Grate America Again?

Make America Great Again infers a return to something. Judging by a talking points memo addressed to Trump Surrogates Mr. Trump wants to revisit a time when Kenneth Starr greatly exceeded his commission as Special Prosecutor appointed to investigate the alleged Whitewater scandal.  Far from being a time of greatness this is a time that marks a low point in America's political history.

Unable to find any wrongdoing on Bill Clinton's part regarding Whitewater, Mr. Starr deliberately set out to find something, anything for which Bill Clinton could be prosecuted. What Mr. Starr found, of course, was Mr. Clinton's sexual dalliances and the scandals and civil suit resulting therefrom. The insanely partisan Republicans led by Newt Gingrich then used Bill Clinton's alleged perjury in Paula Jones' civil case as grounds for impeachment. Needless to say that the impeachment itself became the biggest scandal, as well it should have. Instead of the issue being one of perjury the pubic accurately concluded that it all came down to sex. The hypocrisy and insufferable sanctimony of the Republicans was too much to bear, and Larry Flynt, the self described smut peddler, offered a million dollar reward to anyone who could prove she had an affair with a member of Congress. Newt Gingrich resigned in disgrace before Mr. Flynt could reveal the information he said he had on Gingrich, and Gingrich's heir apparent as Speaker of the House, Bob Livingston, resigned from the house as a result of an affair exposed by Larry Flynt. "Many other prominent Republican members of Congress [who voted for impeachment] (including Dan Burton[15] of Indiana; Helen Chenoweth[15] of Idaho; and Henry Hyde[15] of Illinois, the chief House manager of Clinton's trial in the Senate) had infidelities exposed around this time ..."

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Oddly enough during the height of the Monica Lewinsky/Paula Jones scandal Bill Clinton's job approval rating was sixty percent. What went down was his reputation for being honest and trustworthy. Not being content with attacking Bill Clinton the Republicans also used Hillary Clinton's understandable defense of her husband to besmirch her character and veracity. This is where Trump comes in because, as the talking points to his surrogates makes perfectly clear, he is now trying to defend his misogyny by tarring Hillary Clinton with the same brush used back then. It does little good to tell Trump that this tactic used against Bill and Hillary Clinton did not work out well for Republicans, or that women object to someone using the husband's infidelities against the wife as much as they object to men using a woman's weight to belittle her!  Nor can you convince Trump that instead of making America Great again this return to a past fraught with sanctimonious hypocrisy will grate on America and anger better than half of its population.  Nothing penetrates Trump's self absorption unless it confirms an image he already accepts.

I was much amused by an intellectually dishonest Trump Surrogate (is there any other kind?) that appeared on MSNBC this morning. Her argument was to deny that Trump does anything that is boorish and/or misogynistic, but that he should stop doing it!

Politics of Change

Donald Trump has been trying to portray himself as the candidate of change, but not all change as good change. Simply saying he will smash or change what we now have is not good enough for anyone who is bright enough to pay attention. Does Trump know what is needed? Does he have what it takes to do what needs to be done? He is trying to convince us that his experience as a businessman answers both of those questions in the affirmative. The remarkable thing is that he does this while defending his checkered past by extolling as sound business practices his shameless exploitation of workers, contractors, and others, as well as extolling his use of our bankruptcy laws to stiff his creditors. He does this without apology or conscience. It is almost enough to make Ayn Rand blush, and she is dead.

Saying Donald Trump's campaign is unconventional is being far too polite. His campaign is a Saint Vitus dance best performed in a dim light that softens the appearance of his herky jerky motions. When the light is turned up, as it was in the last debate, everyone can see that in spite of Trump's grotesque contortions he is in serious danger of sliding away on the offensive and boorish words and deeds that litter his playground like banana peels in a monkey cage. At long last even the broadcast news media has finally decided to turn on some light and do some fact checking! This is not good news for Trump, who lies at least 80% of the time.

There is little doubt in my mind that Kellyanne Conwoman, Chris (just ignore the “facts”; the fact checkers have an agenda) Christie, and other Trump apologists had to gird their loins with leak proof underwear before dutifully trying to spin Trump's unspinnable debate performance to news people who were much amused by Trump's alternate reality whirlers trying to convince us that what we saw and heard is not what we saw and heard. The only solace for Trump's spokespeople, if there is any solace for them, stems from the fact that Hillary haters will excuse anything in order to justify voting against her and that the hard core Trump chumps have there heads in such a dark, fact proof place that they actually believe “Trump done good!” So here we have Paul Ryan, forever the Ayan Rand pseudo intellectual, saying he thought Trump “passed a number of thresholds” and showed “he could go toe-to-toe with Hillary Clinton."

But what gives comfort to the gullible does not win over anyone who thinks that facts matter. Other Republican pundits are at least realistic enough to recognize a pratfall when they see one, and they are lamenting the fact that Trump was tripped up by his own racial comments, his absurd birther allegations, and his bogus business dealings. He needs to stay on message, they say. He needs to keep hitting on bad trade deals and tout his ability to be the vessel of change! Everyone wants change!  They may not know what it is, but they want it.

If I were advising Hillary Clinton and Trump continues to portray himself as the vessel of change, I would follow Harry Truman's example. Who is it that has been preventing meaningful change? It is not Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton who have spent all their time trying to deny millions of people health coverage by trying to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act over fifty times. It is not Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton who have twice shut down the government and twice threatened the full and credit of the United States. It is not Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama who refuse to fund infrastructure projects, or who refuse to raise the minimum wage, or who refuse to pass any meaningful legislation at all. It is a Do Nothing More Constructive Than Going On Vacation Republican Congress that has slowed down the recovery and made the status quo quick sand. And, like it or not, that is Trump's party. That is the party he must please.  He can do nothing without them and what they do best is nothing!

One of the reason the Republicans give for not voting for Hillary Clinton is the Supreme Court, which still has a vacancy because of the Republican Party's intransigent hyper-partisanship. It is difficult to imagine that Hillary Clinton could possibly give us a Supreme Court that is worse than the one the Republicans inflicted on us. It was this horrible Republican Supreme Court that gave us Citizens United, gutted the voting rights act, placed a woman's right to choose in peril, and rendered so many despicable decisions giving corporations an unfair advantage over individual citizens. And if you think the Republicans will make the Supreme Court better you better think again; the unconscionable Republican Party is defying all tradition by not even considering a nominee to replace injustice Scalia. The Greedy Old Plutocrats actually want another justice like Scalia because injustice Scalia voted with the right wing majority on most of the Court's worst and most controversial decisions. Furthermore, Donald Trump has said his favorite Justice is Clarence Thomas who is widely regarded to be the most unethical Supreme Court Justice in modern times.

One can only hope that Trump continues to demonstrate how unfit he is to be President!

Portrait Of Deplorable

When Hillary Clinton said  "You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables," the news media and Trump jumped all over it. As most politicians know stating percentages as a figure of speech rather than an accurate quantification is usually going to leave you open to charges of mis-characterizing the evidence, and the reaction to Hillary Clinton's statement was predictably critical: “how dare she disparage millions of voters!”

As reported by David Corn of Mother Jones, Trump said “that [claiming] half of his supporters were racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, and Islamophobic and belonged in a "basket of deplorables..." disqualifies Hillary Clinton because "you can't lead this nation if you have such a low opinion of its citizens."

Fortunately in this same article David Corn reveals Trump's hypocrisy by telling us that during a June 2015 interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News Trump disparaged millions of voters by railing against what he characterized as “so many people who don't want to work...” Trump went on to say that “we have a society that sits back and says we don't have to do anything. Eventually, the 50 percent cannot carry—and it's unfair to them—but cannot carry the other 50 percent.”

Trump, of course, is trying to make Hillary Clinton's “basket of deplorables” comment an issue by saying that it is comparable to Romney's 47% comment. I find that laughable. Is there really anyone who can look at Hillary's statement and the Donald's and not see how much closer Trump's statement is to what Mr. Romney said? Hillary thinks Trump is actually doing her a favor. She is so sure of this will not fly as an issue that she has walked back the quantification but not the characterization! The result is that the question of what and/or who is deplorable is rapidly becoming the issue, and that is much to Hillary Clinton's advantage.

As the Huffington Post reported in its article about Trumps racial comments: 

In addition to the endorsement and support of David Duke, Donald Trump's “...white supremacist fan club includes the Daily Stormer, a leading neo-Nazi news site; Richard Spencer, director of the National Policy Institute, which aims to promote the “heritage, identity, and future of European people”; Jared Taylor, editor of American Renaissance, a Virginia-based white nationalist magazine; Michael Hill, head of the League of the South, an Alabama-based white supremacist secessionist group; and Brad Griffin, a member of Hill’s League of the South and author of the popular white supremacist blog Hunter Wallace.”

Now that is certainly a something full of deplorables, but it gets much worse because of who Trump has brought into his inner circle, his campaign staff. In an article in Mother Jones entitled, “How Donald Trump's New Campaign Chief Created an Online Haven for White Nationalists” Sarah Posner wrote:

"We're the platform for the alt-right," Bannon told me proudly when I interviewed him at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in July. Though disavowed by every other major conservative news outlet, the alt-right has been Bannon's target audience ever since he took over Breitbart News from its late founder, Andrew Breitbart, four years ago. Under Bannon's leadership, the site has plunged into the fever swamps of conservatism, cheering white nationalist groups as an "eclectic mix of renegades," accusing President Barack Obama of importing "more hating Muslims," and waging an incessant war against the purveyors of "political correctness."

Not being content with the deplorable Mr. Bannon Trump added as his deputy campaign manager the deplorable David N. Bossie who, The Washington Post tells us, “...rose to prominence as a relentless Republican congressional staffer, hell-bent on tearing down the Clintons at all costs. After Bossie was caught engaging in unethical behavior, House GOP leader forced his ouster.”

It does not matter how much Kellyanne Conwoman tries to spin it, Trump's own well publicized statements about Muslims, Mexicans, women, etc. make it clear that his appointment of such a deplorable campaign staff is no accident, nor is it an accident that he has the support of white supremacists.

Apparently good things come in bunches as do deplorable things if you are Trump. At long last Donald Trump is drawing some very overdo scrutiny. Kurt Eichenwald in a News Week article entitled “How The Trump Organization's Foreign Business Ties Could Upend U.S National Security” writes in part that:

“...A close examination by Newsweek of the Trump Organization, including confidential interviews with business executives and some of its international partners, reveals an enterprise with deep ties to global financiers, foreign politicians and even criminals, although there is no evidence the Trump Organization has engaged in any illegal activities. It also reveals a web of contractual entanglements that could not be just canceled. If Trump moves into the White House and his family continues to receive any benefit from the company, during or even after his presidency, almost every foreign policy decision he makes will raise serious conflicts of interest and ethical quagmires.”

And that makes the refusal of Trump to produce his tax returns deplorable! What else is he hiding? We might find out some of it because according to Reuters “New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said on Tuesday he had opened an inquiry into the Donald J. Trump Foundation to ensure the Republican presidential nominee's charity was complying with state laws governing nonprofits.”

Gee I wonder why. Could it be because of what appears to be a bribe the Trump foundation paid to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi. As Media Matters Reports the broadcast news media has chosen to concentrate on the very flimsy accusations about the Clinton Foundation rather than the very real scandal of the Trump Foundation. According to Media Matters:

“In 2013, the Donald J. Trump Foundation donated $25,000 to a PAC supporting Bondi’s re-election. As The Washington Post explained, “At the time, Attorney General Pam Bondi was considering whether to investigate fraud allegations against Trump University. She decided not to pursue the case.”

In addition to the bribery scandal there is what The Washington Post described as purchases by the Trump Foundation of a football helmet and a six foot Portrait of Donald Trump, both of which were then given to Donald Trump. I might add here that unlike the stellar contributions made by the Clinton Foundation the contributions of the Trump foundation are paltry and largely Trump serving.

So add Donald Trump to your list of deplorables!

 Where are your tax returns Mr. Trump? And where is the IRS letter informing you of the audit you allege?

Insulted

I am really insulted by Trump and Trump's chumps. They all seem to think that I and a majority of other voters are idiots who will believe anything. They are acting as if we are dumb clucks on an egg farm who will actually buy the notion that being plucked, fried, and eaten by the plutocrats Trump represents will finally free us from George Orwell's infamous farmer!

News flash: The failure of trickle down economics was made abundantly clear by the crash of 2008, and the efforts of the GOP to obstruct the recovery after Obama's election demonstrate beyond all doubt just how intellectually dishonest and morally bankrupt the Republican Party has become. The only clap-trap from the GOP establishment that base Republicans still accept is the absurd lie that the crash of 2008 was somehow the fault of Barack Obama even though he did not assume the office of President until 2009, or in the alternative, that the crash of 2008 has no baring on our present economic situation.  Unfortunately the other thing the base Republicans still accept is the nihilistic contention of the demagogues that all government is evil. The base Republicans embrace this disparagement of government because they know they are getting hosed and do not know who else to blame.  God knows you would not want to look at history, even recent history -- only a smart-ass intellectuals do that.

The bottom line is that far too many low information voters are feeling desperate enough to turn to a fascist strongman such as Donald Trump never realizing that Trump will not only double down on the failed policies of the establishment, but that he will do so with a vengeance.  As the expression goes, Trump "has the soul of an accountant," and those failed policies are good for his bottom line.  So he will treat us the same way he treats the contractors he stiffs, the laborers he exploits, and the students of Trump U. who are suing him for fraud.

And the Pig Slowly Walked Away

Here are a few lines from an old folk song about a pig and an inebriate who passed out in the street: 

“... No one was I disturbing, as I lay down by the curbing

And a pig came up and lay down by my side

As I lay there in the gutter, thinking thoughts I cannot utter

A lady passing by was heard to say

"You can tell a man who boozes by the company he chooses"

And the pig got up and slowly walked away.”

The question posed by the upcoming election is whether the voters are as selective and/or discerning as the pig in the song. Although I am not a big fan of guilt by association, you can tell a lot about a person and what that person believes by the people with whom that person chooses associate. Unfortunately I do not think the voters are getting enough information about Trump's associations – about who advises Trump and who he has recently brought into his campaign. On her show last night Rachel Maddow did her best to remedy that ignorance, and what she said on her show is posted on her blog, which I urge everyone to read.  Below are a few excerpts:

“The Washington Post reported:

David N. Bossie, the veteran conservative operative who has investigated the Clintons for more than two decades, has been named Donald Trump’s deputy campaign manager. […]

… For those who were politically engaged in the 1990s, Bossie’s name may sound familiar: he rose to prominence as a relentless Republican congressional staffer, hell-bent on tearing down the Clintons at all costs. After Bossie was caught engaging in unethical behavior, House GOP leaders forced his ouster.

… The Republican operative eventually parlayed that notoriety into his own organization, called Citizens United Not Timid. The name may sound clumsy, but Bossie chose the wording based on its vulgar acronym.”

The vulgar acronym becomes even interesting when you consider what Trump has said about women and by the fact that one of Trump's closest advisors is Roger Ailes who is embroiled in a sexual harassment scandal that got him ousted from Fox News. All of which should have women telling the male chauvinist pigs they know to walk away from the Trumpster!

But it is not just the gender issues that make Trump's associations so undesirable it is a whole range of issues. Just one look at the headlines on Breitbart News tells you that Trump should not have made Stephen Bannon the CEO Trump's Campaign. And that is even if you ignore the phony stories Breitbart ran about Acorn, Shirley Sherrod, etc. As for Roger Ailes he is everything that ails the dark and smelly world of the extreme right wing; he is also the one who turned Fox News into the reactionary disinformation factory!

So here, as if Trump's name calling, absurd accusations, and Xenophobia were not already sufficiently foreboding, we have him adding to his campaign organization right wing character assassins such as Messrs Bannon, Bossie, and Ailes! The pundits who say Trump's campaign is a campaign of malcontent are wrong; it is a campaign of malintent!