Peter David's Blog, page 3

FREAK OUT FRIDAY – JULY 10, 2020

The Republicans themselves are getting sick of Trump.

Yes, granted, he still tends to poll well among Republicans in general.  But I think it’s obvious that those individuals are people who have lost sight of what the Republican party is supposed to be.  Poisoned by everything from Newt Gingrich to Fox News to the Tea Party to Trumpism, the party is unrecognizable to those who believed it was idealized during the Ronald Reagan years.  They are appalled by the direction it is currently going and under the guise of Never Trumpers and the Lincoln Project are launching a series of ads not only to stop Trump, but to drive as many voters as possible over to Biden.  They are hoping that those people who refused to vote for Hillary because they saw her as indistinguishable from her opponent are beginning to understand how catastrophically wrong they were and will line up behind Biden.  Because they are convinced that four more years of Trump will leave the United States unrecognizable, not to mention considerably less populated.  

Indeed, the only thing they require is a kicking acronym.  Might I recommend RAFT:  Republicans Against Freaking Trump.  Want to get rid of Trump?  Jump on the RAFT.  

Meanwhile Trump continues on his roadshow of killing Americans. Because we are being forced to the conclusion that he really is one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse; if you view him from that perspective, then everything he does makes perfect sense.  Trying to force children to attend school as if nothing bad was happening, and ignoring CDC guidelines while doing so?  Great idea, because what else could help kill more people than clustering kids together in confined areas or riding to and from school in crowded school buses?  Upset because the CDC guidelines are too stringent?  Strongarm them into scaling them back.  Throughout the country governors are limiting the number of people who can assemble in a confined space?  Go to Tulsa and have a rally in a confined area where masks are not required.  The Tulsa government put stickers on the chairs in that arena designed to force people to sit in every other seat to at least try and social distance?  Have your staffers insist the stickers be removed so that people can get nice and intimate and facilitate the spreading of the disease.  It’s like the whole thing is being managed by Dick Roman, the leader of the Leviathans from the seventh season of “Supernatural.”  Because naturally it’s two weeks later and the virus has spiked in Tulsa, as we all knew it would.  Meanwhile there are only two states that have shown a significant decrease in Covid 19 cases:  Vermont and New Hampshire.  So guess where Trump’s next rally is?  New Hampshire.  Of course it is.  Where else?  (Well, Vermont, I suppose.  That’s likely next.). 

The only thing to occupy him aside from turning arenas of people ill is complaining on Twitter, and he is doing it royally.  Naturally he had no complaints when the Supreme Court ruled that President Clinton had to testify in the Paula Jones case because no one, not even the President, is above the law.  But when the SCOTUS ruled 7-2, including his two appointees, that the New York grand jury was entitled to the documents and returns it wanted, good lord did he go out of his mind.  Endless capitalized tweets about how other presidents got much better treatment at the hands of the SCOTUS (ask Richard Nixon about that) but there was no such consideration for him.  How dare the SCOTUS not treat him with the same fabricated deference his addled imagination believes they treated his predecessors.  Remember, this is the same guy who claims he was treated worse than Lincoln, who was assassinated. Indeed, those close to him describe how he is engaged in an endless pity party, beginning meetings by delivering lengthy monologues over how badly the press is treating him, how unfair it is that the police killed a helpless black man and suddenly the country is rioting and there’s nothing he can say to stop it, how unfair it is that there is a pandemic which has killed 130,000 people and hurting him personally because it’s destroying the economy that he single handedly built.  

Everything is about him.  Absolutely everything.  

Not that he takes any responsibility for it, of course.  His denials of the virus, his magical belief that it would just vanish in April, that the handful of cases we had would quickly dwindle to zero and his complete ignoring of Obama’s playbook on how to handle a pandemic…none of that is at all related to the virus spreading like wildfire.  His attacking of peaceful protestors so he could have a photo op, his inability to present any sort of national speech on race relations, his tagging Black Life Matters and Antifa supporters as terrorists, that the BLM message NYC painted in front of his building was a “symbol of hate,” his support of Confederate statues, that couldn’t possibly have anything to do with people believing he’s a racist and a symbol of the worst America has to offer.  No, no, it’s all the fault of the lying media which continues to report the now nineteen thousand lies that he has told in the past three and a half years.

It continues to remain an irony that a man who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, who was loaned millions by his father that he never compensated, who has had people covering for his mistakes and ineptitude his entire life, and who currently holds the office of the most powerful man in the world, paints himself as a victim.

Poor Donald.  One almost feels sorry for him.

PAD

Freak Out Friday – July 3, 2020

Even as I write this, the population of South Dakota must be preparing itself for a new massive spike in the Coronavirus.  This evening Donald Trump is hosting a fireworks display at Mount Rushmore, and has made a point of saying that social distancing and masking will not be required.  Let us put aside that there have been no fireworks at Mount Rushmore for years because of fears that it will set off forest fires and contaminate groundwater.  It is expected that a crowd of around 7500 is going to be attending (unless K-Pop fans inflated the numbers again) and the Republican governor has stated that none of the procedures required to restrict the Coronavirus will be followed.  Meanwhile, as I write this, Herman Cain—who attended Trump’s Tulsa gathering—has been hospitalized with the Coronavirus.  But hey, he’s only a seventy-four year old black man; it’s not like there’s any threat of his dying from it, right?

Meanwhile Trump continues to help politicize wearing a mask, although he’s oddly presenting conflicting signals.  His determination to remain bare-faced inspires his idiot Trumpies to follow the lead of their moronic cult leader, except I’m reasonably sure that actor George Takei has postulated the real reason that Trump refuses to mask up.  Remember when he returned from his busted Tulsa rally looking like five miles of bad road?  Close up photos revealed streaks of his tan make-up on the inside of his collar.  Takei pointed out that that was likely why he refused to wear a mask:  Because make-up stains would be visible all over the edge of the mask, and when he took it off, the outline of the mask would be right there on his face.  His vanity won’t stop him from spray-tanning his face, and his ego will not risk him looking ridiculous as it smears visibly all over him.   So instead he insists on going maskless, millions of followers imitate him, and thousands upon thousands of people die.  

That is the mindset of the man who is sitting behind the typically clutter free Resolute desk.  Nothing matters more than his ego.  Not lives of Americans.  Nothing.

Yet curiously enough on Thursday he seemed to reverse course and claim that he was in favor of Americans wearing masks.  It’s obvious why:  enough members of the GOP must have come to him and basically said, “Dude, what the hell?!” Trump’s relentless politicizing of something that just makes good health sense is absolutely ridiculous, and is becoming impossible for even the most devoted of his quislings to get behind.  “I’m all for masks,” he surprisingly said to Fox News, even as he continues to go maskless. 

Indeed, we are actually seeing his latest lack of priority as far as American lives are concerned as he furiously tries to deny the damning New York Times article that reports Russia offered bounties to the Taliban for any who killed American soldiers.  Trump’s response was to claim that he hadn’t been told, which is a crock of shit that absolutely nobody except his most devoted followers believes.  Does anyone think the intelligence agencies wouldn’t go to him immediately with this information?  Of course not.  Yet he asserts they didn’t tell him.  

Let us put aside the question of whether or not they did (they did.). The only reasonable response he should put forward is, Now that I know, here’s what I’m going to do about it.  Except as near as we can determine, his response to it is to deny it.   Because of course he does:  He still wants Russia to be included in the G7, and continues to maintain the insane theory that Ukraine rather than Russia interfered in the 2016 election.  

You may wonder what is going through the man’s brain.  Based on his recent interviews, that remains an open question:  even he doesn’t know.  In the past week, he was asked by two friendly Fox anchors what he wanted to do in a second term.  

Now I will admit that it’s not the easiest question to answer.  Even Jeb Bartlet, arguably the best president in American history, couldn’t come up with a good response when C.J. asked him that very question.  But one would think that Trump’s people would have come up with a response and then pounded it into him with a baseball bat.  No such luck.  Instead of answering, he rambled on for five minutes, claiming that talent was more important than experience, that he’d never slept over in Washington before, and that “What we’ve done nobody’s been able to do. But we have more to do,” without describing what he’s done or what more needed to be done.

In short, he Trumped it.  Naming speech oddities after people who display it is certainly commonplace.  Malapropisms come from Mrs. Malaprop, a character in a 1775 play, “The Rivals.  Spoonerisms come from the Reverend Spooner who would switch consonants on words.  Freudian slips are naturally after Sigmund Freud.  So I believe Trumping something is going to become a new word meaning “speaking in word salad” or providing nonsensical responses.  “Boy, he really Trumped that answer.”  “I knew what I wanted to say, but I just Trumped it up.”  

In his inability to give a reasonable, understandable response to any question, Trump will finally make the mark he’s been desperate to achieve:  His name will be remembered.  Just not in the way he anticipated.

PAD

Freak Out Friday – June 19, 2020

“It’s fading away.  It’s going to fade away.”

That is what Trump told Sean Hannity, the man whose lips are permanently caved into the shape of Trump’s ass on Wednesday, about the Coronavirus.

If that sounds at all familiar to you, it’s because that’s what Trump was saying months ago, when the virus was just getting revved up.  That it was going to magically disappear, that the warm weather in April would terminate it.  Now here we are, 110K deaths later, with ten states reporting record numbers of infecitons, most of which—at Trump’s urging–have attempted to proceed as if nothing abnormal was happening, and twenty-three others reporting increases, and Trump is resorting to his typical magical thinking and trying to sell the notion that the illness will magically terminate on its own.

Indeed, he is planning to singlehandedly spike the disease in Oklahoma this Saturday by having an indoor rally surrounded by people who will not be wearing masks and be shoved in shoulder-to-shoulder with each other.  Meanwhile Jacksonville, FL—another state with spiking disease reports—has stepped in where North Carolina wisely backed off and volunteered to give Trump another mask-free assembly point in August for the RNC convention.  Somewhere two horsemen of the Apocalypse—Pestilence and Death—are looking in wonderment at each other and saying, “Really?  He’s making it THIS easy?  Is he insane?”

Well…yes.  He is.

We know he’s a sociopath; that much is indisputable.  Now he’s fallen into Albert Einstein’s famed definition of insanity:  doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.  He is once again asserting that the virus will magically fade away and is hoping that this time the disease actually listens to what he says and just departs without doing any further damage.

Meanwhile he got repeatedly pummeled by the Supreme Court this week.  First the SCOTUS, in a 6-3 decision, declared that LGBTQ citizens could not be discriminated against.  Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s OWN APPOINTEE, wrote the majority opinion.  This was quickly followed by a 5-4 refusal to dismantle the Obama-era Dreamer’s act.  Trump proceeded to rage on Twitter (“A shotgun blast to the faces”) about how we need new justices on the SCOTUS even though Gorsuch was his appointment and Chief Justice Roberts was installed by George W, the man who has most benefitted from Trump because Trump has supplanted him as the worst president in the history of the country.  It should also be noted that the two worst presidents we ever had lost the majority vote and were installed by the Electoral college, a voting device that exists in no other country that has a Constitution.  

On top of that, John Bolton’s book is getting major traction.  Granted, the New York Times gave it a bad review, which Trump should naturally dismiss since he typically disbelieves everything the “failing” Times says.  But this time he’s embracing it, loudly declaring that everyone should ignore the book while simultaneously launching a law suit against it.  Of course, anyone familiar with the Streisand Effect could have predicted how that was going to turn out:  It’s Amazon’s top seller.  Part of me is amused and part of me is furious.  Rather than reveal his knowledge back when it might have been useful, like during the House investigations, Bolton dicked around until it was too late and the hearings moved to the Senate.  By that point he was ready to talk but naturally the Senate GOP made sure that didn’t happen.  His book apparently verifies the entire case against Trump, and even adds items both big (begging China to help him get reelected) and just stupid (wanting to get an autographed CD of “Rocketman” to Kim jong un.). Bolton belatedly declares that the man whom he relentlessly supported for months is unfit for office.  I know, I know, better late than never, but Bolton could have been a major figure in American history rather than an after-the-fact addendum.

Plus Trump’s polling numbers continue to crater.  But having been burned in 2016 by polls that give Clinton a substantial lead right up to election day, every bit of reportage on Trump’s numbers are accompanied by warnings of “You never know.”  Meanwhile the GOP continues to do everything it can to make sure that the poor, students and minorities are precluded from voting, while Trump does everything he can to make the post office go away.  It’s an obvious gambit to avoid a Big Blue Shift:  That’s when the initial voting seems to be leaning Republican, but the subsequent tally of mail-in votes swings it over to the Democratic side.  Since Trump and the GOP want to do everything they can to impede the Democratic right to vote, naturally they have to target both the post office and the procedure itself, which Trump baselessly claims is rife with fraud.  

If Trump loses in November, this past week will be regarded as the beginning of the end:  when Trump’s tone-deaf response to everything from Coronavirus preparedness (he asserted that people are wearing facemasks just to piss him off) to Black Lives Matter (his fear mongering is causing armed “militia” men to harass peaceful demonstrators in small towns) to his actions on Twitter (he retweeted a doctored video that falsely depicted a non-existent CNN story which Twitter wound up labelling as such) finally turned enough people against him to make a difference.

That’s assuming they’re allowed to vote.

PAD

Freak Out Friday – May 29, 2020

FREAK OUT FRIDAY – MAY 29. 2020

We all know that Trump has no understanding whatsoever of the Constitution, the document that he falsely swore to uphold three and a half years ago in front of a far smaller audience than Barack Obama drew for his inauguration.  Since then he has sworn that the emoluments clause is “phony,” has falsely claimed that Article II gives him the power to do “whatever (he) wants,” and swore that he is going to do whatever he can to narrow the freedoms that the First Amendment provides.

And this week he has renewed his assault on freedom of speech, continuing his angle that has been parroted by dictators historically:  that the free press is the enemy.  We’ve already seen him open fire on his beloved Fox News when the right wing swinging news channel dared to criticize him.  Now, however, he has opened fire on the forum that enables him to talk directly to millions of followers:  Twitter. 

Basically Twitter dared to treat him in the same way that they would treat someone else who was violating their terms of service.  Indeed, if he’d been anyone else, they likely would have blocked his account and banned him from Twitter ages ago for his incessant lies, his name calling and his threats.   They flagged one of his false tweets about voter fraud, linking it to articles from reputable sources, and naturally Trump went ballistic.  He falsely declared that linking his tweets to news sources was the same as censorship, and unlike his sluggish nonresponse to the virus, he immediately swung into action and signed an executive order that targeted Section 230 which affords Twitter protection against law suits.  So basically he screwed himself, because all he did was give Twitter MORE incentive to carefully patrol tweets and make sure they don’t violate the terms of service since their protection would be minimized or eliminated.  If they’re worried they can be sued for libel, they will naturally delete any lies that Trump posts.  That whole nonsense about a non-existent cold case against Joe Scarborough?  Gone.  His baseless claims that Biden is mentally impaired?  History.  His contention that Obama committed the greatest fraud in political history?  Adios.  Through his own actions, he is removing any incentive that Twitter has to allow him to do whatever he wants.

His latest endeavor was this morning, when he swore he was going to send the army into Minneapolis, declaring that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”  Because when White supremacists run over a helpless protestor, there are very good people on both sides.  When armed idiots waving the Confederate flag show up in droves, shut down the government and threaten the Democratic political leaders, Trump applauds them.  But the moment blacks begin to riot, he’s ready to begin shooting them down.

It should be noted that if I did a tweet that said, “I can’t stand Trump blowing his own horn.  When the tooting starts, the shooting starts,” not only would Twitter delete it, but I’d likely be visited by the Secret Service.  A threat is a threat.

I suppose I should address the whole rioting thing, because naturally right wingers are loudly declaring that liberals are perfectly okay with people rioting and stealing while we strenuously objected to armed white people showing up and shutting down the government.  And it does seem that rioting and looting is an expected reaction associated with people of color.  For instance, when the verdict of O.J. Simpson was going to be handed down, Los Angeles police were bracing themselves for rioting from blacks if he was found guilty.  When he was declared not guilty, there was zero concern that angry whites would storm the streets.  Which they didn’t.   They just sat there, puzzled, while blacks cheered that they had for once gotten “white man’s justice.”

I’m not okay with rioting and theft.  But I understand it.  The attitude is likely that if they break into a Target and steal some televisions, well, the Target will repair the damage and insurance companies will reimburse them the loss.  And of course they’re right.  They do it because it satisfies their anger and their desire to strike back at the white-run system that doesn’t give the slightest of damns about black life.  “You take our lives, so we’ll take your stuff.”  Meanwhile, whenever they attempted to protest in a non-violent method—whether it was taking a knee at a football game or assembling in protest with no weapons—they were greeted with condemnation.  If you’re going to despise them no matter what they do, they figure they might as well hurt whites in the only place that matters:  the pocket book.  

Meanwhile a dark skinned CNN reporter was arrested while a white skinned CNN reporter wasn’t.  If that doesn’t underscore the pure difference in how whites and blacks are treated, nothing will.

And yet Trump, who has historically supported white supremacists and registered no complaints about whites killing blacks before, suddenly decides that the death of George Floyd—killed by a white cop—is outrageous and should be condemned, that the rioters are dishonoring him, and let’s shoot them.  The leader of the free world wants to shoot some citizens while he simultaneously rages against Twitter for daring to take the slightest step in holding him to the same rules they hold everyone else.

The words “I can’t even” have never seemed more appropriate.

Oh, and he is changing an environmental rule from the Obama administration so hunters in Alaska can now go into the dens of bears and killed their cubs.  

Just in time for Eric and Don Jr. to go hunting, I suppose.

PAD

Freak Out Friday – May 22, 2020

It would be easy to focus on Trump because, as always, not a week passes where he doesn’t say or do something stupid.  This week he threatened two states because their Democratic leaders were endeavoring to make sure that people could vote by mail, threatening to try and withhold financial support because of their attempts to encourage election fraud. This despite the fact that election fraud is not an issue and absentee voting doesn’t tend to favor either Democrats or Republicans.  Basically he’s renewing his whole quid pro quo, threatening to keep help out of the hands of people who need it unless those people knuckle under to his demands.  And why not?  The GOP covered his ass in January, so he believes he can do whatever he wants with impunity.

Which, so far, he can.  Inspectors General threaten to ride herd on him?  Fire them.  People testified before Congress over his actions or reported their concerns to their superiors?  They’re gone.  Walk around in public without wearing the face mask that his own people are saying should be a part of one’s apparel in pubic?  Screw that:  the press would take delight in depicting him wearing one, so why not risk being exposed or infecting others?

Because with Trump, it’s all about weakness.  He doesn’t want to appear weak in any way, shape or form, because to be weak is to be a loser, and he absolutely cannot ever lose.  Ever.  This is so much a part of his persona that he literally could not say that the tests he’s taken for the Coronavirus were negative, because to him, a negative test was a failure, and failure is a loss.  So he actually said, “I tested positively towards negative.”  This yutz actually has the nerve to claim that BIDEN can’t speak properly when his own twisted psychology prevents him from saying, “I tested negative.”  Meanwhile he continues to attack journalists, especially female ones, who have the nerve to ask him actual questions about his contradictions and vagueness.  Indeed, for some reason he’s started talking like Yoda:  “A rude question that is.”  I know he’s been accused of being a Russian puppet, but it was never intended to be a literal charge.

But you know what?  Screw Trump.  I feel like talking briefly about his followers.  

They are the ones whom experts have been describing as being members of a death cult.  Although they claim that the left wing is viewing the pandemic through the haze of partisanship, this is actually a classic example of something Trump does all the time:  Accuse the opposition of something that you yourself are doing.  Because the fact of the matter is that it’s the Trumpies whose perceptions are being governed entirely through the haze of cult membership and tribal partisanship.  They condemn Democratic governors for the unspeakable crime of worrying about citizens’ health and obeying the advisories of medical experts and epidemiologists while lauding GOP governors who place the economy above health concerns.  Meanwhile evangelical intellectuals are loudly proclaiming that it’s silly to elevate fear of death over spiritual concerns and that people should be ready to die if it will serve the greater good, i.e., the economy and attending services so they can donate to the churches.  

And the reason I say their opinions are tribal is because we all know that if Hillary Clinton were President and she were saying the exact same things that Trump was—that the country should reopen, that doctors’ advice should be ignored—the Democrats would be appalled and the right wing’s heads would be exploding.  They’d be demanding she be impeached and loudly declaring, “That’s what happens when you put a Democrat in charge!”  But no, instead they line up behind Trump, endorse his talking points no matter how stupid they are, and oh, do they hate Democrats.  Indeed, that’s really why they love Trump:  Because they believe he irritates the left, and it’s all about aggravating the left.  Nothing else matters.

So allow me to address their perceptions, their lies, their distortions:

We wanted to be proven wrong about Trump.  We really did.

We wanted our concerns to be groundless, our worries to be misplaced.  We wanted to believe he would grow into the job, that the whole racist, brainless thing was an act to get elected.  That he would rise to the challenges of the position.  That he would protect us, and would protect the United States’ position as leader of the free world.  That he could grow to be the man we needed.

We wanted our fears that, if confronted with a genuine threat to American health and safety, he would rise to the challenge.  

Why?  

Because WE LIVE HERE, you dumbasses.  Our fates are tied in with yours, and we do not benefit from friends and family members dying, jobs disappearing, and businesses go bankrupt.  

We are not so obsessed with Trump losing that we’re happy that over 100,000 people are going to be dead by June 1, that the economy has crashed, that the entire country is spiraling down the drain.  Hell, my daughter was supposed to attend a BTS concert tomorrow; that’s not happening.  Who knows if it ever is.  No one knows anything.  We’re living on suppositions, guesses and speculation, and we’re no more comfortable than you are.  The difference between us is, our opinions are not shaped by cult like devotion, and yours are.  You can and do hate us with all your souls, and by and large, we don’t return that hate.  We just feel sorry for you and shake our heads, wondering if there is anything that can shake your faith.  Apparently the only thing that can is if you die from the Coronavirus.  

Which you’re very likely to do as you hold your idiotic protests and ignore basic safety measures, strutting around with your guns to prove how tough you are.  You’ll infect each other because the virus doesn’t give a damn what your political affiliations are.  It’ll just make you sick and possibly kill you.  

To quote your leader:  Sad.

PAD     

Freak Out Friday – May 15, 2020

Trump’s hatred for Obama, the—let’s put it how he doubtlessly thinks it—uppity black guy who dared make fun of him at the annual Correspondents dinner some years back, has been obvious for ages.  First he spent years claiming that Obama wasn’t born in the United States and was thus invalid to be president (which eventually he turned around and claimed that Hillary Clinton had asserted and that he had disproven through his relentless and thorough investigation).  Then, once the antiquated Electoral college ignored the popular vote and installed him into office, he has relentlessly and methodically attempted to undo every single thing that the Obama administration achieved.

It’s an impressive list.  He withdrew from the Iranian anti-nuclear deal and the Paris climate accord.  He terminated Obama’s DACA (Dreamer) program that protected young immigrants.  He has consistently undone numerous environmental protection rules, ranging from rescinding a 2015 law to prevent fracking on public lands to overseeing a GOP tax overhaul that eliminated a ban on oil and gas drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.  Currently he is suing to put an end to the Affordable Care Act, because right in the middle of a spreading pandemic is exactly the time to end medical coverage for millions of Americans.  What he is consistently doing is truly unprecedented for the office of the presidency:  He is steadily and determinedly taking as many steps as he can to hurt the people of the United States.  Physically hurt them, damage their environment, and endanger their health.  Attribute it to whatever you wish:  His basic sociopathy.  His lack of any sign of empathy.  His syphilitic reasoning.  His fundamental misogyny.  The fact that he’s bone stupid.  Whatever reason you want to choose, that’s fine.

What it comes down to is that Obama remains far more admired than Trump.  According to YouGov.com, “Barack Obama is the most popular Democrat and the most famous.  Barack Obama is described by fans as:  Intelligent, Presidential, Good Speaker, Stands up for ordinary people and A leader.”  These are not words that are ever applied to Trump, not even by his supporters.  His supporters simply excel in insulting anyone who disagrees while declaring “Trump 2020” as some sort of mantra.  Pressed to apply any of those adjectives to Trump, they will simply turn around and toss more invective.  Currently critics are busy declaring that Obama should be locked up without bothering to specify what crimes were committed during his scandal-free administration.  And let us remember that it was scandal free despite incessant GOP investigation as part of its endless endeavors to make a reality Moscow Mitch’s determination that Obama remain a one-term president.   Remember when the big deal was that he wore a tan suit?  I love those days.

When Obama left office his approval rating was around fifty-six percent and it’s only gone up since then.  Trump’s latest approval rating remains anchored at forty-nine percent, and that’s despite the fact that Americans tend to rally-round-the-flag for presidents during a time of national catastrophe.  Indeed, the only reason it remains stalled at that number is that his support is stuck on partisan lines.  It literally doesn’t matter how many people die, Trump’s base cannot admit that they screwed up and backed the wrong horse.

Yet astoundingly Trump seems to believe that his best path to reelection is by reminding us about his predecessor.  If he had any functioning brain cells, he’d realize that he needs to stoke the popular calumny that Joe Biden—whose occasional misspeaks are doubtless caused by his stammer—is mentally impaired.  Remember back when Hillary Clinton slightly stumbled and people freaked out about it?  Voters love to take any display of weakness and highlight it beyond any scope of sanity.  So if he continued taking that tack with Biden, it might influence people.

But his hatred of Obama and his need to undo his administration overshadows even common sense.  So this week he invented a brand new scandal, “Obamagate,” and since then has been desperately searching for an actual charge for it to be about.  When pressed for specifics, he was unable to produce them.  Since then the conservative media has been fabricating charges related to Michael Flynn, the man who Bill Lower-The-Barr decided not to prosecute for his admitted lying to the FBI, thus sparing Trump having to spend political capital by pardoning the person he previously fired.  Despite the fact that Obama and Biden followed completely standard intelligence procedures, they are desperately trying to pretend that the two of them did something untoward and illegal.  Trump and his idiot right wing supporters are loudly declaring that Obama and Biden should be jailed, despite the fact that they can’t actually cite a single illegal act that they committed.

You know what?  I hope Trump keeps up this angle.

Because the more he brings up Obama, the more he’s just going to remind people that things were pretty okay under his presidency.  That his administration was scandal free.  That he fought to protect the environment.  That he created the increasingly popular Obamacare, which Trump has relentlessly sworn to get rid of and replace with a non-existent far better plan.    That he didn’t spend hours on Twitter attacking anyone who pissed him off, and never fired back at the people who questioned everything from his religion to his status as a U.S. citizen.  That he was a man who believed in the importance of America rather than himself, and that man selected and trusted Joe Biden, so maybe we should, too.

So by all means, Trump.  As the death toll tops eighty thousand…as it will be over a hundred thousand by June, and likely be over a million by the end of the year…you keep focusing on Obama.  You keep reminding us of the man who contained Ebola.  Who left you a sixty-nine page book on how to deal with a pandemic which you ignored.  Who is a far better man than you’ll ever be, and whose vice president may actually be able to start undoing the horrendous mess you’ve made of this country if he’s elected, despite your best efforts to short circuit the actual electoral process.  You keep at it.

See how much good it does you.

PAD

Freak Out Friday – May 1, 2020

FREAK OUT FRIDAY – May 1, 2020

I am so freaking sick of the hypocrisy on the right that it’s making me ill.  My stomach turns as these blathering blowhards put forth their idiotic, self-contradicting opinions as if they have any worth.  I am tired of these inconsistent blowhards rallying behind Trump in order to march this country straight over a cliff.  

And boy, am I fed up with them attempting to label the left as hypocrites when they continue to kiss Trump’s butt while spewing philosophies that are in constant conflict.

And the icing on the cake is Tara Reade, a woman whose accusations are so sketchy that EVEN TRUMP isn’t getting behind it.  He shrugs, he says he doesn’t know anything about her accusations, which is absolute bull.  “I don’t know about it or about him or about her” is his default position (a close second behind “fake news!”) whenever he’s confronted with something he doesn’t want to face.  I swear, if Jared Kushner was arrested while having sex with a twelve year old, Trump would swear he doesn’t really associate with him.  

What fractures me is that the Trumpies are seizing upon Democrats’ lack of support for Reade as some sort of hypocrisy on our own side because, hey, we made a big deal out of Christine Ford and her accusations of Brett Kavanaugh.  So let me see if I’ve got this straight:  the same people who dismissed Ford out of hand are now turning around and saying that WE are hypocrites because we’re regarding Reade with suspicion.  Even though they are the ones embracing her while having rejected Ford.  

Well, hell, let’s examine Reade, shall we?

Tara Reade claims that Biden molested her back in 1993.  Curiously, she never brought it up when he was made vice president.  That would certainly have been the time, yes?

Then again, it’s not like she repeatedly praised Biden for his attitude toward abused women.

Oh, wait.  She did.  Often.  In the intervening years she extolled Biden’s virtues while lambasting Vladimir Putin.  She did that all the way to 2018, when Biden first started making noise about running for President.  Then amazingly, she did a 180.  She proceeded to trash Biden while simultaneously extolling Putin’s manliness and virtues.  

But that’s probably coincidence.  I mean, it’s not like she’s ever done anything criminal…

Oh, wait.  She did.  Back in the 90s, she stole $1400 from a charity dedicated to helping horses.  Hell, that would certainly make her an apt mate for Trump, since stealing from charity is kind of his thing.

Then there’s her brother, who told an interviewer that Biden had touched her shoulders in a way that made her uncomfortable…and then, several days later, texted the reporter that Biden had also shoved his finger into her vagina.  Because…he FORGOT that when he first did the interview?  If some guy physically manhandled your sister’s genitals and then you were later asked about that man, wouldn’t you kick off your recollection with that?  How in God’s name could he have omitted that?  That’s not just burying the lead; that’s tying a granite block to it and shoving it into the Marianas trench.  

And yet these same right wing blockheads who do not hesitate to believe that two dozen women are all lying about Trump doing everything from manhandling them to raping them…they firmly embrace Reade’s dubious claims while calling us hypocrites because any examination of her story doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

We’re the same party who gave the bum’s rush to Al Franken for doing things that wouldn’t even register on Trump’s radar of abuse, and they dare accuse us of being hypocrites? 

The Reade complaint is the absolute proof that Trump’s followers do not care about the truth, about consistency, about reality, about anything except clinging to power and lying about anyone who disagrees with them.  And I am done with it.  

I am done with these bastards destroying Democratic candidates for the presidency.  These assholes took war hero John Kerry and made people believe that he was a lying coward.  These schmucks convinced the world that Al Gore claimed he invented the internet, which HE NEVER SAID.  They are the living embodiment of what Joseph Goebbels said:  “If you tell a lie big  enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

This latest outing—their blind acceptance of Trump despite his sexual predations so numerous that there’s an entire book out about it called “All the President’s Women”—while simultaneously condemning Biden for a sole accusation by a woman whose word simply cannot be trusted, is the last figurative straw.  

Slap them down, people.  I mean it.  Wherever you go on Facebook or Twitter, when you see them ranting, throw their hypocrisy in their face.  You won’t convince them; their heads are buried so far up Trump’s ass that they’ve forgotten what fresh air smells like.  But smack them down before they convince people who just don’t know any better.  

Enough sitting around and shaking our heads and tut-tutting about how awful they are.

Time to fight back.

PAD

Freak Out Friday – April 23, 2020

There are arguments that have been made contending Donald Trump is the anti-Christ.  I must admit, that’s a little outside of my realm of expertise.  But based upon this past week…indeed, this past year…I can certainly see the reasons for the contention.

He’s certainly opposed to life.  That’s a given.  His constant ignoring of the early warnings which, had he heeded them could have prevented thousands of deaths.  His touting of unproven medicines which, as they are scientifically tested, are proving lethal.  His recent suggestion that injecting people with bleach might help, which he is now desperately trying to walk back as being “sarcastic” which is his typical response when called on his idiocy, even as we concern ourselves that some Branch Covidians (as Wil Wheaton has termed them) will embrace the concept.  His spending two hours every day taunting and baiting reporters (because he is a master baiter), insulting other politicians, or throwing them under the bus as he just did with Governor Brian Kemp.  Kemp was stupid enough to take Trump at his word and reopen Georgia.  When that resulted in a ton of negative backlash, Trump immediately turned around and said that Kemp should not do what Trump had been saying for two weeks he SHOULD do.  Basically he threw Kemp under the bus, drove the bus over him, then backed up and ran over him again for good measure.  

Honest to God, if Trump were Jesus, Judas would be the only one he would trust because he’d understand Judas’s motivation.  How can any reasonable person turn down thirty pieces of silver, after all?  Give Trump thirty pieces of silver, he’d betray all the disciples in a heartbeat and then kick back with some Kentucky Fried.

You think you’re bored sitting around in your studio apartment?  Trump, according to the New York Times, is going stir crazy trapped in the White House.  Even this numbskull knows that he can’t go golfing, short of playing eighteen holes in a mini golf course.  (Great, now I’ve got a mental image of Trump slamming a little windmill with his golf club while shouting, “Stupid giant!  Give me cancer, will you?!”)  

The solution to his problem is obvious:  Resign.  If he wants to get out of the White House, turn the presidency over to Pence, get the hell out of Washington and go wander Mar-a-largo and spare us two hours of tortured syntax, taunting, misinformation and lies every day.  

Which he won’t do.  Instead he is going to continue to try and take whatever underhanded step he can to skew the election in his favor, even as his decisions turn swing states against him and the Coronavirus accelerates its gains in Red States.  He’s currently trying to dismantle the postal service to remove the threat of mail-in votes which would give greater access to people who the GOP is currently working on disenfranchising.  Can’t blame him for being concerned.    Remember when the right wing dismissed it as a Democratic problem because crowded Blue cities were the only ones suffering?  Not anymore.  More remote areas are getting hit now; all those rural folks who thought they were off the hook are suddenly having major problems breathing.  And you just know that Georgia and surrounding states are going to experience major spikes as Kemp invites the virus to have another go and wipe out people who were lucky enough to avoid it the first time.

But don’t worry, America, because Mitch McConnell has your back.  As the GOP continues to prove that even life and death situations are secondary to politicizing everything, McConnell suggested that if states are having financial problems, well heck, they should just declare bankruptcy.  Why should anything be done to help New York says the Senator of a state that ranks forty-six out of fifty states on the range of financial metrics, according to the Mercatus Center of George Mason University.  

Of course, there is a reason states can’t declare bankruptcy:  it’s against the law.  This was pointed out by Governor Cuomo who was so sick of McConnell’s BS that today he challenged McConnell to send a global message of financial distress by crafting a law that states can indeed declare bankruptcy.  “I dare him,” said Cuomo several times, although he stopped short of double dog daring him.  He dared McConnell to craft the law and Trump to sign it, asserting that they should if they had the courage of their convictions.

Which, naturally, they don’t.  They’re bullies and thus intrinsically cowards.  Of course, if they disagree, they can show Cuomo up and do exactly what he challenged them to do.

Betting they won’t.

PAD 

Freak Out Friday – April 10, 2020

The GOP has traditionally stood for Grand Old Party.  

I think in the age of Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell, the initials should be changed.  The alteration should be made to reflect what the party has become.  Because the modern state of the Republicans would not be recognized by Ronald Reagan, although Richard Nixon would doubtless be envious of it.

GOP should henceforth be changed to Guardians of Power.

Thanks to everything from gerrymandering to voter suppression, the majority of representation in the government belongs to the minority of voters.  Hillary Clinton’s three million vote triumph, which to this day Trump absolutely refuses to acknowledge as legitimate, is just the tip of the iceberg.  There are states such as Wisconsin where Democrats vote in the majority but the Republicans rule thanks to disproportionate representation.

Indeed, let us focus briefly on Wisconsin.  The state where voters were forced to make a choice between fulfilling their civic responsibility and risking their lives.  Voting places in heavily Democratic areas disappeared, resulting in lines that were reportedly three miles long.  While the Democratic governor attempted to push back election day, the GOP united in overturning that ruling and pushing the matter all the way to the SCOTUS, where Trump’s majority insanely supported the notion that voters who had not yet received their absentee ballots had to have them postmarked by election day.  How nice that they were able to rush through that ruling in time to screw over tens of thousands of mostly Democratic voters while delaying the cases about Trump’s tax returns.

Meanwhile the GOP as a whole and Trump in particular continue to exploit the Coronavirus for all it’s worth.  While Republican governors outlaw abortion, dismissing an extremely time sensitive procedure as not being a medical necessity, Trump is busy declaring that mail in voting should not be allowed because—and for once he admitted the truth—you’ll never see a Republican win an election.  Yet again he said aloud the part that you’re only supposed to think.  For once, he was truthful, although not for the reason he supposed.  My assumption is that he believes that voting by mail will ensure cheating, even though there is no proof on record of mail-in voting being used fraudulently. It’s right up there with his ludicrous assertions that people would vote, then go out to their car, change clothing and walk back in to vote again.

Yes, the GOP aggressively does everything it can to block voting, particularly for the poor, students, Hispanics and people of color, since those groups all tend to vote Democratic.  Because they are no longer interested in governing; they’re interested in retaining power and will do everything they can to hold onto it.

Donald Trump is both a product of this mindset and also its leader.  In the past several weeks, he fired Michael Atkinson, the inspector general who did his job by bringing the whistle blower complaint to congress, and Glenn Fine, the inspector general who was tasked with overseeing the $2 trillion slush fund that Trump is undoubtedly going to steer toward people he likes and quite probably himself.  

So let’s see where we are in our democracy.

The GOP continues to rule the Senate with an iron fist, ignoring their oaths and letting Trump off in the impeachment trial while doing everything they can to stymie voters from removing either Trump or them from office.  Meanwhile the Supreme Court does whatever Trump wants, the four member minority helpless to convince their associates to attend to, or even remember, the rule of law.  The founders created our government to be three co-equal branches.  That is no longer the case.  The legislative and judicial branches are now completely subservient to the desires and whims of Donald Trump, a man who openly and aggressively courts and admires and envies dictators.

Let’s check the definition of a dictator, shall we

Dictator:  1) A ruler with total power over a country, typically one who has taken control by force.  2). A person who behaves in an autocratic way.

Autocrat:  Someone who insists on complete obedience from others; an imperious or domineering person.

That pretty much settles it, folks.  With his systematic dismissing of people from office whose job was to provide oversite and control, and with his party doing everything they can to steal the next election just as they stole the one in Wisconsin, Trump is no longer on his way to becoming a dictator.  By every demonstrable measure, he IS a dictator.

Welcome to North Korea.  Welcome to Russia. Welcome to Nazi Germany.

PAD

Freak Out Friday – March 27, 2020

You know, it occurs to me that I need to spell out something to the right wing blowhards who are still howling about Obama and Hillary rather than face the facts of the President’s incessant failures when it comes to managing the Coronavirus.

When Trump was—well, not elected, but rather chosen by the Electoral college over the actual winner—I was rooting for him to succeed.  As opposed to, say, Mitch McConnell, who swore that his job was to make sure Obama would be a one-term president and spent eight years stonewalling damned near everything that Obama wanted to accomplish.

Make no mistake:  I was certain Trump wouldn’t succeed.  I opened up betting on my website asking people to guess how long he’d last in office; few opined that he’d make it through all four years.  Meanwhile his supporters swore, without evidence, that he would grow into the office.  That his racist effrontery, his relentless insults, would dissipate.  That the responsibility of the position would elevate him, rather than that he would lower it.  They were sure of it.  I was not.

But I was hoping they were right.

Because I still remember 9/11.  Not in the current abstract, “let’s list all the people who died” manner, but from when it was actually happening.  Back when my panicked next door neighbor asked me, as the towers were smoking, whether we should send our kids to school or would the terrorists attack that building next?  Absurd, I know, but that’s what fear does to you.  It makes the ridiculous seem plausible.

At that time, we looked to our leaders to calm us down.  To provide guidance.  To tell us that everything was going to be okay.  To tell us what to do next.

Initially, George W. rose to that challenge.  His approvals skyrocketed because in times of crisis, there is an impulse to rally around the flag and support whoever is in charge.  And Bush did okay…until he then used that approval to guide us into decades of warfare in order to maintain that approval and not be a one-term president, repeating the “mistakes” of his father.  But at least he started off strong. 

I wanted Trump to rise to the occasion.  I wanted him to become the man his supporters swore he could be, because ultimately we are all in this together.  Despite the howls to the contrary from the right who claim that anyone with opposing opinions is a traitor who despises America, I love this country and what it stands for.  I want it to succeed, and a lot of how well it does rests on the shoulders of the man in the Oval Office.  I was certain he would fail, but very much wanted to be proven wrong.  

Unfortunately, the coronavirus has proven beyond all question that I was absolutely right.  

Bereft of his beloved mob gatherings, Trump has instead been holding press…I dunno, “briefings” doesn’t seem the right word.  “Praisings” seems more accurate.  Contradicting or ignoring the words of medical experts who have spent their lives studying and fighting pandemics, Trump has used these praisings as platforms to talk about the most important subject of all:  himself.  New York needs respirators?  Screw that:  do you know how much money the poor fellow is not making as president?  “It cost me billions of dollars to become president” says the man who has charged taxpayers millions upon millions to support him during his countless golf trips.  While medical expert Anthony Fauci vanishes into the woodwork, Trump stands there and asserts that the country will be up and running by Easter.  This despite the fact that the experts assert such a thing would be calamitous.  Trump still insists on likening the pandemic to the flu.  People die from the flu and we don’t shut down the country, he points out.

That’s correct.  That’s for two reasons.  First, the flu has a fatal rate of .1 percent while the coronavirus is anywhere from three to four percent.  Second, the flu doesn’t overload hospitals.  When you have to convert the massive Javits Center to a hospital, just to handle sick patients for whom there’s no room in the existing facilities, something is seriously out of whack.

And yet we are now seeing, on a daily basis, indisputable proof that Trump is completely and utterly bereft of empathy.  This is one of the classic definitions of narcissism that put it far beyond the simple fault of being an egomaniac.  Hell, to some degree, I’m an egomaniac:  most writers are.  We believe that what we have to say is so important that it should be distributed to as many people as possible with our names attached, ideally in large letters at the top.  If you’re a writer and not an egomaniac, you’re in the wrong profession.

But I care about my wife, my children and grandchildren, my siblings, my friends and family.  I care about what happens to them, and typically will put their concerns above my own.  

A narcissist doesn’t do that.  He is incapable of it.  He cares only about himself, how others can serve him, and how he can use them until they are no longer of any use, at which point he can discard them and move on. 

That’s Trump.  At a time when we need someone who desperately cares about others, who values life above all other considerations, who wants only the best for everyone, we have a strutting narcissist who takes the time to point out the sacrifices he’s made in order to stand up there and promote himself and his brand.  He doesn’t care about the wife that he cheated on with a porn star.  He doesn’t care about the national health.  He cares only about the stock market and the economy, and that’s because he figures he needs it to be strong in order to be reelected.  So by all means, have everything be back to normal by Easter so that he can boast he managed to beat the coronavirus, restore the economy, and be the hero.

Do not let yourself be fooled as his supporters have been.

PAD