After being under the radar for a few days, Trump arrived in Paris, without Melania. Greeted by French President Macron on a red carpet, Trump appeared as though he was trying to arm wrestle the French president. Clearly confused, Macron patted Trump’s hand as if to let him know that everything would be okay, that no wrestling would be necessary. Later, DJT was seen in the newly renovated Notre Dame Cathedral, sitting hunched over to one side as though he had an injured butt cheek.
Generally, Macron appeared extremely cordial toward the soon-to-be U.S. President, possibly reflecting back to his earlier congratulatory message to him on social media: “Ready to work together as we did for four years. With your convictions and mine.” (Thank you Jimmy Kimmel).
Here in the U.S., the news was full of speculation about who Joe Biden will pardon next. Specifically, preemptive pardons for possible targets of Trump’s retribution once he’s been sworn in.
The fact that this is even happening in the United States, should give pause to Trump supporters, “should” being the operative word. I no longer hold out much hope for the possibility of conversions although any late awareness of reality will be greatly appreciated.
I was stunned at the outcome of the popular vote. Still am. It just doesn’t seem possible. It feels like some kind of alternate reality kicked in, taking the country by the throat and threatening our American Democracy as Democrats failed to vote. For anybody. But here we now are, stuck with it.
Years ago, I had a professor in a humanities course at the University of Minnesota, who taught us an interesting premise. One that’s stuck with me. Maybe because the professor was a body builder who rode a Harley. Very imposing for an academic. Smart guy, too.
“Every man, wants to be a god.” That’s what he told us. I can’t remember who originally came up with it, but it’s pretty good. Especially in light of all that’s happening in our current state of madness.
Think about those in control and those who seek control. And how much of it they actually want.
Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, contributed more than a quarter-billion dollars to the Trump campaign, or so says the New York Times. But why? Why would anybody give that much money to an egomaniac with the attention span of a flea? Because he wants to be a god, that’s why.
It’s not enough for Musk to be uber-wealthy, so wealthy that his family will enjoy “generational wealth” for centuries to come. No, he wants it all for himself, or as much as possible, and he wants it now. That means obtaining the office of the most powerful person in the world, the President of the United States. But Musk can’t have that because he wasn’t born in the U.S. He’s a South African import, who, according to reports, inherited an emerald mine before getting his company started on U.S. soil illegally, apparently, before obtaining the proper credentials.
So, unable to get himself elected to be the nearest thing we have to an Egyptian Pharaoh, a sun god who walks the earth like a giant while all others cower in fear, he’s trying to buy his way in. With a quarter of a billion dollars. Why? To get next to Donald J. Trump, our soon to be anointed American god, who admires, perhaps idolizes, Vladimir Putin, dictator, absolute ruler and god of Russia, master of all he observes, a man who is trying to rebuild the old Soviet Union. Apparently. And who is helping him get that done, as Ukraine is devastated to satisfy Putin’s god-like desires? Why it’s Kim Jong Un of North Korea, of course. Dragon God of the North.
Putin is running out of soldiers to continue his war of conquest against the unfortunate people of Ukraine, so North Korea’s Kim, not wanting another god-factor dictator to go down in flames because that might reflect badly on him, has sent his troops to Russia, to help conquer Ukraine and perhaps one or two or three other countries that were at one time in the Soviet orbit.
Those who would be gods, need to stick together. Trump has professed his admiration and even “love” for both Putin and Kim. A bromance from hell.
And then there’s Israeli PM, Benjamin Netanyahu, who, it seems, has something in common with all the others. All these wealthy, powerful, conceited and probably sociopathic individuals who just can’t get enough. They demand absolute power and if you disagree, they’ll threaten you with a state sanctioned reprisal. They might send in the tanks and blow you away. In Putin’s case, some rare radioactive poison might be preferred.
The common factor is that they all want to be gods. The professor was right. For any one of them, more will never be enough. And they are all here at the same time. What a cruel and unholy turn fate has dealt us.
So Lindsey Graham is saying that it “will be difficult” to get Pete Hegseth, confirmed by the senate? Really? That will make Hegseth the third Trump nominee to be shot down before DJT has been sworn in. Gotta be a record for failure, and an interesting one at that, since Trump’s opposition appears to be not just the democrats, but his own party as well. This could portend a difficult time ahead for Donald, one he did not anticipate. Tough to do, I suppose, if you have the attention span of a flea. (Please read Mary Trump’s book.)
I can’t get used to the idea that a hurricane bombing, dictator loving, bleach injecting, Covid denying, six time bankrupt coup leader is actually going to be sworn in, and not for the first time. Will Democracy hold?
Speaking of Democracy-
Good and bad news from South Korea this morning, that’s the country just south of North Korea, which is ruled by a murderous dictator with whom DJT shares self-admitted love letters. South Korean President, Yoon Suk Yeol, declared marshal law, and then canceled the declaration after being confronted by a vote in parliament overriding his decision. It was a bad move by the president, who now faces the probability of being impeached, but a good day for Democracy, which held together in spite of the country being thrown into chaos.
I’m reminded of the U.K. keeping relatively calm and carrying on, despite years of madness with Boris Johnson. For some reason, Johnson, reminds me of DJT. Could be the hair I suppose, or possibly their mutual tendency toward inexplicable behavior. Johnson, is now blaming the Church of England, for turning the UK into a bunch of “fatsoes.” Weird? Sure, but it’s not that difficult to believe for those of us who remember the Covid parties at 10 Downing Street. Alas, Johnson is all but gone, leaving the UK to deal with Brexit, much to the delight of Vladimir Putin, who is being assisted by the North Korean military, as he, Putin, continues his war of conquest in Ukraine.
As for Trump, everything he comes into contact with seems to fall into ruin, leading to the obvious question of whether America can survive another four years under his thumb. At least four years, I should say, since he’ll probably refuse to leave again, as he did the first time, if defeated at the polls.
If you want to predict the future, study the past. Everyone should know this by now, but apparently there are a few who do not, so I am repeating it here. Yes, I went to college. Please don’t hate me for it.
We can only hope DJT wasn’t watching tv coverage of what was happening in South Korea. With no patience for reading, that’s reportedly how he gets his news, and is probably why he likes to nominate talking heads from Fox, like Pete Hegseth. Marshal Law in South Korea, might give him ideas about doing the same thing here in the U.S.? Never mind that it didn’t work. Pretty sure DJT wouldn’t let that stand in his way. Or the fact that his ability to be backed by his party regardless of what he does, may be slipping away.
The Republican Party, doing what is right for America, instead of being driven by the imagination of a handful of MAGA loonies? It could happen, I suppose. Washington, did survive the winter in Valley Forge. We may be due for another miracle.
Putin has been making noises about nuclear war for months. Now Kim Jong Un, is making the same threatening sounds about nuclear conflict on the Korean Peninsula while his troops fight alongside the Russians in Ukraine under a master plan obviously drawn up by the Kremlin. Wonder what China thinks? What’s keeping their Commie big-wigs up at night?
Also have to wonder if Russia, North Korea and China are awaiting the coronation of Prez Elect Trump, before announcing their new hybrid Communist/Autocratic axis while NATO shrinks into near insignificance without the United States? Will it herald the Chinese attacking Taiwan and maybe some of the Japanese islands while the Russians continue pushing into Ukraine and possibly other countries as well, all with the blessings of Donald J. Trump? If that does happen, will even that be adequate to convince Trump’s supporters that they made a massive mistake?
Why didn’t anybody tell us?
By the time the right wing media gets done with what will be a boiling cauldron of misinformation, disinformation, opinion and rumor, the Trumpsters will have no idea what’s really going on or why. But that’s to be expected, the truth being so bothersome to autocracy. Anyway, for them it will be nothing new. It’s what they want to hear. It’s their comfort food. It’s Pavlov, blowing his whistle.
Well, that’s over. I feel a need to write something about the dog catching the car, but there’s probably nothing I can add to what will be an endless stream of highly critical reviews. Perhaps most biting, is the fact that more than half the country voted their approval of immorality, bullying, and extreme dishonesty.
When the world’s stability is hanging in the balance, there’s no such thing as a “little white lie.” Words, carry weight.
An early thought, which I find most interesting, is how all the Trump voters will feel when they realize they were conned into voting against their own best interests. Again. That they bought into it, big lie after big lie. That they fell for it, hook, line and sinker, or whichever metaphor you prefer. A political cartoonist, might depict it as the dog that caught the car urinating on one of the car’s tires before walking away.
This is the same guy who said he’d build a border wall and get Mexico to pay for it. The same guy who lied to the American people about the threat posed by Covid-19. We didn’t get a wall and more than a million Americans died from Covid.
One of the toughest truths for me to try and get around, is that they bought into the lie that real news was fake and fake news was real. Feels like it came right out of some old KGB playbook in the 60’s, but they bought it, again and again and again, and now we’re all stuck with it. Like a bug on a rug. For at least four years or maybe longer. Who can say just how far the country will slide into monarchy?
Whatever our system might have morphed into, Trump will refuse to leave. By then he’ll be 82. Who knows when his already questionable synaptic relays will simply stop firing? When Mozart was that old, he’d been dead for 47 years.
One imagines Melania, rehearsing for the lead in Evita at the Met, the opera having been federalized for the sake of presidential convenience.
None of it will be our fault, those of us who saw the train wreck coming and tried to warn the country. And now, with the dog having caught the car, and all of us buried under a giant pile of all the best metaphors and analogies we could come up with to try and make things understandable, we can only sit back in shock and amazement that so many of our fellow Americans plunked down their hard earned money on an Edsel when they could have had a shiny new Buick. It’s gonna be a long four years and in the end, we’ll get what we voted for. Or paid for, in the case of Elon Musk, who, according to multiple sources, contributed $130 million to the Trump campaign.
Until then, there’s a monster question the Democrats need to sort out. What was it they did that was so wrong, so abhorrent, that it drove millions of Americans to prefer what was clearly an unacceptable choice? Was there any one thing or was it a national combo plate of sexism, racism and new media driven by a new high-tech that has outpaced our ability to control it? It’s so much easier to bury the truth once it becomes unidentifiable.
Thinking about the horror of Trump’s appearance with the NABJ, and what a terrible catch-22 we’re in.
If you put him on the air, even if you feel it’s your obligation to cover what he’s doing as a candidate, you’re giving him a national platform to spew his anger, hatred and fear. True, it’s not a journalist’s job to avoid reality, even if it does look like the next episode of “Evil,” but in this case, normalizing someone who led an attempted coup puts everything in a different light, doesn’t it?
Since his outrageousness is what feeds his campaign to destroy American democracy along with his ego-driven sociopathy, shouldn’t journalists stop providing coverage of his lunatic dog and pony shows and stick to an analysis of the issues? Since rational thinking is apparently something he can’t do, and he has no solid plans for America, other than attacking immigrants and women and cutting taxes for the rich, limiting coverage would provide added perspective on the vast divide between the candidates.
So far, covering Trump as though he’s just another candidate has done nothing but make a bad situation worse by normalizing his neo-Nazi movement. I know the campaign must be covered, but the Trump-free week following the announcement that Biden wouldn’t seek another term, while Donald was conferring with his cabal was heavenly. A return to sanity and the safety it provides as opposed to the master of chaos filling our screens and front pages with his blather each and every day. Or maybe putting all that insane drivel out there is a good idea, as there may be one or two voters who haven’t yet realized that the Donald is certifiably crackers. Co-morbid, as Mary Trump put it in her book, exhibiting more than just one psychological or possibly psychiatric dysfunction.
I dunno, it just feels to me like the news media was horribly late in getting to the party by not recognizing that this is not just another campaign, and as such, it requires a whole different kind of coverage. But that’s where the catch-22 comes in. Not sure what the answer is, I just hope Harris has the staying power to pull us through the storm and into a safe harbor while the usual bunch of reporters struggle to cover this mess as best they can.
After months of name calling by Trump and the American Fascist Party machine, the Democrats finally have a word for Donald and his goofy cabal. The word, is “weird,” and it perfectly describes DJT and his running mate.
You know it has to be getting to Donald, who appears to be spending most of his time at his golf course in New Jersey, while workers clean ketchup from the walls at Mar- a-Lago. Donald’s biggest problem now, apart from his need for a personality transplant and a conscience, is the absence of anything he can use to credibly attack Kamala Harris.
“Hannibal the Cannibal” loving, flag hugging , coup leading, Covid denying, funky chicken dancing, Donald J. Trump, is weird. So is his ‘childless cat-ladies’ hating, Yale educated “Hillbilly” attorney and running mate, J.D. Vance.
“Weird.” It’s the perfect adjective to describe what DJT’s niece and clinical psychologist, Dr. Mary Trump, calls her uncle’s psychological “co-morbidity” in her book, “Too Much And Never Enough – How My Family Created The World’s Most Dangerous Man.”
A scene from the movie “Young Frankenstein” comes to mind. It’s the bit where Igor, returns from the brain depository with a brain for the monster. When asked who the brain came from he replies, “Abby, something? Oh yeah! Abby Normal!” But that was just a movie. Mark Hamill and Jeff Bridges and more than 150,000 others coming out to support Harris on the “White Dudes for Harris” zoom call that raised more than $4-million was reality. Nothing weird about it.
Hadn’t heard anything about nukes for a while, not since Putin, threatened to unleash them in his war against Ukraine, so I took a look around. What I found, is more than a little disquieting. Turns out there’s one helluva big nuclear buildup taking place, with the U.S. and Russia, leading the pack.
According to a report dated June 17, from the AP, “…the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, ICAN, said the nine nuclear-armed states spent a combined total of $91.4 billion on their arsenals in 2023 – equivalent to $2,898 per second.”
Seems like a lot, doesn’t it? Moreover, presuming advances have been made in nuclear science making contemporary nukes exponentially more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, shouldn’t this development be at or near the center of the runup to the November election? Standby, it gets even better. Or worse, maybe.
Again, from the Associated Press, “The group said that figures show a $10.7 billion increase in global spending on nuclear weapons in 2023 compared to 2022, with the United States accounting for 80% of that increase. The U.S. share of total spending, $51.5 billion, is more than all the other nuclear-armed countries put together.”
What are Russia and the United States getting ready for? An unsurvivable conflict, leaving both countries in ashes? Will we never get past the theory of mutual annihilation preventing us from annihilating one another? Shouldn’t somebody be talking about this?
At the very least, supporters of Donald Trump, should know how precarious the world situation truly is, before they decide to vote for a man who actually thought nuking a hurricane or injecting bleach into the human body to fight Covid, might be viable ideas. Nothing should be taken for granted. Not when dealing with human behavior.
Since I slammed Biden and the Dems for turning a blind eye to sky high grocery prices, I suppose I should also congratulate them for getting 5 Americans freed from Iranian prisons. Anybody who has a problem in giving Iran back its own money to cut the deal, should imagine what it’s like to have a loved one held captive overseas for years one end, with no end in sight.
Biden is also creating a new Office for Gun Violence Prevention. Good for him. Good for his administration. After decades of talk somebody is finally doing something. More than 25-thousand Americans have died from gun violence so far this year in a country that refuses to outlaw assault weapons. Weapons with no purpose other than ending human life.
While all that was going on one major poll shows Trump’s support growing among Black and Latino voters. Apparently they have no memory of what happened during the Trump Administration? There was an attempted coup, remember? Remember who it was encouraging the mob to march over to the Capitol to try and overthrow the Republic? This was the same Donald J. Trump, who said there were “very fine people on both sides,” following neo-Nazis and other white nationalists, marching through the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia.
High grocery prices may be the Republican Party’s best friend right now. I have no idea how middle-income Americans are able to feed their families. A whole lot of Wonder Bread and spaghetti with watered-down ketchup for sauce, apparently. If they can afford to put gas in the car to drive to the market.
The situation with the Republican Party is seriously comedic, or it should be. A handful of separatist lunatics are controlling the entire House of Representatives, as just one vote from a MAGA Republican, can boot Kevin McCarthy from the Speaker’s chair. So the Speaker, third in line to the Presidency, must bend to the will of a few MAGA nutjobs, as they continue to support a candidate facing not one, not two, not three, but four criminal indictments. Topping it off, Vladimir Putin, is now voicing his support for DJT, as he spews condemnation of our democratic system.
Imagine that, Vladimir Putin, international terrorist and pariah, thinks we have a bad system. A man who leads a country people are exiting in droves with almost nobody wanting to get back in. When was the last time Russia, had a border crossing problem, with somebody trying to get in as opposed to getting out?
Then there’s Tommy Tuberville, a former football coach who lives in Florida but represents Alabama in the U.S. Senate, where he and he alone, is stopping our military from appointing new leadership to make a statement about abortion. He needs to get out of politics and go back to football. If a team will have him. Football is checkers. American politics is three-dimensional chess. Tuberville, is in over his head and our military readiness is being damaged in the process.
The Republicans are weakening our military and crippling the House with a threatened government shutdown, while they support a man who lead an attempted coup against the United States while cozying up to Putin and the Russians, who want nothing short of our destruction. It would be a massive comedy of Republican errors, were it not for the fact that millions upon millions of average Americans can’t afford groceries and gas, while the Democratic Party, continues to act like everything is just fine. If you listen to the President we’re more than fine, we’re great. Well, not really. Not everybody. And Mr. Biden’s position is that we have the strongest economy in the world? Maybe he needs some new advisors? Maybe a trip to the market to do a little shopping on a fixed income budget?
It’s way too easy for gougers to hide behind claims of the war in Ukraine disrupting international supply chains while our elected leaders look the other way. World food prices hit record highs in 2022, but the price of almost everything at your local market shot up, not just food and products impacted by international markets.
It’s so easy for those reaping huge rewards to argue that those of us without degrees in economics can’t begin to understand the implications of international trade, how the price of grain in the Middle East, impacts the cost of a jar of pickles or a pound of sugar in Omaha. There are credible charges that the gouging goes beyond the supermarkets, which have already hit record high prices, and into the military.
As for the impact of Covid, surely its impact on supply chains has had more than enough time to level out? Should we really be expected to pay $10 for one Covid test kit that costs pennies to produce?
Dem leaders need to be wary of turning their backs on consumer prices that are crushing average Americans, while the UAW appears poised to join SAG/AFTRA, the Writer’s Guild and custodial workers on the picket line.
The Writer’s Guild and then SAG/AFTRA were among the first to recognize that working people have reached an economic tipping point. A realization that Russia, isn’t the only country with a giant gap between its oligarchs and average working people, a gap that will surely grow with advancing AI and the ever-increasing march of automation threatening to make us all obsolete.
As in 2016, this upcoming election is the Democrats to lose. Some, apparently, think that’s not even remotely possible. Could be the same bunch that thought it would be a slam-dunk for Hillary in 2016.
The Guardian reports that after millions of years, time may be running out for the Japanese Giant Salamander. Kinda begs the question of whether maybe its time is up? Also, does the world really need the Japanese Giant Salamander? They are apparently highly reclusive, so it’s doubtful they’ll be missed.
All these classified documents that keep popping up, first at Mara Lago and now in Joe’s garage, or in a space nearby, will, I predict, turn out to be irrelevant. “A mere bag of shells,” as Oliver Hardy, might have put it. At first I had questions about whether DJT might not be selling stuff out of his back door, but now, seeing how Joe Biden is having the same problem, it appears reasonable to assume high government officials have probably been ferreting stuff away at home for years with nobody raising a fuss. Frankly, we should probably be more concerned with information on the JFK assassination the government has locked away.
We will probably get the truth about who killed JFK at the same time they decide to admit to us that lizard people from Beta 4 in the Zenon Quadrant, gave us technology for the transistor and suggested the possible use of vaccines to stop worldwide polio epidemics.
As nutso as that sounds, there are a few folks out there who will think it’s for real. You know, the Jewish space laser, Pizzagate nutballs. The same folks who gave us the real world zombie apocalypse on January 6th of 21, many, or maybe most of them, because they really believed it was the right thing to do.
All of it is beginning to look like one gigantic out-of-control joke on all of us, particularly those of us who would like to retain our government and all that goes with it, including law and order, the military and a tax system that makes our civilization possible. Trouble is though, increasingly, it feels as though we’ll have nothing to say about whether we can hang onto what we’ve got, or whether, with so many nutjobs out there, and a truckload of them now in the Congress, the whole damn thing might not just slip away into the night and we’ll wake up one morning to face the devil, all by our lonesome selves. Won’t that be a corker?
More than ever, we need Hunter S. Thompson. Chances are, he might now, finally, believe that things had gotten weird enough, even for him.
Well gang, here we go. Arguably, the most important American election in 160 years is underway. The results, will depend in no small way upon how many of us continue to deny the validity of the just past election of 2020. Many of those same folks also refuse to recognize the attempted coup d’etat of January 6th, 2021, when a former preisdent sent his supporters down Pennsylvania Avenue, for the sole purpose of stopping the count of electoral ballots so that he could remain in office as an authoritarian, a tyrant, with the democratic process set aside. Maybe permanently.
That actually happened, but millions, apparently, continue to deny reality, favoring the misinformation and disinformation promoted by Fox and the house of Murdoch. We can only hope they lied when asked by pollsters who they were going to vote for. We can only hope they turned off the right-wing echo chamber long enough to clear their heads and think for themselves just long enough to see what tyranny and greed are doing to us.
So many have given up on traditional media, which continues to try and report out the truth, despite terrible pressures from corporate sales and promotion departments that answer to CEO’s and their Boards, and not to the American people. Fact is, despite corporate greed, there are still thousands of real journalists out there doing the best they can. Not just for their employers, but for their readers and viewers as well. Many of them, struggling to survive on low pay as their papers continue to be threatened by closure. They are unsung heroes. They deserve our support.
Too seldom are we reminded that a free press is the cornerstone of our Democracy. Not Twitter, not Facebook, not the Communist Chinese owned Tic Tok, but our traditional newspapers and broadcasters, who have earned our trust by continuing to seek out and report what Carl Bernstein likes to call “the best available version of the truth.” I think it was Ben Bradlee who called it “a first rough draft of history.”
Don’t be fooled. The issue of this election is not the economy. It is not the price of gas or unisex restrooms or abortion rights. It’s the survival of American Democracy, self-determination derived from honest and open elections and the rule of law. It’s a question of how many Americans have been fooled into believing the tyranny of autocracy and despotism will be preferable to the freedom provided by our democratic process. Something, perhaps that far too many have come to take for granted.
There was a time, not so very long ago, when you actually had to do something. You had to have a string of accomplishments proving you were worthy of being given a voice, before they handed you a megaphone or a microphone or a keyboard. No more. Now, a little rich kid from South Africa, can fall over backwards into an emerald mine, buy a social media app, and suddenly be in charge of one of the biggest and potentially most dangerous megaphones ever invented. This might be compared to Wm. Randolph Hearst, getting into the newspaper business?
Sure, I know about Space-X and Tesla, but he didn’t exactly invent anything did he? Musk, simply invested money he had inherited, right? Do a couple of smart or lucky investments mean we should listen to what he has to say or that he should have control over one of our most powerful channels of information? Is Warren Buffett, really that much wiser than the rest of us simply because he has acquired a pile of money? For years now, I have been fascinated by the major media’s affection for Mr. Buffett, treating him like some old testament prophet, simply because he is sitting on a truckload of money.
At this point I should probably insert something about people not being able to live on money alone, about Homo sapiens primal need for spiritual input or we will wither away, but that old chestnut has been pulled out of the fire so many times that if our species doesn’t get it by now, chances are we never will.
Sounds pretty bad for us, doesn’t it?
Is the story of Musk, all that different from the story of our last alleged president, who was reportedly handed some $400-million by his dad, only to blow it all in bad business deals before he too found Twitter, turning it into a soapbox that landed him in the White House – along with considerable help from CNN and MSNBC, hungry for the ratings Fox had been getting? Interesting how the 7/24 news channels are now so eager to condemn DJT, after they did so much to get him elected? People forget.
The dangers of social media apps are all too apparent. Or maybe Twitter, is simply evil. A tool of the devil. But that would be beyond me. Evangelicals of one sect or another might want to look into it. Hopefully they won’t wait too long. It feels a little like children are out there playing with loaded shotguns. Again.
Reports coming in from Russia, indicate people are being arrested in the streets for protesting the war. Other reports indicate military recruiting offices are being torched while airlines are bulging with people wanting to get out of the country rather than being subjected to Putin’s latest military call up. History teaches that it rarely ends well for demagogues, once the Russian people take to the streets.
Putin again threatened the use of nuclear weapons. This is, hopefully, his version of Nikita Khrushchev, banging a shoe on his desk at the United Nations while threatening, “We will bury you.”
At the same time, back in America, the Feds have won their appeal, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, two of the three judges having been appointed by Trump, giving them access to the top secret files from Mar a Lago. Meaning, they can move forward with their investigation of Donald J. Trump, while New York Attorney General Letitia James, moves forward with a civil suit against Donald and his children for bank and tax fraud and possibly more in a complaint of 222 pages and the possibility of criminal cases being pressed by the IRS and the SDNY.
Legal and moral accountability appears to be arriving at about the same time for both Putin and Trump, entwined in their mutual love of tyranny and hate for Democracy and the freedom it represents.
It’s good to have a variety of sources for news and opinion. It’s also important to be able to distinguish between the two.
This morning, I could feel myself falling into a pit of depression after reading a headline on the front page of the Baltimore Sun. “Trump runs ahead of Hogan in hypothetical GOP primary.” the headline says. “Trump has twice the support of Hogan among likely Republican voters in Maryland” it says.
I continue to be amazed at the number of people who continue to support Donald Trump, even if they are Republicans who obviously don’t read and watch nothing but Fox News.
It’s horrific, after all that’s happened, that Maryland Republicans would choose the Donald over Larry Hogan, a Republican governor in a blue state who is extremely popular among both Republicans and Dems. Hogan, would probably get along well with former California Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had as much trouble with the state’s Republicans as he did with Democrats.
Schwarzenegger and Hogan, are both centrist Republicans. As such, they are increasingly rare birds. Not unlike Liz Chaney and Adam Kinzinger, both of whom have refused to follow their party into a black hole of political insanity bordering on treason. Instead, Cheney and Kinzinger, are behaving like patriots. American patriots. Something we badly need.
Bet you didn’t know that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, wanted to enact a form of universal healthcare in California? The state’s Republicans went nuts over that one.
Back here in Maryland, the thing with Larry Hogan makes no sense at all until you see a recent quote from Donald’s niece, Mary Trump, who happens to be a clinical psychologist.
“I hear people say that Republicans are afraid of Donald – No they’re not. They are him. They are sticking with the guy who gives them permission to be their worst selves,” she says.
Thank you Ms. Trump. The world is no longer standing on its head. Of course the question of why they insist upon being that way, remains. I suspect it has something to do with the ease of falling into an emotional pit rather than using one’s mind to think. Or, they could be suffering from some mental illness?
In her book, “The Sociopath Next Door” another clinical psychologist, Martha Stout, argues that “4 percent of ordinary people–one in twenty-five–has an often undetected mental disorder, the chief symptom of which is that that person possesses no conscience. He or she has no ability whatsoever to feel shame, guilt, or remorse. One in twenty-five everyday Americans, therefore, is secretly a sociopath. They could be your colleague, your neighbor, even family. And they can do literally anything at all and feel absolutely no guilt.”
Where does this leave us? Apparently, with a big chunk of our populace both badly informed and (or) mentally ill. We can’t possibly expect these people to get their news and opinion from a variety of sources much less differentiate between the two. They are easy prey to those who want only to extract wealth from the masses and tear apart the common good.