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!