will have to do is destroy its own nuclear arsenal, cede Hawaii to North Korea, and become a province of Russia. Hawaii, because volcanoes and it will annoy the shit out of Barack Obama, and Russia because…well, that had nothing to do with Korea. He was going to do that anyway.

Chuck Schumer, a bit of a kitten himself, tweeted, “Are we executing Putin’s diplomatic and national security strategy or AMERICA’s diplomatic and national security strategy? After the last few days, it’s hard to tell.” No, actually, it’s all too easy to tell. Trump is a fool, a crook, and a traitor.

Now, Kim might greet Trump by telling him “I like Trudeau because he makes you look weak and stupid.” And during negotiations, speak to his aides (well, his sister) in Korea, with the only English word in clear being “Mueller” interspersed with giggles.

At which point, Trump will declare war on Canada, and then attack Mexico because someone handed him the map upside down.

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Milkin’ It — Why Canada Won’t Be Cowed By Trump

By on Saturday, June 9, 2018

June 9th 2018

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

In the chaotic and insane presser Trump gave at the G6+1 summit in Québec he railed about the Canadian tariffs of 270% on American dairy products. He howled that this was a devastating blow to America’s brave, patriot dairy farmers, or words to that effect. Canada was screwing America inside out, an insult not to be borne!

Oh, those awful, awful Canucks. (Truth in Advertising time for those who didn’t already know: I’m a Canuck). Two hundred and seventy percent! No wonder America’s going down the tubes! It’s probably why the US budget will have an extra trillion deficit next year!

Well, it was almost lost in the avalanche of sheer nonsense that Pissmop uttered during that strange press conference, but what makes his whines about Canadian dairy pure nonsense is this one inconvenient fact: The US actually enjoys a trade surplus with Canada in dairy. It’s about a 5-1 trade surplus, at that. Granted, the market, in both directions, is minuscule—about $600 million US—but it still means that the US exports about a half billion in dairy to Canada while Canada exports about $100 million to the US. Now, in case Trump is reading this, I’ll type it very slowly: The US does not have a trade deficit with Canada over dairy, the stuff that comes from cows, and for some reason, hens. It actually sells more than it buys. Have someone with actual business experience explain it to you, Donald.

So why is Fearless Leader pissing and moaning about Canadian cows? The best reason anyone can think of is that Canada has a regulated, efficient and effective dairy industry, whereas the American one is in such an intense state of cutthroat competition that there is a huge oversupply of milk, with the result that the “gate price”–the price distributors are willing to pay to take it off farmers’ hands—is lower than what it cost the farmers to produce the milk. And that’s with the cows doing all the work.

American dairy farmers overproduce, hoping that having more to sell means that more will be bought, and they will thus get a bigger share of the market. Anyone who has taken Econ 101 in high school knows this is utter nonsense, and someone who knows anyone who took Econ 101 in high school will probably be able to explain it to Pissmop.

Milk is milk is milk; there isn’t a great variation in quality from one farm to the next, despite what the advertising says, so the market is free to select the lowest price, knowing the quality will be about equal to the stuff selling for a few pennies more per gallon or liter. Which further drives down prices.

What will happen is what is happening: small farms are being driven, and the big dairy companies are buying their stock, overproducing yet more to destroy the remaining small farmers, and eventually they will turn on one another, and classic economics suggest we’ll eventually end up with a consortium of three-to-five big companies that will collude to artificially raise milk prices and limit supply. This is known as “the free market”, a market in which suppliers, consumers, and the product are anything but free in any sense of the word.

Not only are American farmers going broke competing with one another, but last year they cumulatively threw away forty three million gallons of milk—literally dumped into holes in the ground.

In Canada, they have this thing called “Supply management.” The Canadian Dairy Commission (and doesn’t the name just scream “Nazi socialism”?) set national quotas on supply, and coordinate with the ten provinces to ensure a stable market in which supply very nearly matches demand. (I don’t know if it applies in the Territories, despite that being nearly half of Canadian real estate—I haven’t heard much about an Inuit dairy industry, and cows are notoriously unhappy on ice).

Now here’s the thing: It works. It works extremely well. Yes, it means higher prices for consumers, but since Canadians enjoy a higher level of disposable income, nobody minds much. They look at the madness of the American industry and realize that the extra fifty cents a liter is a wise investment.

American wants a dumping ground for the surpluses created by its overheated cutthroat industry, and Canada isn’t interested in destroying its own efficient and effective industry in order to oblige suicidally competitive American dairy farmers. Nor do they want a system that encourages such patently destructive competition. They are also suspicious of lax American regulations regarding the use of hormones and antibiotics in cattle, and GMOs. The wild-west approach to basic health and safety measures in America has led to a deepening mistrust of American food products.

Pissmop has to know he’s spewing nonsense when he attacks Canada over dairy trade imbalances, since it’s obvious the existing imbalance actually works in America’s favor. (Part of the reason for that is that Canada doesn’t limit imports on cheese, and the American standards for cheese, which include permitting a certain amount of animal parts in the cheese, is much lower—as are the prices.)

Trump is taking a similar approach to trade with the rest of the world: American can’t compete because standards are low for their products, so Trump is demanding the rest of the world lower their health and safety regulations to let America compete “on a level playing field.”

The problem is the rest of the world, including Canada, perhaps America’s best friend, are looking at the US the way is is right now and muttering to themselves, “Don’t be that guy.”

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Gone Trumpin’ — North Korea Played Trump Like a Trout

By on Thursday, May 17, 2018

May 17th 2018

Even before Trump came along, America had a bad reputation about keeping their word in international agreements. There’s a long list of American toadies who sold out their countries to American interests and then got shafted anyway, ranging from the Shah to Ky to Saddam Hussein.

One lesson stood out: meet American demands to disarm, and get attacked anyway. It happened in Iraq, and it happened in Libya. The lesson was clear enough; acquisce, and get beaten up. Show a willingness to put up a fight, and the Americans will back off.

So it was never in the cards that the paranoid and secretive regime in Pyongyang would agree to American demands they give up their nuclear weapons. Even if they didn’t already regard America as the absolute evil in the world (an opinion formed, in certain measure, by American atrocities in the Korean war), they had the object lessons from other places.

And now, with Trump in charge, America is absolutely feckless, and totally bereft of any moral rudder. They reneged on the Paris agreement. They reneged on the Iran agreement. They reneged on multiple treaties, including SEATO and NAFTA.

If American couldn’t be trusted in the eyes of North Korea when they had an honest president (Carter) or at least one who would stay bought (Clinton), why would they throw away the one element of self-defence they possess dealing with Trump?

Trump had been crowing about his diplomatic triumphs, both imaginary and delusional, for several weeks, puffed up with grandeur of delusions fed by the Faux Noise machine, which promised Trump would surely win the Nobel Prize for all this. It was so ridiculous that if Kim was any better than Trump, he might have deflated Trump as an act of mercy, because Trump went beyond ridiculous.

Of course, Kim isn’t really in a good position to notice wild megalomania and paranoid self-aggrandizement. He may have considered Trump’s behavior to be normal.

But he deflated Trump, and made him look like a fool in a way even Trump couldn’t miss.

The denouement was triggered, in part, by joint South Korea/US military exercises, which Pyongyang interpreted as an affront and an expression of poor faith bargaining. The Pentagon may have argued that they couldn’t stop the exercises because red tape would have reared up and strangled them all (not seeing a downside here…) but even if it wasn’t meant as an insult, or at least a challenge, it was taken that way.

Trump reacted with typical good grace, promising Kim he would meet the same fate that Gaddafi did. That seems a good way to restore Kim’s trust: threaten to have him lynched and stuffed in a sewer pipe.

Ah, Trump. Always the charmer. That’s how he proposed to Melania, you know.

He then went on to offer the least convincing carrot-and-stick deal since Hitler assured Churchill he could keep his brandy and cigars: Kim “will get protections that will be very strong. He’d be in his country and running his country. His country would be very rich.”

Why, he would even be allowed to stay in office and rule the country, if you define “office” as “stuffed in a sewer pipe” and rule as “having your intestines set on fire and your testicles ripped off.”

I just can’t imagine how Kim would refuse a deal like that. Trump is very trustworthy, you know: he says, “You can believe me” all the time. He couldn’t say that if it wasn’t true.

Trump will probably have to back away in angry confusion. He’s already so weakened as President that if he ordered an attack on North Korea (almost certain to result in nuclear and conventional attack on South Korea that would kill tens of millions) the Pentagon might actually mutiny. There’s already been open talk in the military about defying some of the more capricious scenarios likely to occur under Trump.

Iran has to be watching this closely, both for signs a humiliated Trump might try to save face by lashing out at them, and for object lessens on how to manage Trump. He is not shrewd, he’s easily played, and all Iran needs to do is figure out a good point of leverage. What can they offer to stroke Trump’s ego, and how can they manage it to either continue to play him, or if to make him fall flat on his face, leave him baffled and helpless.

Hint: look to Qatar. Suddenly, they’re Trump’s best buddies again. And all it cost them was a $300 million investment in that enormous white elephant at 666 Park Place.

Time is on the side of Trump’s would-be targets: as more and more evidence of Trump’s criminal and possibly treasonous activities emerge, his residency in office appears shorter and shorter. Even Senate Republicans are showing a willingness to move against him at this point.

In the meantime, in North Korea, they’re probably planning a spectacular military parade (of the type Trump yearns for so tragically) to celebrate their stupendous victory over the evil Americans.

Not that it matters to the North Korean people: they have to applaud such displays every other day and twice on Sundays, and somehow, they still go hungry.

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