Two Good Men

You don't generalize from small samples as anyone should be willing to confirm -- but not everyone does. Our president, for instance loves to make it look like our biggest crime problem is the presence of undocumented Hispanics, although it isn't. It only takes a handful of examples to make us think "typical" A handful of examples and a lie.

But we're not going to see that at work today in the case of the Christian killer in Portland:  Christian in faith, Christian in name. As you know when two good men stood up and attempted to intervene with Mr. Christian who was assaulting an apparently Muslim woman, they had their throats slit. According to a witness, one was black and the other apparently Muslim. Both were young. Both make me proud.

Should I say "typical Christian" and blame all murderers on Christians? After all, they commit most of them in the US. 

It isn't Islam or Christianity or knives or guns, it's hate. Hate is a religion and it's preached everywhere radio, TV, the Internet and yes, sometimes the pulpit are available. We even have governors of states  suggesting reporters who ask questions be killed.  Will the real Americans please stand up, speak up, act up.  Lady Liberty wants you!

He's a Big Boy Now

"I did it and I'm glad," a high school friend used to say as an act of high school bravado against the unsympathetic faculty attitude toward our antics.  We long since grew up and perhaps are no longer so proud of certain deeds of what we saw as the resistance.  Our "business man" in chief seems to be similarly proud not only of his flaunting of  prior norms and practices, but of his ability to get away with things otherwise criminal because of  his Presidential status.

Donald Trump is 70 and not 17 and his pranks don't involve eggs or rolls of toilet paper or even detergent in the town fountain, but Armies and rockets and nuclear weapons.  Loose lips sink ships and so do loose cannons. Loose commitments to truth brag about sending armadas North and order them to steam South: they brag about reducing debt while borrowing trillions and about achieving greatness for us while achieving immense wealth for himself.  Loose lips screech and rant about leaks and secrets and serve them up with Beluga on toast and vodka on ice to our enemies.

Trump used to tell us the world was laughing at us under Obama, who had much respect around the world and doesn't seem to know or acknowledge that they've now stopped laughing at him and started building fallout shelters. The most chilling laughs I've seen were those of the Russian spymasters  mocking the US reporters as they and Tass film crews entered the closed door meeting with the swaggering, boasting buffoon. Lavrov's smile was the Russian Bear remembering a hundred years of pent up frustration and hate and anticipating long-awaited revenge.

I did it and I can get away with it, thinks Trump. Look at me, I'm the president now.

God, Guns and Lies

"Be totally unafraid to challenge entrenched interests and failed power structures,"

said Trump to graduating students at a university that shares the dubious provenance of many other things that include Liberty, Freedom and Patriotism in the title. Like Trump University, it was founded by another megalomaniac with a narcissistic personality disorder and an angry, vindictive and graceless nature. I should say humorless as well, or at least immune to irony, as entrenched interests and failed power structures are in fact the notable characteristics of Trump and his efforts to bring us back to the age of Corruption and coal and a culture of every man for himself.  The Trump administration is literally packed with representatives of established power and authority and yes, failed power structures and failed ideas. He's pandering to future representatives of  a power structure based on undemocratic un-elected authority over our lives.  It's fraught with punishment and persecution and they're selling it with fraudulent and fallacious claims of  victimhood.  

"In America, we don’t worship government, We worship God,"

 He goes on, giving a dishonest and unconstitutional hurrah to the biggest entrenched interest in Western History and fallaciously implying a binary choice between God and Government: offering the absurd proposition that anyone has been or has even suggested worshiping government. What he means is the choice between religious authority and our secular laws and what he's arguing is dishonest.  Of course the question isn't worship, it's Trump's use of presidential authority to give support for religious worship and for a presumably Christian God.

It's another typical Trumpish example of "tell 'em what they want to hear" and it is, after all, an institution as devoid of challenge to religious authority as the space between galaxies or, at the moment, the Oval Office. It's been argued and argued well that it really isn't a University, it's a Church and a place where if you don't agree that the Earth is new and  Biblical cosmology and history isn't real, you flunk out or are expelled.  An institution dedicated to supporting ancient and un-sourced authority against objective and demonstrable fact doesn't deserve the title of University, regardless of what the Liberty University brochure might say.

In America we don't have to worship your  God in fact, nor do  all of us.  That's not meant to be offensive to those who do worship or acknowledge or pray to a virtually infinite number of gods, it's just a statement of religious freedom,  and of course that's a cornerstone of what used to be our secular Republic.  A president who insinuates, at least to that particular audience, that "worship" is an essential and necessary qualification for citizenship is not a real president; nor is he as he suggests, an "outsider" or one to challenge tradition or authority, but a fake, a phony, a panderer and an enemy of the Constitution he swore and pretends to protect.

But you know that. You may support him, believe him and in him and disregard the virtual Niagara of lies and misrepresentations, but in your heart, you know it's all dust and ashes and ego and cupidity and bigotry and indecency and fear and disregard for morality or ethics. You can lie to yourself, and say it's true when he lies to you, but all of this will eventually need to be answered for. There will be nothing left to say  and no ears to listen when it all falls down.

A Slow Train Coming

But it's speeding up fast!

Frankly I thought it would take longer, but the Comey firing and Lester Holt's interview have suddenly accelerated the disintegration of Donald J. Trump.

It has gained wide acceptance and indeed Trump actually admitted it on network TV that the FBI Director was fired for refusing to stop the investigation and that Trump called him to choose between his job and his integrity and patriotism -- a test Comey apparently passed. Say what you like about him, he's not one to put loyalty to Trump ahead of his oath of office or to swear a loyalty oath that contradicted it. Will anyone pledge loyalty to this vindictive, childish madman after this?  

Trump once again has been caught in the middle of a lie he's changed several times even while he was telling it. It appears,  as of this morning's twitter excretions that Trump has openly threatened Comey by saying he'd better hope there are no "tapes" of their conversations before he "leaks" further. Yes, that Nixon smell is getting rather strong and no it's not a leak Mr. President. There's nothing classified here. 

As we know, the use of quotes means Trump can say he didn't mean tapes -- and he should say it soon, since recording Comey would have been one more illegality to throw on the bonfire of Trump's vanities when he comes to trial. It's already beyond credibility that Comey would be lying and Trump isn't. Same goes for Sessions and his bogus "recusal" which wasn't actually a recusal. The water around him is warming up rapidly as well.

We're getting into impeachment country now and we've already pulled into the Obstruction of Justice Station and moved beyond this week. Illinois Senator Dick Durban called Trump dangerous on MSNBC this morning and many like me think it's an understatement. Witnessing his escalating fits of rage and meltdowns and the panicked way he's been changing his stories so fast his mouthpieces can't keep up is simply scary, since the tried and true method of thwarting adversities and avoiding consequences is starting a war and declaring special powers. Ask Erdogan and of course -- his mention being predictable -- Hitler.

Even if he doesn't, he's doing damage every day; demanding as he did recently that the electric catapults on all new aircraft carriers be removed and replaced with steam. Perhaps he thinks they'll go back to coal power as well. It's because, as he says, you have to be Albert Einstein to understand "digital." Truly stunning, isn't it? He knows war and he knows nuclear engineering better than the engineers and generals and Admirals and historians, but he hasn't heard of the work of Michael Faraday in electromagnetism in the 1830's and thinks it's "digital."

History repeats itself. The phantom caravan, as Omar sang, returns to the nothing it set out from. The Bible tells us Nebuchadnezzar went mad and grazed the fields like a beast. George III went nuts in his time and we're watching the man with the launch codes grow increasingly confused and desperate and manic.

Give him a chance, say the dwindling but tenacious supporters. I gotta advise them to ask themselves: Do ya feel lucky? Well do ya America?

Killa from Manilla

Sarah Palin could probably smell Trump's new tower in the Philippines all the way from Alaska if it weren't for all the rotting carcasses of bear cubs and wolf puppies littering her place in the Spring thaw, but for some reason one more opaque Trump overseas real estate deal with a murderous genocidal tyrant is nearing completion and nobody cares about our fake president's name emblazoned on it because of his non-existent "achievements" and his position as the symbol of ignorant rabble status in America. 

"I give him an A+" says the man in the Barber shop, the supermarket, the parking lot of the local Wal-Mart.

"The architecture is exquisite, the interior design is flawless," says Ivanka in the ads, "and just look at my breasts. Buy my Jewelry!" The developer is getting around $750,000 for a one-bedroom apartment in a city where the average worker takes home less than $10 a day.

Is there anything immoral about expensive housing in  a poor city? Not really, but is there something stinky about the Philippine Idi Amin appointing the guy who's building it as a special trade envoy in the US? Anything wrong with inviting the killa from Manilla to have lunch at the Palm Beach Pleasure Dome?   Hmmm. maybe send out for another case of Febreze for the White House, 'cause I don't think the windows will open.