Tag: Trump

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Comeuppance – Trump deserves one; America needs one

December 14th 2018

We’re at the point now where there is no longer any reasonable doubt that Trump committed dozens, perhaps hundreds of felonies in his sordid and tawdry life, and at least dozens following his decision to become President. At the very least, he turned his candidacy and presidency into a cash cow. At worst, he conspired against his own country with a hostile foreign power for personal gain.

Yes, I know: ‘Innocent until Proven Guilty.’ But he has admitted—even bragged about—a number of felonies he committed on Twitter. His personal lawyer and his campaign chair have pled guilty to felonies they committed at his behest. He is a liar. He is a thief. His presidency has been an utter disaster, one that has cost America, and Americans, dearly.

It’s the “much worse” items, the ones not already proven in a court of law, that should scare people. If he didn’t openly betray his country, he certainly betrayed the people who voted for him.

So what happens next?

Well, until the past couple of days, when the magnitude of the case against him became more evident, most Republicans and centrist Democrats were saying that impeachment was out of the question. I believed myself that until fear for their own futures outweighed their lust for power, Senate Republicans would never convict, no matter how compelling a case. It’s a sad state of affairs when most of the Senate is on the exact same level as the juries in those old Soviet show trials of the thirties.

It’s part and parcel of the Republican approach to the law in what is supposed to be a nation of laws. They are now openly contemptuous of the law—Orrin Hatch said yesterday that he simply didn’t care if Trump broke the law. He walked it back later, after discovering that the optics were bad, but you can be sure he still feels that way. Republicans sneer at the law, using it only as a device to attack Democrats and anyone else who doesn’t support them. We didn’t see those endless, fruitless investigations into the Clinton and Obama because Republicans loved and respected the law. They just wanted to use it as a cudgel if the found anything, and as a smear if they didn’t. Beyond that, they think the law is for suckers, for the little people.

We didn’t get to this point by accident. Nixon, who probably should have been hanged as a traitor, was dragged into the spotlight, accused of many lesser crimes, including perjury and obstruction of justice. The evidence was overwhelming, and he was forced to resign or be impeached. The nation breathed a sigh of relief. “Our long national nightmare has ended.” Remember that?

Then Ford pardoned him. Nixon would face no charges.

It was a body blow to American’s faith in the system. I remember that evening going to a coffee shop with a friend, and the waitress, who knew us as regulars, asked why we looked so down. “Ford just pardoned Nixon,” I replied. She snarled “Oh, goddammit” and threw the tray down. She ran out to the kitchen, and a few minutes later saw the manager walking her out, talking angrily to her. I was about to get up and defend her, tell the manager I said something that upset her and wanted to apologize but then saw the manager stop dead, stare at her, and as I approached, said, “Really? He did that?” He paused. “OK—clean that up, get back to work.”

It hurt America that that vicious dirtbag walk free.

Then George HW Bush did the same thing, issuing a raft of pardons at the end of his term, kicking the huge Iran-Contra case to splinters and letting many felons and traitors walk free. Instead of keeping his senile ass out of jail, Republicans felt free to talk about putting Reagan on Mount Rushmore, or replace FDR on the dime with their broken hero.

By that time, Republicans knew they were well above the law, but were free to abuse it to hurt others.

The people building the case against Trump know about Republican unearned privilege, too. That’s why a lot of the investigations have been taking place at the state level, where Trump’s power to pardon is annulled.

For Americans who haven’t drunk from the poisoned chalice of Republican entitlement, there is a sense of dread. Dread that Mueller, the Congress, and the other investigatory agencies might bring a damaged case that will let Trump and his minions off on a technicality (remember Ollie North?). The law-and-order crowd, who scream about people getting off on “technicalities” (such as police falsifying evidence, or browbeating simple minded victims into making false confessions) would just love it if Trump walked because a form was filed ten minutes after the deadline.

There remains the argument that a president shouldn’t be indicted. Trump named a ratfucker to the Supreme Court solely on the basis that said ratfucker believed presidents cannot be indicted, only impeached. Same ratfucker who fought for Jones vs. Clinton, upholding the right to sue a sitting president.

They dread that a trial might pull the country apart. A fair trial might; a biased trial certainly would.

They dread he’ll get a slap on the wrist. The sight of the near-treasonous Flynn walking while an abused 16 year old girl gets 51 years for killing her “owner” is a stark reminder of how fucked up justice is in the country, and how far the scales are biased in favor of rich white privilege.

And of course, they dread the pardon. Republicans have abused it to tear the soul out of the country, waitresses, soldiers, any honest person who wants an honest system. It’s possible that Pence will be indicted and convicted alongside Trump, since he’s tits deep in a lot of the emoluments violations, but will Pelosi, as president, have the resolve to allow justice to be done? Centrist Democrats are seen, with good reason, as being too accommodating and obliging to the fascist right, a party of Chamberlains who fail to grasp the nature of their adversaries.

This isn’t just a test of Trump and his sleazy criminal gang; it’s a test of the country, and the countries resolve to administer justice to the rich and powerful.

If they blow it again, that will be strike three.

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The Filings – Grinding the crooks down

December 7th, 2018

Rather than reinvent the wheel, I’ll just quote the fine recapitulation of Donald Trump’s adventures with the law provided by Sabrina Siddiqui, writing for the Guardian:

  • Cohen told investigators he made efforts to contact the Russian government to propose a meeting between Trump and Putin in 2015, after discussing this with Trump.
  • Prosecutors recommended Cohen receive a prison sentence of about four years.
  • The government for the first time implicated the president in Cohen’s campaign finance violations, saying the attorney “acted in coordination with and at the direction” of Trump.
  • Paul Manafort lied to the FBI and to the special counsel’s office, according to a separate filing by Mueller on Friday.
  • The former campaign chairman tried to conceal his contact with an “administration official” inside the White House as late as May 2018, the filing said.
  • Mueller wrote: “Manafort told multiple discernible lies – these were not instances of mere memory lapses.”
  • James Comey, former FBI director, testified before the House judiciary and oversight committees on Friday, and later criticized the process.
  • Trump tweeted attacks on Comey and also wrongly claimed the sentencing memo “clears the president”.
  • John Kelly, White House chief of staff, has been interviewed by Mueller’s team and is expected to quit, CNN reported.
  • George Papadopoulos, former aide to Trump’s campaign, was released from prison on Friday after serving 12 days for lying to the federal government about his contacts with the Russians.
  • Trump nominated William Barr as the next attorney general, selecting a man who served in the role under George HW Bush.

Well, that’s quite a bit to digest. Cohen committed felonies at the behest of “Individual-1”, aka, Donald J. Trump, President of the United States. This means that the President has been officially accused of a felony, since the act of ordering someone to commit a felony on your behalf is, in itself, a felony.

Manafort lied to everyone about pretty much everything. We kinda knew that already, but you know, it doesn’t hurt to recap what a monumental pile of human shit Trump built his presidency upon.

Kelly’s going to quit. Too late to save his reputation, but at least he won’t be sharing a prison cell with Flynn. Granted, Flynn won’t do any jail time, but that just makes him a smarter lickspittle to Trump, not a better one.

Comey went to Congress to answer their questions. They wanted to know about…Hillary’s emails. No shit. I’m not kidding. They’re still rabbiting on about that. Even though it came to light that unsecured emails were common throughout the Trump campaign, and in the Trump administration. Trump doesn’t even use a secured cellphone because he’s too stupid to figure out how it works. The Republicans wonder why they are doing extinct. Despite what they believe, there’s only so much stupid out there.

Trump bragged that the filings today “clears the President” which reaches Baghdad Bob levels of bullshittery. Anyone remember Joe Isuzu? Yeah, that level of in your face lying. Thousands of people lined up on the web to remind Trump of who “Individual-1” actually is. Hint, Donnie: it’s not Hillary Clinton.

Whitaker was apparently just taking up oxygen. I would love to hear the story of how he wound up not systematically trying to destroy the Mueller investigation; I doubt very much that he or Trump had a change of heart and decided justice must take its course. So Trump is going to nominate William Barr, who is basking in the reflected glow of the newly-sainted George HW Bush, now suddenly a hero due to his ability to drop dead at the age of 94. Barr was Bush’s A-G. On the surface, it seems a wise choice: previous experience, and smells of the aroma of the closest thing to a respectable person the Republicans have remaining. Well, until he died, that is.

But here’s the thing you need to know about Barr: he was Attorney-General at the same time that Bush ordered all those pardons, the ones that wiped out nearly 200 felony charges and thousands of lessor charges from dozens of people working in the corrupt, morally bankrupt Reagan administration. In a sane society, Bush would have gone to prison for obstruction of justice, and Barr would have been in the next cell over as his accomplice. So if you think Trump wants a decent, respectable man in the position, stop it. Just stop it.

But here’s the most important thing: George Papadopoulos is FREE! Let the bells ring out, let the children cheer! It seem too good to be true, but he’s free! And one day he’ll show up at your neighborhood bar, drunk off his tits, and tell you the story of how he set Donnie up for a one-night stand with Vladimir Putin and got a nice fur coat in return. I bet you can’t wait.

And some people say there is no god…

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The Plea Bag – Mueller outsmarts them all

November 27th 2018

Like everyone, I’m watching the spiral death dance of the Trump with a mixture of wonder and disgust.

We expected major developments from the Mueller probe this week, and we certainly have been getting those. They just aren’t the ones anyone expected.

What we’re getting is a whole lot more twistier and amusing.

Let’s start with Paul Manafort, once and future felon. Mueller’s office dropped the plea bargain arrangement they had up until yesterday, on the grounds that Manafort had been steadfastly and systematically lying to them.

Of course, there are dozens of theories about why Manafort would lie (nobody, as far as I know, has tried to suggest he wasn’t lying and Mueller is simply wrong). Perhaps Trump has been dangling a pardon, in itself obstruction of justice. Manafort may have been afraid of Trump, or some of Trump’s mob contacts, or perhaps Vladimir Putin. Or he may have just thought he could pull it off.

I can just picture Manafort meeting with one or two members of Mueller’s team. As Manafort talks, the Feds are enrapt, scribbling furiously or clacking their keyboards, even though everything is being videoed. Manafort will correctly assume this means they are taking his testimony very seriously, in a way a silent and unassuming camera eye cannot. It inflates Manafort’s sense of self-importance and self-worth.

Suddenly, the agent with the computer sighs and slaps the laptop shut. He sighs. “Damn thing crapped out again.” He looks at his partner. “Do you have yours handy?”

The partner shakes his head. “Died Wednesday. I was supposed to have one for this meeting. You know how important M thinks it is.”

The first agent turns to Manafort, a sad smile inviting sympathy. “You know how it is. You worked on the campaign. It’s the same here. People screaming at each other, in panic, nothing gets done.” He olds up his number 2 pencil. “Why if it wasn’t for this…”

Manafort nods sympathetically. He was the one sane man in the chaos of the Trump campaign.

Later, the agents make a friendly wager on how long it will take for their little “slip” to turn up in a Trump speech. Mueller runs a tight ship, but the White House leaks more than a geriatric ward, and so they know that Trump is trying to use Manafort as a mole into the Special Prosecutor’s activities.

And of course, it did start showing up in the speeches and trumpentweets. You have to wonder how many other false tidbits Mueller’s people fed to Manafort to confuse and divert the already confused and diverted Trump.

Then there’s the thing with Julian Assange. Mueller’s office filed a court document that accidentally named Assange as being under a sealed indictment. The document didn’t say what the charge(s) was, or when it was filed, and people thought it odd the normally legally meticulous Mueller legal team would make such an error.

But it apparently shook something loose. The Guardian reported yesterday that “Manafort visited Julian Assange three times at the Ecuadorian embassy, including once during the 2016 election.” That right there would send Steven Colbert’s right eyebrow clear up into his hairline. Then it broke that the Trump team had been conferring with Ecuador over their somewhat unwelcome sanctuary guest in their London embassy, meeting with them as recently as yesterday. The speculation is that they are begging Ecuador to NOT release Assange over to American authorities.

Gee, I remember being critical of Obama because he did want Assange turned over to American authorities. Strange times we live in, eh?

Manafort and the Trump people are vociferously denying the report, and given the general ethics and moral characters of those worthies, I can’t help but conclude that it means the report is true. Terribly unfair of me, I know, but when the ball keeps landing in double zero, it’s pretty stupid to bet against the house.

When Mueller asked for a ten day extension on the plea bargain arrangement with Manafort, everyone assumed he just wanted more time to draft his next round of major charges, and was just doing due diligence. We now know that can’t be the case, because we’ve learned that Mueller had proof Manafort was lying, and he knew what Manafort was lying about and when. And because he had to know Manafort was feeding information back to the Trump people through some likely-to-get-disbarred-if-not-imprisoned lawyers, he was systematically convincing Manafort he was being believed, and he was probably feeding disinformation for Manafort to send back to his homies.

So why the ten-day extension? The plea bargain deal was already dead. Why extend it to yesterday?

That’s the deadline for Trump to turn in his written answers to Mueller’s questions about cooperation between the Russians and the Trump campaign.

He turned them in with help from his lawyers who, through Manafort, believed they had a handle on what Mueller did and did not know, and thus had an idea what lies Trump could tell that would be safe.

This right here is a major disaster for Trump, but he really sealed his fate hours after he turned his under-oath answers to Mueller, publicly boasting that his lawyers did not write the responses, but that he did them himself. Every word.

The sad thing (OK, the hilariously sad thing) is that Trump is probably bullshitting and in reality probably just signed off on answers his lawyers wrote and probably had at best a dim understanding of their contents.

But his public boast stripped him of his one and only fig leaf, and the cold blasts of the perjury indictments are coming.

Somewhere in Mueller’s spartan offices, a couple of junior lawyers are holding up a number two pencil, and laughing their asses off. And they may have just helped save the country.

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The Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy – Who knew the Trump White House was infested with libruls?

The Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy

Who knew the Trump White House was infested with libruls?

November 25th 2018

I’ve been hearing chatter lately about a Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy. David Bossie, who was one of Paul Manafort’s wing men during the campaign, told an increasingly strained Chris Wallace, “There is a vast left-wing conspiracy that has been going on since the president won this election. All throughout the transition and through his first two years.”

We’ll get back to that facet of the VLWC in a moment. Bossie went on to say, “A vast left-wing conspiracy, similar to what Hillary Clinton used [to say] about a right-wing conspiracy.” Chris Wallace interrupted him, auto-saying, “Which incidentally didn’t turn out to be true,” since they’ve been denying the existence of such since about 1991. Even before Hillary pointed out the deliberate machinations of the right to undermine and defame the Clintons.

Bossie wasn’t buying it. Saying the VRWC really existed, he said, “Chris, there was an effort by the conservative movement to undermine President Clinton.”

Well, duh.

So let’s get back to the VLWC. There’s absolutely no doubt that liberals and leftists have opposed Trump since he announced he was running in 2015. It goes by many names: The Democratic Party, The Resistance, and so on. After three years of being somewhat ineffectual in their opposition to Pissmop, they finally landed a damaging blow on November 6th with a gigantic “blue wave” vote.

Prior to that, about the only thing we managed to do was to annoy Trump, who was in high dungeon over the fact that members of the opposition party might oppose him, or traitors to America who don’t like fascists and racists. We had absolutely zero luck in shaming GOP officials into trying to stop him before he wrecked the country, and even less luck in budging the polls further away from Trump. (His approval is locked at 41%, +/- 3%).

Trump has taken considerable damage already: his business brand, such as it was, is ruined beyond repair. While still capable of doing considerable damage through his sheer genius at mismanagement, he’s lost the House, so he isn’t going to get legislation to the still-barely-Republican Senate, and support in the upper house is eroding rapidly now that the writing is on the wall.

There’s three primary sources to the most damage Trump has taken, and none of those sources qualify as ‘left wing’.

First, there’s the personnel in all the agencies he’s alienated. Right wingers love to talk about how agencies dealing with education, welfare, science, etc., are all “liberal” but the fact is that while they tend to favor Democratic policies by overwhelming margins, it isn’t because they are liberal. It because for decades Republicans have been dumping on them, calling them dupes, liars, anti-American and anti-God for simply stating easily-proven facts.

Hint to Republicans: when you spend half a century pissing on someone’s head because what they know doesn’t jibe with what you want to believe, don’t expect them to believe you when you tell them it’s holy water—and don’t expect them to vote for you. Trump took that on-going abuse and turned it up a notch.

That he managed to alienate the intelligence agencies took real talent. These are the children of J. Edger Hoover and Wild Bill Donovan, and they’re about as liberal as Genghis Khan.

Yes, there are a lot of people in government who hate Trump. But it’s not because they are Democrats; it’s because they hate Trump, and he’s given them a lot of reasons for doing so.

The Mueller Investigation: It wouldn’t even exist if he hadn’t vindictively fired the best friend he had in all of government, the man who single-handed sank Clinton’s campaign in the final two weeks, James Comey. Comey is no left winger. But it brought about the investigation, run by a Republican, Robert Mueller, and supervised until last week by another Republican, Rod Rosenstein.

All the People in the Know expect Mueller to pounce this coming week, and even if the appointment of the Toilet Heist Master to oversee Mueller pressured Mueller, the results should be damning. Given that Trump’s Congressional support amounts to “Can this crazy son of a bitch help me get what I want” the sliderule governing that support is going to shift heavily against Trump.

White House Staff: Ever had a boss like Trump? I have, once. Weak, authoritarian, vicious. Back stabbing. Plays people off against one another, pays no attention to rights and responsibilities of either his subordinates or himself, and demands absolute loyalty from the people he is abusing. Workplace is a nightmare where the ability to betray is the only currency of the place. Working for someone like Trump is a nightmare. I know, because I have. I got out, and saved my sanity.

It’s a pretty safe bet that the white house staff aren’t secret left-wingers, unless you count the cooking staff and the gardeners. Especially the guy who does the roses; the rose is the symbol of the Democratic Socialists of America, you know. It’s a thorny issue.

Most of Trump’s flunkies are absolutely hateful people, partly because those are the only types willing to work for him, and party because they have to front for a hateful person. The public despises them, but many people also pity them.

Some of the most egregious partisans are back-pedaling furiously, trying to save their (generally worthless) asses: Frank Luntz on on Faux News the other day, devoutly declaring he couldn’t call himself a Republican any longer. No blinding lights and fluttering angels to this particular self-apotheosis, though: Luntz went on to say it was both parties, really. He didn’t get enlightenment: he just wants to be standing outside the blast zone when it goes off. That Luntz, always with the liberal sensitivities!

Not to disparage the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy: we have been first-most, and steadfast in our opposition to Trump and what he represents. But we weren’t the ones who damaged him. He damaged the people who supported him, including members of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, and they whipped around and bit him on the ass. They are the ones that did the real damage.

In the end, as always, Donald Trump’s greatest enemy is Donald Trump.

I suppose we should be grateful for that.

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Our Rakish President – Trump uses his to start forest fires

November 21st 2018

“Obama judges have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country.”

Those were the words uttered by the five-and-dime Mussolini in the Oval Office today, and it may be the scariest thing he’s uttered to date. By implication, Trump judges are good for the safety of the country, whereas non-Trump judges are…well, traitors, apparently. It isn’t enough that the judge he originally picked a fight with yesterday, US district judge Jon Tigar in San Francisco has nearly a decade on the bench (He issued a temporary restraining order against Trump’s proclamation that he could incarcerate asylum-seekers). Roberts himself was nominated by George W. Bush in 2005 and while I think he’s far too chummy with business interests, I don’t consider him a threat to the safety of the country.

A relatively straightforward lower court decision, observing the country’s mandate by treaty on how to treat asylum-seekers, seems to have triggered the biggest confrontation between the Court and an Administration since FDR’s famous effort to pack the court in 1936.

The constitutionality of “the court pack” never was resolved. The court began issuing rulings favorable to FDRs New Deal programs even before FDR’s too-smart-by-half idea, and interest in the court pack waned among Congressional Democrats. One judge had a change of heart regarding New Deal Acts that began before the court pack idea was brought up, a fellow named Roberts. Owen Roberts. He had been a swing vote between the four conservatives on the court and the four liberals, the New Deal’s version of Anthony Kennedy.

Our Roberts isn’t that Roberts, and Trump pretty clearly is no FDR. I don’t think we’ll see anything resembling a rapprochement there.

FDR and his allies were slier in their attack on the courts. FDR was the concern troll, fretting that the nine old men, many in their 70s, might find the burden of the many cases before the Court to be an undue burden, and should welcome the help of four or five young, strapping judges who can lift the Constitution over their heads and give it a good stout flapping. His allies are busy, including publishing a book, “Nine Old Men” that inferred that the court might have some problems with senility creeping in.

Trump, of course, is a bit more direct, simply saying that justices not appointed by him presented a threat to the safety of the county. He probably can’t display the same wit and brilliance with the name “Roberts” that he did with “Adam Schitt”. Our President, the third-grader.

Trump has authorized US troops guarding the border against migrant caravans to use deadly force if necessary. Citing “credible evidence and intelligence” (in other words, Trump pulled it out of his ass) Trump believes that thousands of approaching Central American migrants “may prompt incidents of violence and disorder” that could threaten border patrol agents and other government personnel. His order expands the authority of US troops to include “a show or use of force (including lethal force, where necessary), crowd control, temporary detention and cursory search” to protect the border agents.

Those poor border agents. How will the poor dears deal with a group of unarmed men, women, old folks and children who are still some 800 miles away and won’t even show up until at least March? Or longer, given their travel plans.

You see, those troops that Trump has boldly sent to protect the poor, quivering, border agents from possible contact with aliens? They went to Laredo, Texas. The caravan is going to San Diego, some 1,500 miles to the left of Laredo.

Oh, well, the troops can cover themselves in glory potshotting Mexican kids who look like they might be thinking of tossing a rock at the heavily-armed troops. After all, it worked for Netanyahu. A true hero in Trump’s eyes.

Posse Comitatus? Oh, you’re thinking of the OLD United States, and not the new and improved Trump version.

It’s raining in Northern California right now, and with a sigh of relief, Smokey the Bear can lay down his rake. While this storm won’t bring much to Southern California, the long-range (November 27-December 6th) looks pretty promising. Everybody is ready for a respite in the fires, and I just hope the Camp Fire area doesn’t get too much rain. Montecito is still fresh in our memories (and still at risk, nearly a year later). Likewise the millions of other acres burned in this ongoing nightmare. One clown on Facebook castigated ignorant liberals who probably didn’t know where Paradise was for doubting the acumen of Glorious Leader, showing a picture of a piling cat, saying that this was the ‘rake’ Trump was talking about. A piling cat is about 10-15 feet wide, with 6 or 8 big tines, and resembles the big tilling machines tractors tow around fields. Nobody calls it a ‘rake.’

I see Ivanka was busted for using an unsecured email server for government business. How about it, Pissmop? Gonna chant “Lock her up”? Oh, give it a go! We watched your grotesque turkey pardon thing yesterday: this is your chance to surprise us all with a flash of self-deprecating wit and humor. Or even, “I pardon peas, carrots, Ivanka and myself”.

Of course, if you ever venture out where you can hear crowds, you hear “Lock HIM up” a lot from now on. Unless you feel, as you do with American troops, that if you go out where they can see you, someone might shoot you.

Gosh, that would be a real shame. Stay hidden and stay safe. Keep your rake handy against all the forest fires you’re starting politically.

PS: If Trump is impeached, guess who oversees his Senate trial?

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Election 2018 – And its possible aftermath

November 5th, 2018

It has been brought to my attention that there is some sort of election thingie tomorrow. An unkempt person, disheveled with wild, wide eyes and arms failing in futile violence, screamed at me that the entire future of humanity rested on this election, and that I must implore everyone to vote right away!

I really have to get rid of that mirror. Nobody likes bad-news mirrors, and you don’t even have to be an evil narcissist to have one seriously fuck you up.

There will be no vote imploring from me. If you haven’t decided if you are going to vote or not, you probably aren’t reading this, and are too dumb and apathetic to be reading much of anything more involved than the directions on how to make a grilled cheese sandwich.

For the rest of you, yes, quite a bit rests on this election. However, the rest of the world, should America fall, will simply close ranks and go around the former world leader. Yes, America is mighty militarily, but it still needs to engage and trade with the rest of the world in order to survive.

Trump is not a negotiator. For starters, he announces up front that he plans to screw the people he’s negotiating with, which deincentivizes those people from negotiations. Would you buy a car from a guy who tells you he has the best profit margins from car sales in the state? If you would, call me: have I got a sweet deal for you! Well, a sweet deal for one of us, anyway. You like sweet deals, right?

Trump boasts himself into corners. Take NAFTA. After announcing he was going to shaft Canada, he was dismayed when Canadians turned down his polite offer to be shafted. Having boasted he could swing a great deal by pressuring Canada, he threatened the Canadian auto industry, which consists of such Canadian enterprises as Ford and GM. Turned out he lost the support of the very people he was trying to protect from those evil Canucks, Ford and GM. Cornered by his own bombast, he finally signed a deal with Canada in which America actually made more concession, because Trump desperately needed an agreement he could lie about and proclaim to be a great victory for Trump America. In poker terms, Canada had a pair, and Trump had a busted flush, and Canada walked away with the pot, leaving Trump to scream that his hand was a lot closer to a real flush than a lousy pair!

Most of the world looks at Trump with a mixture of sadness and apprehension. He’s a pathetic clown, but he is a very troublesome pathetic clown, and what’s more, he is greatly strengthening the hands of other players in the game who are not clowns: China and Russia.

So as Americans vote, American prestige and influence, already plummeting, might go past the point of no return. If it does, that means a lot of problems for a lot of people, but in the end the world will carry on, they way it did following the fall of every other mighty empire.

In a best case scenario, the Democrats take the House, and Trump is in prison by 2020. That won’t solve the problem of Republicans in general, a party gone mad, but it will pin their ears back some. Worst case scenario, Republicans keep the House and Senate, and only the most naive or the most cynical Republican supporters believe America will have anything in common with the America of 25 years ago. Oh, America will still have an election in 2020, but it will be about as relevant as the elections they used to have in the Soviet Union.

The elections won’t save America, and could seal America’s fate. It’s not a great choice, but it’s probably the last best chance most people will get to have a choice.

Just remember that when you wake up on Wednesday, Trump will still be in the Oval Office. Republicans will still control congress, and will have two months to try and entrench as much of their toxic fascist agenda as possible. The Supreme Court will still consist of four liberals, four fascists, and a GOP ratfucker. November 7th will not be rainbows and butterflies, and the real fighting may just be starting.

The other day I wrote about an article by Stephen Marche on a respected blog in Canada speculating on what Canada should do in the event of an American civil war. It was a jarring thing to see.

CBC radio, the heart of journalist decorum and restraint, had a lead story referencing Marche under the headline, “What should Canada do if there’s a civil war in the U.S.?” This is the CBC, which probably started its September 1st 1939 broadcast with something like, “There appears to have been a spot of bother in Poland today as Chancellor Hitler continues to behave in an impolite manner.” They aren’t given to frantic arm waving, or, being non-profit, overly obsessed with ratings and clicks. Such a headline would be unthinkable unless they seriously believed that a civil war or other forms of violent chaos was truly in the offing for the United States.

Despite Trump, Canada remains the closest thing to a friend the United States has. If a friend tells you you look very ill and ought to see a doctor, you should at least consider the advice.

I’m not sure such a calamity can be sidestepped. But all sane Americans need to be aware of the danger, and think hard on how it might be averted. Despite what the history books say, nobody ever wins those types of battles.

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The Cowardice – If you are a bigot, you are a coward

November 1st 2018

The main premises underlying bigotry are fear of those who are different in some way, any way, and a desire to twist society to give yourself an unfair advantage over the people you hate and fear.

It is cowardice.

That’s not a descriptive; it’s the absolute basis for bigotry. Without fear there cannot be bigotry.

It’s said that we all harbor racist impulses. If you are walking down a street and you find yourself surrounded by people who are different, it’s normal to feel a slight sense of anxiety. On bad days, we may all see someone who is different do something boneheaded or foolish, and think “typical.”

We all are anxious about the Others, and that transcends all races, all ethnicities, all religions.

It’s what we do about it that either makes us decent human beings, or cowards.

Decent people understand what the animal impulse is, and set it aside. Cowards use it to justify and feed their fear.

You can choose to be a coward. You can choose to be a bigot. You have then chosen to be a weak and vicious person. You have chosen to be contemptible.

I can’t help but wonder what the 15,000 troops Donald Trump is sending to the Mexican border are feeling. They’re under discipline; they can’t express their thoughts and opinions on the matter. But they have to know that in being sent, heavily armed, with orders to shoot “rock throwers” from a group of families with children and grandparents, some barefoot, who are walking the length of Mexico and have 1,300 miles to cover, and that they are being used by a low, loathsome man for a low, loathsome purpose.

The Pentagon knows. They leaked a risk assessment report, something they never do. Their conclusion: there is no threat. There have been previous caravans from the desperate lands colonized by American corporations that used vile fascism to control workers and protect industry. Many caravans of frightened, desperate people, taking everything they can carry on their backs, hoping for a better life. They are sometimes barefoot, pregnant, carrying children. Elders ride in hand-drawn carts.

Mexico is a wild and forbidding land, variated and beautiful, but daunting to hike. These people are walking the equivalent of Maine to Florida, through jungle and desert.

It’s something the Pentagon has seen quite a few times, and very few of the people in the caravan actually make it to the American border. And when they get here, they aren’t interested in throwing rocks; they want jobs, and a chance to educate their kids, and a better life.

There has to be a lot of contempt and disgust for this President and his weak followers amongst the American military leadership. They signed on to defend America and the Constitution, and not a mob of inchoate, cowardly strutting bigots. Trump and his howling followers are as alien to American as Hitler and his brownshirts were to Germany in 1923.

Many Germans thought they were better than that, and most of them were. But enough weren’t.

Forty percent of Americans support Trump. They are the worst of America; the coward, the bigots, the vicious and violent, the ignorant and the godstruck. Their strutting masks deep fear.

So they consider it courageous to shoot Jews at their place of worship. They admire Trump for going and desecrating the grieving and mourning of the survivors. They moan about how they are victims and will be until they have put themselves above the law and all others are subject to their laws. Gays have no rights. Immigrants have no rights. African Americans have no rights. The list of people they think don’t deserve rights is very long, and based on a sense of grievance, an insane notion that people who have the same rights they do have an advantage.

Cowardice.

Trump is trying to harvest the Coward-American vote, with grandiose promises to throw hundreds of thousands into tent-cities (with hot and cold running Zyclon-B, perhaps) playing on their yammering fear to crowd around his ersatz aura of Father Invincibility. He vowed to greet the caravan with live ammo, perhaps the most craven moment in American history.

If you agree with Trump, you aren’t just wrong, not just inhumane. You are a coward. You are contemptible. Shooting kids because they look like they could be capable of throwing rocks? It’s why Israel, once the most broadly supported country on Earth, is now met with scorn and disgust. But Netanyahu, another strutting bully and coward and disgrace to his country, seems to be Trump’s role model. Shoot kids. I’ll make you look strong and resolute.

I believe Americans are better than this. The only question is if they contain the ones who aren’t better than this. After all, we have the example of Germany to look to. Lot of good people in Germany.

Just not enough.

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Madness Awaits – The savagery of the GOP laid bare

Madness Awaits

The savagery of the GOP laid bare

October 21st, 2018

As the midterms near, the sheer madness of America’s descent has become nakedly clear. A journalist, an American resident, is tortured and murdered in a Saudi Arabian embassy, and the President of the United States spins excuses on behalf of the Saudi Crown Efrit who doubtlessly ordered the murder.

The next day, Pissmop praises a Congressman who body-slammed a reporter for the crime of asking a question. Later, he claimed he was just joking, but the howling, maddened mob who cheered him and made death gestures at reporters in attendance were not joking.

Meanwhile, the propagandistic pseudo-reporters of the far right are transfixed by the existential threat of a group of men, women, and children who are slowly making their way out of the horrors of their homelands in central America, intent on walking the length of Mexico, some 1,800 miles, to petition for amnesty at the American border. Declaring them criminals—which they aren’t—Pissmop told his mindless screamers that something must be done right away, and only the GOP can save them from the ravening horde limping its way north.

The group includes old people and children, and are on foot, so they probably aren’t moving much faster than Pissmop can waddle around his golf course. Let’s see: 1,800 miles divided by waddle equals lots of time to figure out humane and sensible answers. But Pissmop doesn’t want that.

Pissmop claims that Democrats want open borders and this huge menace will invade America the day after the election unless Republicans keep Congress.

The Republicans have abandoned even the efforts to make their lies credible. Today’s local paper had a column labeling the return of insurers being able to deny insurance to people with pre-existing conditions a liberal lie, but the fact it that is exactly what is happening. Up to 40% of the population is at risk of far higher premiums or losing their coverage altogether.

Republican thieves in Congress, avid to steal the trillions allocated for Social Security and Medicare for their rich masters, have announced they plan to impose deep cuts to ‘pay for’ the huge deficits that they themselves have created. Social Security and Medicare aren’t even a part of those deficit and will make no differences to the deficits. But they will steal the pensions and health care from people who have spent their lives paying for it.

Back in 2002 I wrote an essay about a movie, The Man Who Cried with Christina Ricci and Johnny Depp. The movie concerned itself with the rapid descent into utter madness the citroyens of Paris experienced in the wake of the German invasion in 1940. You never see the German invaders. You just hear them marching. Cronch, cronch, cronch. (And I remember wondering what it must have been like for German citizens between 1932 and the final consolidation of Nazi power by mid 1934. Defying Hitler by Sebastian Haffner tells that tale).

Things in America were bad in 2002, as the country went through a big surge of hypernationalism and paranoia in the wake of the 9/11 attacks (brought to you largely by citizens of Saudi Arabia, the same nation Pissmop is being an murder accessory after the fact for), and the article address the snarling viciousness that consumed the country in the wake of the attacks.

While it never really did recover from that, America at least had a reason then. People were frightened and lashing out, and it was pretty easy to see why.

America doesn’t really have that excuse now. White citizens are not in danger of being subsumed by ‘dusky races’. Christians are not being persecuted or even inconvenienced. LGBT folks aren’t trying to force anyone to their lifestyle: they just want you to let them live their lives in peace.

Other minorities don’t want ‘special rights’; they just want the same rights you enjoy. People who recognize that aren’t employing ‘identity politics’; they just aren’t going to throw the rights of their fellow humans under the bus in order to try to appease swaggering bigots.

Yes, the economy is teetering and likely to crash between now and the next general election, but that’s the inevitable result of unrestrained capitalism. Give them enough rope. Entire economies vanish into oligarchic black holes. Republicans swear they are the solution to that, but the fact is they are the cause.

What’s more, it’s what they want. That’s why the deliberate sabotaging of the national treasury, pensions, health care, and the systematic destabilizing of American institutions from voting to the courts. Economies in vast turmoil mean societies in crisis, and that in turn means a cringing, frightened and dependent populace.

The cause of the crises are mostly imaginary, but the crises that arise are quite real, destructive, and useful to Pissmop and his cohorts who stand to benefit from the destruction and debilitation of your personal reality.

Republicans invent crises to try and panic you and make you their dependents, but the reality is that they are the crisis, and it’s one that can still be solved.

Next month, make the Republican party and its would-be dictator an unhappy footnote in history.

Or follow the path of Germany in the 1930s.

Cronch. Cronch. Cronch.

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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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