Mar 30, 2018

March 31, 2018: Landmark Observance, Rock and a Hard Place, Yes! Yes! Yes!


Great Leaders don't grow on trees”
                           ----Mother

Today is yet another landmark observance of that time half-century ago when anything and everything seemed within our reach. On this date in 1968, President Lyndon Johnson addressed the nation in a speech to the nation about the war in Vietnam. The speech had become necessary in the wake of the January Tet Offensive during which South Vietnam had been temporarily overrun by insurgent forces. Images of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon under assault, and raging battles lasting weeks in the old provincial capital of Hue where street fighting was literally block, by block, house by house, door to door.

Johnson had accepted at face value, as had most of the nation, the assurances of General William Westmoreland, then commander in the field. Recent biographies have thrown doubt upon the veracity of Westmoreland as well as his role in creating illusions of victory; for he had purposely manipulated the facts on the ground in order to tell the president what he thought the president wanted to hear. Now the president would tell a nation, grown impatient and weary of war, what it so desperately wanted to hear. This, tragically, had led the president to tell the nation that there was, in his unfortunate metaphor, 'a light at the end of the tunnel'. Now, it appears, that light was nothing more than a speeding locomotive.

Much has been made in the hand-wringing in the aftermath about the lessons of Tet. Pro-war advocates still contend that the battles were a huge defeat for the Vietminh, and that the nation should have pursued its objectives in the wake of the 'victory'. But this analysis misses the point entirely. Yes, as Johnson was about to address the nation, now 50 years ago this evening, he could report the heavy casualties inflicted upon the enemy and that it would take years for Hanoi to recover. Indeed, it would be another 4 years, almost to the day, before our adversaries could mount another major offensive. But missing in this argument is that there would, inevitably, always be another and then, seven years later, finally, another.

Johnson had finally absorbed what he had always suspected. In historian Michael Benchloss' book “Taking Power”, Benchloss publishes for the first time recorded telephone conversations from the oval office in the days immediately following the assassination of President Kennedy. Here one encounters Lyndon Johnson in frank conversation with his Senate mentor Richard Russell of Georgia wondering aloud, in the fall of 1963, whether anyone—even the United States—could ultimately prevail in Vietnam. These people are a warlike people, the President told his former Senate colleague, citing Vietnamese history. President Kennedy, confronted with a crisis in neighboring Laos in 1962, had wisely demurred from military intervention. Now the drumbeat for war in Vietnam was growing and the calls that the dogs of war be loosed were becoming ever more insistent. On these recordings one can hear a deeply troubled president cite the fact that the Vietnamese had fought the Chinese for over 300 years before they finally were able to free themselves. Johnson knew, as Ho Chi Minh would later declare in 1966, that our children and grandchildren will still be fighting this war. It was always a real possibility, if not a dead --certainty. Now, Tet had confirmed his worst fears.

Johnson found himself caught between a rock and a hard place. To ask the nation for ever greater sacrifice in the defense of such a corrupt regime; a sacrifice seemingly without end was, simply, not tenable. To sue for peace was, in the wake of all the jingoistic Sabre-rattling, unthinkable.

Many historians, from LBJ biographer Robert Caro to MSNBC's Chris Matthews, have duly noted that since his days in Congress, LBJ was always writing his resignation speech. Indeed, Lawrence O'Donnell in his “Playing with Fire” a book commemorating the 50th anniversary of that terrible year 1968, points out that several anti-war activists—Allard Lowenstein among them—were pointing out to Robert Kennedy, Gene McCarthy and anyone else who would listen that LBJ would, if push came to shove, quit.

And so it was that as a reluctant RFK pondered the times, Lowenstein and others coaxed a quixotic Minnesota Senator to enter the race, challenging LBJ in a limited number of primaries. What followed was a stunning performance in New Hampshire in which McCarthy polling at around ten percent finished with an astounding 42 percent of the vote, Lowenstein had found his peace candidate. Then, on March 16, Robert Kennedy entered the race. Now the President faced with war on one side and a surging peace movement on the other, felt the ground shift beneath him.

From the White House, Johnson addressed the nation. He had two endings to his speech. As he approached the end of the speech he signaled Lady Bird Johnson what he would say. She was the only other person who knew of the alternate ending and they had agreed upon a prearranged signal. Accordingly, as he ended his address to the nation he told the country that, in effect, Walter Cronkite was right. That there had to be a negotiated settlement. That the effort would require his undivided attention and that to do this he had to remain above the partisan struggle now unfolding in the process to choose a new president. Then he said it “ accordingly, I will not seek, nor will I accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”.

I remember watching the speech alone. My mother was in the kitchen, my step-father was working second shift. In any case, I was the family's only dissenter and in our house the “generation gap”, as it came to be known, was real and palpable. They supported the President and this was anticipated to be yet another speech on what was becoming an all-too-familiar drum-beat. I quite expected the same and when the President announced that he was sending more troops into the maw of war, my heart sank. Then, he pulled a rabbit out of his hat, inviting our adversaries to join us at the peace table. When he withdrew from the race by god I leaped from the sofa, exclaiming “Yes!Yes! Yes!” My mother asked me why I was so animated. When I told her, she looked puzzled, perplexed, crestfallen. Then she said “you know, great leaders don't grow on trees”.

An observation that was soon enough brought home.

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


Impeach and Imprison.

Mar 27, 2018

March 27, 2018: Tepid Response, Inconvenient Truth, Fold Like a Deck Chair


Whenever Caesar Disgustus confronts Vladimir Putin, our “president-for-life” folds like a deck chair on the Titanic.
                           ---- from "The Quotations of Chairman Joe

To date, the response by the Western World to the poisoning of a Russian double agent and his daughter has been tepid. Prime Minister May of Great Britain has called out Putin for this outrage but, led by May, the Western World has so far only expelled diplomats. True, a significant representation of participating countries joined in the effort, from France to Ukraine, with the U.K. Expelling 20 diplomats, but the response of the United States has been puzzling.

Disgustus' first response was 'wait and see', telling the press corps and the nation that he wanted to first talk with the Brits and see the evidence, not that anything the Rescumlickans do is evidence-based. This was a curious response, given that Prime Minister May had already stood in the House of Commons and declared unequivocally that the attack, using an agent pioneered by the Russians, was engineered by Putin and his henchmen. Nevertheless, like any other 'inconvenient truth' (like global warming), the scum are always late to the scene. So while May and the European community were organizing a response, our very own Caesar Disgustus was found wanting.

Instead, our intrepid Disgustus was seen congratulating Putin on his electoral victory, ignoring a memo written by his national security team with the words “DO NOT CONGRATULATE” in capital letters. Disgustus, famous for his illiteracy, ignored the memo and called, we learned again from Russian sources, Putin to do precisely that. Not only did he ignore his advisers, but failed to call Putin into account for the violence visited upon the former Russian spy and his daughter, nor bring any criticisms to bear concerning ongoing election tampering or the Russian hacking of our nuclear plants and the power grid. White House officials were stunned and embarrassed, as is the nation.

Disgustus has been dragged, kicking and screaming, into the collective effort by the West to mount some kind of response. But let us face facts. The effort, to date, has been lackluster. Obama, in the wake of election tampering, expelled 25 Russian diplomats. Putin responded by expelling 700 U.S. Diplomats from Russia. Disgustus, responding to the Russian reaction merely said that his friend Putin was doing him a favor by helping his administration cut costs. Now we have another round of Diplomatic tit-for-tat, which basically boils down to a slapping on the wrist, while the meddling and hacking continue.

What is amazing here is not only the tepid response of this administration—as deplorable as it is—but that of the West generally. While Britain's may take some solace in the expulsion of twenty Russian diplomats, the fact is that this isn't much of a response. Indeed London has been flooded with Russian Oligarch money, money in search of a safe haven against possible political upheaval, or the falling from grace. Russian-linked money has done its worst, for it has not only bought the oligarchs a safe haven for their funds, or their possible futures but has bought acquiescence from the governments of those countries so invested.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the United States, where Russian money-laundering and the implicit, if not explicit, participation by our very own Caesar Disgustus has frozen in place the appropriate American action. Look no further than the steadfast refusal of Disgustus to impose the sanctions voted by Congress with only 5 dissenting votes in both the House and the Senate. Clearly, Disgustus is willfully ignoring the expressed will of the people and their demand that our response is punitive. Instead, our Maximum Leader, our “president-for-life” in waiting, folds like a deck chair on the Titanic.

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

Impeach and Imprison.



Mar 25, 2018

March 24, 2018: The Prince of Darkness, Holland Christian's Very Own, The New Praetorian Guard


"If ever ye seek a reason to close down parochial schools, ye need look no further than  Holland Christian's very own 'Prince of Darkness'.

                   ----from "The Quotations of Chairman Joe"


For decades now, the Rescumlickan party has been assiduously working to privatize whatever governmental functions that they cannot sell off outright.  The important advantage to privatization is that the money comes not from persuading unsuspecting customers, but from demanding the revenues from unsuspecting taxpayers. Here we have the blessed capitalist paradise wherein one can reduce costs by slashing services while all the time demanding revenues on parity with those still in the business who are actually serving the public. Ergo, this wretched “school” across the street that was once a public elementary school but is now a privatized 'high school'; that was once filled with teachers, but is now filled with computers; that was once filled with laughing playing children, but is now filled with surly juvenile delinquents. Schools with no teachers, no regular classes and almost no accountability. This is the educational paradise created by one Betsy DeVos, she of the Prince and Scamway fortunes who, through unlimited political contributions, has risen to take her place among those practicing unlimited political expedience—all in the name of greed.

DeVos, another of this administration's national embarrassments, was on CBS's 60 Minutes a week ago demonstrating her complete ignorance about all matters educational, sitting dumbfounded as she stammered through answers put to her by Leslie Stall about the mess she and her ScamWay family has made of education in the State of Michigan. Nowhere has the 'charter' school movement been more profound and less accountable; nowhere has the public domain been so stripped of resources, a billion dollars a year now goes to these operations, money stolen from the public trust to line the pockets of capitalist pigs. The experiment has, by all accounts, been a miserable failure. Yet this has not prevented the likes of these Scamway ideologues from imposing this failure upon the rest of the nation. Experience is again powerless to instruct. What happens when objective reality calls to account the ideological imperative? Answer: away with reality! But then, in DeVos' own words, she is only “doing god's work”.

This isn't the only legacy bequeathed to us by Holland Michigan's Holland Christian High School. Betsy's brother another alumnus of this American Madrasa, is none other than the world's most notorious mercenary, the prince of darkness himself, Eric Prince.

Prince should have been long since arrested and sent to the Hague to be tried for war crimes stemming from outrages committed by his company—then known as Blackwater—during the Iraq war. Instead he had taken refuge in the Middle East during the Obama administration and as the election of 2016 approached began to do work for the tRUMP campaign, eventually ending up advising the campaign and the transition team on appointments to national security posts. With the elevation of Disgustus to the presidency, Prince was again back in the country pressing the newly anointed to privatize the entire war in Afghanistan, a war his company, now calling itself Frontier or FSG, would then prosecute. Also, in the works, was an idea floated about to create a privatized intelligence agency, run by Prince, that would compete with the CIA, NSA, and the several military agencies and report directly to Disgustus. The projects were tabled in the immediate wake of the Michael Flynn imbroglio and the Russian investigations, but news has recently emerged that the proposal regarding intelligence has not only re-emerged but has actually been funded in the recent budget resolutions passed by Congress.

Things keep getting curiouser and curiouser as this country careens from scandal to scandal, outrage to outrage, like a pinball from lever to post. Not only has Prince been implicated in shady financial dealing in the Seychelles Islands while attempting to establish yet a second 'back-channel line of communication between Caesar Disgustus and the Kremlin; but, according to a recent YouTube podcast by “The Young Turks”, the world's most notorious mercenary has not only been selling military hardware and technology to Azerbaijan, Libya and other less than savory actors, but he has successfully lobbied this government into creating a private intelligence agency within the U.S. Government, run by Prince's company—formerly Blackwater, now Frontier or FSG (Frontier Security Group). This is not an entire family or even U.S. Owned operation. According to “The Young Turks”, the largest shareholder is a Chinese Government run bank.

Eric Prince is a mercenary, a war criminal, and a traitor. By doing his bidding Disgustus has further put this nation's security at risk by placing national intelligence and, therefore, national security in the grasp of not only the Prince of Darkness but within the reach of hostile foreign powers.

There is a further concern here, and that is that these machinations are more than likely going to develop a modern Praetorian Guard. Disgustus is known to worship dictators. Leadership like that of Russia, China, the Philippines, and Turkey are objects of adoration by this fool. He reportedly sleeps with a copy of Hitler's speeches on his nightstand. He has, on at least two occasions, openly mused about the advantage of a “presidency-for-life” here in the United States. Imagine a newly-minted 'strongman' complete with his own version of a “Revolutionary Guard”, patterned after the old German Gestapo or, perhaps, the Roman experience with its Praetorian Guard in the assassination of its republic.  This is where we may well be headed.

Cenk Uygur, formerly of MSNBC and host of "The Young Turks", reported that the government was informed of  Prince's involvement with alleged illegal arms and technology transfers in 2016 by the then CEO of the company, an action that led to the ouster of Frontier's chief executive. The Obama administration did nothing, perhaps because, as Uygur suggested, the administration may have felt that Clinton was going to win and that the next administration could take up the task of cracking Prince's skull. But there may have been a more sinister reason. Could it be that those in power are now intimidated, if not terrorized, by this groups of mercenaries and fear the consequences of calling them to accountability?

It is worth noting that by the first century C.E., the Praetorian Guard regularly not only assassinated the Caesars but chose who would succeed in his place. The foundations of the Republic begin to tremble.

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

Impeach and Imprison.

___________

Note:  "The Young Turks" once a weekday news program on MSNBC, has since moved to the internet featuring reporting, among others, of former CBS Nightly News Anchorman Dan Rather.  Like Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O'Donnell, Cenk Uygur's reporting is a reliable source of information. 




Mar 22, 2018

March 22, 2018: Shit-kickers and Methodists, Rogues Gallery, Deep From the Bowels



I want rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers, and Methodists!”

-----Harvey Korman as Hedley Lamarr in Mel Brooks' comedy “Blazing Saddles”.

Caesar Disgustus promised “only the best”. Instead he has presented the nation with a veritable rouges gallery of “hornswogglers, horse thieves, con men, dimwits, halfwits, shit-kickers, and assorted desperados. Perhaps a few Methodists would leaven the mix and bring some semblance of sanity to the bedlam that is this White House.

As has been previously noted in these columns, the original 'dream team', put together by our intrepid 'leader' resembled, in the words of British comedian John Cleese, “the crew of a pirate ship”.  It is that, mixed with mendacity for good measure.  Add to this inspiring incompetence and one is presented with the chaos chronicled by Michael Wolff in his best-selling account of the first months of this maladministration Fire and Fury.

Foreign observers and more than a few Washington insiders have taken some limited comfort in the presence of military brass that had been installed in the White House, a kind of military approach that many had hoped would bring some order to the madness. But with the recent firing of the 'adults in the room', the prospect of this administration going entirely off the rails presents a clear and present danger. In the last two weeks we have lost Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and today it was announced that Disgustus had fired national security advisor General H.R. McMaster, with Chief of Staff John Kelly said to be in the crosshairs.

Tillerson was undoubtedly the worst Secretary of State in the history of this country; but it says a great deal that his departure was viewed with trepidation. He oversaw the cutting of the budget by over 30 percent and, more than a year into this administration a full 60 senior positions including all six undersecretary position have gone unfilled. So serious is this that Disgustus went to Europe without this country having ambassadors in such countries as France, Germany, and Russia. Currently the United States' diplomatic roster is so understaffed that we send no one to important regional meetings on energy, trade, and other international issues leaving leadership to others. Now Disgustus is about to head to a summit meeting with the leadership of North Korea without an ambassador to South Korea or an undersecretary of State for the far East. This is the legacy of Rex Tillerson as he swallowed whole the Bannonite nonsense about the evils of the so-called 'Deep State'.

But Disgustus wasn't finished. He completed the vandalism by summarily firing Tillerson after the Secretary came to the support of our British allies in their dispute with Putin over the poisoning of Russian nationals on British soil. He did so as the Secretary was in Africa attempting to mend fences after Disgustus, ever “Ye Publick Ass”, had referred to countries in Africa and elsewhere as 'shitholes'. Here was a Secretary who had been the CEO of one of the world's greatest companies, now occupying an office once held by Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, being summarily dismissed while far off in Africa sitting on a toilet.

In his place Disgustus put former tea-bagging congressman and ideological idiot Mike Pompeo, ensuring that there will be one less voice objecting to the madness about him.

Now we have the dismissal of McMaster. McMaster has never worked well with Disgustus. According to Michael Wolff, McMaster had made the cardinal mistake of boring Disgustus by giving him lectures on the complexities of the issues before him. Disgustus, famously, does not like to read, and does not listen. Presentations are made with graphics, lots of pictures, and as few bullet points as good conscience will allow. Now, just as Tillerson in his last act as Secretary had criticized Russia on chemical attacks, so the last act of McMaster was to excoriate Russia for its nerve agent attacks in Syria and Britain. Within hours the White House announced the imminent departure of the National Security Advisor.

In his place Disgustus has put the worst possible choice in John Bolton. 'Ol Two-Cows' had made Bolton Ambassador to the United Nations but he did it when the Senate was out of session. Declaring that 'there is no such thing as a United Nations' saying that if one removed the top ten stories of the U.N. Building would make no difference. Significantly, the position of National Security Adviser does not require Senate confirmation.

Bolton is an idiot; an unrepentant neo-con who has yet to see any primary role for diplomacy and negotiation. Here is another foul smell deep from the bowels of conservative 'stink-tanks,' fresh from Faux News, that will only add to the stench in the echo-chamber pot that is becoming this White House. The adults are abandoning ship and the shit-kickers are taking charge. These are the depths into which we have fallen; this is where we have gone in the last fifty years;  there are no hero's there are only villains; this is the legacy of the Generation of Swine. 

An Br'er Putin he jus' laugh and laugh'.

Impeach and Imprison.

















Mar 20, 2018

March 16, 2018: Higher Standards, You! You! You! Revolutionary Priest



I am today announcing my candidacy for the presidency of the United States. I do not run for the presidency merely to oppose any man but to propose new policies. I run because I am convinced that this country is on a perilous course and because I have such strong feelings about what must be done, and I feel that I'm obliged to do all that I can...

At stake is not simply the leadership of our party or even our country. It is our right to moral leadership of this planet.”

                            ----Senator Robert F. Kennedy, March 16, 1968

With these words, Senator Robert Kennedy speaking in the very same Senate Caucus Room in which his brother had a short eight years earlier launched his own presidential campaign, began his own short-lived odyssey which, in a mere 82 days, would transform his political legacy as well as a broad spectrum of the country.

It has been a half-century now since that terrible time that transformed America. A year fraught with violence; a year marred by riots and demonstration; a year that began with such promise and ended with the ultimate booby prize: Richard Outhouse Nixon.

We are now as far removed from that time as they were from the Armistice ending the First World War. Many have chronicled those days, but few, if any, have captured the times, the energy, the drama, or the lightning in a bottle. There are, to be sure, records. There are films, videos, books, magazine and newspaper articles. Historians make constant reference to the year in which the foundations underlying the social contract cracked. But these, as any accounts, are secondary. They do not and cannot capture the smell, the moment, the life as it is lived. They are merely and can only be vicarious accounts such as they are.

But to wrap one's arms around the legacy of Robert Kennedy is no easy task. During his lifetime those who drew political cartoons rarely captured the man. He was, simply too complex to easily caricature. The best chroniclers of the time were Theodore White's “The Making of the President 1968”, one in a series of such books on the presidential elections from 1960-1972. Joe McGinness' work “The Selling of the President” about the Nixon campaign's use of media leap immediately to mind, as does Eugene McCarthy's “Year of the People”. None, however, reach the breadth and scope of three Englishmen, foreign correspondents at the time, Lewis Chester, Godfrey Hodgson, and Bruce Page with their opus “An American Melodrama The Presidential Campaign of 1968. In addition, there have been countless biographies from Arthur Schlesinger to Victor Lasky of Robert Kennedy each, in their own way, attempting to plumb the depths of his complexities if not his soul.

Thurston Clarke, who has presented us with perhaps the best effort at capturing the soul of the '68 campaign and, perhaps by extension, the soul of the candidate himself, begins his account with what is clearly the best description of the funeral train carrying the body of Robert Kennedy from New York City to Washington D.C. Chris Matthews, himself recalling those scenes a full half-century later, would note the composition of those that gathered along the miles of railroad tracks: black and white, young and old, protestant and Catholic, rich and poor, inner city residents and rural farmers and farm hands, people from every walk of life standing along the tracks holding American flags, standing in salute, holding signs expressing the nation's grief in a demonstration of reverence that can only be compared to the funeral cortege that accompanied the deaths of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. And yet, this man was never elected president.

What did he have”? Campaign chronicler Thurston Clarke asks repeatedly as he describes these scenes. To ask the question is to seek answers into the ties that bound the soul of the man to millions of his fellow Americans. Clarke takes us on a journey from the steel mills and farmlands of Indiana, to the cornfields of Nebraska, to the Indian Reservations in the Dakota's to the Valley of California in search of his soul. But perhaps the best description of the man that was Robert Kennedy came from the old chronicler himself, Teddy White
:
The gash that Robert F. Kennedy tore into the story of 1968 aches still—aches in personal memory, but more in history itself. Of all the men who challenged for the Presidency, he alone, by the assassin's bullets was deprived of the final judgment of his party and people. Wistful and pugnacious, fearless and tender, gay and rueful, profound and antic, strong yet indecisive—all these descriptives of him were true. Yet none recaptures what stirred the passions that made him the most loved and most hated candidate of 1968, nor the quicksilver personality who, when pensive, looked like a little boy, or, when hot-in-action, like a prince-in-combat.

For he was more than himself, and he knew it To explain why this was so, and the blaze he lit in the mad spring months of 1968, one must start with the phrase, 'the Kennedy movement.' However difficult it is to define, the Kennedy movement is a romantic reality—and thus one of the hard political forces of America today as it was in the spring of 1968, it exploded at the call of its then-leader, Robert F. Kennedy.

Technically, of course, one can specifically date the transformation of the political resources of the Kennedy family into what is called a 'movement'. It began at the moment when John F. Kennedy's body was buried in Arlington and his memory rose to become legend. One could dissect the Kennedy movement almost as one dissected the anatomy of the grand Rooseveltian coalition: there were the common millions who had come, simply, to enjoy the presence and grace of the handsome young President on the home screen or in their midst; there was the very real gratitude of millions of Negroes, given hope; there was the respect of thousands of thinkers who could not forget a man who had so effectively used talent and ideas; there was the corps of eminent men—executives, writers, diplomats, politicians—who had known their first taste of greatness and responsibility, in the thousand days of the Kennedy administration and remained, a shadow corps of loyalists, yearning to govern again.

But the legend was stronger than this analysis suggests; the legend rested on more primitive elements. The strongest force in the movement came from an atavistic craving—the simple craving of people for heroes. In the remorseless strangulation of American politics by new technologies and infinitely complicated problems, the vent of a personalized loyalty gave millions of Americans who responded to the name Kennedy the same emotional satisfaction felt by those English yeomen who had fought for York or for Lancaster. An indefinable but nonetheless substantial power came to the movement from the equally simple hunger of people for style and elegance. And there was a time element also: when Dwight D. Eisenhower was succeeded by John F. Kennedy, it was as if a generation of fathers had been put aside and a new postwar generation of Americans had taken over....

There could have been no Kennedy movement without John F. Kennedy; but there could also have been no Kennedy movement had not Robert Francis Kennedy been large enough a man to keep it alive. Without the younger Kennedy, the older brother would have been remembered as Tiberius Gracchus might have been by the Romans if Tiberius' assassination had been an isolated episode—as a single glorious moment in the expansion of freedom and opportunity in that republic. It was the life—and violent death—of Gaius Gracchus, his younger brother, that made them remembered as 'the Gracchi,' and identified them with a cause that outlived their time in the forum.” (2)

It wasn't as if Robert Kennedy didn't have his distractors. Nearly every campaign stop was met with those in the crowd who registered their opposition. Placards reading: JACK WAS NIMBLE, JACK WAS QUICK, BUT BOBBY SIMPLY MAKES ME SICK was remembered by White as a particular piece of anti-Kennedy doggerel that stuck in his memory.


The first quality that surfaced when Bobby Kennedy was discussed was his 'ruthlessness.'
The tag had been applied to him as he first came to public notice in his brother's Presidential campaign and administration [actually, prior to that when RFK was chief counsel of the Senate Rackets committee interrogating the likes of James Riddle Hoffa and mob figures like Sam Giancanna]. There was no doubt that he had been for his brother the enforcer, the 'rod,' the crack-down man, whether it was against Russian diplomats who lied to the administration, or to politicians who ran out on a deal. If one had to choose an enemy, Robert F. Kennedy was not a man anyone would like to have as an enemy. He fought hard, bare-knuckled, savagely. To break one's word to Robert Kennedy was to put oneself in peril—for a welsher he had little forgiveness. Whether it was a hack politician, book-writer, steel magnate—once a man broke his word to Robert Kennedy, Kennedy's retaliation was certain. He could also be intemperate and impulsive. Robert Kennedy made up his mind on the right-or-wrong of any given issue quite slowly, but once he did he could be the image of wrath—his forefinger pointing, his fist pounding in his palm, his eyes ablaze. His insistence on immediate action, a quality of youth, angered a broad spectrum of Americans. It angered businessmen who never forgave the Attorney General who, they believed, had authorized the FBI to rouse sleeping newsmen [and steel company executives] from their homes during the steel crisis; it angered liberals who felt that no sin of Jimmy Hoffa justified the wire-tapping and relentless pursuit of that corrupt union leader to jail; it angered intellectuals and writers who could not understand Kennedy's quarrel with William Manchester, who have been authorized to write an approved story of the assassination of John F. Kennedy and who Bobby believed had broken his word

The rigidity of his convictions was so stubborn that to the outside world he appeared dictatorial. Within the inner circle of the Kennedy administration, however, this rigidity was often an amusement. I [Theodore White] remember a late-afternoon visit to the White House during the Kennedy administration when, sitting in the Oval Office, I tried not to eavesdrop but was unable to resist tilting my ear to a series of important telephone calls that interrupted the President. A Federal judgeship in the Southern states, at the frontier of civil rights, was obviously at issue. President Kennedy was balancing calls between the hold buttons on his desk telephone until he reached the Attorney General, Bobby must have been crisp, tart and emphatically negative. The President flicked his hold buttons and told the Southern Senator hanging on the decision that he would have to get back to him later. Then he noticed I had been listening. 'You know,' he said, 'you know what the trouble with this administration is?' 'No, sir,' I said. 'The trouble with this administration,' continued the President, 'is that the Attorney General has so much higher standards for judges than the President.' it was not quite that, of course, but whatever the Attorney General felt he would express with a vehemence which, in echo, always made him sound like Savonarola.

Thus, 'ruthlessness' (3)

The story goes that when Theodore Roosevelt lost both his wife and his mother on the same day, he was so stricken that he placed his young daughter Alice in the care of a relative and went off into the badlands of the plains to find himself. For penance, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, would be able to say things to the President that no one else dared. After one open tart retort a bemused Teddy turned to a friend and quipped “I can be either President of the United States or Alice's father; I cannot possibly be both”. Such was the caustic nature of Alice Roosevelt Longworth who lived out her life as a wife of an alcoholic congressman, becoming an American version of Gertrude Stein holding salons in which she would regale the assembled with her caustic wit an commentary. She once said of Robert Kennedy that “Bobby could have been a revolutionary priest”. (4)

Thus, 'ruthlessness'.
Indeed, the “roughest confrontation between Kennedy and Students came when he spoke at the University of Indiana Medical School to the kind of privileged youths who had [earlier in the campaign] angered him at Columbia.”(5) Here gathered were a group of “Boomers” that one would think would have been his natural constituency but were, in fact,  the political larvae that would soon emerge to spawn the “Generation of Swine”. Kennedy spoke for about twenty minutes before a group The New York Times reported as 'generally hostile'. (6) Quoting Aristotle he spoke of health care as being more than a luxury available only to the affluent. He told the audience about what he had seen in the slums of the inner cities, the shacks of Appalachia, the squalor of the Mississippi Delta,
A student called the neighborhood clinics that Kennedy was proposing needless and costly. Another asked why he wanted to increase social security payments to the elderly. Another questioned why it mattered that ghetto health centers were second-rate since most Negroes did not bother to use them anyway Another raised the issue of funding again saying 'All these programs sound very find and nice and all that, but where's the money gonna come from?'

As at Columbia, Kennedy had finally had enough. 'From you!' he barked, pointing a finger at the student who had asked the question. He pointed at the youth with the Reagan balloon and said 'from you.' then went around the hall, jabbing his finger and shouting 'From you!..You!...You..You!'
Kennedy left, shaking his head saying “They were comfortable, so comfortable”. (7)

Thus, 'ruthlessness'.

But there were other sides to the man. Schlesinger in his two-volume biography takes us with Bobby to South Africa and Latin America, to the Mississippi Delta and Appalachia, to Bedford-Stuyvesant, Watts and Harlem, and countless other places that politicians fear to tread. Kennedy not only went there but took the press corps in tow, taking the nation with him. Thurston Clarke captured best the essence in a chapter called “Brave Heart and Christopher Pretty Boy”. Kennedy, press in tow, had veered off the campaign trail and headed to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation at Chandron, Nebraska. There he spent a day on the campaign trail meeting with the tribe and touring the reservation investing precious time at a place with few votes and where he had already huge support. The title of the chapter is about the chance meeting of Kennedy, dubbed “Brave Heart” by the tribe dating back to his days as Attorney General when the cause of the tribes were at the forefront of Bobby's expanding horizons, and Christopher Pretty Boy, a young boy whom Kennedy met among the junk cars. Clarke published among others a photograph of Kennedy sitting on a bed with Christopher Pretty Boy looking like there was no other place in the whole-wide-world he would rather be. Kennedy asked the boy to come and visit him at his home (Bobby was known to do this) but within a year both would be dead. (8)

Again, let us consult historian Theodore White:
...Missing in this appreciation of Robert Kennedy were several other qualities of personality that had surfaced first in the administration and then, later, in Robert Kennedy's years of displacement from power. They were his sheer, stunning executive ability; his intuitive sense of the use and nature of American power; and his sense of personal identification, unique among American politician, with the victims and casualties of American society.

His executive talent had been noticed only by a small handful of men in the years of his brother's administration, when he was overshadowed in action by the larger transactions of the President. But one should linger over this talent, for his stewardship of the Department of Justice as Attorney General was, without doubt, the ablest of modern times....

Within months of his swearing-in in 1961, black 'freedom riders' were loose on their challenge to ancient racism in the South; and no law, nor any legitimacy, gave the Federal government the right to protect them. One remembers Washington slowly becoming aware of his executive talents during these weeks of peril. What code gave the Federal government the right to act? If the Attorney General did choose to act how would he find the manpower? How—out of the few hundred middle-aged men who bear the title of Marshals of the United States scattered across the country—could he assemble an effective force? Could he legally recruit Treasury Agents, prison guards of Federal prisons, immigration border guards, to pacify the turbulent South? The simple administration and coordination of such bodies was a puzzle; yet it was all accomplished in a matter of weeks. And at the moment of crisis, when white mobs in Montgomery, Alabama, threatened to burn down a Negro church in May, 1961, the Attorney General was ready and presided over every detail of the counterstroke—the assembly of men, the provision of planes, the installation of communications. He was to demonstrate his flair for action over and over again as Attorney General—at the University of Mississippi in 1962, at the University of Alabama in 1963.

This executive ability of Robert Kennedy flowed from the best principles of leadership. He had impeccable taste in men, chose extraordinary lieutenants. He listened; no man seemed more indecisive over longer periods of time than Robert Kennedy as he consulted, consulted again, aired his thoughts with friends and deputies, probed, questioned and re-questioned, trying to find the jugular of his problem. But then, when he acted—decision was his alone. (9)

Contrast this, if you will, with not only what now sits in the presidential seat, but those about him in the agencies and the Congress. A politician with empathy; a politician with experience; a politician with judgment; a politician with questions; a politician in search of new beginnings; a politician who understands the uses of power in the name of the republic. And, let us not forget, a politician who could and did admit mistakes. Kennedy understood power as few others; always the tactician, Kennedy had learned by experience how power enables and how it humbles those who wield it.
It has been half a century now and the wound still bleeds. MSNBC host Chris Matthews has written a book about Kennedy on this the half-century of his passing. He wrote it to commemorate the milestone and in that vein, I purchased a copy this Christmas for my daughter inscribing:

To My Greatest Creation,
A reminder of what once was and what could yet be.”

Impeach and Imprison.
______________________
  1. Clarke, Thurston. “The Last Campaign, Robert Kennedy and
      the 82 days that Inspired America” Henry Holt and Company
      New York, New York 1968. 321 pages;

      `(2) White Theodore H. “The Making of the President 1968” Atheneum Publishers New York, New York. 1969. pages 150-151
    (3) Ibid.151-152
    (4). Op. Cit. Page 109
(5). Clarke page 186
  1. Clarke Page 187
  2. Clarke Page 187-88
  3. Clark Page 153-165

(9) White. Pages 153-154

Mar 15, 2018

March 15, 2018: Arrogance of Ignorance, Proud to be Stupid, Springtime for Sycophancy


"Caesar Disgustus prances about wearing his ignorance like a crown"
                 -----from "The Quotations of Chairman Joe"

Every day the country is presented with multiple outrages, blinding ignorance, and disturbing accounts of breathtaking dysfunction circling about the personage of our very own Caesar Disgustus.

An essay appearing on Rachel Maddow's blog, written by Steve Benen, chronicles the depth of ignorance and stupidity currently in residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Not only are they in residence, but their presence is openly celebrated. Here is Mr. Benen's complete commentary:

About a year ago, Donald Trump sat down for an interview with the Associated Press, which touched on the president’s criticisms of NATO. He referenced an exchange he had during the campaign with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, in which then-candidate Trump expressed deep concerns about the security alliance despite “not knowing much about NATO.”
In other words, according to Trump, he spoke with great conviction about a key area of U.S. foreign policy, despite the fact that – by his own admission – he had no idea what he was talking about.
Yesterday, something very similar happened. The president spoke at a fundraiser about a conversation he had with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in which the two leaders discussed which country had a trade deficit with the other. As the Washington Post  reported, Trump bragged last night that he made the private comments without having a clue as to whether or not he was correct.
Trudeau came to see me. He’s a good guy, Justin. He said, ‘No, no, we have no trade deficit with you, we have none. Donald, please,’ ” Trump said, mimicking Trudeau, according to audio obtained by The Washington Post. “Nice guy, good-looking guy, comes in – ‘Donald, we have no trade deficit.’ He’s very proud because everybody else, you know, we’re getting killed.
“… So, he’s proud. I said, ‘Wrong, Justin, you do.’ I didn’t even know…. I had no idea. I just said, ‘You’re wrong.’ You know why? Because we’re so stupid. … And I thought they were smart. I said, ‘You’re wrong, Justin.’ He said, ‘Nope, we have no trade deficit.’ I said, ‘Well, in that case, I feel differently,’ I said, ‘but I don’t believe it.’ I sent one of our guys out, his guy, my guy, they went out, I said, ‘Check, because I can’t believe it.’”
So, Trump started with the premise that the United States is “stupid” – a curious assumption for an American president – and then based his assumptions on that dubious foundation. It then led him to assume, without having any facts or having done any homework ahead of his meeting with the Canadian prime minister, that we have a trade deficit with our neighbors to the north.

According to last night’s story, Trump’s aide then came back to him to assure the president that he was, in fact, correct about the trade imbalance – which is bizarre, since, according to the Trump administration’s own data, the United States has a trade surplus with Canada.

What’s amazing about this story, however, isn’t just the American president being wrong about a simple issue he’s talked about for years.

Rather, what we have here is a president bragging about making stuff up, then assuring his audience that his evidence-free claims are accidentally true, without realizing that he’s still wrong. It’s like a lie wrapped in a gaffe inside propaganda.
For most presidents, this would be a deeply embarrassing moment that he hoped the public would never find out about. For this president, it’s an anecdote that Trump thinks makes him look better, not worse.

What’s more, given the circumstances, we have no reason to believe any of the conversations Trump described last night – the one with Trudeau or the one with the aide who looked up the trade details – actually happened in reality. It’s entirely possible the president just made up this part of the story, too.

After all, according to Trump, this is just what he does. Why anyone would ever take his word at face value is something of a mystery. When someone boasts about making stuff up, their credibility necessarily evaporates.

Donald Trump is not the nation’s first ignorant president. He is the first American president to brag about his ignorance, as if it’s worthy of celebration. “ (1)


This account comes close upon the heels of an account by economist Paul Krugman in this Tuesday's New York Times. Writing about tRUMP and trade, Krugman takes usual note of the tRUMP's usual nonsense, this time referencing trade with Mexico, Canada, and the European Union. Disgustus has “focused on an unexpected target: the European Union, which he tweeted has 'horrific barriers & tariffs on U.S. Products going in...This is odd on several levels,” continued Krugman noting that Disgustus routinely directs his ire based on “racial enmity”. “Why,” he asked, would tRUMP “rush into a spitting match with our allies that only serves the interests of enemies of freedom like Vladimir Putin? Oh wait.” 


Disgustus is, as usual, writes Krugman citing a 3 percent average tariff on U.S. Goods exported to Europe, wrong about facts.

Where is he getting this nonsense? Krugman suggests an adviser named Peter Navarro who came to the attention of Jared Kushner who was instructed to “find some research supporting his (tRUMP's) protectionist trade views”. Kushner then went to Amazon and finding a book authored by Navarro called “Death by China”, he cold-called one of the books authors, who became the campaigns first economic adviser”.

Krugman, a respected economist explained that Navarro, although holding Ph.D. nevertheless is (surprise!) out of the mainstream of accepted economic thought citing as an example Navarro's “complete misunderstanding of the trade effects of value added taxes (VATs), which the U.S. doesn't have but play a large role in most European countries' revenue”.

So how does someone who misunderstands such a basic, well-understood point about taxes and trade get to be a key economic adviser? As I said, it's because he tells the boss what he wants to hear. More than that, he's willing t abase himself in extraordinary ways.
Here's what he told Bloomberg recently: 'My function, really, as an economist is to try and provide the underlying analytics that confirm his intuition. And his intuition is always right in these matters.' Wow” Navarro, Krugman points out, is here declaring himself to be nothing but a propagandist, not only confirming the worst prejudice of Disgustus but kneeling to the lowest level of sycophancy, all but openly declaring our erstwhile Caesar infallible.

As Caesar Disgustus basks in the sycophantic glow produced by the house of mirrors that he is building about himself; as Caesar Disgustus prances about wearing his ignorance like a crown, came the news that he has accepted an invitation by North Korea to meet the Korean leader to negotiate some sort of settlement. The world trembles in the balance.

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

Impeach and Imprison
______________________
  1. Krugman, Paul. “Springtime for Sycophants” The New York Times. Tuesday, March
    13, 2018. Page A24



Mar 14, 2018

March 11, 2018: The New Republicans, Staggeringly Stupid, Sacrificing the Heartland


For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two, three moderate Republicans in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.”

----Senator Chuck Schumer (D-Wall Street) (1)

If one were to seek an explanation of what has gone wrong with the Democratic Party one would have to look no further than the face of the Party in the United States Senate. I am referring here to none other than Wall Street's very own senator, Chuck Schumer.

Here, precisely, is what is wrong with the Democratic Party. Frank Bruni, writing recently in The New York Times, (2) describes how the Democrats are becoming the new Republicans. By foisting Caesar Disgustus upon the nation, the Rescumlickan Party has made a mockery of the political high ground; the defense of which has always been transparently fraudulent.

Bruni points out that it is the Democrats who now claim defense of family values, whatever that means, by promoting gay marriage and defending the social safety net, efforts directed at forming increasingly heterodox families and keeping them together. Democrats are now the party of patriotism by calling out the Russians for violating our political process as well as our political institutions actions against which tRUMP's nonsense about NFL players appear laughable. Democrats are the party of national security defending as they do the network of alliances that have kept peace between the major powers for three quarters of a century. Democrats are also the party of law and order defending the FBI and our intelligence services from savage attacks by the White House and the minions of Disgustus in the Congress and the media.

It is right and proper that the Democracy once again reclaims its role as champion of these values, a claim that has been brought into serious question by the fraudulence and hypocrisy of the conservative movement as manifest in the Rescumlickan Party.

But, unfortunately, the party of “fiscal responsibility”, is also now the party of Wall Street.

By ratifying Reagan and the Bush's several assaults on the tax code, the Democrats began a long slide down the path of perdition that led, by degrees, to deregulation and the savaging of the safety net. It led by the Obama years, into accepting the Rescumlican drivel about the need for austerity in times of recession, unlearning by degrees painful historical lessons. It led to the abandonment of unions. Indeed, the Democratic Party—since the day the Carter Administration folded its tents over labor legislation—has raised nary a voice in support of organized labor and the working man and woman that unions protect. These policies have resulted in stagnant wages, prolonging hardship in times of recession, burdening our young with crushing debts, and the decline of the middle classes in the United States.

In sum, the Democrats, becoming material accomplices in the dismantling of the New Deal, betrayed the Middle Classes that the party created and nurtured. The doors were left open for the rise of a Populist Revolt in the form first of the Teabaggers and then the tRUMPists.

With the elevation of Caesar Disgustus the Democrats presented the country with a new leader in the Senate: none other than the face of Wall Street. Accordingly, we are now about to see the Senate take up a measure repealing several provisions of the Dodd-Frank law, the tepid congressional response to the crash of 2008 with—you guessed it—bipartisan support. No stone, it appears, will be left unturned as Democrats tirelessly strive to transform their party into the Republican Party of Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. At this writing, not only has Richard Durbin, the Minority Whip of the Senate, but a dozen other Democrats, including both Senators Peters and Stabenow of Michigan have pledged support for yet another effort by Democratic office holders to transform the party into the Rescumlican Party of our fathers and grandfathers.

This is what happens when the party of the working people has been sold out to Wall Street; and this is why the Democratic Party lost control of both houses of Congress, two thirds of the state legislatures and the White House. No, Chuck, the strategy hasn't worked. It didn't work in Wisconsin, or Ohio, or Pennsylvania, or Michigan. It hasn't worked in Iowa or Kansas or the former Democratic strongholds of West Virginia, Kentucky or Tennessee. By ceding vast swaths of this country, from the Appalachians to the rust belt, the Democrats have allowed Caesar Disgustus to sneak in through the back door; for the staggering stupidity that inspired the Clinton-led DLC and its latest incarnation called The Third Way is still with us as the entrenched mossbacks that lead this party continue to sacrificed not only the noble tradition of the Democratic Party, but the middle class and with it the American Heartland in the not-so-noble pursuit of Rescumlican votes.

Enter Caesar Disgustus.

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

Impeach and Imprison.
__________________

  1. Bruni, Frank. “Democrats Are the New Republicans. “The New York Times”
    Wednesday, December 20, 2017. Page A27

Mar 11, 2018

March 7, 2018: Dereliction of Duty, Not a Dime for Defense, Dropping our Shields


Caesar Disgustus has opened the gates in the face of a hostile foreign threat. There are no other words but Dereliction of Duty.”
----from “The Quotations of Chairman Joe”

The “New York Times” recently touched upon both the magnitude of the ongoing Russian threat and the Administration's staggeringly vapid response. Reacting to recent congressional testimony of our intelligence community concerning the nature of the threat and our tepid response, the Times had this to say:

With the midterm elections only nine months away, the federal government is taking some defensive measures. It is trying to get at least one election official in each state a security clearance to make them aware of threats, and is providing states with enhanced online security to ensure that Americans' votes will not be manipulated.

Nevertheless, absent Mr. Trump's commitment, there can be no robust mobilization to take all measures needed to confront an insidious problem that strikes at the heart of the democratic system. These would include a comprehensive and well-funded plan for protecting critical infrastructure, countering cyberattacks and mitigating propaganda.

The president should not only be strengthening electoral defenses, but also pushing back against Russia, instead of ignoring a law Congress adopted overwhelmingly to impose sanctions for election meddling and aggression against Ukraine. The list of potential activities meriting sanctions covers weapons deals, human rights abuses and Russian cyberattacks against the United States and other democracies.

Although Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin assured Congress...that sanctions 'are coming,' there's little reason to believe him.” (1)

There is no reason to believe him. As the editors of The New York Times had duly noted, the heads of the C.I.A., and F.B.I., as well as the Director of National Intelligence and the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency—tRUMP appointees all, testified that “the president has never asked them to take measures to combat Russian interference and protect democratic processes.” (2)

Admiral Michael Rogers, Director of the National Security Agency, recently testified before Congress that he too has received no instruction whatever in regard to the Russian threat. He said that the government is in possession of powerful countermeasures that can be undertaken but as yet no word has come down from on high. No one on the committee asked the Director why he hadn't contacted the White House and asked for instruction and authority to act, but the revelation that the White House has done nothing is staggering. Then, following this revelation—coming as it does on the heels of previous testimony before Congress by the other intelligence experts—it was revealed by The Washington Post that Rex Tillerson hasn't done a thing. Not only had the State Department closed down the office of sanctions enforcement but now the Post reports that State hasn't spent a dime of the 120 million dollars voted by Congress to defend us against these attacks.

Why hasn't there been a push-back? The intelligence community is warning us that the Russians have not retreated but have stepped up their cyberattacks. “Some have said” opined “The Times”, that “he is giving Russia a green light to tamper with the 2018 election. That would have once been an absurd suggestion. It can no longer be dismissed out of hand”.

Indeed, it cannot for the recent testimony must be seen in the context of a series of behaviors regarding the emerging and ongoing Russian threat. First, in 2016 Disgustus openly invited the Russians to continue to hack into the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton Campaign, and then, once in office, the administration quickly moved to cut from the budget all money designated to protect our electoral system from cyberattacks, There can now be no doubt that our Caesar Disgustus is dropping our remaining shields and inviting an ongoing assault upon our electoral proceedings.

This is beyond mere staggering incompetence; this is beyond unfathomable corruption; this is Dereliction of the Duty to protect this country “from all enemies, foreign and domestic”.

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

Impeach and Imprison.

______________________
  1. Editorial. “Mr. Trump is Blind to Russia's Threat” The New York Times. Thursday, February 15, 2018. Page A30
  2. ibid



Mar 2, 2018

March 2, 2018: Phalanx of Intelligence, Twisting In The Wind, Unmistakable Conclusion



In an editorial appearing in The New York Times, the paper asserted that tRUMP is “blind to Russia's threat”. “The phalanx of intelligence chiefs who testified on Capitol Hill delivered a chilling message,” wrote the editors, “not only did Russia interfere in the 2016 election, it is already meddling in the 2018 election by using a digital strategy to exacerbate the country's political and social divisions...

It's particularly striking that four of the men who gave this warning to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday—C.I.A. Director, Mike Pompeo; the director of national intelligence, Dan Coats; the F.B.I. Director, Christopher Wray; and the Defense Intelligence Agency director, Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley—were all appointed by Trump” (1)

The editors note that tRUMP is not completely oblivious concerning Russia's behavior, but that he “continues refuse to even acknowledge the malevolent Russian role.” (2) Indeed, NSA (National Security Agency) Director Mike Rogers, testified before Congress this week that he has yet to receive any instructions from the White House concerning a response to the threat dumbfounding Connecticut Senator Reed. The director informed the senators that indeed this country has powerful cyber weapons that can be brought to bear. Unfortunately, no one asked the director why he hadn't reached the White House to ask for directions. Instead, we find the heads of relevant departments twisting in the wind.

The unmistakable conclusion one is left to draw is this: tRUMP is not blind to the Russian threat. In fact tRUMP knows all about the threat; has been an eager participant in the Russian effort; a willing volunteer in the subversion of the country's electoral process; an eager accessory to the crimes. Precisely why he has been so obsequious to Putin, such willing clay in Putin's hands remains to be fully explored. But one thing is sure: follow the money.

an' Br'er Putin he jus' laugh and laugh”

Impeach and Imprison

______________________
  1. Mr. Trump is Blind to Russia's Threat” The New York Times Editorial. Thursday
    February 15, 2018. Page A30
  2. Ibid.