l'etat c'est Donald

Memory is a funny thing when it applies to the world of politics. I wonder how many remember Dick Cheney's statement that the actions of a president are ipso facto legal.  That would sound very strange coming from the Republican machine that has been trumpeting the opposite for 8 years: that everything Obama does is illegal, scandalous and unconstitutional.

Truth, legality and morality apparently are time dependent, are time specific and situational. but don't look for anyone to confirm the obvious, because the core value is, that it's not illegal (fascist, racist, unconstitutional or deplorable) when we do it.

Donald Trump told us, his soon to be subjects, in an interview in the New York Times yesterday that profiting in business using your presidency is legal because there is no such thing as a conflict of interest when one is president, or should we say El Presidente.

“The law's totally on my side, meaning, the president can't have a conflict of interest.”

Is that true?  I'm not a lawyer, but Title 18 Section 208 of the U.S. code seems to exempt presidents from the requirement to, for instance, not steer the country for his own profit.  Maybe it's a new era coming. Maybe all that shall be changed, or maybe not. Congress has yet to challenge Trump's declaration that l'etat c'est moi as Louis IV the Sun King once told the world.  We shall see. We shall see how congruent the rule of law and the will of Trump shall be in our boisterous, sheet wearing, cross burning, minority deporting, religiously conformist, all white and all great America.  We shall see what we have done.

I'm the Captain Now.

Remember the scene where the scrawny Somalian kid says to Captain Phillips: "I'm the Captain now?" I think you will. I think you will remember it well. We're all hostages now and as for all those snarky, snotty, superior Hillary haters, I blame you for selling out my country. You're dead to me and when I see you bagging groceries at the Winn-Dixie in a year or two, don't expect a tip and besides, I'll probably be jealous of anyone with such a good job when America is Great again.

No, she's "crooked" she lies and then there are the thrice examined emails of no discernible importance. There's the thrice examined Benghazi debacle which didn't rise to the level of the 12 previous embassy attacks we little note or care to remember. You're hypocrites, you're snark addicts, trying to give import to your insignificant opinions with your zingers and snarky epithets. You're willingly gullible, having too much fun piling on to stop and think. You're my enemy and the enemy of my country and I shall never forgive you.

Go ahead and wait for the crook and liar to make it great. The demise of American prestige and respect leaves a hole that will soon be filled by those who have no intention of making America anything but a third world economic colony.  You wrote the death warrant.  You and no other and when it comes time to regret it, and all your piety and wit won't  wash out a line of it, nor all your tears a line, don't look for me.

Been here and gone.

Glenn

Another Republican collapse?

Huffington Post has never seemed an extremist publication, except perhaps to extremists, but today's article about the historic drop in the markets coincident with the recent rise of Trump's prospects is full of flashing lights, klaxon horns and a voice from Das Boot shouting "Dive, Dive!"

We have, if you've been watching markets as closely as I do, the most prolonged sell-off since the financial crisis even though the odds are he will lose. Is that ironic with so many of his lower education level supporters extolling his talents as a business man who will end our "debt problem?" You betcha! as another lowbrow Republican pundit said. It seems like yesterday.

Financial experts and leaders around the world are expecting little short of total world collapse under a Trump administration. "Inconceivable" is the nearly universal reaction to the prospect of President Trump.   Moody’s says Trump’s policies would throw the U.S. economy into the longest recession since the Great Depression. Citigroup thinks a Trump win could cause a global depression.British research firm Oxford Economics thinks Trump in the White House would cause the American economy to shrink by $1 trillion over five years. Is the Nixon Gambit going to work to dismiss the fears of  the most informed conservatives in the Capitalist world by reciting the "Liberal Media" formula?  It will for some; for many in the Denialist/Conspiracy community. But it won't matter. For them it will still be all about emails and Benghazi and Crooked Hillary and if  (please) she manages to win she'll be straightjacketed by investigations and inquiries and impeachment hearings and filibusters and budget crises and shutdowns and the inability to appoint anyone to anything.

Are we damned either way?  Who knows, The best I can hope for is survival. Greatness may have to wait. An out of office Trump is not a dead trump and like Dead Cthulhu in his home beneath the sea, he'll be dreaming of revenge.

Nothing worth saving here

Fuck it all.  I'm done. And no it's not just because the Republicans have instigated an idiot revolution, a Biblical flood of lies, libels and treason, it's because there is no other side with any interest other than promoting something by insulting, slandering and lying about someone else. A million eager buffoons on a million soapboxes, shouting.  Fuck it all.

Some self righteous turd from Black Lives Matter just told me in a TV ad that I'm an "educated racist," without knowing who or what I am or what I think or can argue for or demonstrate or defend. "My dogma, my words, or you're the Devil.

This gives me license to say all kinds of invented things about him, and so here goes. He's an uneducated, smug, self righteous, lying son of bitch slandering good people with a farrago of fallacies a smart fifth grader could eviscerate.  It's an insult to my intelligence and if you doubt it, I doubt your honesty and cognitive powers.

All Buddhists, all Humanists are educated racists,by his estimation  but this cesspool of decomposing egotism and hate and lust for justifying retribution isn't?  How many millions of self appointed authorities are going to demand that I think their way or I'm a racist, communist, fascist, blasphemer or whatever.  Fuck it all, fuck America, Fuck Trump, I'm done.

Let it all fall down. I'll be here to piss on the ashes.

No Exit

Hell is other people, said Jean-Paul Sartre. in No Exit, (Huis clos) and so is Democracy as I was reminded today in the New Yorker.  A third of Americans can't name one branch of government and examples of  the massive failure of education to integrate the population into the process are more than abundant.

Perhaps it's my prejudice speaking but I would guess, in the absence of further data, that this proportion is even higher among supporters of Donald Trump, many of whom seem to think that a president can do almost anything he wants, from "fixing the schools" to changing the ties in the affairs of men and rebuilding the world of the 1950's within our walled borders. All of course without help or hindrance from  the legislature or the Judicial Branch.

The requirements of Democracy include an informed, intelligent, rational electorate and I know I didn't have to tell you that, and I didn't have to tell the Founding Fathers that; seeing that they attempted to follow a sort of hierarchy of decision making that we call a Republic to protect us from the passions, the rages and the foolishness of the people.

I don't think it's working and not only because fewer and fewer potential voters are informed enough to rise above the level required to get on the carnival ride we call our electoral process, and more and more are intentionally and effectively misinformed, propagandized and enraged beyond the point of caring.  The days of hand set and hand printed newspapers ended over a century ago along with the disappearance of a population with the time and inclination to read them. Ten thousand, ten million flowers have bloomed as the tyrant Mao would have said and there is much confusion about who is or isn't likely to be telling the truth.  Every truth, every lie, every observation is buried in an accretion of commentary and although so much information is available, few bother to do more than seek out confirmation of what feels good to believe and scream it loudly in the street. 

Perhaps there truly is no exit and perhaps there are no limits. A candidate we associate with "those" people is soon divorced from his own history and ours and becomes indistinguishable from the Satan who was long ago invented to enable the demonizing process -- while the devil himself can become a hero. There is no damping factor as an engineer might term it and the system flies apart as we see today - right now. 

Is the secret to stall the rush to authoritarianism and a government of men to introduce some authority of information: some referee of last resort?  We can't know because even though it's so easy to check facts, checkers who we don't trust because they tell us we're wrong, become the demons themselves and we trust no one but the anonymous voices of agreeable rage on the web, in our emails, in our minds and on the 24 hour news. We sink into paranoia and into faith at the same time: into separate hermetic universes. Nothing in one can be proved to be true or false in any other frame of reference. Whether or not Hassan really said it, in our world and in his, nothing is true and anything can happen.

Is there really no exit?  How do you say "No Chance" in French?

Behind the screen

I was a Cub Scout.  I was a Boy Scout, I've considered myself to be an outdoorsman and I have a lot of pocket knives, many sheath knives and a few machetes/ I have knives I use for gardening, cooking and once upon a time whittling. I got my first pocket knife - an official BSA model at age 8 and my dad taught me how to take care of it and use it. I may have nicked myself a couple of times over the years, but never thought of it as anything but a tool to allow the Boy Scout to "Be Prepared."

I never go out without one, usually small - the sort of thing they used to call a "gentleman's knife" or pen knife because it so often comes in handy. I once used a Swiss Army knife to repair a carburetor linkage well enough to get the car home.  I'm as likely to turn around and go home for having forgotten a pocket knife as I am for forgetting my phone or even my wallet. You never know.

A 13 year old kid here faces a felony charge for having a pocket knife. His life may well be ruined. This is no longer my country, my civilization, my culture.

We look around at tools and see weapons. We look at cars and we see death. We look at falling crime and tremble in fear. Nothing is safe enough. We're afraid of our food, our water, our government. Teach your kid to build a fire, make a shelter?  DANGER! Let him walk to school? You're going to jail.

Drive a car on the interstate, the safest roads we have -- hell no. It's too dangerous. Remember kitchen "Strike anywhere" matches?  Some states ban them.  I mean you could burn your finger.

Paranoia strikes deep. Starts when you're always afraid, as the song goes. We're terrified of our phones, our electric meters. We're afraid of freedom and so we let them sell us subjugation wrapped up in a flag and complete with air bags and radar brakes and we build walls to hide behind and the fat men in wigs smile, the lawyers get richer while we watch people have adventures in the only world we aren't afraid to participate in: teh one behind the screen.

Abandon all Faith.

I can hardly condemn people for getting much if not most of their news from the Internet. It's efficient, you can read many sources quickly and you don't have to sit through all those TV commercials or deal with all that newsprint. That's why you're here, right?  The problem is, obviously, that for every legitimate news report there are uncountable sources of propaganda, slanted news and totally fabricated lies. Unless you're just looking for laughs you tend to believe them because you want to. We all want our prejudices, or as we like to call them, our principles, to be confirmed. Indeed far too many of us log on first thing in the morning desperately seeking outrage, scandal and condemnation. It's like a strong cup of coffee to get us going, and as with all things, where there is a demand, there arises a supply. It's called the Internet.

There are web pages that closely mimic the major outlets and unless you look closely you may think you've logged in to CNN.com or a legitimate newspaper. There are all sorts of web sources attached as supporting links on the things you get on Facebook or in email demonstrating that whatever it is you don't like is a fraud, fake or a harbinger of doom. Many are just more propaganda, many don't even exist.

But there are all sorts, put up by all sorts of organizations or individuals or political parties. My opening delight this morning was labeled as World News Politics.com and in the wildest of hysterical terms proves that Hillary Clinton hates and wants to persecute Christians:

Hillary Clinton: CHRISTIANS IN AMERICA Must ABANDON FAITH IN CHRIST, Adhere To NEW LIBERAL LAWS

Screeches the headline. a misquoted menu of quotes mrom Mrs. Clinton proving this premise follows. Why this found its way to me, I don't know, being a cynical and fairly well informed atheist, but the claimed 277,000 "shares" means others welcomed the chance to feed the addiction, to feed the Hillaryhate, that newest branch of the Clintonhate religion that dates to Bill's first campaign. Of course none of those predictions or maledictions came true and Bill may have been the most successful president in our history, but faith never dies, nor do lies  and they're still predicting all sorts of horrors that never happened then and won't happen now. One of those things is the persecution of Christians.

The writers of News World Politics may or may not believe this idiocy, but they know you desperately need it as a vampire needs blood and the people who pay them make their living from your fear and hate and other psychological problems you like to call Christianity. What you may depend on for your identity and self respect along with your Confederate pretense, your sense of biological superiority and your guns.

It's not going to die, it's not going to go away and it will continue like a cancer in America no matter that it's fake and like the "tax and spend" meme, the Gun Grabber meme, the "spread the wealth" calumny, it's designed to make you abandon your faith in America. Can you imagine what kind of people with what kind of motivation are behind this? That's not too hard, is it?

America and Its Fears

What are we so afraid of, we Americans?  Everything it seems. Everything is too dangerous, nothing is nearly safe enough now that life is safer in America than it ever has been. We live longer than Americans ever have. We're less likely do be murdered, to die in a car accident or shot in a robbery. Sure, the progress isn't smooth and it affects us erratically, but the things certain to kill us are heart disease, Cancer, organ failure and complications of Diabetes. We're making progress on those things, but yet we have Americans terrified of  the very remote chance of  a pressure cooker bomb but who smoke, text while driving and are 150 pounds overweight.  We are now and always have been irrational creatures, reluctant and even afraid to base our actions and opinions on objectivity. On that fact are our political passions based.

A survey by Chapman University results in a list of what Americans fear most and by far, the largest concern is corrupt government officials. Nearly 61% tagged this as their biggest fear.  Is government so much more trustworthy than it was in my childhood when nearly everyone trusted the government?  Does it correlate to any actual increase in corruption over the days of Nixon and Agnew?  It's easy to dredge up lists of the worst presidents using Google, but basically any premise can be supported with Google searches and any president shown to be corrupt, but so much of it is motivated by political objectives.  Near the top of the list of the search I just did is titled Obama: The Most Corrupt and America-Hating President in US History  That's seriously untrue and there also seems to be an odd correlation between popularity and the reality of a president's term in office. What you blame them for or credit them with says more about your prejudices than their principles.

But next on the fear list is "terrorist attack," fear of which seems loosely linked to risk statistics. more than 40% of are afraid of swarthy invaders with bombs. Should I suspect that people a hundred years ago were just as afraid of Bolsheviks  and Wobblies and Anarchists with just as little reason? But of course nearly as many are afraid or very afraid of Obamacare. 38 1/2% are afraid of gun control. 37 1/2 % are very afraid of economic collapse.

Not all fears are unwarranted at all, more than a third of us are afraid of losing a loved one, of not having enough money in the future. These are real possibilities, but fear of irrecoverable economic collapse seems less so and our record of predicting such things seems laughable. We've had 8 years of panic about the imminent collapse and before that 8 years of denial of the probability and at present, we can't agree whether we're in a bull or bear market even if the Dow has gone from 7000 to over 18000 in 92 months of increase.

To fear is human and animal too, for that matter, and evolution has predisposed us to worry too much than too little, but so much of what we fear and the degree to which we fear it is the result of deliberate action and the actions of opinion makers and fear mongers; scam artists and profiteers. On the internet we find as much support for a flat earth, a 7 day creation and the fraud behind the Pythagorean Theorem as we do for   Obama: The Most Corrupt and America-Hating President in US History or for Hillary Clinton as liar, thief and murderer and like the cowards we are and are trained to be, we select the scariest, not the most plausible or the most supported by facts. We do the same with the promises of politicians.  Ask yourself whether you really believe your candidate can hope to do more than give lip service to the Utopian visions he describes or whether in fact anyone could given the complexities of government. Do you really?  Do you think your 4 door Nissan sedan is a race car like the commercial says it is or whether women will swoon over your "crossover?"  And if we elect politicians on such a basis and we look at or overlook their performance with the same selective eye, whose fault is it?

Locker Room Talk, misogyny and cover ups.

It's evidently difficult for Americans to tell an unsupported assertion from a hypothesis based on evidence. That's more true than it ever has been because we have the Internet to support anything no matter how insupportable.  All it takes to launch a cult is a plausible assertion and an anecdote, neither of which has to have any basis in reality at all as long as it satisfies that old human passion for conspiracy, bigotry and the hunting of witches.

Normally I avoid dressing conjecture up as a campaign, but the gloves have been off for quite a while and it's hard to take too much more of Hillary-Killary-Shillary who flies around on a broom and has been making all major policy decisions for the Federal government for 30 years. The search for things to attack her with is so desperate that when the supply wanes, the demand for fiction will bring creative results. No exoneration no matter how rigorous or lengthy or hostile can overcome the certainty of her universal guilt of something and everything.

So here it is: Donald J. Trump has gender issues and he's afraid you'll find out.. What he calls his love of beauty and what he calls "Locker Room" talk are ego defenses covering up the inner Donald who is afraid of and perhaps even disgusted by women.  He seems horrified by the fact that women need toilet facilities, that they menstruate. If he is indeed attracted to women, or if he just uses them as props, they must be young and beautiful in the extreme so as not to allow any question as to his machismo and of course to flatter his fragile narcissistic ego. I've never heard such exaggerated raunchiness in a locker room unless it's by 14 year old boys full of fear and lust and sexual frustration but eager to seem like men. Real men don't talk that way. Real men don't call their daughters "pieces of ass." Donald is not a real man.

Trump needs to think you see him as an icon of manhood and to him that means demonstrating dominance and control over women while asserting that women can't resist him and not just for his money. If they do, it's because they're fat and ugly and crooked and disgusting and have no judgement.  How could they if they're not fawning all over them as he gropes and grabs.  Feeling like the man for Donald means bragging and the right to feel contemptuous. It means arrogance and I suspect the roots of arrogance lie in a hidden sense of humiliation. How can I not suspect that like Hitler, a fulfilling relationship with a woman was impossible.


And speaking of Hitler- that's right, I said the gloves were off, didn't I?

The Greater Groper

Back when America was great, or at least when Humpty Trumpty suggests it was, America was about free trade and open borders, the business of America was business and laissez faire Capitalism was King. That's sort of the message I get from Clinton's "secret" speeches, you know the ones that show she's in league with the minions of free market Capitalism. How the hell did it come about that a truly rapacious freebooter who wants to destroy banks and financial institutions like a Bolshevic's wet dream, who thinks he has the right to grope your wife for sport, who doesn't believe in paying his bills and has cheated his way to the top is the champion not only of the GOP but of the people he routinely screws? So she suggests that bankers and brokers and the like know best how "Wall Street" should be regulated, that's not saying they should be given the power to self-regulate. It's saying that they know what's going on better than congress or you for that matter. The Trumpshevics hope you think so, but then they just assume you're dumb and uneducated, mad as hell and half drunk. Go ahead, scream about Killary, you idiots, you'll be first on the bread line.

I've Fallen into a Madhouse and I Can't Get Out

There's no denying that this election has brought out the worst in all of us. Listening to man-on-the-street interviews with Trump supporters makes me want to run for the border: to some place not populated by armed and enraged thugs far more dangerous than the Zombies in any of the popular movies and TV series. But the Hillary, Killary, Shillary Billary idiots who are helping with their irrational perceptions and their cultivated ignorance are only making it more possible for the neo-nazis and atavistic ape-men (and women) shit-face drunk on slogans and murderous memes and animal rage to destroy our country as fast and as thoroughly as any nuclear exchange, although it would be foolish to rule that out too.

How do you argue with people who would choke to death rather than relinquish the false comparisons, false equivalences like comparing the not-even-legal Trump foundation to the Clinton Foundation and dismissing both candidates as "Proven liars."  No one can truly that stupid and I can only explain it as being pathological.

That's not to say Americans aren't living in their hermetic little worlds, giving equal weight to matters of student loans and modes of address as against Nuclear brinksmanship and the likely failure of  Western civilization. We sound like 300 million birds on a very long wire, tweeting memememememememe.  Selfishness, narrow mindedness and the blindness of rage: Ignorance is strength.

Which Trump Do You Love?

Viruses like HIV that have an extremely high mutation rate, like moving targets in general,  are hard to fight.  The same thing seems to be true of Donald Trump.  Not only a moving target, he's one that jumps from quantum state to quantum state and can be at two places at one time.

Many people seem to have trouble understanding how he can make a fool of himself over and over again and suffer no adverse consequences. Trump himself has commented, with no small degree of smugness, that he can get away with anything, and indeed discussing one day's outrageous statement or act is difficult because it's so soon swamped by today's outrageous and sometimes contradictory statement. One day he's going to put millions in boxcars and send them to camps, the next day he's going to be compassionate. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, fade away like smoke.

My estimation of Charles Krauthammer has never included objectivity, so it's still surprising to read this morning's column saying essentially the same thing: that there is a constant stream of new Trumps emerging and evolving from the original strain. Never the Same Trump Twice.  All those expensive Clinton ads showing people being grossly insulted by Donald's angry ravings make his opponents glad at heart, but do they work on those so desperately clinging to the delusion that he's not a thug and a bully and an ignoramus and a liar pandering to the worst of the worst?  He can tell us that Hillary Clinton quite literally founded ISIS and the next day deny it and the following day repeat it and America with it's heads spinning simply forgets the details and only remembers to associate any Clinton supporter with apocalyptic disaster and the darkest of evil. He knows better than the Generals?  He's going to "carpet bomb" ISIS? He's going to change the prime rate, take direct control of the troops, invoade the Middle East and take the oil home ina bucket? He's going to fix the schools?  He's going to make the US look like some walled Sumerian city-state from 3000 BC? Is there time to mention that he can't, that no president would have the power or the funds or the time or the support from Congress or the Court?  Before you can drum that into the many-headed beast of America, he's elsewhere telling us about his heroic sacrifice for our country which consists of sleazy and illegal business deals.

Can anyone get Americans to consider the enormity of refusing to divest himself from hundreds of offshore business relationships, some in strategic countries like Turkey? Refusing to show us his sources of income, his debts and to whom he owes millions.  Can anyone get Trumpers to care that he steals from a charity with his name on it to pay his lawyers to shield him from punishment? Hell no, they're too busy braying like asses about Crooked Hillary.

The Democratic ads and essays might as well be written on water. The Trump of ten minutes ago is no more, yet the Trump goes marching on.

These are Those Interesting Times

I think it's OK for me to call these interesting times. It may be that hackers with no intent to do so may allow historians to write a more accurate history of the 8 years of George Bush, that period that seems to have changed  the world for the worse is so many ways, taking the US from a thriving economy of surplus to nearly bankrupt, causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands at least, destroying countries, societies, cities and thousands of years of history. Reading the emails from Powel's private server is like opening doors and windows and file cabinets that have been locked for decades. How would we know that Rudy Guiliani actually admits that Obama is a decent man or that Powell thinks the Benghazi thing is a stupid "witch hunt" and she's not to blame? Of course deplorable Trumpsters won't read that, but we will and historians will.

Amongst the national noisemakers, the editors, disguisers, redactors and inventors of history, there may be consternation in reading the letters of Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice that excoriate Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld and Paul  Wolfowitz -- names we're not hearing much about any more. In fact we're not hearing much about W any more either, now that the zombiemakers in the media and the GOP have hidden them behind a wall of denial that Donald can only feel jealous of.  It's all about pathological Hillaryhate as it once was all about pathological Clintonhate. All the bad things of the GWB administration have become Hillary things, Obama things.

Anyway, it's nice to hear those in the know - and Rice and Powell certainly in the know call HRC qualified, with a long "track record" and a respected friend, even if the General is a bit miffed at the attempt to compare his private email server to her email server and Rice's private email server.

I don't imagine he will come out and endorse her, but if there are historians left after the Trumpocalypse, to write about what happened after the GOP destroyed America, becaus perhaps two thousand years from now people will have some idea that the howling, smoking, radioactive remains of America once was and who destroyed it.

Party First

More e-mail hacks!  It makes me wonder whether we should allow government officials to use e-mail at all.  Nothing seems beyond the reach of hackers, government backed or independent. Colin Powell's furious trashing of Donald Trump, the medical records of sports figures and all the other "scandals" we are forced to listen to. Perhaps we should look at our communications as a form of publishing.

Of course it's amusing to read former General, Joint Chief of Staff and Secretary of State rant about Trump as an international pariah, national embarrassment and damned racist, but when Mr. National Embarrassment calls on foreign governments led by a former KGB director to hack into the communications of a former secretary of state: someone with the ability to do just that, I think we have a crisis at hand. Electronic communications are not secure. This latest hack may have been Russian in origin.

“There is nothing [Trump] can say that will sway black VOTERS…He takes us for idiots. He can never overcome what he tried to do to Obama with his search for the birth certificate…the whole birther movement was racist…And for him to say yesterday that within four years he would have 95% of blacks voting for him is schizo fantasy.”

But wouldn't it be nice if courageous people like Powell, people with a great deal of bi-partisan prestige would simply come out and tell us what they felt?  It's not easy to understand his reticence after Republican leaders have used him, embarrassed him and tarnished his reputation by having him read false stories to the UN about Mobile Chemical Weapons Labs the president knew were British Weather stations?

“Yup, the whole birther movement was racist. That’s what the 99% believe. When Trump couldn’t keep that up he said he also wanted to see if the certificate noted that he was a Muslim.”

He's right, Trumps Birther campaign was racist and Trump know all along he had no "insider' in Hawaii with the world shaking information he swore he had and Trump even attempted to tell us that non-existent document proved he was a Muslim as though people are born with a religion.

Powell tells us Hillary could have bypassed the whole e-mail fiasco if she had told us what she had done earlier. Perhaps, although I don't think Powell tod us he had done the same thing, but I have to ask why he hasn't told us about the horrors of what the GOP has done and is doing. Is this another case of  Party über alles?  GOP first, American last?

Disaster

A disaster.  Obama's policies have been a dis-ASTER! says one millionaire to the other like some kind of a club password or secret society handshake. How so? I ask and just what policies do you mean?  Things get quiet really quick and I can almost hear the unspoken malediction: "y'ain't from aroun' here, arya?"

No I'm not, I'm from a place called reality and it can be a lonesome place for sure. Fact is, the only disaster  since Cheney and the Chimp left Washington has been the inability to perform even one duty of office without all-time filibuster records and total obfuscation. The guy couldn't order a hamberger from a drive-in window without the Jack-in-the Box Republicans trying to stop him, but the "Obama Disaster" is still one of the tent poles that holds up the GOP circus tent. No, he would be a tyrant and would be "trashing the constitution" by appointing cabinet members, but the constitutional mandate for the Senate to discuss his SCOTUS appointment?  Don't ask because you'll have to hold your nose for the answer.

Seems not too long ago that the Dow Jones was at 6,400. after an 8 year stretch of Bush's policies of borrow, spend, and cut revenue. Today was a bit of a disaster for my portfolio but it's still over 18,000, just off some all-time market highs. Disaster.

Today's Census Bureau figures show US household incomes up 5.2%  -- the fastest increase since the end of the Bush Recession, Strange because wage stagnation is another one of the tent poles and yes unemployment is near record lows too, but you know it's magic tent. It really doesn't need poles, it's held up by faith: faith that "Hillary's agenda" and her "policies" will be just as bad as her husbands and Obama's.  We can only hope they are.

Charles Krauthammer -- Still an Asshole

Some have been tempted to cut Charles Krauthammer some slack of late, since he's decided to recognize the dangers of a Trump presidency, but he's still an asshole.

The world disdains Barack Obama and he's earned it, he says. There are no actual statistics to prove it, only a handful of anecdotes that support the idea that our enemies don't like him.  Countries engaged in military aggression and expansion have publicly snubbed him: China by making him wait and Russia by making him wait and Iran dislikes him too. Of course Putin kept the pope waiting too, but you wouldn't expect an Atheist dictator and imperialist to do otherwise. In fact you might say raising the enmity of  enemies of freedom would be a good thing for a powerful Western leader who has stood up to them. But is China or Russia "the world" or the enemy? If you're dumb or a Republican you just won't think to ask. Maybe you'll raise your right arm in salute, but you won't ask why Putin would prefer someone who is against NATO and doesn't care if he takes back Poland and Hungary and East Germany,. . .

But Not Charles Krauthammer. Not the Charles Krauthammer who is smart enough and educated enough to raise inapposite parallels and make false conclusions. Those who pander to the angry rabble and supply them with food for further anger like to portray the ideal leader as someone the world should fear.

His attempt to impress us with a comparison of Obama with Secretary of State Henry Stimson who in 1929 declared we wouldn't be indulging in code breaking may be indicative of the isolationism of the Republican Hoover administration in the 1920's but the implication that the US is not indulging and successfully in espionage is without any factual support, which is my way of saying it's a damn lie on top of being a baseless smear against Obama.  Somehow that Putin admires Trump makes such statements stink even worse.

Yes, he's right about Russian and Chinese expansionism but that Obama has stopped short of Nuking them isn't a bad thing. That he simply carries on knowing we are militarily unassailable and on the high ground in support of the free world isn't the same thing as the humiliation Krauthammer sees. I'm tempted to add my suspicion that those who feel humiliation from every angle are the ones with the weakness problem, the lack of self esteem, the fear, but I'll leave that to the shrinks.  Meanwhile the enemy of our enemy is not really our friend and Charles Krauthammer is still an asshole.

The last days of America

You watch them sitting there, some in VFW hats looking like aged Boy Scouts trying to sit through a lecture on Balbus-Hawley Instability without falling asleep or revealing total incomprehension. Some of them like lobotomy patients nodding together from their rocking chairs on some asylum veranda.  They have mostly little questions about how the presidential hopeful would solve things a president has nothing to do with: how would you end discrimination, how would you end poverty and change human nature.

The moderator tries hard to control his anger as the candidate evades every question and every unsuccessful attempt to put the question back on the podium. The men in funny hats nod.

In living rooms all over the nation there are those so outraged they will spend a sleepless night pretending they can respond to suggestions that the centuries old strife in the Middle East began with Hillary Clinton and her invention of the Islamic State, her autocratic and premature withdrawal of American troops from a decade old occupation.  Indeed Hillary of the emails is the devil in all details and particularly the fictional ones. But of course, since she's been the de-facto president of the United States for nearly 30 years, the very principle of evil itself and the sole cause of the current disaster. And believe me it's a disaster, in fact it's huge.

You'd think some of the Admirals and Generals Trump claims to have as supporters would remember that the troops in Iraq were withdrawn under a schedule set by George Bush and the Iraqi government -- that the cover story under which the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld junta operated was that we were liberating Iraq from a tyrant and allowing them to set up the Liberal Western Democracy they claimed was the default state of the human species. We wanted to reassure the suspicious world that this was not a conquest, an attempt to claim Iraqi resources and to exploit them for our benefit and at their expense.

Trump of course is good at appealing to our collective atavisms. We should have made it a conquest and "taken their oil" as though we could put it in a bucket and taken it home like a trophy.  The mechanics of  making Iraq a colony under our iron clad control?  Only the deeply deficient would fail to ask. Only the morally vacant would fail to protest - yet the audience stares into the cameras and nods.

They stare with empty faces like those in the early stages of Alzheimer's dementia as Trump brags about the success of his triumphant trip to Mexico, about how the world is mocking us, testing us, threatening us, even raping us. He brags about how he would have walked away from the G-20 conference in all his greatness and taken his ball and bat with him. They nod, dreaming about a simple world and simple solutions even they can understand. Some manage to smile,

Hillary of the eternal emails. Hillary who took us to war on false pretenses, who condemned at least a generation to paying for it with lives, with money and with a world gone mad. Hillary the crook, Hillary the war monger, Hillary the Satan worshipper, Hillary who ran up the debt more than any president, who tried to pay for the most expensive war in our history by giving tax breaks to Donald Trump. Crooked Hillary who runs fraudulent businesses and bribes officials to avoid prosecution, who has avoided paying taxes in his supreme sacrifice for America's greatness.

88 Generals -- really? After telling them he knows ISIS better than they do? Who tells them his qualification to be commander in chief was  "making deals?"  I'm sure they're impressed and looking forward to a truly massive war and decades of bloody occupation. I'm sure they're impressed by his suggestions of a nuclear interchange, of making deals with dangerous tyrants, with hints of giving back the Soviet territories at long last liberated. Surely all the while he was making deals all these years he was really only thinking of making America Great and formulating deals and plans and invasions to make it happen.  After all this is the man who says he's sacrificed for his country as much as those who lost life and limb in Hillary Clinton's wars!

Nod along America. These are our last years. This is the failure of all our dreams, the final snub to those who truly thought we could be the light of the world and tried to make it happen.

The tin Drum

I have no idea why Americans continue to look to athletes and entertainers for sanctification of their opinions, but it is amusing to watch the media try to make a big issue out of  Colin Kaepernick and his little personal demonstration. The first thing I heard on the TV this morning was that some other athlete had done the same thing in support. I'd hate to have been the news reader trying to keep a straight face while declaring this a "growing trend."  That's two out of three hundred twenty million! Why if this trend continues. . .

Yes, I know it's an election year and this requires an "all outrage, all the time" policy, but to put up with the endless tramp of Trump, Trump, Trump, like boots marching in the street is enough, thank you very much, or should I say Danke Schöen. We don't need anything more.

I'm not about to tolerate a government that can or will demand oaths or spoken rituals or demonstrations or any other form of star spangled blather. Freedom of expression, freedom of thought, of conscience and belief. These are not something granted by a government, but are the very cornerstone of a government whose foundation is that freedom.

Or as we used to say in Brooklyn: I gotcha anthem right heah!

Donald does Detroit

Or at least he tried to and I mean do in the sense of screw. Who thinks that today's speech wasn't written by some staff member to mimic the rhetoric and cadence of a black preacher as the non-black public envisions one?  Who thinks the shot of Donald gyrating with the gospel choir was pandering and that he hasn't been in a whole lot of churches of any kind in a very long time? Pretty much everyone that watched.

Oh Donny, you're a man for all places and all seasons, but only if those seasons are named Lie, Cheat, Steal and Misrepresent. The odds that you knew that or any other Gospel Quote before yesterday are about the same as the odds that you pay any Federal Income Tax.

I have a feeling that you've made more enemies than you had before because it sure seems that you expected the intended audience to be unsophisticated enough and too anxious to please a rich white man not to feel the condescension. The day of minstrel shows is long over Donny. Wipe off the blackface and go home to your penthouse.

Je ne suis pas Charlie

Remember when we were falling all over ourselves to post a "Je Suis Charlie" picture somewhere?  Of course we wanted to stand up for freedom, but since none of us had really heard of that French language magazine or were familiar with the kind of thing they print, it was all so easy to flatter ourselves that we're noble defenders and not lemmings.

So what do you think of their cartoon showing a multi layer collapsed building with the arms and legs of squashed Italian corpses oozing out and calling it lasagna?  Gratuitously tasteless, heartless and disgusting come to mind rather rapidly.

Nothing of the sort that justifies slaughter of course, just enough to raise questions about whether they learned anything about humanity and decency and compassion from it.  Suddenly I'm not so Charlie any more.