Jan 31, 2018

January 31, 2018: No Role Model, Dividing the Country, Worn Out His Welcome



According to “The Hill” Disgustus efforts last night, “garnered the lowest net positive reaction in the last 20 years”, which is to say the lowest positive reaction since such measures have been taken.(1) While generally favorable, the general reactions to the speech have been muted. Billed as an attempt by Disgustus to appear reasonable, agreeable and somewhat civilized, it wasn't long before he wandered off the rails introducing the issue of immigrants, both DACA and general immigration reform, by railing on about MS-13 and other tales of gang warfare, crime, drugs and vice that he has previously tarred immigrants from Latin America. The old familiar dog whistles, the same red meat thrown at his knuckle-dragging political base. Those who anticipated a move toward the center, a pivot, a first dawning of civilized behavior, were sorely disappointed. There are reasons why this annual event did not garner the positive response that most such presidential speeches before a joint session of Congress usually produces. A Quinnipiac University poll shows the extent to which Disgustus has twitted away his presidency.

"January 25, 2018 - Trump Is No Role Model For Children, U.S.Voters Say 2-1; Quinnipiac University National Poll Finds;
He Does Not Provide Moral Leadership, Voters Say

It is important that a president be a good role model for children, 90 percent of American voters say, but President Donald Trump is not a good role model for children, these voters say 67 - 29 percent in a Quinnipiac University National Poll released today.
There is almost no gender gap in grading President Trump's standing as a role model. Every party, gender, education, age and racial group, except Republicans, say the president falls short, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University Poll finds.
Republicans say 72 - 22 percent that Trump is a good role model for children. Another key element of the president's base, white voters with no college degree, say 54 - 41 percent that he is not a good role model for children.


President Trump does not provide the U.S. with moral leadership, American voters say 63 - 33 percent. Again, there is virtually no gender gap as all listed groups, except Republicans and white voters with no college degree, say by wide margins the president does not provide moral leadership. Republicans say 80 - 16 percent he does provide moral leadership and white voters with no college degree are divided 47 - 47 percent.


"For President Donald Trump, it's a troubling trifecta: Stagnant approval numbers, low grades on most character traits and the reality that if parents are looking for someone their kids should emulate, that person is not residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue," said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.


"Only 27 percent of American voters say they are proud to have Donald Trump as president, while 53 percent say they are embarrassed - a 2-1 negative."


American voters disapprove 58 - 36 percent of the job Trump is doing, marking 12 months of negative scores and seven months since his approval rating hit 40 percent.


The only groups approving of Trump are Republicans, 86 - 9 percent, and white voters with no college degree, 50 - 42 percent. White men are divided as 47 percent approve and 49 percent disapprove.


Trump's grades on most character traits remain negative as voters say:


  • 60 - 35 percent that he is not honest;
  • 59 - 38 percent that he does not have good leadership skills;
  • 57 - 40 percent that he does not care about average Americans;
  • 65 - 30 percent that he is not level-headed;
  • 61 - 36 percent that he is a strong person;
  • 54 - 40 percent that he is intelligent;
  • 61 - 34 percent that he does not share their values.

From January 19 - 23, Quinnipiac University surveyed 1,245 voters nationwide with a margin of error of +/- 3.3 percentage points, including the design effect. Live interviewers call landlines and cell phones.

The Quinnipiac University Poll, directed by Douglas Schwartz, Ph.D., conducts nationwide public opinion surveys, and statewide polls in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Iowa and Colorado as a public service and for research.

Visit poll.qu.edu or www.facebook.com/quinnipiacpoll

Call (203) 582-5201, or follow us on Twitter @QuinnipiacPoll. " (2)

Americans by a two-to-one margin recognize that the man simply cannot tell the truth. A clear majority question his judgment and his intelligence. He does not share our values, and 9 out of 10 would not want Disgustus babysitting their children.
Other polling reveals the same collapse of political support of the Chief Executive. According to an NBC/WSJ poll, tRUMP's approval rating is the lowest of any modern president one year into his term. Additionally, the poll found:

  • President Trump scored only a 39 percent approval rating in the new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll.
  • It is the lowest approval rating in the survey's history for any modern president after his first year in office.
  • More than half of respondents say they strongly disapproved of Trump's performance. (3)
What Disgustus seems not to understand is that by constantly engaging in 'tweet-storms', violating every normal protocol associated with the office, and constantly creating chaos, the country has grown tired and weary of him. He has simply worn out his welcome. He has defiled the office and become a national embarrassment, if not a national obscenity. We have grown, as a nation, ashamed.

When asked by the pollsters to use one word to describe Disgustus, the adjective “Disgusting” is most often used. Russian Affiliated (R.A.T.) television (FOX News) and the knuckle-dragging teabaggers and their town criers on hate radio will laud the effort. But this White House did nothing to regain the vast number of independents who are exiting the auditorium in droves. America had already turned him off. 

"And Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh".  


Impeach and Imprison
________________

    1. thehill.com/homenews/administration/371569-poll-trump-state-of-the-union-garners-lowest-positive-reaction-in-two
    2. NBC/WSJ Poll







Jan 30, 2018

January 30, 2018: Grading Disgustus, State of Disunion, Responsibility for Nothing


Tonight Caesar Disgustus will take to the dais and address a joint session of Congress. Once again the nation will sit transfixed before the 'tube' and witness the constitutionally mandated presidential report on the state of the union.

It wasn't always done this way. Until Wilson the presidential report was sent up to the hill and read by a clerk. Later in the century the speech was broadcast first on radio and then, in 1965 on television. Since then the annual event has become a time when the president can command nearly universal media attention and address the nation directly. Accordingly, the speech has become part report, part agenda, and mostly propaganda. Time and again the president stands before the nation assuring the assembled that, with some minor correction, the nation is sound.
It is a most boring spectacle.

But Disgustus now finds, having twitted away his presidency, that he stands with the lowest approval rating of any president one year in. Tonight he must appear 'presidential', which means sticking to the tel-prompter and not going off the rails.

Accordingly, it is rumored, he will give a 'presidential' speech, calling for national unity putting forth large proposals around which the nation will rally. But tRUMP is tRUMP and how long he can go without wandering off into braggadocio and endless self-praise remains to be seen. But he will take credit for the economy, that much is sure. Being the beneficiary of sound Democratic steps taken in the wake of the last Rescumlican disaster will, of course, not be mentioned. To hear Disgustus tell it, the recovery started last January.

Robert Reich, economist and former Secretary of Labor had this to say today on his Facebook post:
    In his State of the Union Address tonight, Trump will claim credit for the economy. Baloney. The trends he'll came credit for started as the economy recovered from the Great Recession. In fact, they’ve slowed under Trump:
    1. The economy produced fewer new jobs in 2017 than in any year since 2010.
    2. Hourly earnings grew by only 0.4 percent in 2017. That’s less than the1.8 percent growth in 2015 and 0.8 percent in 2016.
    3. Blue-collar (production and non-supervisory) workers did even less well. Their wages grew only 0.17 percent in 2017 – the slowest wage growth for these workers in the past four years.
    4. The earnings of workers at the federal minimum wage continued to decline, adjusted for inflation, as Trump and his enablers in Congress refused to raise it from $7.25 per hour, where it’s been since 2009.
    5. The only big winners under Trump have been people who own lots of shares of stock. Stock values surged 25 percent in 2017. But most of these people were already rich. The richest 1 percent own 40 percent of all shares. The richest 10 percent own 80 percent. More than half of Americans have no shares of stock at all.
    Spread the word.”

In the spring of 2009, President Obama declared that he 'owned' the recession. That is, he told us that he was taking responsibility. Disgustus will never take responsibility. While he will take credit for any good news, he will never take responsibility for the bad. After all, he gave himself a '10' for the government's response to the hurricanes that ravished the country, and as it stands tonight over a million are still without power on the island of Puerto Rico, and, by some estimates, over a thousand have died—mostly due to the lack of federal response to the crisis.

Disgustus will stand at the podium and beat his chest, tell the country and the world what a great job he is doing, but the numbers suggest otherwise. As Professor Reich reports job growth is down as is virtually every other indicator save the speculative craze on Wall Street, certain to create another 'bubble' and another collapse.

But Disgustus, our modern P.T. Barnum, our Carnival Barker, will put lipstick on the pig, taking credit for everything; responsibility for nothing.

On the economy tRUMP is once again more lucky than good. The effects of his savaging of regulations, his miserable tax policies, and his budget cuts have yet to be felt. We are only now coming under the first of his budgets.

Grade: Incomplete

Impeach and Imprison.


Jan 28, 2018

February 28, 2018: Grading Disgustus, Domestic Policy, Self-Promotion


Disgustus' singular talent is self-promotion. He exhibits no other such known quality. He has talent for neither management nor understanding, yet he has achieved the highest office in the land by commandeering the stage during the Rescumlican primaries and in a field in which the vote would be fragmented in so many ways emerged the winner while capturing a mere fraction of the vote. He won the presidency through the back door of the electoral college, the suppression of more than 7 million votes and the inspired stupidity of the Democratic Party which insisted the country needed another Clinton Administration. Through it all, Disgustus did his level best to lose and, according to Micheal Wolf in his book “Fire and Fury” indeed expected to lose. The plan, according to Wolf, was to use a presidential bid to promote himself in order to shore up the flagging ratings of his 'reality' television show “The Apprentice”. There was additional talk of starting his own television network to rival FOX in scouring the dregs of the conservative barrels. Perhaps another book or in the works. He would, of course, have cried foul and screamed from the roof-tops that the election had been stolen and used this posture to do a running commentary on the state of the nation. In short, the presidency was just another one of tRUMP's many campaigns of self-promotion one in which he would, of course, through the uses of many of 'his' properties during the campaign, make money. He could charge the cost of his jet travel, his accommodations and that of his staff to the campaign so that all those small donations would be swept into the tRUMP financial empire rather than going to building a national political organization or other normal political activities. Moreover, with the addition of secret service protection, the federal government would be billed for their stays at tRUMP tower and other locales. It was all about promoting the tRUMP name, the tRUMP image. Running for president wasn't about winning. Running for president wasn't about the welfare of the country. Running for president was about promoting the tRUMP brand. Running for president was a facade.

Wolf describes the moment when it was learned that Donald J. tRUMP would be president of the United States. He turned, visible even under the orange foundation, ashen white. His wife openly wept. Panic spread about the Kushner relation as it was perhaps they who first realized that the klieg lights were about to shine upon virtually everything about them and there is so much that could not withstand scrutiny. Nevertheless, tRUMP quickly transformed himself from the beaten warrior into a proud, bellicose, and triumphant new Caesar. He could not, however, leave his past nor his resentments behind.

We were immediately presented with the spectacle of his press secretary Sean Spicer bitterly lecturing the assembled about the size of the inaugural crowds, an immediate indication both of the self-delusional nature of this president and the willingness of the sycophants he gathers about him to participate, reinforce and enable these delusions; a deeply disturbing trait that was grotesquely put upon display with a video of his first cabinet meeting where the modern Caligula sat like a modern Mussolini while each cabinet secretary was required in turn to sing the praises of the maximum leader, demonstrating that the banana republicans have nearly completed the task of reducing the great United States into a banana republic.

So it should come as little surprise to continually witness the braggadocio of what quickly became our very own Caesar Disgustus, notwithstanding the appalling behavior and the subsequent record entirely bereft of accomplishment.

At his first cabinet meeting, Disgustus told the assembled that they (meaning he) had accomplished more than any president except, perhaps, F.D.R. In his first 100 days. He has told the nation that he has passed more legislation, that he is one of the great presidents. None of this is, of course, true.

He has signed many executive orders, it is true. He has reversed, to the detriment of the country many of Obama's executive orders even down to the national monuments that he recognized and the lands the lands set aside in our national parks by presidents Obama and Clinton. By reversing previous executive orders he has repealed regulations on fracking for natural gas, opened the entire seacoast of the United States to oil exploration, save Florida because the Rescumlican governor vigorously objected while repealing the regulations on oil drilling that were put in place after the B.P. oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. He has demonstrated, through executive order, his willingness to vandalize whatever might be in reach.

His congressional record and his relationship with Congress are nearly nil. In December, Rescumlicans in a panic, knowing that they would soon face the voters having failed to pass a single piece of significant policy-changing legislation, forced-marched a tax bill through the Congress. Without hearings, without the testimony of a single expert on the likely effects of so dramatically cutting taxes, the Scum in the House voted out the first version. Departing from the normal order not only were there not hearings but the Rescumlicans didn't even wait for the Congressional Budget Office to score the bill. Blindly, the House scums voted along party lines and passed the first version.

It then went to the Senate where McConnell likewise bypassing his committees and normal procedure, formed a committee of six Rescumlican senators to draw up a Senate version. The first draft would have given, after ten years, roughly 64% of the benefits to the top 1% of the income bracket. Having failed to gather the votes for that it was thought that finally, the Rescumlicans would come to their senses and either produce a bill that would actually address the grievances of the middle class or give up the enterprise entirely. Facing a 'populist' uproar the Scums did what they always do, go back to the smoke-filled rooms and hammer out another agreement as far as possible from the light of day. Telling the nation that the Rescumlicans had to produce something for “the people who sent us here”, McConnell reconvened his group and produced a bill that gave 82% of the benefits to the top 1%. The bill passed the Senate without a single Democratic vote and, because it was part of a budget package managed to cut Medicaid funding denying 13 million people health insurance. They would not only turn their tricks for their paymasters but undermine ObamaCare in the bargain. This was their singular legislative accomplishment. The Senate bill, working under the guise of having been produced in a 'conference committee' with the House, was quickly passed by the house and the Scums were finally able to send to Disgustus a major piece of legislation. It was a victory for the richest among us. It was a victory for Disgustus, but it was not a victory for the country. It was, in fact, the most hastily prepared and ill-conceived piece of legislation passed by any congress in memory. But by violating virtually every normal legislative procedure, the Scum were able to declare 'victory' and further enable Disgustus teaching him once again that for him the rules do not apply.

This followed a similar path in which Disgustus was able to put his man Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court. The Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell suspended the rule that required 60 votes, rule that kept Obama's nominee from even getting a hearing before the Senate. Indeed Merrick sat patiently outside the Senate chambers for nearly a year awaiting confirmation but the Rescumlicans refused to move, in effect filibustering the nomination. The Democrats were prepared to do the same leaving the court at 8 members until a nominee more agreeable were to be found. Instead, the Scum trashed the procedure and put Gorsuch on the bench in effect stealing a Supreme Court seat and teaching Disgustus that once again, the rules do not apply.

Caesar Disgustus has little to show domestically. He has failed to move his agenda and what actions he has taken have been driven by an obsessive hatred of all things Obama. He has done whatever and whenever possible to undo sound government policy, to vandalize everything he touches. In the process, he has ridiculed United States Senators and members of Congress. He has ridiculed and sought to delegitimize the press, the courts, law enforcement agencies, intelligence agencies and any person who criticize him. His mendacity regularly spills over into the entertainment fields even unto the National Football League.

While tRUMP boasts of great accomplishment the record, as the photographs of his inaugural crowd, show otherwise. It is all sound and fury, blue smoke and mirrors, in a word: facade. In sum, he has made a pig's breakfast of domestic policy as he has of governance itself.

Grade: F

Impeach and Imprison.


Jan 27, 2018

January 27, 2018: Grading Disgustus, Foreign Affairs, He Thinks He Knows


Trump appears to believe that he achieved great things during his first year in office and that his critics have been proved both vicious and wrong. In fact, he has demoralized the institutions of the U.S. Government on which he depends. He has disappointed anyone, at home or abroad who expected him to mature. He is exhausting his first group of appointees and does not have much of a backup bench. And perhaps worst of all, he thinks he knows what he is doing. He does not seem to realize that he has not faced any tests comparable to the 9/11 attacks or the 2008 recession, and there is no reason to believe that he has developed the knowledge or judgment to handle such a challenge when it does arise. What he attributes to genius, most observers correctly attribute to luck. And there is a good chance that 2018 will be the year his luck runs out.”

                                         ----Foreign Affairs

Declaring that it “could have been worse”, Eliot Cohen, after a brief survey of year one of Disgustus' reign, reached the conclusion that he has been lucky but that his luck is about to run out.

It could have been worse, but one would have to conjure quite a nightmare to imagine it. Disgustus, behaving like a bull elephant in a china shop, has made a pig's breakfast of foreign policy and in the process has reduced the stature and the credibility to levels never seen.

In Europe he has insulted our allies, refusing for instance to shake the hand of German Chancellor Merkle, questioned the efficacy of our NATO alliance and pointedly omitted references to article 5 involving mutual defense agreements when referring to the defense of the old Soviet satellite states. Meanwhile, he has heaped lavish attention upon Russian President Putin about whom Disgustus has yet to level a mild criticism.

In the Middle East, he has abdicated the role of the United States as an honest broker of peace. First, he cut the legs out from under, buy cutting the funding for, the insurgent groups in Syria effectively ensuring the survival of the Assad regime and abdicating the region to the Russians.
Additionally, he has insulted our ally Pakistan declaring that no further aid will be forthcoming causing the Pakistan government to no longer share intelligence with the United States. He has backed the Saudi war with Yemen causing untold carnage in the country, and is currently threatening to withdraw from the nuclear agreement with Iran, notwithstanding that our European allies, as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency as well as the Disgustus-led United States State Department, have held that the Iranians are complying with the accord. But reasoning that he has not vandalized the world order quite enough, Disgustus approached the end of his first year by moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Here in one act, Disgustus, ever the negotiator, gave away the most significant bargaining chip in exchange for nothing virtually ensuring in the “bargain” continued Palestinian resistance and the end of the two-state solution. It was an act of inspired stupidity brought about at the insistence of Nevada casino owner Sheldon Adelson, the largest contributor to the tRUMP campaign.

In Latin America, Cohen, for instance, argues:
    But in Latin America (with the exception of Mexico), as in other parts of the world, there was not so much friction as absence: the United States was simply not playing much of a role one way or another. And throughout his first year, Trump acquired a global reputation for being unreliable, temperamental, and deceitful. According to the Pew Research Center, 93 percent of Swedes polled said they had confidence in U.S. President Barack Obama, but only ten percent said they felt the same about Trump. Of course, this may say more about Sweden than the United States, but in Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom, the numbers were almost as bad. And foreign officials have begun talking openly about how, in the words of Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s minister of foreign affairs, “our friend and ally has come to question the very worth of its mantle of global leadership.” The costs of such a deterioration in U.S. standing are long term.”(2)

In the Far East, Disgustus has engaged in the kind of bluster that has led up perilously close to armed conflict, perhaps, nuclear war. The conflict on the Korean peninsula pits two national leaders with a tenuous grasp on power: the North Korean leader young, delusional and inexperienced and the American leader old, delusional and inexperienced. Neither is known for graciously backing down and in a conflict conducted under the glare of the klieg lights compromise is impossible. On this the hundredth anniversary of the Great War it is perhaps wise to remember how Europe and then the world stumbled into a global catastrophe.

After castigating the Chinese, whom tRUMP referred to as 'rapists' and vowed to set matters right as he campaigned for the presidency he immediately changed his tune upon achieving office. First the Chinese leadership came to Washington and then Disgustus went on a Far East trip suggesting to the Japanese that they re-arm themselves and that the South Koreans would be perhaps better served to look to the Chinese when dealing with North Korea. Trump took a group of Capitalists with him to Beijing and emerged not with an agreement over North Korea or any agreements dealing with our massive balance of trade deficit with China, but with an additional 250 Billion dollar trade deal almost certain to increase the deficit. The Chinese rolled out the red carpet and tRUMP folded like a lawn chair on the Titanic. So much for “The Art of the Deal” so much for the great negotiator.

As the first anniversary approached the White House, fearing massive protests should he show his face in London, canceled the upcoming trip to the United Kingdom. So low is Disgustus standing on the world stage that he cannot accept an invitation from our closest ally to visit their country.

With the questioning of our long-standing alliances, rogue diplomacy in the most dangerous hot spots in the world, a credibility daily twitted away, and the head of a regime seen universally as ignorant, incompetent, unstable and totally lacking in credibility, Disgustus has destroyed the credibility of a once great power. He has isolated the United States to such a degree that most world leaders now view this country as a rogue superpower, with attendant shifts in international diplomacy. Already the Chinese are moving to fill the void in the East, Africa and parts of the Middle East, Russia in Syria, Egypt, and Eastern Europe. With Britain withdrawing from the European Union, Germany is now seen as the leader of the Western World.

Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh.”

Grade: F-

Impeach and Imprison.




-------------
  1. Cohen, Eliot A. “Trump's Lucky Year”, “Foreign Affairs” https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2018-01-20/trumps-lucky-year?cid=int-fls&pgtype=hpg
  2. ibid. Emphasis mine.





Jan 25, 2018

January 25, 2018: Br'er Putin, Whack-A-Mole, Object Of Ridicule


And Br'er Putin, he just laugh and laugh”
                                              ----from “The Quotations of Chairman Joe”

Caesar Disgustus spent the first anniversary of his maladministration holed up in the 'dump' he calls the White House. It wasn't supposed to be that way, for he and his henchmen had planned a gala at tRUMP's Mar-A-Lago resort in Florida, a veritable bribery dinner which cost those in the cheap seats one hundred thousand dollars per couple and those seated around the 'captain's table' forking over two hundred thousand dollars per couple for the benefit of dining with and hearing the gibberish that continually emanates from the Oracle of Queens.

Disgustus was held hostage in Washington because the wheel had come off the wagon. The Democrats, having grown tired of playing “whack-a-mole” with the White House had filibustered a continuing resolution to keep the government funded. A week earlier, in a televised White House meeting Disgustus assured the assembled lawmakers and the nation that he would happily sign whatever immigration measure that the Congress could pass. Accordingly, Senators, Lindsay Graham (R-South Carolina), and Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) headed up a group that included Jeff Flake (R-Arizona) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) among others, producing a bi-partisan plan to meet the urgent needs of the DACA (see previous posts) recipients as well as significant compromise provisions concerning an overall immigration overhaul, the first in nearly 35 years. Durbin called the White House and informed Disgustus that he had a deal, tRUMP asked if Graham was on board and was assured he was. Accordingly tRUMP led Durbin to believe that a deal had been struck, one that would easily pass the Senate and, if Ryan allows the bill to be voted upon in the House would receive broad bi-partisan support. Durbin contacted Graham and the two of them went down Pennsylvania Avenue to meet the 'president'.

Upon arriving they confronted Disgustus in ill-humor, fresh from a meeting with White House Counsel Miller and his Chief of Staff Kelly who had invited Senators Tom Cotton (Rescumlican-Arkansas) and Purdue (Rescumlican-Georgia) both immigration hard liners. Durbin found himself having been sandbagged, surrounded by a host of congressional hard liners and White House staff who, last obtaining Disgustus attention, blew up the deal. Hours later, C-Span presented us with the visual spectacle of the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell openly pining that he had no idea what this 'president' wants. Whereupon business came to a halt.

The Rescumlican Lie is that the Democrats shut down the government and moved to interrupt and hold hostage our military. NOT TRUE. Like everything coming from the RESCUMLICANS this is a bold-faced lie. Lawrence O'Donnell in his broadcast last night told us the truth, complete with video from the Senate floor. Immediately following the vote that sustained the filibuster and forced the shutdown Senator Claire McCaskill took to the floor and asked for unanimous consent to fund the military during the crisis, asking to approve the action without objection whereby Mitch McConnell rose and said: "I object". Senator Nelson of Florida rose to ask for a continuing resolution to fund the government for another day so that the government would run while negotiation continues. Again, McConnell rose and said, "I object". Senator Tester then rose and asked for unanimous consent for a continuing resolution to keep the government open until Monday, again McConnell rose and said: "I object". Here for all the world to see, McConnell not only shut down the government but moved to block the payment of our military creating a crisis in which, thankfully, cooler heads eventually prevailed. But make no mistake about it. The Rescumlican spin is, as always, a boldfaced lie. It was McConnell and his Rescumlicans that shut down the government and McConnell and his Rescumlicans that were holding the military hostage.

The nation has become a laughingstock. Recent polls show that confidence in institutions, not just political institutions plummeted 37% in the last year, greatly accelerating a trend that has been decades in the making. Americans now trust no one, not their law enforcement agencies, not their religious institutions, not their congress, not their president; and every day in every way Disgustus defiles whatever he touches further eroding confidence.

Internationally, the U.S. Stands one place ahead of Russia and behind China as a trustworthy and respected presence on the international stage. Effectively, Disgustus has isolated the United States, making this country an object of ridicule among nations.

Fearing the fallout of a 'leader' skipping out of town to hobnob with billionaires while the government was turning out the lights, the White House kept their man, however reluctantly, in town. Rumors quickly spread that he was holed up in 'the dump' alone in bed with his cheeseburger forcing the White House to release a photograph of the idiot sitting in the presidential chair looking for all the world like a tourist who had broken free from the tour group, stole into the presidential sanctuary striking a pose. “The Acting President” who can't act.




Jan 19, 2018

January 20, 2018: Piss in Your Fireplace, Numerous Red Flags, Defiling our Space


Tourists talking about the madhouse
talking about the ear
the madman hangs in fancy homes
they wouldn't let him near!
He'd piss in their fireplace!
He'd drag them through Turbulent Indigo”

----Joni Mitchell “Turbulent Indigo” (1)

We were told that he would piss in our fireplace and drag us through turbulent indigo. The paper and the reporters who know him best, “The New York Times”, warned about the madman who hangs in fancy homes, and they weren't singing about Vincent Van Gogh.

Normally the editorial board of the “Times”, fills a full two columns on its editorial page opining on two or three issues. But on Monday, September 26, 2016 (2) the editors took a full two columns comprising two thirds of the editorial page in an essay entitled “Why He Should Not Be President”, and featuring a photograph of a sober tRUMP staring blankly off into space.

Citing their years of chronicling tRUMP's unlikely rise to prominence in Manhattan, and his “improbable” run for president culminating at that time with the nomination of the Rescumlican Party, the editorial board issued a clear warning about what other publications—the Cincinnati
Enquirer and the Nation magazine among them—openly called a “clear and present danger”.

From the moment of combustion, it became clear that Mr. Trump's views were matters of dangerous impulse and cynical pandering rather than thoughtful politics. Yet he has attracted throngs of Americans who ascribe higher purpose to him than he has demonstrated in a freewheeling campaign marked by bursts of false and outrageous allegations, personal insults, xenophobic nationalism, unapologetic sexism and positions that shift according to his audience and whims” (3)

The Times tore into how tRUMP was selling himself and why he couldn't be believed. A financial wizard? The editors cited his “record rife with bankruptcies and sketchy ventures like Trump University” (4) which his biographer David Cay Johnston has pointed out requires sanction from the state of New York, something the state had pointedly not done. About his tax returns, the Times opined that disclosure “would undoubtedly raise numerous red flags” citing his ubiquitous use of loopholes, years of paying no taxes at all, and “notably (tapping) $258,000. in donor's money from his charitable foundation to settle lawsuits involving his for-profit businesses, according to the Washington Post” (5).

A straight talker? The “Times” editors point to his vacuous claim that he had a plan to defeat ISIS, despite having no experience in national security. Borrowing a page from Richard Nixon's famous 'secret plan to end the war in Viet Nam' here was tRUMP bobbing and weaving, steadfastly insisting that he had a plan but that he didn't want to reveal it “ludicrously” insisting “he must not tip off the enemy”. (6) Then there was “the shameful 'birther' campaign against President Obama's legitimacy as a wedge for his candidacy” (7)

Since his campaign began, NBC News has tabulated that Mr. Trump has made 117 distinct policy shifts on 20 major issues, including three contradictory views on abortion in one eight- hour stretch. As reporters try to pin down his contradictions, Mr. Trum has mocked them at his rallies. He said he would 'loosen' libel laws to make it easier to sue news organizations that displease him” (8).

An expert negotiator? The editors were far from sanguine:

His plan for cutting the national debt was far from a confidence builder: He said he might try to persuade creditors to accept less than the government owed. This fanciful notion, imported from Mr. Trump's debt-steeped real estate world, would undermine faith in the government and the stability of global financial markets. His tax-cut plan has been no less alarming. It was initially estimated to cost $10 trillion in tax revenue, then, after revisions, maybe $3 trillion, by one adviser's estimate. There is no credible indication of how this would be paid for—only assurances that those in the upper brackets will be favored.” (9)

His questioning of NATO would “present a major diplomatic and security challenge as would his repeated denunciations of trade deals and relations with China. Then there were the threats of pulling out of our agreements with Iran and with the rest of the world on climate change.

Is this the “change agent for the nation and the world?” That is the question, opined the “Times” facing the electorate. Did we really want to run up deficits in order to cut taxes for billionaires? Did we really want to savage our new national health insurance program? Do we really want to address gun violence by arming “citizens to engage in what he imagines would be defensive 'shootouts' with gunmen”?

Concluding, the editors of the “Times” summed up what confronted the country as the election approached:

Voters attracted by the force of the Trump personality should pause and take note of the precise qualities he exudes as an audaciously different politician; bluster, savage mockery of those who challenge him, degrading comments about women, mendacity, crude generalizations about nations and religions. Our presidents are role models for generations of our children. Is this the example we want for them?” (10)

The answer to the question was declared in the headline. Of course not. This by the newspaper that covered him most and knows him best. They know this carnival barker for what he is and know him to be a clear and present danger. The Times was not alone. Caesar Disgustus has every reason to rail against the 'mainstream' media for Disgustus earned the editorial endorsement of not a single big city newspaper in the United States. Those that cover politics, and those that have been reporting on the life and times of one Donald J. tRUMP, know that he was and is entirely unfit to be president of the United States.

Every day in every way he defiles the office of the presidency. Every day brings outrage. This week has been spent backpedaling and parsing whether the scum used the word 'shithouse' or 'outhouse' when describing countries in Latin America and Africa, as if the difference would somehow exonerate the bastard. As noted in an earlier post (11), Disgustus reeling from having been savaged by a new book describing the ugliness that now inhabits the White House, appeared on television holding a meeting with congressional leaders. During this meeting Disgustus was seen gyrating from one pole to another basically agreeing with whatever was last suggested, regardless of how contradictory, and finally declaring he would sign whatever the Congress could agree upon. That declaration put Senators Graham of South Carolina and Durbin of Illinois to work producing in short order a compromise on the DACA program which included some significant concessions by liberals on chain-immigration and skills requirements. The president was about to agree to it but hearing about the accord, White House Chief of Staff Kelly called in Sen. Cotton of Arkansas and Purdue of Georgia as well as several other hard liners to get Disgustus to change his mind yet once again. This led to the ugly meeting late last week in which the epithets hurled at those from Haiti and other countries blew up the agreement. Now, with the Democrats demanding action of DACA as well as the children's health care program CHIPS, which has been left unfunded since last September as part of a deal to raise the debt ceiling, the government, as we speak, is facing yet another shutdown. Meanwhile we are presented with yet another novel spectacle: the senate majority leader openly musing on the floor of the United States senate that he knows not what a president of his own party wants. This is what happens when one elects an outsider. This is what happens when a country disparages politics. This is what happens when vast swaths of the country consistently confuse celebrity with substance. Here stands the most ignorant and incompetent man ever to walk across the national political stage. Disgustus has no idea and that, in the end, will be all that may save us.

Today marks the anniversary of the arrival of Disgustus. The press tried to warn us. It has been a turbulent year as our orange Julius has gone about making a pig's breakfast of governance. It has been a year now since he was invited, albeit through the back door of the electoral college, into our living room. But this is no Van Gogh who took up residence. Our hospitality has not been rewarded with anything grand or beautiful. Instead he has defiled our living space, he has pissed in our fireplace, he has dragged us through turbulent indigo.

Impeach and Imprison”

--------
  1. Why He Should Not Be President” “The New York Times” editorial September 26, 2016, page A26.
  2. Ibid
  3. ibid
  4. ibid
  5. ibid
  6. ibid
  7. ibid
  8. ibid
  9. ibid.
  10. January 12, 2018: Unforeseen Circumstance, Modern
    Caligula, Death Knell of the Republic



Jan 14, 2018

January 13, 2018: Nature of Wisdom, Hollowing Out Our Institutions, Ignorance Reigns Supreme


The sum total of individual ignorance”....This is the specter that haunted the founders and haunts us today. To guard against mob rule, the passions of the people, the founders not only set about creating a fragmented government and established a “Bill of Rights”, but went about through the passage under the Confederation of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 in which provisions were made not only for the inclusion of the territories into the union but for the education of these populations. A provision under this law set aside a square mile in each new county the proceeds from the sale of which would go to the establishment of public schools. Later, Jefferson would cite his greatest achievement not the Declaration of Independence, nor his presidency, nor his inventions, nor his authorship of the Virginia laws establishing religious liberty. No, what he wanted as his legacy was the establishment of the University of Virginia, the first public university in the United States. It would be, Jefferson and his generation held, through the establishment of sound public schools that ignorance, while always prevalent, would not always be controlling.

Today the great Vandal in Chief presides over an administration that is hollowing out not only the State Department but virtually every federal agency. He has failed to make appointments to over 600 major positions. The Justice Department is hemorrhaging, ambassadorships have gone unfilled. Currently, we face a crisis on the Korean peninsula with no ambassador in place in Seoul. With the hollowing out of the bureaucracy, institutional memory is lost, replaced by an intentional and willful ignorance. Nowhere is this more evident than in the selection of Betsy DeVos to be Secretary of Education.

Educated at Holland Christian High and attending Hope College in Holland, Michigan, DeVos, sister of Eric Prince—the founder of the mercenary Blackwater Corporation—and married to the son of the SCAMWAY heir, DeVos had never attended a public school. She has, using the millions available from the family fortunes, spearheaded a movement to plunder the public domain by taking taxes raised for education and funneling them to private schools—mostly religious ones. She has also been out front in the campaign to saddle the public schools with useless and damaging performance tests and to strip the teachers of union representation so as to lower teacher's pay. The result has been to materially hollow out public education and nowhere is this more evident than her home state of Michigan. Michigan in my youth ranked in the top ten states in educational performance. Today it ranks down with Alabama with Mississippi not far in the rearview mirror.

DeVos, of course, demands layers and layers of standardized tests (mostly state administered) which has caused the schools to teach not the subject but to teach to the tests. She steadfastly refuses to hold her private schools to any such standards. The result is that Michigan has the worst private school system in the country but, nevertheless, over a billion dollars of state money goes into these worthless institutions. I have one of them right across the street. A 'High School' that has no teachers, no schedule, no compulsory attendance. A 'school' where only computer's teach. It is a joke but someone is making money from it. That's the point. If those in this administration cannot get the government out of the business, they privatize it so as to plunder the public domain. This isn't new to tRUMP, but Caesar Disgustus has returned to the theme with vengeance ensuring, among other things, that ignorance reigns supreme.

This vandal destroys everything he touches. That's what joins the likes of the Mercer's, the Prince's, the DeVos', the Koch's and Putin in the enterprise. Indeed, a very useful idiot.

Impeach and Imprison.


Jan 13, 2018

January 12, 2018: Unforeseen Circumstance, Modern Caligula, Death Knell of the Republic


The founders could foresee a possible Tiberius, a possible Augustus, a possible Napoleon. They could foresee the development of faction. They did not foresee the organization of political parties not to mention the emergence of a modern Caligula, our very own Caesar Disgustus.

As chronicled in these columns the cancer that is modern conservatism fueled as it is by the corresponding dominance of the “Generation of Swine”, has been eating away first at the economic base of this country and now upon its hallowed social and political institutions. This cancer has culminated with the rise of one Donald J. tRUMP, extreme narcissist and quintessential 'boomer'. Our very own Caesar Disgustus representing, perhaps, the death knell of the republic.

As we speak a motion is being introduced into the House of Representatives calling for a vote to censure the 'president' for conduct unbecoming. This in the wake of a remark made two days ago referring to 'shithole' countries like Haiti and Africa and complaining that we are accepting too many immigrants from these countries and bemoaning the lack of white folks from places like Norway coming to our shores.

A new book having been released by a beat-writer named Wolff, has chronicled the madness inside the tRUMP White House. Portraying this 'president' as a juvenile, self-absorbed, indeed narcissistic twit, about whom virtually no one who works for him holds any respect, operatives inside this madhouse went about putting Disgustus on television broadcasting the first hour of a meeting with congressional leaders about fixing DACA (the Obama era program to address the needs of the so-called 'dreamers') and the larger immigration issue. Here was Disgustus, arms folded over his chest, the haughty condescending countenance that has now become a permanent fixture upon his face, trying his level best to appear informed, rational and in control. Instead the country watched transfixed the 'president' pogo back and forth agreeing with virtually everything that was said, finally ending with the flat statement that he would sign whatever was sent to his desk. This reminded me of a remark that Huey Long made about the man who would succeed him as governor of Louisiana and over whom Long had absolute control. “Hell”, remarked Long, “he'll sign a leaf if it blows in the window and lands on his desk”. So it is with Caesar Disgustus. He will act upon the advice of whomever speaks to him last; and will sign into law whatever the billionaires and their paid prostitutes put on his desk.

Every day brings a new outrage. Every day the depths of the cesspool are sounded as Disgustus goes off on another of his twit-storms, making another offensive remark, launching another assault upon our institutions. When he isn't insulting black athletes, picking fights with Gold Star families of wounded and dead servicemen and women, hurling insults at congressional leaders, senators, judges and agency heads, endorsing a candidate for the United States Senate convincingly accused of violating an underage girl, we find him undermining the very rule of law by engaging in a prolonged and concerted effort to obstruct justice and working to vilify and discredit those charged with investigating his conduct. And now this.

Several African nations are demanding an apology. Disgustus does not apologize, this insecure fragile little man's ego will not allow it, especially to those that do not look like him. Every day in every way the cancer that is our Caesar Disgustus eats away at the republic, destroying our standing in the world, unraveling our longest-standing alliances. Indeed, it was yesterday announced, Caesar Disgustus was dis-invited to London, canceling a planned state visit to meet with our closest ally. These are the depths to which we have fallen and I fear we are nowhere near sounding the bottom.

You've got to hand it to Vladimir Putin. Putin knows tRUMP well. Putin knew that he would get quite a return on his investments. Putin understands that Caesar Disgustus is a very useful idiot indeed.

Meanwhile a motion is introduced to censure this man for “conduct unbecoming”, that is, For Being Ye Public Ass”.

Impeach and Imprison.






Jan 12, 2018

January 11, 2018: Back to the Farm, Contradictory Assumptions, Protection from Themselves


A republic rests upon the assumption that the sum total of individual ignorance equals mass wisdom; capitalism rests upon the assumption that the sum total of individual greed equals the greater good. Both assumptions are contradictory; both assumptions are false.”

                             ----from “The Quotations of Chairman Joe”

The year 1776 gave us two of the pillars of our republic, the Declaration of Independence and Adam Smith's “Wealth of Nations”, the third being the Constitution of the United States 13 years later. While still mired in a slave economy, these documents served to lay the framework from which the United States would lay claim to both the emerging industrial order and the dawning democratic age.

It was during one of my visits to the 'farm' (1) that, confronted by my great uncle, my horizons concerning our often blind assertions, even our basic assumptions, began to be stretched.

I'd like to take credit for the inspiration of the above quote but it was during a conversation with my great uncle Lionel that my comfortable certainties were abruptly brought up short.

Do you believe in democracy?” he asked.
Of course I do”, was my predictable reply.
What makes you think that the sum total of individual ignorance equals mass wisdom?” was his reply as he once again flashed his toothless smile.
To this query, I could muster no acceptable answer.

Here my ageing uncle would, in a short exchange, teach valuable life lessons; for not only did he succeed in jarring the foundations of a world-view that had been handed down by countless schoolmasters, but he taught me to question the very foundations of our common misunderstandings. It was a skill I quickly began to put to use as I would engage my peers and sometimes my elders in robust debates. It was a skill that led, in time to likewise question our fundamental economic assumptions leading, by degrees, to the quotation above, the first part of which is a variation of the question put to me by my great-uncle; the second is mine alone.

However, it would be years and much reading before I could fashion an answer to his direct question for the query put to me at the old farmhouse set me out in search of new answers to what were clearly fundamental contradictions. The journey would take me through countless history books, biographies, philosophers, and political economists. From Rousseau to Feuerbach, from Plato to Galbraith, from Jefferson to Roosevelt, from Marx to Nietzsche, and, finally, Madison's Federalist No. 10.

It was professor Lynn Mapes who put me on to “The Federalist Papers” and my friend Larry Hamp who, disgusted that in the wake of a marital separation and pending divorce found that I had given up reading, presented me with a boxed copy of the work. Therein I discovered that the founding fathers were indeed aware of these implicit contradictions and were clear-eyed and without illusions as to the difficulties involved in compensating, if not overcoming, them. The “Papers” opened my eyes to the degree to which those who met a Philadelphia were aware not only of the difficulties involved in determining, in Rousseau's words, “the will of the people”, but likewise the necessity of protecting said people from the “passions” that would inevitably sweep the country; in a word, protecting the people from said “will”, protecting the people from themselves. Accordingly, they set about establishing what they hoped would be certain safeguards to keep the population safe from the public's presumed “right to err”.

They did this by fragmenting governments, first fragmenting government vertically by creating a federation in which state and local governments were clearly distinct and, in some measure, independent of the national government and, secondly, horizontal in that the national government would be divided into three equal branches, the Legislative, the Judicial, and the Executive, each with distinct powers, each depending upon but separate from the others. In this way, it was held, no one man would be able to grab all the reigns of power and establish a tyranny.

But equally important the founders, remembering their English ancestry, quickly passed a “Bill of Rights” guaranteeing certain personal freedoms. Today Americans like to see these first ten amendments as rights protecting the individual from capricious governance but they are more than that, far more than that. For by protecting the Press, by protecting the Churches and prohibiting the state from the interference thereof, the amendments served to establish and protect institutions what would be and were intended to be, in professor John Kenneth Galbraith's term, 'countervailing powers”. Institutions beyond the reach of governments acting as independent checks upon the 'popular will'. Likewise protections against self-incrimination, unlawful searches and seizures and so on. The founders knew quite well the capricious nature of Rousseau's 'popular will' which can all to easily degenerate into a type of lynch mob.

They put other measures into place as well, the Electoral College, a feature we have become painfully re-acquainted within recent years. The Senate elected by the state legislatures of the several states, a feature that was changed in the early twentieth century as well as a senator's term of office lasting two years longer than that of a sitting president and only 1/3 of the Senate up for re-election during an election year. This would provide some greater measure of stability, further safeguards against the “passions of the moment”. The government was intended to be cumbersome, inefficient, slow. It was intended to be so as to protect the people from their passions, and, hopefully, give greater stability and therefore longevity to the experiment for the founders knew how short-lived republics tended to be. To protect the people from themselves...

Likewise with the emerging economic order. Federalist No.10 is a long essay by James Madison arguing for the adoption of the constitution. In it he forthrightly addresses Montesquieu's critique, citing historical examples such as the Greek City-States, Venice, and the Hanseatic League, that a republic covering a vast territory cannot long endure. Madison responded in No. 10 with the argument that precisely because the United State traversed so much territory that a certain stability would be ensured, arguing that such a republic would be too large and too complex, having too many interests for one group, one cabal, much less one man to dominate. In this document, Madison laid the foundations for what would become our “interest-group democracy” in which the various major interests would contend and, in the process, neutralize each other. It was a concept put to the test with sectional disputes leading to civil war in the 19th century and the dominance of cartels during the 'Gilded Age' and our own. Moreover, Madison argued in another essay, the single most important reason to adopt the constitution was to regulate the economy. The constitution gave Congress broad power to do so. What became known as the 'commerce clause', gives Congress all the power that is 'necessary and proper' to regulate. The founders had no illusions crafting the best structure they could to protect the public from capricious and arbitrary rule as well as economic exploitation and rapine. To protect the people from the likes of Caesar Disgustus.

The lessons taught so long ago bear fruit.  To disagree and to know why is a mark of intelligence; but, perhaps more importantly, to agree and to know why is a mark of wisdom.  Setting one free of one's acquired certainties sets one on the path to understanding; for any 'truth' can only be discovered alone. Thank you my mentor. 

_________________
  1. see December 15, 2010: Northwest of Custer, The Farm, Damn Democrats as well as November 5, 2011: Return to Custer, A Word about The Word, Pigs Breakfast.