Tag: Donald Trump

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The raid on John Bolton’s house is more than a little worrisome. To start with, Bolton is a Republican who, at least on paper, agrees with Trump on most of the issues. He actually served in Trump’s first term as president. But Bolton disagrees with Trump and he personally seems to hate Trump. These type of disagreements, at least in the past, were a part of the big tent parties. You occasionally disagreed with each other. But Trump must have 100% allegiance to him.

So, if you won’t keep your mouth shut willingly, Trump is going to scare you into submission. Trump is using intimidation to stop his opponents from speaking. There is a big difference between calling a person stupid and opening a Department of Justice Investigation into a person’s activities.

If Bolton has nothing to hide what is he worried about? If only it was that easy. Investigations require lawyers to gather evidence to support your case. This, of course, means you have to have money in the bank to take on a Trump investigation. You have to take time out of your life to appear in court. So, even if you are found innocent, you lose time and money to Trump’s petty harassment. There might be people who would risk irritating Trump, but there also are people who will decide to keep their mouths shut instead.

It certainly seems to have shut down any criticism from anyone in the Republican party. Any Republican who disagrees with Trump is silenced — either by keeping their mouth shuts or through making their lives so miserable they quit or are pushed out in primaries. There is only Trump and what Trump says goes.

The deafening silence of party elders is baffling. I am talking about you Mitch McConnell (83 years of age) and you Chuck Grassley (91years of age). Here are two old men without a political future. Their political futures, and let’s face it their personal futures, have a very limited time line. They have nothing to lose. Why not raise a little Hell on your way out? What are they saving their gravitas for? Future power.

Trump’s behavior is so blatantly corrupt now that it is beyond shocking. He is selling presidential pardons. He owns stock in companies the government is doing business with. He openly shakes down business leaders for their spare change. He threatens anyone who crosses him with investigation. What line does Trump have to cross before these men speak up? There is very little power in nodding your head in agreement to everything Trump says. Yet they still continue to quietly nod.

Democracies occasionally put bad people in power. It is inevitable. They aren’t, however, the real problem, it is the people who keep their mouths’ shut hoping to hold onto what little power they have when any real power they had is long gone. They are powerless intimidated people who would rather give Trump what he wants than take him to task.

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Donald Trump was upset about the Smithsonian’s failure to talk about the good parts of slavery. There are good parts of slavery? Who knew. I am greatly interested in hearing more. I am sure he will be forthcoming with more details sometime in the future.

Trump may have had a point about the information in Smithsonian displays but it was lost when he started to talk about the good parts of slavery. Because Trump has a reputation of never apologizing and never backing down, there will be no apology which puts his supporters in the awkward position of defending Trump’s ridiculous statement when the only sane response is Trump is wrong and he never should have said something so stupid.

A good portion of the Conservative side has taken the best option available to them — they are ignoring the statement completely. Anyone who tries to defend him looks like an idiot and no one dares contradict the notoriously vengeful Trump so silence is about the best option a sane person would have.

Why Trump and Conservatives feel that American History has to always paint the country in a positive light is baffling. History is about human beings doing things. Human beings, some of the time, are going to do the wrong thing. It is inevitable. And it is a good lesson for children. Even people who do good things can sometimes believe and do terrible things. Children need to know this. How do you expect them to navigate life in this rough and tumble world if they believe Americans only do good?

Facts are facts. Slavery existed in the United States at one time. How do you explain American History without talking about it? The Civil War was all about slavery no matter how hard people try to make it about State’s Rights. This fails when looking at what people living at the time say. All the historical evidence points to slavery as the cause of the war. It wasn’t tariffs, agricultural policy, industrial policy, or any one of a million different issues that states might disagree about — it was about slavery.

Well, then, a lot of Southerners opposed slavery but they felt compelled to support their state, friends and family who did. So where exactly do you stop supporting your friends and family when they have bad ideas? I don’t really want slaves but all my friends and family have slaves so, in order that they don’t feel awkward, I am going to fight a bloody civil war so they know I really like them. These people are actually worse than the people who believed slavery was acceptable. It is the old mother’s adage if everyone was jumping off the Empire State Building, would you? Give me a break.

The Civil War is over with. It is no longer relevant to a modern discussion of civil rights. Now, I happen to disagree with this but say I give it to Trump’s defenders in this debate. The Smithsonian’s displays are about the Civil War. They are trying to explain what happened in 1860 and not how we live now. In order to understand America in the 1860’s, slavery has to be discussed and, if it is discussed honestly, the evils of slavery come up from time to time — it is unavoidable.

Some slave owners were nice to their slaves. Oh come on, really. They may have been nice people but they still believed it was OK to own people, to sell people, and to retrieve people if they ran away. That is your definition of nice? There is little evidence that this niceness was apparent to the slaves. If the slave owners were so nice why did they have to have laws returning runaway slaves? Why would anyone want to leave paradise on the plantation?

The slaves were fed and housed. Big Whoop. Prisoners are fed and housed. Hostages are fed and housed. This is basic human behavior. Nothing particularly special or nice about. If you are going to buy someone, force them to live somewhere and tell them they can’t leave — you better damn well feed and house them.

Why people try to make the South out to be the good guys in this scenario is beyond me. They were wrong about everything and I mean everything. There is nothing redeeming about the South’s position on slavery. It was wrong for them to have slaves and it was wrong for them to start a war about it. Trying to make lemonade out of this tainted basket of lemons is impossible. So, for God’s sakes, stop it.

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Given Trump’s record of fucking up almost everything he touches, I never gave it much thought but now with all of this back and forth with Putin and Zelenskyy in the past few days, it has occurred to me that a complete idiot like Trump might bring peace the Ukraine. What if Trump can come up with some manageable scenario where Putin can exit the Ukraine gracefully while Zelenskyy can limit his land losses to Russia. Right now, it is highly unlikely but still possible nonetheless.

Trump doesn’t know a lot about the Ukraine or Russia and isn’t looking to learn much. Oddly this puts him in a position of having few preconceived notions about how things will turn out. He is a blank slate. He just wants peace so he can snag a Nobel Peace Prize and if he has to force two warring parties to make peace then that is what he will try to do. Since he also has an inflated sense of his abilities, he might be so oblivious to the reality of these two enemies that he might also suggests something crazy enough to work.

I am more than a little dubious that this will happen but, unlike almost everyone else on Earth, expect the unexpected with Trump. I mean I never thought he would President and look how that turned out.

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One of the historical debates I remember in school was why did so many German Jews stay when they could see what Hitler was doing. Wasn’t the coming Holocaust obvious to them? Of course, anyone living after post-World War II know this but how could someone living at the time know it. No one until World War II could imagine such a horror as happening. Now, however, the world remembers the Holocaust as an example of how things can go terribly wrong with Facism and Nationalism. So much so that it taints every reference to Facism/Nationalism. People could end in concentration camps if this goes on much longer. Unlikely but still has to be seriously considered given our knowledge of history.

I am thinking about this now because friends recently discussed leaving the country because of Donald Trump. I am not talking about Ellen Degeneres or Rosie O’Donnell either. People I know. And my first thoughts were why on Earth would they leave the country. Things just aren’t that bad. But, because Donald Trump is Donald Trump, I have to question myself — what if I am wrong?

The key to getting out is to leave before it gets too bad. It is best to leave while you can still get your money out and other countries are accepting political refugees, before the madness turns from you are a terrible person to you are so terrible that deserves to die. So, because I am Gay and stand very near to people Trump hates, I need to assess the situation. There must be some sweet spot between leaving too soon and leaving too late. Right now I still have a great deal of hope and I am not particularly worried.

I just can’t imagine my neighbors sitting idly by while I get sent to a concentration camp. Even the ones that voted for Trump would raise the alarm and, so far, I think I am right. Every Trump outrage has been met with some resistance and, while under tremendous strain, Democratic institutions are functioning as they should. It doesn’t mean that this won’t change.

Trump is arresting immigrants and shipping them off to foreign country jails without due process. There are people who argue that potential immigrants don’t deserve due process because they aren’t citizens and therefore are denied the Constitutional
Rights Americans have to prevent autocratic rule breaking. The vast majority of Republicans seems to be willing to go along with this in order to stay in power. So we have a bully with a strong authoritarian streak we need to keep our eyes on.

Right now this all seems manageable but I continue to have this nagging feeling of what if I am wrong. The problem with Trump isn’t the man but his voters. I honestly can see what people see in him. All I see is a buffoon, a clown unworthy of his office. I didn’t think he would be elected president and yet he was which means I am missing something really important about his voters.

I clearly don’t understand them, their grievances or their anger. This is what scares me then. Maybe I am so out of touch that I am misunderstanding all the signals which are telling me to leave. Again, I don’t think so but it is a gamble on my part which makes me think I might end up like the German Jews who staid because they thought things would get better. Am I blinding myself to the obvious and keeping my sunny disposition about the future here in America because I can’t see what everyone else is seeing? Does this mean I will end up on a train car to Auschwitz?

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I try not to read too much news as I find it depressing and unhelpful. I am sorry but there is only so much time I am willing to give to Donald Trump’s shenanigans. There has to be more life than complaining about him so I was struck by a friend’s post in Facebook about Trump. I missed it and it was indeed shocking. Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, prostrated himself before Donald Trump in order to ensure that his company is exempt from Trump’s tariffs.

This isn’t the way government is supposed to work. Trump’s whole theory behind the tariffs is that he wants to bring back jobs to American workers. Yet, Cook, a large company with a large contingent of Chinese labor, bends the knee, buys a present for Trump and is now free from the high tariffs on Chinese manufacturing. Cook supposedly agreed to house more manufacturing in USA but the details don’t sound very promising. It sounds like a lot of paperwork on how Trump’s Team defines foreign made for Apple while allowing Apple to continuing making its phones in China.

So what did American Labor get out of this deal? Vague promises. All Cook had to do was throw a little gold Trump’s way and then, in public, kiss Trump’s abundant ass which I am pretty sure was the most unpleasant part of the whole deal for Cook. I am sure he would have preferred a much quieter deal without the cameras and the transfer of the gold present.

But that isn’t the way Trump operates. He doesn’t think tit for tat is wrong, he doesn’t think accepting gifts from anyone may be suspect, and he likes people to bow before him. I am not naive enough to think this doesn’t happen. It probably does. What is troubling is that Trump fails to see the problem with his behavior and that Cook consented to such a naked display of corruption.

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What is happening in Gaza is horrible and, with no possible solution that both sides will agree to, it will continue to be horrible.

The idea that defunding Israel will somehow stop it is absurd. Donald Trump is an idiot and no competition for the evil genius of Benjamin Netanyahu. So you are more than welcome to dream on with that but be prepared to be disappointed.

The only device left in Hamas’ arsenal is pictures of dying children which tells you everything. When all else fails, dying children will do the trick. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work. There are dying children everywhere, why this particular subset of dying children should get more attention than the other dying children in the world is debatable. Why are the dying children in South Sudan any less worthy of our attention than the dying children in Gaza?

Dying children always occur during war. It is a terrible awful fact. Children died when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7. So when pro-Palestinians try to guilt the West into supporting their side because of all the dying children. I find it difficult to take their complaints seriously when Hamas has the blood of children on their hands.

But Israel is eliminating the Palestinians in Gaza. Probably but how has October 7 made this situation better. Indeed, it has made the Palestinians situation in Gaza a good deal worse and Hamas, instead of surrendering which would save their civilian population, continue this losing strategy in the hopes that the world changes their mind and turn on Israel.

The problem for the Palestinians is what is the world willing to do about it. Israel has an overwhelming military force, advanced technology and atomic weapons. Gaza has dying children, bombed out building and Hamas. What can change this dynamic? More attacks like October 7? Pictures of dying children? Good luck with that.

It’s not as if Israel’s stance is above reproach. It most certainly is. Israel has definitely pursued policies that have robbed Palestinians of their land. On the other hand, the leadership of the Palestinians have pursued a strategy that is even more alienating to the West than Israel’s. What advantage have they gained since October 7? They probably will lose control over Gaza. Since 1948, all that the Palestinian leadership has been able to achieve is less and less territory and lots and lots of dead children.

So, by all means, continue to show pictures of dead children as the Israelis take over Gaza. All those martyrs were worth another crushing defeat.

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I don’t know why Russiagate is such a big deal. It may be a little shady but it falls within the acceptable shadiness of American politics. I know Republicans want to arrest Barrack Obama and the Democrats are calling Tulsi Gabbard a liar. Gabbard is talking about Russia’s ability to hack voting machines while Democrats are talking about campaign money going to Trump or, at least, anti-Democratic PACS. Republicans will investigate and prosecute and will be disappointed.

The idea that the Russians were using cash to influence the 2016 election seemed like a weak argument to begin with. I agree that the Russians aren’t supposed to spend money on American politics but if they did and their candidate wins, I’m not sure where the problem is. The American people voted and, sadly, found the Russian propaganda more convincing. That is on the Democrats. They choose a terrible candidate and ran a shitty campaign.

Then again the Democrats accusing Trump of being a Russian mole is hardly refuted here. If the Russians contributed cash to anti-Democratic organizations, they were clearly hoping for a Trump victory. The Democrats have every right to tell the story and make the charge of Trump being a Russian asset. They may be wrong but when has hyperbole been absent in a political campaign. For example, Trump called Zoran Mamdani a Communist. Mamdani, by any reasonable assessment, is a Socialist but calling him a Communist makes hims sound so much more horrible. Trump knows it and that is why he used the word Communist.

It would be easier to consider Gabbard’s accusations against the Obama Administration’s use of government agencies against his political opponents if Donald Trump was a model of probity but he most certainly isn’t. Trump gleefully threatens anyone who opposes him with government investigation. Why is it OK for Trump to investigate and Obama can’t? Isn’t this just regular campaign malfeasance?

It is just more screaming about nothing that matters to the average man and woman on the street. It won’t convince Trump supporters to abandon him and it won’t elect Democrats to office. It is political noise. Distractions from the tariffs and Medicaid and anything that has an actual effect on people’s lives. This meaningless noise will absorb media attention until it doesn’t.

Oh yes, then there is the Epstein files. I pretty sure that the Democrats will be disappointed with any release of the Epstein files. If the Biden White House had evidence that Trump was having sex with underage girls, I am fairly certain they would have released it during the 2024 campaign. They may have evidence that he had been to Epstein’s island and that he was friends with Epstein but I doubt there is any smoking gun because if they had that evidence why in God’s name didn’t they release in the 2024 campaign? I mean not releasing it would be some serious campaign malpractice.

And don’t say it is because Democrats would never do that shit because I don’t believe you.

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I don’t know who the genius behind the Sydney Sweeney American Eagle ads is but surely this person deserves a raise. They created a significant amout of buzz. A lot of people are talking about it. Hell, the ad might being getting more buzz than Donald Trump the king of manipulating the media for buzz.

The ad is both ambiguous enough for American Eagle to continue to use it and controversial enough for people to debate the true meaning. Even if American Eagle is force to withdraw it at some point, they got their money’s worth. Being a strictly Levi’s guy myself and not much of a shopper, I now learned all about American Eagle — a brand of jeans that I knew nothing about before I saw Sweeney struggling to pull up her pair of “good” jeans.

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The Texas Legislature is about to redraw the district boundaries for the US Congress in their state. Something, by the way, they just finished doing after the 2020 census. The problem is that the Republican majority in Congress is so small that Trump is trying to get Republican leaning states to gerrymander their district boundaries in order to gain more seats in 2024 election. All of this is perfectly legal and will probably happen.

California Democrats have threatened to redraw the congressional districts in their state if Texas follows through with their plan. Again all perfectly legal. In the meantime, real problems are being ignored in order to jerry rig Congress into something easier to control. Of course, this has to be done because the present political climate is so poisonous that achieving anything that resembles compromise is now impossible. Indeed, it is easier to redraw district boundaries than to work with one another for the good of their constituents.

Just one more distraction from all the real troubles of our country. Sadly it is both important and a colossal waste of time, money, and energy.

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I admitted the other day that I would love to see Donald Trump pardon Ghislaine Maxwell — mostly for the pure entertainment value of the experience. Upon thinking about, I have some reservations but I am still leaning to the hellfire that Trump will unleash. Here are my problems:

  1. Maxwell wants to get out of prison. She will do anything Trump wants to do so. This means, given her record of aiding and abetting a man engaged in human trafficking, she is capable of anything, so lying to protect Trump would be very much in her wheelhouse. Nothing coming out of her mouth can actually be trusted.
  2. Pardoning Maxwell is not the same as releasing the Epstein files that Trump’s Attorney General is so closely guarding. If Maxwell clears Trump without the release of the evidence regarding Epstein, we will probably learn nothing new.
  3. Given that Trump is the president she has to please, Maxwell had every reason to throw the Clintons and any other Democrat caught in Epstein’s web under the bus. So, in the short term, at least, Maxwell could torpedo the present Democratic Establishment. Personally, I am all for it. The sooner the debris from Democratic Party Past is cleared, the sooner we can get on with the business of defeating Trump and building a more representative Democratic Party. But it will be ugly. Really really ugly.

So pardoning her is not without repercussions. But one things is for certain, Donald Trump will release the hounds from Hell if he pardons Maxwell, and, if anyone deserves the Hounds from Hell, it is Donald Trump.