May 28, 2018

May 27, 2018: Chasing Rabbits, Puppets on His String, Shrinking the Imagination



One pill makes you larger

and one pill makes you small

and the one that mother gives you

don't do anything at all

go ask Alice, when she's ten feet tall

and if you go chasing rabbits

and you know you're going to fall

tell em a hookah-smoking caterpillar

has given you the call

call Alice, when she was just as small

young men on the chessboard

get up and tell you where to go

and you've just had some kind of mushroom

and your mind is moving low

go ask Alice, I think she'll know

when logic and proportion

have fallen sloppy dead

and the white knight is talking backwards

and red queen's off with her head

remember what the door mouse said

feed your head

feed your head”

----Jefferson Airplane “White Rabbit”


This is the “Generation of Swine”. Conspiracy theories abound, paranoia strikes deep, foremost “Americans have always had” wrote David Brooks in last Friday's New York Times, “a tremendous capacity for fantasy. Jay Gatsby is a classic American hero because he constructed a fantasy version of himself and then attempted to live it. John Wayne constructed a fantasy version of the American West, which a lot of people try to imitate.” (1)

Citing author Kurt Anderson's “Fantasyland” Brooks writes that “for roughly three centuries America's fantasist and realist impulses existed in rough balance”.(2) From Hugh Hefner's “fantasy version of masculinity” (3) to Ken Kesey and Timothy Leary's of “an acid-dripping New Age” (4) the country seems to have disappeared down the rabbit hole.

Two great writers who died this month tracked the explosion of fantastical thinking. In 1961 Philip Roth wrote an essay for Commentary called 'Writing American Fiction,' in which he endorsed Benjamin DeMott's observation that America was then experiencing a 'universal descent into unreality. Roth would go on to make the most of it. 'Making fake biography, false history, concocting a half imaginary existence out of the actual drama of my life is my life,' he told the Paris Review

Tom Wolf “ continues Brooks, “blasted the American berserk into the stratosphere. He tagged along with the Pump House Gang. He chronicled the ESP believers and the Upper East Side aristocrats who imagined they were radical Black Panthers.

Recently we've let the fantasy dog out for a romp. 'Donald Trump is pure fantasyland being, its apotheosis,' Andersen writes. Trump is celebrity subsuming governance. Every day he produces great geysers of fantasy—some which rip the cultural fabric (Mexican rapists), some which merely tug it ('Obama had my 'wires tapped'). (5)

It matters not that the outcome of each collision vindicates reality and Trump's world “dissolves into nothing; its when he seduces the rest of us to move into it. It's not when he ignores the facts; its when he replaces them by building an alternate virtual reality...(6)

Citing historian Daniel Boorstin that one cannot “refute an image with a fact”, Brooks goes on to explain: “Every pseudo-event 'becomes all the more interesting with our every effort to debunk it.' Trump gets to monopolize attention ever more comprehensively and deepen his credibility as anti-establishment hero”. (7) And, it should be noted, ever since at least the release of “Mrs. Robinson” and motorcycle gang movies of the 1960's the anti-establishment hero has been the only hero the “Generation of Swine” have felt obliged to respect.

The second problem observed by Brooks is “that when you agree to operate within his fantasy, even if you are motivated by the attraction of repulsion, you've given the man your brain. Sometimes my Trump-bashing friends and I seem like puppets on his string.”

Therein lies the rub. This fascination with all things tRUMP has led to the losing “control of our own consciousness”. Citing “a fascinating essay in Literary Hub by the book agent Erik Hane”, Brooks continues, that “Hane reads through the slush piles of new novel submissions. These days they are often about Trump. The novelists, he writes, have lost control of their own consciousness: 'These authors are not writing the political moment so much as the moment is writing them.

Hane, who writes at the top of his voice continues, 'it is one of fascism's goals to monopolize our attention. It would like to shrink our imagination'''...(8)

Gone is the nation that, like Paul Bunyan, stood astride the world. Gone is the nation that put men on the moon. Gone too is the ethic of practicality and compromise based upon scientific study and empirical reality. Gone are leaders who would, in the words written by Bernard Shaw and spoken by Robert Kennedy “dream things that never were and ask why not?” No, the two-dimensional fantasy world of the idiot wrong has diminished our imagination and with it our confidence; this fascism that shrinks the imagination also diminishes our democracy because we no longer believe in ourselves. No longer able “to seek a newer world” (9), we instead turn to the tyrant.

For half a century now the country has been sucked, slowly at first, through a worm-hole and into an alternate universe. It is a fantasyland where logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead and, indeed, the white knight is talking backwards as tRUMP struggles, like Gatsby, to live out a fantasy version of himself. That his fantasy has become our nightmare doesn't matter for “some hookah-smoking caterpillar has given us the call.” (10) Go ask “The Donald”, now that the 'tar baby' sits ten feet tall.

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

Impeach and Imprison

_______

  1. Brooks, David. “Trump's Magical Fantasy World” The New York Times. Friday May 28, 2018.
    Page A21
  2. Ibid
  3. Ibid
  4. Ibid
  5. Ibid
  6. Ibid
  7. Ibid
  8. Ibid
  9. From a poem by Tennyson from which the title to Robert Kennedy's campaign book was taken.
  10. From the song “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane.






May 25, 2018: Grifters and Grafters, The Damage Done, Apocalypse Now.



The Administration of Caesar Disgustus can be broken down into two broad categories; not between the ideologues and the realists; nor between the conservatives and the tea-baggers; certainly not between the merely and the inspiringly incompetent; but between the grifters and the grafters”.

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

Political commentator David Brooks wrote today in The New York Times that “I miss people thinking about the world outside the gravity field of Trumpian unreality, and about the world after Trump—the world we should be building.” (1) Many of us had the same reaction to the administrations of the Bushes and, of course, to Brooks' hero Ronald Reagan. But the aftermath of these national disasters are anything but encouraging, for each succeeding administration largely ratified the damage done. This is hardly the worst of it.

Brooks himself, in an earlier Op-Ed piece, sounded the alarm. In an essay he entitled “The Chaos After Trump”, (2) Brooks takes us down the rabbit hole Italy was drawn into by Silvio Berlusconi:

Silvio Berlusconi first came to power for the same reasons Trump and other populists have been coming to power around the world: Voters were disgusted by a governing elite that seemed corrupt and out of touch. They felt swamped by waves of immigrants, frustrated by economic stagnation and disgusted by the cultural values of the cosmopolitan urbanites.

In office, Berlusconi did nothing to address Italy's core problems, but he did degrade public discourse with his speech, weaken the structures of government with his corruption and offended basic decency with his Bunga Bunga sex parties and his general lewdness.

In short, Berlusconi, like Trump, did nothing to address the sources of public anger, but did erase any restraints on the way it could be expressed.” (3)

In the aftermath, Italy has seen the rise of the Five Star Movement, “which was started by a comedian and is now led by a 31-year-old who had never held a full-time job. Another winner is the League, led by Mateo Salvini, which declined to effectively distance itself from one of its former candidates who went on a shooting rampage against African immigrants. Berlusconi, who vowed to expel 600,000 immigrants is back and is now considered a moderating influence. The respectable center-left party, like center-left parties across Europe, collapsed.” (4)

Brooks draws several lessons from the Italian experience. First, citing Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt's “How Democracies Die”, Brooks that “democracies depend not just on formal constitutions but also on informal codes. You treat your opponents like legitimate adversaries, not illegitimate enemies. You tell the truth as best you can. You don't make naked appeals to bigotry.

Berlusconi, like Trump, undermined those norms. And now Berlusconi's rivals across the political spectrum have waged a campaign that was rife with conspiracy theories, misinformation and naked appeals to race.” (5)

Secondly, Brooks points to an astonishing loss in people's faith in the democratic system. Brooks, citing Yascha Mounk's “The People vs. Democracy”, writes that “faith in democratic regimes is declining with every new generation. Seventy-one per cent of Europeans and North Americans born in the 1930's think it's essential to live in a democracy, but only 29 per cent of people born in the 1980's think that. In the U.S., nearly a quarter of millennials think democracy is a bad way to run a country. Nearly half would like a strongman leader. One in six Americans of all ages support military rule.(6)

So what if the man is a fascist, one Italian voter told Jason Horowitz of The Times. “Salvini is a good man. I like him because he puts Italians first. And I guess he's a fascist, too. What can you do?” (7)

Third, Brooks points to the deterioration of debate cause by social media, noting that the Five Star movement began as an on-line “decision-making” platform pretending to use the media to “create unmitigated democracy but is instead “the members have no real power. In reality, there is not any real direct democracy with M5S, but a totally top-down orchestration of the movement.” (8) Instead of realizing the promise of free communication and political democratization we are, instead, “seeing polarization, alternative information universes and the rise of autocracy...

In Italy, as with Trump and his Facebook campaign, the social media platform seems decentralizing, bit it actually buttresses authoritarian ends.

The underlying message is clear. As Mounk has argued, the populist wave is still rising. The younger generations are more radical, on left and right...Vladimir Putin's admirers are surging. The center is still hollowing out. Nothing is inevitable in life, but liberal democracy clearly ain't going to automatically fix itself.” (9)

So what does life after tRUMP portent? One thing is clear: “Once the norms of acceptable behavior are violated and once the institutions of government are weakened, it is very hard to re-establish them. Instead you get this cycle of ever more extreme behavior, as politicians compete to be the most radical outsider. The political center collapses, the normal left/right political categories cease to apply and you see the rise of strange new political groups that are crazier than anything you could have imagined before.” (10).

As an example let's take a look at the informal code of “telling the truth as best you can”. First there was Nixon's bold-face lies concerning Watergate and his personal finances. After the Rebuke of Nixon there followed a short return to normalcy. Then came the advent of Ronald Reagan who, emerging from a profession based upon the suspension of disbelief, began the rapid divorce of the Republican Party from any known connection with truth. At first, they were seen as simple 'gaffes'. The old gaffer had misspoke, or he simply believed something to be true, tantamount to its actual existence. Then came the Bushes, Pappy famously “out of the loop” involving the Iran-Contra scandal. But with Junior things got out of hand. Lying us into a war, violating the national as well as international norms concerning torture, graft and corruption involving 40 billion dollars of unaccounted funds. All of these serve as precedents factoring into the emergence of tRUMP and tRUMPism.

But Caesar Disgustus has taken this venality to an entirely new level, the likes of which this republic has never witnessed. Oh yes we have had grifters, we've had people who have personally profited from public office. Oh yes, we have had grafters, those that have taken money from ill-begotten sources. But nothing on this scale. Moreover, we have had venality, and yes, even cruelty. Dick Cheney leaps immediately to mind. But nothing reaches the levels of malignancy and mendacity of this administration in its actions or its shamelessness.

So what is is to be outside the tRUMPian gravity field? At first glance, it is not pretty. Not since that Cypriot hermit penned his drug-induced “Revelations” have the prospects been so frightening. Apocalypse Now.

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

Impeach and Imprison.

___________

  1. Brooks, David “Trump's Magical Fantasy World” The New York Times. Friday May 25, 2018.
    Page A21
  2. Brooks, David. “The Chaos After Trump” The New York Times. Tuesday, March 6, 2018. Page A25
  3. Ibid
  4. Ibid
  5. Ibid
  6. Ibid
  7. Ibid
  8. Ibid
  9. Ibid
  10. Ibid

May 24, 2018: Criminal Enterprise, Underbelly of Gotham, Guilt In Plain Sight



It is time to call out tRUMP and his enterprise for what it is: a criminal enterprise”.

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

Last Wednesday, May 23, it was reported, and as yet has not been otherwise confirmed, by BBC News, that Michael Cohen had been paid $400,000.00 by the Ukrainian government to arrange a meeting with tRUMP. Disgustus had, famously, taken the other side in the Ukrainian conflict with Putin's Russia so, evidently to ameliorate the situation, the government in Kiev sought out a 'reliable' back-channel to the ears of Disgustus. The meeting, sure enough, was arranged complete with the requisite 'photo-op' featuring Disgustus lavishing his usual hyperbolic praise upon his guest, the identity of whom seemed nearly beyond his tenuous grasp. Then, it was reported, the Ukrainians after receiving recognition and promises of additional military support, sent the 'anointed one' a 'present'.

The 'gift', it transpires was orders directly from on high that hereafter Kiev would no longer cooperate with the Mueller investigation into the nefarious dealings of tRUMP and his associates. Quid pro Quo. Clear graft and obstruction of justice.

Once again "the fixer”, in the seedy underworld that is tRUMPland, seemingly rushed to rescue “The Donald” and, perhaps, himself in the bargain.

Pay to Play, graft, corruption, obstruction of justice....every day brings new revelation plumbing the heretofore uncharted depths of public and private depravity.

Meanwhile Disgustus, desperate to change the subject, screams like a stuck pig crying out that the FBI had infiltrated his campaign, spying on a 'political opponent'.

First, tRUMP was not and would have not been seen as a 'political opponent'. Secondly, as in the bogus claim made earlier by Disgustus and his cohorts concerning the Steele Dossier, the intelligence community and the FBI were not activated by animus toward tRUMP, as disgusting as he is. Rather, they were brought into investigating him through suspicious contacts that other intelligence agencies, Estonian, German, French, British, Australian had been monitoring. These agencies alerted the FBI, CIA and NSA that money from Russia was being funneled from Russia into the tRUMP campaign as well as the Rescumlican National Committee, suspicions confirmed late last year when it was revealed that some of the money from Russia was passed through the National Rifle Association into the tRUMP campaign and into Rescumlican campaign coffers.

Moreover, it has been revealed, the FBI had tRUMP campaign operative Carter Page under surveillance since at least 2013 because of his dealing with several nefarious Russian operatives. In fact the agency alerted Page, it was reported, that Russians were trying to manipulate him. Instead of working with the FBI, Page alerted the Russians, making U.S. Law enforcement suspicious that Page was Russian agent. When tRUMP later revealed that Page was one of his foreign policy advisers, the FBI ramped up its surveillance, as well it should have.

Roger Stone, George Papadopolis, Carter Page, Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort, the list goes on, and the list leads directly to Trump Tower. The scandal isn't that the FBI had an 'informant' within the tRUMP campaign but that it didn't do more: for there was clear cause to suspect that tRUMP and associates were working with a foreign government in violation of federal law to subvert the democratic process. Disgustus, always playing the victim, like the wimp he is, now cries foul.

Some commentators, like David Brooks, contend that tRUMP didn't 'collude' with the Russians because he is too incompetent to organize anything with anybody. I don't buy it.

His incompetence is legendary and beyond dispute. But the intent certainly was there as several 'operatives', responded favorably to Russian overtures. Moreover, the statements by tRUMP just prior to several leaks by Wikileaks as well as actions and statements by several subordinates –Roger Stone among them—coinciding with leaks of Clinton and Podesta emails cannot be seen as coincidental.

There is the question of the money, money not only funneled directly into the campaign chests of tRUMP and the RNC but money used to buy influence, from Michael Flynn to Michael Cohen to Jared Kushner and Ivanka the organization reeks of corruption.

Then there is the question of Russian hacking into the voter lists of several states as well as the use of anti-social media in this country, all in favor of tRUMP.

Finally, there is obstruction of justice, for which there is prima facie evidence from the mouth of none other than the idiot-in-chief, first in a nationally televised interview with Lester Holt just after he terminated FBI Director James Comey and a few days later when he told the Russians in the oval office that he fired Comey in order to get rid of the Russian investigation. Add to these blatant admissions his assault on the intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and one has indisputable evidence of criminal intent to obstruct justice.

And we haven't even begun to plumb the malignant depths of the financial dealings that are the tRUMP enterprise. Reports abound concerning possible (almost certain) acts of money-laundering, racketeering, tax evasion, and bank fraud following Disgustus' every move. Reports abound of sordid business dealings with Russian oligarchs through the likes of Felix Sater and now Michael Cohen, as well as with other nefarious principles in Panama and Azerbaijan, among other places. It is no wonder that tRUMP's personal attorney was a lawyer representing the most seedy characters ever to slither through the underbelly of Gotham. Cohen is a creature of the slime and so is his patron.

The fact is that Disgustus is hiding his guilt in plain sight; or, perhaps, he is hiding his guilt in the swamp and for that reason cannot drain it, indeed must make it larger by adding to it. Disgustus is a creature of the swamp and removed from it he will die. It will take Robert Mueller to drain the swamp and only then will the nation behold the damage done. The stench of this administration preceded by years and will linger decades after we have finally freed ourselves from the unwanted embrace of Pepe LePew.

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

Impeach and Imprison

May 21, 2018

May 22, 2018: Singing His Praise, Like Some Old Testament God, Place Beside Caligula



The elevation of Caesar Disgustus is a consequence of equating wealth with intelligence and then compounding the error by joining celebrity with substance.”

---from “The Quotations of Chairman Joe”

What can you make of a man who is constantly singing his own praise? Last winter Caesar Disgustus took to the antisocial medium “Twitter” and, like the bird-brain he is, began “tweeting”. “Throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart”.(1) He then proceeded to elevate himself to the level of 'genius' for being elected. “and a very stable genius at that”. 

What produced this outburst was the release of Michael Wolff's “Fire and Fury”, in which Wolff describes the Chief Magistrate as “a mentally unstable simpleton”. (2).

It is clear to even the most casual observer of the human experience that elevation to leadership, even the presidency, is no indicator of native intelligence. Witness Zachary Taylor, Warren Harding or George W. Bush. The prosecution rests.

Further, as Charles M. Blow wrote in The New York Times: “Let's start here: From everything I have ever read about the man, he is not particularly smart. This is sometimes hard for people to understand. They equate financial gain with intellectual gifts, but the two are hardly synonymous.

Being gifted at exploitation is not the same as intellectualism. It is a skill, but one separate from scholarship. Being able to see and exploit a need, void or insecurity in people can be an interesting, and even lucrative, endowment, bit it is not enlightenment.

He is also not a reader. That is not to say he can't read, but rather that, given his druthers, he won't.

But mental instability—whether a diagnosable disorder or just a combination of crippling character traits—is a problem of another magnitude. That goes to basic competence and substantially raises the stakes.

This is the problem we face: We have a person occupying the presidency who is impetuous, fragile, hostile, irrational, intentionally uninformed, information averse and semiliterate.” (3)

Wolff describes a White House that has become, in Senator Corker's words, an “adult day care center”, in which the president's staff spend inordinate time praising him in order to keep the man-child from going off the rails. Meanwhile his obsessive need to erase the entire Obama legacy, his coddling of white nationalists and hostility to minorities (born of deep seated racism? ), not to mention his sexism has clearly divided the country. In polling from Quinnipiac University and cited by The Times, taken last December as the nation was coming upon the first anniversary of this national calamity, fully 62% said that tRUMP was doing more to divide the country. 32% said unite. 52% said he was abusing his power as opposed to 44 % who said was not. 52% said we are less safe now then when he took office, only 26 % said we are more secure. This was before the move to Jerusalem, the withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement, and the growing uncertainty and drama over North Korea.

In the meantime “(T)hey have learned to praise him”, like some Old Testament God, “in order to steady him. His weakness is an unending need for affirmation. Anyone who provides it, he abides. It's simple. Also sad. Actually, pathetic”(4). Perhaps, at last, we have stumbled upon the ties that bind the evangelical: the 'unending need for affirmation'. Evangelicals know about this need in their god, and they know how to provide it. So, as they raise Disgustus to the heavens, the 'stable genius' claims his place beside Caligula in the pantheon. “And a very stable genius at that”.

Whatever you say, Wile E. Coyote”.,(5) I mean, “All Hail Caesar”.

This is what happens when one equates wealth with intelligence and then compound the error by equating celebrity with substance. This is what happens when you worship 'gods' like this or, more modestly (with tRUMP is that possible?) Chauvan to tRUMP's Napoleon: It's simple, Also sad, Actually, pathetic” (6).

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

Impeach and Imprison.

_________

  1. Blow, Charles M. '...And Being, Like, Really Smart' The New York Times. Monday, January 8, 2018 page A19
  2. Ibid
  3. Ibid
  4. Ibid
  5. Ibid
  6. Ibid



May 21, 2018: Only the Best, Like Some Sycophant, Into The White House



Caesar Disgustus drained the 'swamp' right into the White House.”

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

He said, in debate with rival Hillary Clinton, that he had the “best temperament” to be president. Nobody, he said, has a better temperament than he. He said that he has the best words, as if by that one means that a vocabulary of 700 of which the words “great” and “fabulous” are used half the time constitute uncommon command of the language. He said that he would only hire and surround himself with the “best” administrators and agency heads if elected to the presidency. He said that he would “drain the swamp” and rid Washington of lobbyists and influence merchants. 

Of course, the truth about himself always lies 180 degrees from the direction he is pointing, and whatever his announced intentions you can bet your bottom dollar that they are the exact opposite. But the country was hoodwinked by the image projected in the 'reality' show “The Apprentice”, a bit of contrived fiction that is art and entertainment. “The Donald”, the sober, omnipotent judge of talent; the CEO with flawless instinct; the chief executive who would fearlessly face down incompetence and impose his judgment swiftly, fairly and surely; the ultimate arbiter of success, for success is sure to follow—like some sycophant-- his every move. 

At this point,” observed the Editors of The New York Times, “you have to ask: Just what do job postings for the Trump administration look like? Surely they must stipulate that relevant experience isn't a plus, but that a flexible notion of ethics is. They must demand references who can recount specific instances of demonstrated incompetence. How else to explain the sheer number of poorly prepared or careless or sticky-fingered officials crammed into this careening clown-car of an administration?” (1) This from his hometown newspaper, from one of the sources that have been reporting upon him for years, from one of the sources that know him best.

What inspired this commentary was the latest fiasco involving the nomination of Dr. Ronny Jackson, the White House Physician to head the Department of Veteran Affairs. The V.A. is the second largest organization in the federal government, following only the Pentagon itself. Nothing in Dr. Jackson's 'resume' even remotely suggest his qualifications for the job; nothing, perhaps, except the exceedingly glowing report issued by the Doctor following his annual examination of the 'president'. Using language that reeked with superlatives Jackson sounded very much like tRUMP had written the report himself as he had done precisely that, it transpires, with his personal physician's report during the campaign.

But, as The Times duly notes, there is more. Montana senator Testor revealed that those working closely with Dr. Jackson told him that he has been drunk on the job, dispensed “sleeping pills,, and even opioids, like Skittles, or screamed at his staff”,(2) the latter behavior no doubt suggesting Jackson for the post since it so much resembles the behavior of our narcissist-in-chief.

Perhaps all of this could be overlooked if Jackson had any other redeeming qualifications beyond pure sycophancy”--like management experience. But the best anyone can tell, Mr. Trump picked Dr. Jackson because he is in the military, looks like a grown-up Doogie Howser and gave the president a glowing bill of health, including saying that the president has great genes, and could have lived to 200 if he had a better diet.” (3)

There are other reasons beyond confirming, in tRUMPian language, the tRUMP belief that he is genetically superior to the rest of us. There is another reason Disgustus would consider someone with no experience, beyond running an outfit the size of a local McDonald's, to head an organization that provides health care to over nine million veterans, and that is to intentionally wreak havoc upon the organization so as to make the case for eventual privatization.

Disgustus was forced to withdraw the nomination since imposing upon the military the customary Rescumlican mendacity is, for the moment and for some Rescumlicans, a bridge too far. But it hasn't prevented Disgustus from seeking and finding the least prepared, the most incompetent, and the most venal band of clowns and pirates ever to descend upon the nation's capitol.

Consider, of course, daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner. Playing Ken to Ivanka's Barbie, the Kushners nevertheless brings to Washington a brand of public innocence exceeded only by their private venality. Given “a portfolio that includes negotiating peace in the Middle East, reforming the criminal justice system and making government more tech-savvy”, (4) Kushner and his wife have parlayed their positions to get trademark deals with China (Ivanka), and financial backing to shore up the god-awful real estate deal involving 666 Fifth Avenue (Jared), among other violations of the public trust.

Then, as The Times points out, there is the “lobbyist-loving wing of the Trump administration, one of its leading members—Mick Mulvaney, who heads the Office of Management and Budget and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—was extolling the practice of pay-to-play public service the other day. At a speech before the American Bankers Association on Tuesday, Mr. Mulvaney said that as a congressman he would only meet with lobbyists who gave money to his campaign...

Mr. Mulvaney was just making old friends happy. He did that for years as a congressman, defending bankers and fending off consumer protection. Since he took over the consumer agency that Congress created after the financial crisis, he has been working overtime to gut it for his pals.” (4)

All of this is being conducted under the radar as Disgustus' daily 'tweets' and Scott Pruitt, head of the E.P.A., get all the headlines and attention. “He got a sweetheart deal for a $50-a-night room from the wife of a lobbyist whose company was seeking goodies from the E.P.A. He has liberally spent government funds on first-class flights and a security detail large enough for a minor potentate. He also spent $43,000. on a soundproof phone booth for his office that might remind some of the 'cone of silence' from 'Get Smart.” When he was an Oklahoma state senator, the Times reported, Mr. Pruitt came to own a stately house overlooking the State Capitol, a million dollar lakeside manse in Tulsa and a stake in a minor-league baseball team. He accomplished all that with the help of a couple of old associates, one a banker and the other a lawyer...both of whom are now on the public payroll, working with Mr. Pruitt at the E.P.A. (5)

These are some of the most egregious examples of tRUMP and his band of pirates plundering the public domain. One need only look to tRUMP himself doing 'government' business with his hotels, doubling the fees to join Mar-o-Largo, or otherwise treating his office as a “cash cow”. Following this lead, those about him from the Kushner's to Cohen shake down foreign governments and those who have business in Washington for personal favors. His cabinet is likewise filled with a grafters. From Attorney General Jeff Sessions new war on Marijuana and crackdown on illegal immigrants—sure to fill those newly re privatized prisons in which Sessions has personal investment, to Betsy Devos' war on public schools, sure to help her investments in private and charter schools, the graft and corruption now evident in Washington exceeds anything in the history of this republic making Grant and Harding Administrations—heretofore the benchmarks of public graft and corruption—pale by comparison.

As with nearly everything else, whatever Caesar Disgustus promises, he delivers quite the opposite. He promised us the best and we got the worst. He did, however, deliver on his promise to “drain the swamp”. He drained it alright—right into the White House.

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

Impeach and Imprison.
______________

  1. The Editors. “Trump's 'Best People” Are the Worst.” The New York Times. Friday, April 27, 2018. Page A26
  2. Ibid
  3. Ibid
  4. Ibid
  5. Ibid

May 20, 2018: A Grotesque Spectacle, Failure In Jerusalem, Toward Apartheid Government



Like the proverbial bull in a china shop, our very own Caesar Disgustus has gone about willy-nilly upsetting one apple cart after another. This month has seen him trash not only the nuclear agreement reached with Iran but, in yet another act of blind stupidity, the moving of our embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. On Tuesday last, recoiling to reports of violence in Gaza, The New York Times featured a column by Michelle Goldberg in which she excoriated the administration in what she called “A Grotesque Spectacle in Jerusalem”. (1)

On Monday, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner and other leading lights of the Trumpist right gathered in Israel to celebrate the relocation of the American Embassy to Jerusalem, a gesture widely seen as a slap in the face to Palestinians who envision East Jerusalem as their future capital.

The event was grotesque, it was a consummation of the cynical alliance between hawkish Jews and Zionist evangelicals who believe that the return of Jews to Israel will usher in the apocalypse and the return of Christ, after which Jews who don't convert will burn forever.

Religions like 'Mormonism, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism' lead people 'to an eternity of separation from God in Hell,' Robert Jeffress, a Dallas megachurch pastor, once said. He was chosen to give the opening prayer at the embassy ceremony. John Hagee, one of America's most prominent end-times preachers, once said that Hitler was sent by God to drive the Jews to their ancestral homeland. He gave the closing benediction.” (2)

This 'spectacle', Goldberg rightly points out, was nothing less than a crass appeal to the tRUMP base, an increasingly strident and wholly unhinged segment of the American electorate to which Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likkud Party have hitched their hopes and dreams of completing the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. The whoring after the Religious Wrong in this country, in spite of its pronounced antisemitism has been a hallmark of Netanyahu strategy, destroying the bi-partisan consensus in support of Israel's legitimate national security needs, a strategy in that became openly apparent when the Prime Minister thumbed his nose at President Obama, accepting a 2015 Rescumlican invitation to speak before Congress without consulting either the State Department or the White House. 

Recognition of Jerusalem, as the editors of The New York Times pointed out in an accompanying editorial, was supposed to represent “the end of a seemingly endless conflict, a blood-soaked tragedy with justice and cruelty on both sides. Israelis and Palestinians have envisioned a capital in Jerusalem, and for generations the Americans, the honest brokers in seeking peace, withheld recognition of either side's claims, pending a treaty that through hard compromise would resolve all competing demands.

But on Monday President Trump delivered the embassy as a gift without concession or condition to the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, as as a blow to the Palestinians. The world did not witness a new dawn of peace and security for two peoples who have dreamed of both for so long. Instead, it has watched as Israeli soldiers shot and killed scores of Palestinian protesters, and wounded thousands more, along Israel's boundary with the Gaza Strip....

Mr. Trump has repeatedly promised a grand peace plan without delivering, and he has now lent America's weight to this maximalist Israeli strategy. For decades, the United States prided itself on mediating between Israel and the Palestinians. Successive administrations urged a peace formula in which the two parties would negotiate core issues—establishing boundaries between the two states; protecting Israel's security; deciding how to deal with refugees who fled or were drive away after Israeli statehood in 1948; and deciding the future of Jerusalem, which was expected to become the shared capital of Israelis and Palestinians.

Mr. Trump's announcement that he was recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital, and moving the embassy from Tel Aviv, swept aside 70 years of American neutrality” 

Note the words chosen by the Editors of the Times. They didn't say that Disgustus had swept away 70 years of American diplomacy, which in fact he did. They said instead, and quite rightly, that he swept aside 70 years of American neutrality and with it,, they could have added, any pretense that the United States can now be an honest broker of peace. Disgustus has given up the leadership of this country in the Middle East peace process, or whatever is left of it, in the name of choosing sides so that the Lord will return and take from him the reigns of power—or at least so the bat-shit crazy functionaries of the idiot wrong would have you believe. 

The event, as the editors also pointed out, couldn't have been more ill conceived. “It was timed to make the American bias clear, coming on the 70th anniversary of Israel's independence in 1948—and the day before Palestinians observe Nakba, or Catastrophe, the expulsion from their ancestors from the newly formed Jewish state.” (4)

The juxtaposition of images of dead and wounded Palestinians and Ivanka Trump smiling in Jerusalem like a Zionist Marie Antoinette”, wrote Michelle Goldberg, “tell us a lot about America's to Israel right now.” (5) Indeed it does. By Disgustus empowering Netanyahu and through him the worst Israeli instincts; and by Netanyahu catering further to the American Political Wrong, both nations have further isolated themselves in the region and the world, but the Israeli's have further isolated themselves within the United States. So much so that the editors, as well as a featured commentator, of the leading newspaper of the largest Jewish city in the world, has called them to task. 

This much is clear. The two-state solution is dead. Israel is moving toward an Apartheid government as it annexes the occupied territories. The United States has lost it's position as the broker of peace and has openly joined Israel as a pariah in the region. Once again Disgustus has ceded ground and will get nothing but conflict in return. 

An Br'er Putin jus' laugh and laugh”

Impeach and Imprison.

______________



  1. Goldberg, Michelle “A Grotesque Spectacle in Jerusalem”. The New York Times, Tuesday, May 15, 2018 Page A25.
  2. Ibid
  3. The Editors. “Mr. Trump's Failure in Jerusalem” The New York Times. Tuesday, May 15, 2018
    Page A24
  4. Ibid
  5. Op. Cit.


May 19, 2018: For The Moment



For The Moment, I am

For the moment
I am

Why am I?
Nobody really knows
Although the priest and my schoolmasters
Earnestly swore by god and country
That they knew
But they didn't

All I know is
For the moment
I am

The eternal “is”
the eternal moment
or so it seems
for it has stretched out now
over three score years
A lifetime

This moment that
I am

What does it mean?
Nobody really knows
Though the few and the many earnestly insist
They swear by god and country
that they know
but they don't

All I know is
For the moment
I am

The eternal moment
Or so it seems
For it has stretched out now
Over three score years
All I've ever known
a lifetime

All I know is
that for the moment
I am....here.


* I am indebted here to Luther's Small Catechism for the mindless piece of theological tautology in which the student, in response to the question “is the bread and wine the body and blood of our lord and savior Jesus Christ?,” mindlessly replies “Is, is and always is is.”....The ultimate existential reality: the past is dead; the future unborn. The fleeting moment stretched into an eternity, encompassing all that one knows or will ever know; one's own eternal heaven or hell.

May 18, 2018: Down the Rabbit Hole, Tits and Ass, Pennsylvania Avenue Shakedown



The news travels fast and furious as the nation careens down the rabbit hole like some kind of out-of-control freight train veering off on a siding of uncertain length. Normally, a Friday is a slow news day, but not in tRUMPland. Friday brought reports that the Senate Intelligence Committee has released a bi-partisan report putting to lie the House version stating unequivocally that the Russians interfered in the 2016 election in order to get Caesar Disgustus upon the throne. The Senate committee thereby ratified the consensus, indeed unanimous, conclusions of the several intelligence agencies. Meanwhile, the Senate Judiciary Committee released transcripts of testimony around the infamous tRUMP Tower meeting between the Russians and several tRUMP campaign operatives, including Donald the Lesser.



It appears that the Rescumlicans, recoiling from the stench now emanating from this White House, have begun to regain their senses. Perhaps there is hope after all.



Meanwhile, it was also revealed that Stormy Daniels' attorney Michael Avellenti got his information about Michael Cohen's notorious shell company Essential Consultants LLC., from someone within the banking community who stumbled upon an S.A.R. Or Suspicious Activity Report, that banks are required to file whenever suspiciously large sums of money are transferred. It appears that this was only one of three such reports filed with the authorities, the other two were referenced in this report. The other two, have gone missing. There could be several explanations for this, one being that the Special Council's office is already on to the documents and has 'sealed' them, in which case Cohen is in a world of hurt. The other explanation that leaps immediately to mind is that the long fingers of the criminal conspirators have reached into the financial system and expunged the record in an effort to cover their tracks. The latter explanation, appears on its face, a bit paranoid given that these clowns have heretofore never demonstrated such competence. But the development does raise eyebrows as the nation—daily deluged with revelation—struggles to keep its head above water and take measure of its peril.



What the documents are beginning to show, beyond all doubt, is that Cohen (see previous posts), always a seedy figure, was about the “business” of shaking down domestic companies and foreign governments,including Qatar, many of which, like Ford Motor Company, refused to cooperate. Indeed Avellenti, commenting on the revelation, said flatly in an interview on MSNBC, that tRUMP's presidency would not survive Michael Cohen.



It isn't the Stormy Daniels' affair. The press, always fixated with tits and ass when it isn't chasing ambulances, knows that these stories are the easy ones to cover. The press knows that the public can readily relate to salacious details involving fornication especially if it involves passable eye-candy. Explaining complex financial entanglements is sure to make the eyes of the public glaze over; sure to lose your audience to some 'reality' television program, perhaps even “The Apprentice”. But it isn't tits and ass that makes the Stormy Daniels affair so dangerous. It's that the tits and ass bring the kleig lights to bear not on the seedy sex life of this bottom-feeder but upon his exceedingly seedy financial dealings; for the story of how the modern Caligula can maintain the facade of wealth, in spite of his long and checkered record of business failure is one that is yet to be told; and it is in the telling that the fraud that is Donald J. tRUMP will finally be revealed.



Ah, but, alas, there is more. There is always more, any one of such revelation would have constituted, in any previous presidency, the scandal of the decade. Rachel Maddow in her program on Thursday raised some serious questions regarding Qatar. One will recall that about a year ago tRUMP famously called out Qatar, our ally and host of the largest military base in the Middle East, as well as U.S. command center for the region, as a supporter of 'terrorism' famously joining a blockade by its neighbors. This, it was revealed, was an action taken shortly after his son-in-law had gone hat-in-hand to the Emir seeking loans to shore up the boy's awful business decision to pay twice as much for the building at 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, than it was then worth. The Kushner family are said to be a billion dollars in hock and desperate to have some financial institution or government rush to their rescue. Now, it transpires, all is well between the United States and Qatar, with the 'president' entertaining the Emir at the White House, lavishing praise upon him, and pledging our support for our re-discovered ally. All this, after the Qatari government agreed to loan the Kushner's the money. This makes Cohen's reported attempts to likewise shake down the Qatari government look, by comparison, like peanuts. The Qatari's reportedly see it as a “shakedown”. It sure looks like a Pennsylvania Avenue shakedown from here.



Perhaps it is rumblings such as these that have finally led some congressional Rescumlicans to reassess their fealty to the 'Don' now heading the syndicate running this government. Perhaps, we shall see, time will tell. We do know that many are heading for the exits, for they don't want to be anywhere near Washington when justice comes to town. Many, dismissed by Disgustus, are beginning to call him out. This week former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson leveled a blistering critique of the administration for it's nearly non-existent relationship with truth. Perhaps those in the 'political wrong' are beginning to wake up. Perhaps. As the country careens from pillar to post down the rabbit hole into the cesspool that is tRUMPland, the nation, overwhelmed by the stench, struggles to catch its breath and find its bearing.



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



Impeach and Imprison.



May 18, 2018

May 17, 2018: Family of Degenerates, Pimps and Parasites, Decades and Generations


"If all Roads to hell lead back to Richard Nixon, they end with Donald tRUMP".
----from "The Quotations of Chairman Joe"
Caesar Disgustus is no mere aberration and should not be seen nor treated as such. As I've commented in these columns the malignancy that is Donald J. tRUMP has many antecedents, many of which, now a half century in the making, date back to Richard Shithouse Nixon. The paranoia, the assaults on the press, the nascent racism, the dirty tricks, the borderline treason that transformed the Republican Party of our grandfathers into the cancer that is the Rescumlican Party today.
Likewise, the mendacious venality that is our modern Caligula has deep historical roots. tRUMP comes by his criminal proclivities quite honestly. His grandfather, emigrating as he did from what is now modern Germany in order to find his fortune came to America because he quite rightly ciphered that here he could best exploit his fellow man. Here was the land of opportunity where, catering the the basest of vices, one could reach that pot of gold. So, we find grandpa tRUMP within a few years of his arrival running grog shops and whore houses first in the American Northwest and, when run out of town by decent folk, moved north to Alaska in time to exploit the riches of the Gold Rush. He didn't pan for gold, for that would involve too much work. Instead he founded the family fortune off the backs of desperate women playing the pimp to the men who produced the wealth in the first place. It was a trait that he would pass on through the generations: making one's living by being a parasite on the larger community.
In due course the money would be handed down to Fred the father who would make millions building homes for returning G.I's after the war, overcharging and pocketing millions creating such a scandal that he would be the first tRUMP to go to Washington, dragged before a congressional committee investigating graft. Fred would involve the family in a series of seedy deals and seedier business associates as he increased the family fortune in the boroughs of New York.
By the time his son Donald would take over the business, tRUMP enterprises were reported to be well involved with the syndicate, exploiting contractors and tenants, not to mention discriminating against those they saw as 'inferior'.
Donald knows something about prostitution. The world's oldest profession is deeply embedded in his genes. His family has a long history of involvement with and profited enormously by involvement in it. Aping his grandfather, Donald tried feeding off the vices of his fellow man by operating gambling casinos. But his real talents at becoming an accomplished parasite involved feeding on the largesse of the greater community through tax breaks, subsidies and defaulting on nearly a billion dollars of loans--monies owed to the greater community but never paid back. This and money-laundering were the singular talents brought to the family by one Donald J. tRUMP, but the intent was the same: make a quick fortune off the backs of others.

While 'The Donald' would expand the envelope, he would not break the mold. He would lead his family and ultimately the nation back to his origins: prostitution. In this case, political prostitution. Pimping out the people's assets through various privatization schemes; shaking down foreign governments for loans, trademark rights, and business opportunity; turning the highest office and greatest honor in the land into a casino. Feeding off the vice of others in order to carve out a fortune at minimum effort. Caesar Disgustus is the quintessential Boomer, the penultimate parasite, the ultimate Rescumlican. No, he didn't get here by chance. It took decades and generations to produce this malignancy. "If all roads to hell lead back to Richard Nixon, they end with Donald tRUMP".

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

Impeach and Imprison.

May 16, 2018: Reflections on William Henry Harrison, Good News for James Buchanan, Somebody's Got To Hold Up The Rest


William Henry Harrison cannot get a break. When George W. " Ol' Two-Cows" Bush finally got on that helicopter and was spirited off to well-deserved oblivion he, nevertheless, was accorded a higher ranking among presidential historians than William Henry Harrison. Some would have thought that only James Buchanan would have ranked lower in the esteem of those in the know but it was not to be. Somehow, after lying us into a war and making a pig's breakfast of the Middle East, literally fiddling while a major city drowns, and presiding over the worst financial collapse since the Great Depression, historians could still rank W. higher than the hapless Harrison. One is left to wonder how a man who was in office a mere 30 days, not enough time to wreak the havoc Ol' Two-Cows visited upon the nation could nevertheless suffer the calumny of history's judges.

It transpires as Gail Collins wrote in The New York Times, "Everybody's Better Than You-Know-Who". Mother used to say, when her beloved Detroit Tigers were mired deep in the cellar of the American League that there was indeed merit in finishing dead last. "Someone has to hold up the rest of the league," she would comment with a certain cryptic twist. Likewise, Buchanan and, yes, even Harrison can now sound a sigh of relief as they no longer carry the burden of holding up the rest of the class. Our very own Caesar Disgustus has replaced James Buchanan as the 'Atlas' holding up the league of presidents. It's official. Donald J. tRUMP is the worst president in the history of the United States.
Citing "a survey of experts in presidential politics--people who have an opinion about whether Chester A. Arthur was better than Martin Van Buren, Trump came in last with a score of 12 out of 100. " (1).
Move over Warren G. Harding, Millard Fillmore, Zachary Taylor, Andrew Johnson, William Henry Harrison and, yes, James Buchanan. Here comes Donald J. tRUMP.
Buchanan, "whose administration began with the Dred Scott decision and ended with the Civil War. ", (2) has rightly suffered at the hands of historians. Meanwhile, Andrew Jackson "dropped dramatically, a demotion...attributed to 'evolving attitudes on his treatment of Native Americans.' But I suspect its because Trump made such a big deal about admiring him. Any friend of Donald's..."
"Barack Obama soared up into the top 10. This could be because absence makes the heart grow fonder. But you know it's about the replacement...
Meanwhile, Richard Nixon moved up to 33. It's true that he conspired to undermine the Constitution, but at least it wasn't with the Russians.
Nobody is too obscure to be less bad than our incumbent. The next time you see the current president on the screen, bragging about his great leadership skills, fee free to think: 'Franklin Pierce and Millard Fillmore got way more points"'. (2)
James Buchanan, after more than a century and a half, has finally been relieved of the burden of holding up the rest. He can now rest in peace. Meanwhile, William Henry Harrison still gets no respect, but at least he's moved up one rung in the ratings. At least and at last tRUMP has achieved some constructive purpose.
'An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh
Impeach and Imprison
_____________
(1). Collins, Gail. "Everybody's Better Than You-Know-Who" The New York Times. Thursday, February 22, 2018. Pg. A23
(2). Ibid.

May 15, 2018: Lizard Wisdom, Thugs Gotta Thug, tRUMP Steaks



Two essays appeared last Friday in The New York Times opinion pages, one by David Brooks and the other by Paul Krugman demonstrating not only the promise that is Caesar Disgustus but the pitfalls as well. 


"We're all educated by our peers," wrote David Brooks, "and, over the years, a good portion of Donald Trump's peers have been thugs. Operating in the New York construction world meant dealing with S&A Concrete, co-owned by 'Fat Tony' Salerno of the Genovese crime family, and John Cody, the notorious head of Teamsters Local 282, who was convicted on racketeering and tax evasion charges.
Building casinos in Atlantic City brought Trump into similarly genteel circles. Trump's hero was Roy Cohn, who unfortunately was born too late to serve the emperor, Caligula. To go to Trump parties in the 1980's was to be surrounded by C-list celebrities and shady business types voted Most Likely to be Arraigned in high school." (1)
Trump's latest 'fixer', Michael Cohen is cut from similar cloth.  Brooks notes that he once "worked for a lawyer who pleaded guilty to bribing insurance adjusters.  His ex-business partner in the taxi industry was convicted of assault in New York, arrested on battery in Miami and pleaded guilty to criminal mischief in New Jersey (2). 
"About 15 years ago Cohen set up businesses for two doctors, one of whom was later charged with insurance fraud and grand larceny, the other indicted on racketeering charges.  as a personal injury lawyer, he frequently represented people accused of insurance fraud....
"If not for the Trump and Cohen peer circle", quips Brooks, "white-collar prisons would be sitting empty".  further noting that all this occurred before the two discovered the benefits and delights of conspiring with Russian Oligarchs. (3)

But Brooks, seeking as he does a silver (if not gold--tRUMP is mesmerized by gold) lining behind every dark face, suggests that perhaps there is an 'evil genius' at work here demonstrating an understanding of the world that the so-called 'educated elites' have wholly missed. He cites here our evolving understanding or, perhaps fatally, our misunderstandings with North Korea, China, and Iran.

The educated elite, the Foreign Policy crowd, the readers of "Foreign Affairs" , countless studies by the likes of the "Council on Foreign Affairs", and reports by international agencies, assumed, according to Brooks that that if we treated these nations with deference and respect they would soon be acting like us and become part of one big international family.  

"This is the vanity of the educated class going back for centuries. Since we're obviously so superior, everybody else secretly wants to be like us. It's wrong. Thugs gotta be thug. Religious fanatics gotta fanaticize". (4)
So by engaging in brinkmanship, and picking fights our "bully" tries to demonstrate who, figuratively and, in the case of North Korea quite literally, has the greater nuclear button. As of his writing, these schoolyard tactics have yielded some result; Brooks noting that there has been a warming of the relationship with North Korea, prisoners have been released, a nuclear test facility has been closed. Similarly, in regards to China, the Chinese have promised to lower tariffs on U.S. automobiles. 
 Brooks stopped short, as well he should, from endorsing Caesar Disgustus concluding, rather ambiguously:
"Please don't take this as an endorsement of the Trump foreign policy. I'd feel a lot better if Trump showed some awareness of the complexity of the systems he's disrupting, and the possibly cataclysmic unintended consequences. But there is some lizard wisdom here. The world is a lot more like the Atlantic City real estate market than the G.R.E's." (5)

Perhaps, but with all due respect for our modern Caligula's explicit connections with, and implicit understandings of, the depravity of the human soul, it is dangerous to imply that when the lizard speaks, he speaks words of wisdom. The Jurasic world of dog-eat-dog or, in this case, lizard-eat-lizard, quickly degenerates into the hellish nightmare of a Hobbesian "State of Nature", which, in a nuclear age, will leave few, if any survivors.  

Indeed, in the days immediately following Brooks' cautious optimism, North Korea has cancelled meetings with South Korea and has threatened to cancel the upcoming summit with tRUMP.   

The difficulty in tipping one's hat, however furtively, to our modern Caligula was hinted at by economist Paul Krugman in an accompanying essay on the same opinion page. "Let Them Eat Trump Steaks" (6), Krugman exclaimed, in reference to yet another of the business 'geniuses' failed enterprises. 

"In general, Donald Trump is notoriously uninterested in policy details", noted Klugman in staggering understatement. "It has long been obvious, for example, that he never bothered to find out what his one major legislative victory, the 2017 tax cut, actually did. Similarly, it's pretty clear that he had no idea what was actually in the Iran agreement he just repudiated.
"In each case, it was about ego rather than substance: scoring a 'win,' undoing his predecessor's achievement.". (7)

That, and as Krugman points out, his overweening mendacity, his hatred of the idea that someone, somewhere is on public assistance. The obscenity of this Krugman excoriates, pointing out that Disgustus and his Ilk have been sucking the public teat for their entire lives. But this is fodder for another essay. What I want to do is go back to the original observation: Disgustus has no mind for policy, particularly public policy. He is willfully ignorant and wears his ignorance like a crown.  

It is this ignorance, ignorance squared so that he is ignorant of that which he is ignorant, that makes this man so dangerous. Tony Schwartz, the real author of "The Making of the Deal", explained in numerous interviews and at a speech given at Oxford University leading up to the U.S. election, that he simply couldn't get tRUMP to sit down and explain his deals. Instead, Schwartz called the other parties to get explanations of what had transpired. To his dumbfounded amazemen,t he discovered that their understandings and that of tRUMP almost never coincided. Each party, after a 'deal' was struck, walked away with an entirely different understanding of what had transpired and what had been agreed to.  

Now we have Disgustus--desperate to accomplish anything--praising the North Korean leader for some small concessions made during the build-up to an "historic" (with Disgustus everything is in superlatives), summit. But the North Koreans have reason to be cautious, for as the talks loom near on the horizon, the U.S. and South Korea engage in joint military exercises right on the North Korean border--a subject long sensitive to the North Koreans, and about which they have long voiced their outrage. Moreover, on the brink of the meetings, Disgustus unilaterally withdraws from the agreement with Iran over Iran's nuclear program isolating this country not only from our European allies but breaking an agreement reached in conjunction with Russia and China as well. Why then should anyone trust the U.S.? Qadaffi trusted us and where did he end up?

The danger here is serious and multiple. If such a summit does occur, it must not take place with only the two principles meeting together. Several nations and observers must be present for
Disgustus can be relied upon to do no prep work, study no history or issues, and appear before our adversaries as but-ignorant as sloth will allow. And we can rest assured that he will compound this ignorance by declaring to the world in as many superlatives as his limited vocabulary can conjure the outlines of an agreement that was never put upon the table laying the foundation for later claims of Korean bad faith and the need for drastic actions. This is what happens when a narcissistic sociopath who operates in his own closed universe dances upon the world stage.  


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

Impeach and Imprison

_______________

(1). Brooks, David. "Trump's Lizard Wisdom" The New York Times. Friday, May 11, 2018. Pg. A27

(2). Ibid
(3). Ibid
(4). Ibid
(5). Ibid
(6). Krugman, Paul. "Let Them Eat Trump Steaks" The New York Times, Friday, May 11, 2018. Pg. A27
(7). Ibid