Tag Archives: Trump

Why I am Not Convinced that We Should Remove Trump from Office

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Anyone who thinks Donald Trump would even take the time to learn what the rules are before he broke them is delusional. The Donald has lived his entire life in a world where the rules don’t apply to him. He’s even bragged about that. He’s not intentionally breaking the rules, because he doesn’t care what the rules are to start with.

So it’s not going to take much digging to come up with a smoking gun bad enough to get Trump convicted of some malfeasance or other, and when the rat is on the table, a few carefully-selected Republicans in the Senate will have to “vote with their consciouses” and Donnie won’t be president anymore.

But here’s the thing. Should that happen, the Republican Party will let out a huge sigh of relief. The Republicans right now are paddling a canoe in choppy waters with a fizzing hand grenade rolling around in the boat. The ones doing the paddling know that if the hand grenade goes off, the boat sinks.

Along come the Democrats, who say, “We demand that you throw that hand grenade overboard!” The Republicans protest, but in the end they reluctantly jettison their deadly cargo. Not their fault! And so the same bastards that brought us WWE politics will be allowed to carry on, and suddenly the other clowns like Ted Cruz seem like rational guys (all of them are guys).

Or we could just suffer Trump for a couple extra months, and leave the hand grenade in their boat. The senate is in play in that scenario; just imagine the fallout within the party if Trump causes them to lose everything.

Ultimately, that’s what I want. I want the Republicans to suffer badly enough that they, ON THEIR OWN, not only throw the hand grenade overboard, but they also jettison the big-money assholes and foreign powers that paid to put that grenade in the boat in the first place. I want the Republican Party to be so damaged by this that they shift tack and try to be ACTUAL CONSERVATIVES.

If that happens, then perhaps Trump will have made America great again after all.

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The Old-White-Man Fear Machine

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Yesterday I read an interesting article over at FiveThirtyEight.com titled Could Trump Drive Young White Evangelicals away from the GOP?. It was an interesting article, but the title didn’t really fit. While Trump may accelerate the generational divide in the Evangelical world, the divide would be there anyway.

In a nutshell, the kids these days aren’t buying the fear that Republicans are selling. That applies to every segment of the population, and the Republican bedrock of white evangelicals is no different.

Younger white evangelicals aren’t worried about becoming a minority; in their world they already are. And they’re dealing with it. They are generally more conservative than their friends, and that’s just a part of life. Their church groups are less white as well. They spend significant time with people who are not lily-white, and many of those brown friends share their values.

Trump, as a world-class fear salesman, might be accelerating the divide between young and old. Older Evangelicals drink that fear like the Kool-Aid it is, but the young ones, while retaining their conservative ideals, just aren’t buying the “scary brown people” narrative. At least, not as much as their parents do.

Those kids will still throw down hard on the subject of abortion, but they’re not going to vote for some joker who has likely funded more than his share of terminations just because he promises to build a wall.

So can we take a moment to stop bitching about millennials? “Kids these days” are not buying the random fear of their elders and instead they are asking their predecessors to stop bankrupting the world just when it’s their turn. Republicans know they are aging out, and it pisses them off. But rather than adapt to the sensibilities of the new generation, they are digging in their heels, and saying that the kids are WRONG!

If it weren’t for the slavery-inspired Electoral College and some pretty damn flagrant gerrymandering, Republicans as we know them would be finished already. But here’s hoping that the young conservatives, even the ones I disagree with, can find a political voice outside the old-white-man fear machine that the Republicans have become.

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How Quickly they Change their Tune

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Remember when Republicans were all saying “Extend the patriot Act! Strengthen it! The FBI needs to be able to go after the bad guys!” and the Democrats were all saying “No! We have to protect civil liberty! Approving all this surveillance damages our democracy!”

That wasn’t very long ago. And by the way, ceding more power to the government is not “conservative”. It’s just one of many places where Republicans have proven to be the exact opposite of conservative.

Now the same people who loudly trumpeted the need to expand the ability of the FBI to investigate US citizens are crying about how the FBI is abusing its surveillance powers. You made this bed, Republicans, now lie in it. (And the lying has commenced, indeed.)

If that weren’t bad enough, the Democrats, who are often mistaken for liberals, have switched sides, too, trying their best to defend the FBI’s use of the power congress gave it. They’re crying about not being allowed to use the same low tactics the Republicans used to make political hay from the Trump/Russia investigation.

Why can’t just ONE Democrat point out that the FBI’s new power is a separate issue that may ultimately be more important than having an evil President for a couple of years?

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Rober Mueller is Getting Slammed – Why?

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Over the last couple of weeks, the Republicans in power have launched a massive campaign to discredit special prosecutor Robert Mueller. The Trump administration, the Republican establishment, and Fox News have started a non-stop “nothing to see here” feedback loop. The complaints they are throwing around are not new; Watergate and Whitewater investigators heard the same things.

The Democrats spent a year complaining about Kenneth Starr, and the complaints about Archibald Cox (Watergate) are even more similar to what we are hearing today. Neither party is above suppressing the truth for its own purposes. Notably, in both those examples impeachment proceedings followed.

So, maybe “Why?” is not the interesting question. Maybe it’s “Why now?” Why has the bashing been turned up to eleven? Mueller’s investigation is moving with historical quickness — after Manafort and Papadopolous turned, I thought we wouldn’t hear more before January, using past investigations as a guide. But even bigger news has followed, and things are now very close to the White House. So, “why now” might be because the Trump administration and their Republican apologists realize that there is something even bigger coming, and they want to get ahead of it, to rally the party faithful ahead of some damning news. If they already know impeachment is in the wind, getting the party to close around a few points of resistance makes sense.

Perhaps.

It’s also possible that Trump and his administration have nothing to hide. Perhaps they realize that their own hound dog, Kenneth Starr, was allowed to expand the Whitewater investigation into realms that had absolutely nothing to do with the original charges, fruitlessly looking under rock after rock, until they finally caught the president not wanting his wife to find out he’d gotten BJ’s in the oval office. Even then it wouldn’t have amounted to anything, but Slick Willy was too slick for his own good, and tried to play word games with his questioners.

When looking for infractions on that scale, you know that Trump — the pussy-grabber and philanderer and liar and serial bankruptcy artist — will trip over something.

So is the Republican message machine afraid of the truth, or are they afraid the Democrats are paying them back for Starr? My guess is that there is an ugly truth coming, and they are girding for a fight that threatens the very relevance of their party. But it may be they’re just about to reap what they have sown. Either way, I don’t have a great deal of sympathy for them.

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Moving On

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Well, Donald Trump got almost as many votes as Hillary Clinton (some people’s votes don’t count as much as others), and now he’s going to be our next president. I’m going to have to take the same advice I would have given Trump’s supporters had the election gone the other way: “Suck it up, buttercup.”

In the interest of healing a fractured nation, and focussing my resolve, I will no longer (publicly) insult Trump. I will certainly criticize flaws in his policies (should he ever articulate any policies), and I will comment on all current and new criminal investigations brought against him. But no more (public) name-calling.

The same goes for his followers. Some of them will realize, as time passes, that their jobs are NOT coming back — in fact they’re vanishing faster than ever — and the community college system they could have used to move to a new career is withering and dying. They will realize that even more people are being grievously hurt by drinking their own tap water, and that pollution from fracking is killing their children. They will notice that terrorism didn’t just vanish.

Some of the people who voted for Trump yesterday will realize that they’ve been hoodwinked, and perhaps make another decision in four years. Others will continue to blame whatever scapegoat they are handed next and respond with the logic “If Trump’s not getting it done, what we need is more Trump.”

There’s not much I can do about that latter group, but name-calling won’t help. All I can do is be civil, provide a contrast to the shouting coming out of their noise-boxes, stand up for the truth, watch out for my neighbors, and hope that after four years the thieves leave with all they can carry but don’t actually light the house on fire.

Whoops. This is going to be really difficult.

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Republican Conservatives Find their Voices (at last)

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For years, the Republicans have been making promises to the so-called “religious conservatives”, even though they had no intention of keeping those promises once elected. “Overturn Roe v Wade!” is trotted out, the Evangelical Christians punch the ‘R’ button in the voting booth, then the slogan is packed away until the next election.

But Republicans have found themselves more and more dependent on the Religious Right and other factions even farther out there that John McCain calls “the crazies”.

The crazies have taken their revenge. The conservatives of the Republican party swallowed their tongues as suddenly all the leading candidates in the primary rush were crazy-fueled WWE candidates. The conservatives remained silent, fearful of pissing off the crazies, hoping that out of this mess somehow rational minds would prevail. They bit their tongues as the crazies took over the engine room and pushed the Enterprise to warp 9 and pointed it directly at the sun.

I did not plan to use a Star Trek metaphor, but by Skippy I’m running with it.

McCain and Kaisch and a host of others now see that the ship is gong to blow up if they don’t do something. McCain blasted Trump. A gaggle of 50 influential Republicans just gave him the finger. Money that would have backed a rational Republican is landing in Democratic pockets. Money follows winners.

Senators in close races are distancing themselves from the national stink-bomb that is Trump. The conservative press (not to be confused with infotainment like Fox) has turned on the man. Trump is running out of supporters to alienate.

Leaks come out that party bosses are drawing up contingency plans should Trump quit. Other leaks say the top Republicans are “phoning in” their campaign support for their presidential nominee. Those leaks aren’t about the presidential election, they’re about the senate and the house.

The conservatives are speaking, at last. I don’t agree with some of the things they say, but at least they’re talking about policy, in actual sentences. If all these wise conservatives had found the backbone to speak six months ago, we might be looking at a very different election. Now, they are just trying to emerge from this election with some semblance of a party. They’re putting all power to the shields and hoping they still have a ship on the other side of the sun.

Post Script: Democrats, learn the lesson here. You make empty promises to labor every cycle, using them the same way Republicans use Christians. Bernie gave you fair warning that you’re not getting away with shit any longer.

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Trump and Idiots

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I have, on several occasions, said that people who vote for Trump are idiots. Having read the excellent article Why Trump Voters are not Complete Idiots I have been forced to question my stance.

The article, if I may be so bold as to recast, turns the US into a two-story house. The folks on the ground floor get by, the folks upstairs do well. By any measure, I’m living upstairs.

It’s important to note that while money is a big factor in where you think you live, it is not the only factor. Income is only one way one’s value in society is defined. Respect from those around you is another. Upstairs people feel more valued.

There’s no guaranteed pass to the upper floor, but a college education is pretty damn close to one. Go to college, move upstairs. And here’s where the core resentment toward immigrants comes in. It’s not the illegal immigrants coming in on the ground floor that rankle, it’s the legal immigrants, the educated ones, who step right onto the upstairs that piss people off.

It’s not how well you’re doing, it’s how well you’re doing compared to the other guy.

So Liberals and Democrats (not at all the same groups) make two basic promises: 1) we will make living on the ground floor suck less, and 2) we will make it easier for your kids to go upstairs.

But for a man just getting by, with his kids already past “college age”, there’s not a lot of upside there. He remembers when just being a hard-working man doing his job and not bitching too much was enough to feel secure in this country. Maybe he couldn’t get upstairs, but hard work meant something, and he could be confident that his family would be taken care of. For that guy, that was when America was great.

Trump, while not offering anything specific at all, implies that he will restore America to those good old days. But he isn’t offering to make living on the ground floor better, he wants you to believe that he’s changing the rules for who gets to live upstairs. For people who feel stuck downstairs and degraded by assholes like me calling them idiots, maybe it’s time to change the rules.

It gets a little ugly, though, when you consider that during this mythical period when America was great, the upstairs was occupied almost exclusively by white men. So when he talks about going back to the good ol’ days, he’s talking to the working white men whose fortunes have flatlined while all the other demographics in this country have caught up. But he’s making it a white-men-vs-the-world proposition. Sometimes subtly, sometimes not so much.

These folks have heard all the political double-speak before, but there they sit, downstairs, even while brown and yellow college-educated kids skip up to the luxury suites without breaking a sweat. Time to shake things up! Time to value the people who work with their hands, who actually make stuff. So people in the making-stuff group who want to shake things up are not inherently idiots. They are following an agenda that, at least superficially, gives them the better chance to get upstairs. The Democrats are telling them their grandchildren will have a more fair shot at the stairs, but that’s far away.

Blow up the system. When the debris stops falling, who knows who will be on top?

So far, that makes sense. But there’s still the question: Is Trump the guy to do that?

Let’s take another look at those good ol’ days. When a working man could provide for his family and maybe even send his kids to college. Or at least technical school, or a skilled apprenticeship. Those days actually existed, not long ago.

Was it the Republicans, or the white men upstairs that created those conditions? Well, no. Not even remotely. It was the labor unions. The Great America Trump wants us to remember is the America when workers had power. When there was dignity in labor and a comfortable life even while the fat cats upstairs got rich.

So, white men who remember a better past, is Trump really going to return us to those days? Will he restore the power of the unions?

Hell, no.

He couldn’t if he tried, and he’s not going to try. Among the many lawsuits Trump has settled, there are the union-busting ones. He is famous for shitting on the working-class people. Gleeful, even. He is the worst thing that could possibly happen to the working-class joe in this country. He is a spoiled rich man with a long history of disregard for the people he is now asking to put him in the White House.

So, back to my premise: are people idiots for voting for a fundamental change to the system? No. Not if they don’t believe that we are on a path that makes things better for their grandchildren.

But are they idiots for voting for Trump? Yes, absolutely. Trump is one of the people who put them where they are, and he has no intention of changing that. Just ask that man of the people over in Russia.

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Our Next Vice-President

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According to John Kaisch, Trump’s kid told him point-blank that if he were Trump’s vice-president, he would be in charge of domestic and foreign policy. In other words, he would have had all the responsibilities of an actual president. Trump, presumably, would be off pounding vodka with Vladimir Putin*.

Kaisch said no. He pretty much hates everything Trump stands for. And since he is governor of Ohio, a state Trump must carry, when he says no it hurts.

I’ve said it before: Trump has no interest in being president, he only wants to become president. So it’s not hard to get from there to assuming that a vote for Donald Trump is actually a vote for Mike Pence. Just as evil, but perhaps at least somewhat competent. So there’s that bit of sunshine if you feel compelled to vote for a racist fear-mongering bigot out of some misguided impression that he is in some way “conservative”. (Pro tip: Trump is not conservative.)

Then there was the handing of the announcement of the Republican VP nominee. It was botched, badly, while Trump spun in indecision and tried to weasel out at the last minute. Another display of the general incompetence of the “best people” (mostly his children) that Trump has gathered around himself.

On the other side of the ticket, the Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee is going to be interesting. There are rumblings that it might be Elizabeth Warren, but given her full-frontal tweet attacks on Drumpf and pals I don’t think it will be her. She’s the attack dog now, and although Clinton has said she wants that in a VP, I think ultimately the campaign will look better if the attack dog is not on the ticket.

Also: I don’t think Warren likes Clinton that much. She hates Trump far more, sure, and she’ll go attack-dog for the party, and she knows that the party will remember. The Democrats at this point have their shit together way more than the Republicans do. Those super delegates the Bernie crowd complains about? This is how you get them, by helping win elections for others.

Don’t be surprised if Warren is our second female president. But personally I’d be surprised if she was Vice President first.

One common qualification for Vice President is hailing from a key swing state. That’s why Trump wanted Kaisch. Warren is from Massachusetts; Clinton will need no help winning there. She needs someone who can deliver her a critical state in the upcoming election. A place like Florida, or… Ohio… Someone who can balance the ticket and reach across to disenfranchised conservatives. Someone who has a track record of standing up to Trump, who puts ideals over ambition.

Someone like John Kaisch. Now, wouldn’t that be something?

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*Putin would rapidly tire of Trump, and ultimately, while janked up on benzedrine, cocaine, and Viagra, would shoot the POTUS just so he could say he did.

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I Agree with the Republicans about One Thing

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At the convention the delegates on the floor are getting all frothed up. One of the signs they’ve been given to wave around reads, “We deserve better.”

Yes you do, Republicans. You deserve better. But you hitched your wagon to a racist xenophobe child-king and now we have to embarrass your whole party as monumentally as possible to make sure you grow the backbone to not be railroaded again.

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The RNC Drinking Game

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trump_1868826aMy cousin, over in Facebook-land, has been soliciting ideas for drinking games for the Republican National Convention. It’s going to drive you to drink anyway, why not make a game of it?

The major political conventions have been reduced to noise and flashing lights anyway, since the conclusion is foregone. In smoky rooms where cameras never reach, actual policy decisions might be made, planks laid for the coming campaign and whatnot, but those meetings hardly need the hoopla of the convention. It is, really, just an extended political ad that the major networks offer up for free.

The Establishment will now do pretzel contortions to pretend they liked Trump all along. But they didn’t like him then, and they don’t like him now. A large chunk of the party just wants to punt this one over to Hillary and try to take it back in four years. There will be agonizing moments of discomfort durning the RNC.

So, the drinking. I figure there are a couple of easy categories, and one tricky one.

Things People Say
These don’t have to be an exact match, it’s the spirit that counts.
“Donald Trump is a savvy businessman.”
“Donald Trump cares about America.”
“Make America Great Again!” (if you accept this one, you will get hammered).
“Donald Trump undertands “
Untruths that can be verified within thirty seconds.
“The beautiful city of Cleveland”
“The great state of Cleveland” — With Trump, it’s possible. You know it is. 10 drinks.
Any attempt to use Cleveland’s NBA championship to generate excitement.

Images
Weeping male zealot (1 drink)
Weeping female zealot (3 drinks)
Big crowd shot with all the signs pumping to insipid piped-in music
Trump, with his hand raised in a gesture that might not be Hitler but is definitely in Mussolini territory
A black person. (1 drink)
The same black person (2 drinks)
The same black person another time (Ok, there will be four black people there, and the cameras will be hungry for them. Your call whether to go linear or exponential here.)
Beauty shot of Cleveland from the air.

Tongue-Biting
One of the greatest travesties of this election is otherwise-rational people will be backing Trump out of misguided party loyalty. Moments when those people are captured by the cameras will be the most precious of all.
Party leaders golf-clapping.
Top Republicans forcing smiles only made possible by the intake of copious cocaine.
Conventioneers wearing Hillary buttons.
Mentions that if Trump doesn’t win in one round, delegates are free to back other candidates.
“I’m not saying Trump is [racist/sexist/stupid/unethical]…”
Referring to his campaign as unorthodox.

Things you will die if you include
“The great state of…”
“The next president…”

If the list gets too long, the game gets too complicated (and dangerous). It might be too long already. Still in the spirit of the convention, I’d like to open the floor to proposals for other planks in the game platform. Comments left here at the blog will live on long after Facebook comments are lost in noise, so I encourage the conversation to take place here.

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But I DO Blame You

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In a few months the “Don’t blame me, I voted for Trump” bumper stickers will start appearing. The implication is that a Democrat is in the White House despite the efforts of the Trump faithful. Well guess what, Sunshine: you and all your pals who endorsed the clown-car politics of the Republican party are entirely to blame for the coming election outcome. You nominated a toddler to be President of the Unites States; what did you expect?

In the process, you robbed the electorate of any sort of grown-up conversation about the future of our nation (outside the debate among the Democrats), and utterly silenced the rational conservative voices who have valuable contributions to make regarding the governance of our nation. You put Trump in the election and you not only screwed your party, you screwed the United States.

Ok, I have to grant that “Republican” and “conservative” have nothing to do with each other any longer, but wow. The only people who want Trump to be president are stupid people. I’m going to say that a second time, to give you a chance to reflect on the Buddha-like wisdom: The only people who want Trump to be president are stupid people. Intelligent conservatives are wondering where they can go to be heard. Intelligent middle-of-the-road folks have had their minds made up for them.

Trump voter, you have kicked your own party in the balls. And while it might have seemed fun at the time, you have left yourself with no voice. You’re an idiot, Trump voter, so you losing your voice doesn’t bother me much, but you also robbed the rest of us of a chance to hear a clear conservative argument in what promises to be a watershed election.

I do blame you, Trump voter. This is your fault.

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What is Trump’s Goal?

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Trump is a liar, a skunk, and a bully.

A couple of years ago, Trump told the Republican party that he didn’t need them. He told them that he would run a campaign for president, and he’d hardly have to spend a dime doing it. He knew the media, and he knew he’d get free coverage every inch of the way. A WWE campaign. The GOP insiders should have listened. While his opponents spend millions to get attention, he just says the most inflammatory thing that comes to mind at the moment. Boom. Instant coverage. Attention brings votes.

Many of the things he says are lies. He knows that as he says the words. It doesn’t matter to him. When people expose those lies, he threatens to sue. Of course he never will carry out that threat, because he would lose and look bad doing it.

Hey Donald. SUE ME! SUE ME FOR SAYING YOU ARE A LIAR AND A BULLY! DO IT! WHILE YOUR PATHETIC FANS CHEER ON; ACTUALLY DO WHAT YOU SAY YOU WILL DO! I will not fall for your lies. I will not let you or your brownshirts intimidate me. STEP UP, DONALD. You and me in a debate. Any time, anywhere. I WILL TAKE YOU DOWN.

No risk there. Trump is a balloon. He knows how to manipulate the media. He is the train wreck we cannot turn away from. But every fucked-up thing he says is BIG NEWS.

Does Trump really want the responsibility of being President of the United States? I doubt it. He would really suck at it, and I think he knows that. Does he want the personal gratification of being elected? Absolutely. Does he have any plans for what he’d do with his presidency? I’m skeptical. Getting elected is important, being president is an unfortunate responsibility best left to flunkies and sycophants.

Trump will say anything to get elected. Is he racist? Who knows? But by saying racist things he gets automatic coverage. Coverage that other candidates pay for. He will say ANYTHING if it gets him on the six o’clock news. Any meme on Facebook with his face is a win for him. And now I’m saying his name too.

Trump is a liar, a skunk, and a bully. It hurts me to even acknowledge him, but the time has come to make sure he does not succeed, and that requires speaking the name of the beast. He has drawn me into his cesspool, and now I will fight.

Not only must Trump lose, he has to humiliated. His vanity machine must be punished, or the next Trump will get even closer to the goal.

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