Tag: Trump

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You don’t press unpopular issues if there is little chance of winning. For example, Barack Obama did not support gay marriage when he first ran for president. Now, in my mind, a gay man, I realized that Obama could give a rats’ ass about gay marriage and was opposing it in order to win an election where a significant portion of the American public opposed gay marriage. It doesn’t make sense to lose an election for an issue, gay marriage, that would surely go down to defeat in most state legislatures. Gay marriage had to wait for another time because Obama could do other things that help me and, more importantly, every other non-gay citizen who, by the way, make up 90 percent of the population.

One of the great lessons of age is you realize that you don’t get everything you want. It is better to get some of what you want than to get nothing. You have to win elections in order to govern, this means compromise. This is how democracies work. Some changes have to wait. You have to deal with the reality you are in.

Which brings me to the New York legislature’s recent passage of a law that replaces mother and father with gestating parent and non-gestating parent in the law books. This change was necessary to make sure that the very few women who are transitioning into men (and vice versa) know that New York law is aware of their non-binary status and included in New York law.

I have numerous problems with this fishing expedition in an empty lake.

  1. 1.The binary division of man and woman has dominated Western Culture. It is still to be determined how this view might change but Trans activists are under the impression that they have won the battle. The vast majority of people, even in the liberal circles, still fall back on the terms like man, father,woman and mother. More to the point, nobody I know uses the terms gestating parent and non-gestating parent. None. So, why is this piece of legislation even necessary when no one uses the terms or even knows what these terms mean. But OK, I guess, gestating parent.
  2. Because no one uses gestating parent and non-gestating parent, it seems like a bad idea to incorporate such words into the law books when the more popular terms — mother and father are working without complaint. Why change them? Who requires this change? Oh, trans activists want this.
  3. Well, if Trans activists could deliver votes, I might be inclined to give them this change without complaint but they can’t. In fact, Republicans are using this issue as a cudgel to defeat Democrats. So, then, it might be bad idea to be pressing the issue. If they are demanding it, they don’t seem to have a grasp on reality. I would never have expected any Democratic body to push for gay marriage during the 1990’s. It would be political suicide. Are Trans activists so short sighted to see this an unhelpful in the struggle to defeat Trump and the Republicans.
  4. The Democrats control New York. How did this pointless and damaging piece of legislation get through these bodies when someone with power should have killed it long before it ever reached the governor’s desk? It is both shocking and depressing that Democratic power brokers were more interested in distributing symbolic prizes to loyal constituencies instead of winning elections. It is almost as if there is some Trump mole working at a high level in the New York Democratic Party.

I don’t want to lose this election but if it were to happen, I want the defeat to be about something big — something like Medical Care or the War in Iran and not whether to rename Mother’s Day to Gestating Parent’s Day.

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Another assassination attempt was made on Donald Trump. The Secret Service shot the man down. Early reports about the shooter are depressing. He thought he was God so I am not sure whether he had a coherent world view which prompted him to take this action but I doubt it. People who think they are God are uniquely incapable of coherence so this leaves us with crazy.

Early in the week two teenagers stormed a San Diego mosque — killing three people and then themselves. They hated about everybody, given the way it turned out, even themselves.

I don’t know what to do about the crazy people in this country. As a nation, we have pretty much decided to lump them in with the regular citizens which means they are left to their own devices. They can own guns, sleep on the streets, do whatever the Hell they want until they cross a line and then, in the worst case scenario, they are gunned down.

This is how we want to live and, lets be clear, no decision is a decision. We would rather have the occasional blood letting to addressing why unstable people with guns keep creating such havoc. Limiting gun availability is off the table. Let’s face it the 2nd Amendment makes this impossible. Furthermore there are too many guns out there now and there would be way too much resistance to confiscating guns to make it worthwhile. It is, for now, off the table.

But what about the other part of the equation dealing with all the crazy people. Well, this would require political will and money. Why this is controversial is beyond me? Mental health requires some level of preventative measure. Identify the people who are sick and get them the help they need before they break.

Think physical health. For example, we can control high blood pressure through medication. The first step, though, is identifying people suffering from it before we can help them. The same practice apples for mental health. We need to know who needs help.

But freedom, people shouldn’t be forced into a psychological check. We could require a yearly psychological check as a part of having health insurance. This would, at least, help us address the vast majority of the population.

Who is going to pay for all these checks? The government or the insurance companies? Forget I said anything.

So you see nothing is going to happen. We just have to accept that mad men with guns will be walking the street until they break and then after they are done killing, we will kill them or they will kill themselves. A little messy but the problem is solved without raising taxes.

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I guess we are at war although Trump and company say otherwise. There are war like things going on — the occasional missile falling on the UAE, the Straight of Hormuz being closed to commercial shipping (Sorry if it is open, the status changes so quickly I can’t keep track) and there is war like rhetoric flowing from both sides.

Who knows? There is no consistent trustworthy source of information. By that, I mean every one agrees that these people are supplying the facts as they are. So as far as I can see we are in a range of the war is already won to the war will go forever. The truth is somewhere in between those two mutually exclusive points. But where it is in this range I haven’t a clue.

I do know that the general feeling that comes from a nation at war, the rally around the flag feeling, is glaringly missing. Young men aren’t signing up at the recruiting stations. There is no grandmotherly figure urging us to grow victory gardens. People aren’t glued to their television sets watching the progress of the war — although this may be more a result of there being so little progress (either way) in this war.

Think World War II — everybody (this includes the Allies and the Axis, Democrats and Republicans, British and Americans, I mean everybody) knew it would end when the Germans and Japanese surrendered or vice versa. The finish line was apparent.

What will mark the end of the Iranian War is both a mystery and dependent on who you are talking with. Iranians say one thing. The Trump Administration says another. There are negotiations sometimes going on and sometimes stalled. Trump says nothing short of an Iranian unconditional surrender is unacceptable. Except that he is negotiating terms with the Iranian government and they are bring terms which are far from unconditional surrender.

Which begs the question when does a defeated enemy negotiate terms. If you lost the war, you take the terms that the winner gives you and hope for the best. This isn’t happening here so Trump’s victory claims are hollow.

There is very little, if any, personal investment in winning the war. The only consistent sentiment I can see is that everybody wants the war over as fast as humanly possible. Oddly missing is any idea of what victory actually looks like — just end the fucker. Hardly a war cry to rally the nation.

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I wrote about this the other day so I thought I had vented my spleen sufficiently but then I stumbled across Erick Erickson’s lame rejoinder regarding Trump’s threat to destroy a civilization and the spleen became inflamed again. Erickson rather blithely said he would have preferred that Trump had not said it but if it was between that and Trans Recognition Day then well wink wink nudge nudge. Get it.

Fuck you, Erick Erickson. How was this the choice? The choice was between Trump making a measured comment about the American involvement in a war (or military operation if you will) and one where he threatens to destroy a whole civilization. On Easter — the Christians holiest day. Trans people were no where in the equation until Erickson dragged them out.

This is yet another example of Trump supporters dismissing Trump’s terrible behavior. I don’t like what he said but it is better than the alternate. The alternate, in this case, is a president savvy enough to talk reasonably about a dangerous situation that he is responsible for. What needs to be addressed is Trump’s statement. Erickson needs to give critical feedback without the additional little zinger about Trans people which suggests, I might add, that there are no limits to Erickson’s support of Trump. This might have been a good time for Erickson to stipulate these limits instead of giving him limitless support for fear of what was it? Oh, yeah, Trans Recognition Day.

Trump has always been an asshole and will continue to be an asshole. He is what he is. But his supporters are a different story. To continue to support a careless president is madness particularly as he continues his dangerous meanderings through the world. Republicans and Conservatives must draw the line because they hold the power in Congress to stop him.

Just for the record, and I can’t believe I am suggesting this, the alternate is J.D. Vance. When that weasel starts looking good to me, and he is, you know we are in desperate times.

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I try not to talk about Donald Trump too much. It is a nearly impossible task as he is president of the United States and is always inserting himself into everything. So I apologize for yet another Donald Trump post and, after some consideration this more about Donald Trump’s apologists who, instead of trying to right Trump’s direction, just go along with him come Hell or high water.

I took a photo (see below)of an Instapundit post because Instapundit doesn’t provide a direct link to their post so this was the only way I could figure out how to get you the post in question without you paging through the whole blog which would leave you disheartened from the slavish loyalty to Donald Trump. It is a dirty job and I am willing to do it.

Trumps threat in this post, although a bit tamer than the one where he wants to bomb Iran back to the stone age one, is about annihilating a whole country. Instapundit’s defense is to point out that the Islamic aspect of Iranian civilization is actually a colonist civilization and is separate from actual Persian civilization. So, I am gathering, destroying Iran now is perfectly OK because it is Islamic and not in fact Persian.

Well OK thanks. I guess but that has nothing to do with the point Piers Morgan was making. Trump is talking about destroying an entire civilization because they won’t do what he wants. Maybe Trump has a less deadly idea of what destroying a civilization is but my interpretation is that all the Iranian people would be dead along with all buildings and all infrastructure. There would just be a pile of rubble after the Tuesday deadline. This is what Trump is threatening. The distinction between Islamic and Persian here is meaningless. Islamic rubble and Persian rubble are pretty much the same thing. Rubble.

Trump’s tone and Instapundit’s unwavering support are unhelpful in bringing about peace for the following reasons:

  1. The US does not have the fire power to flatten Iran. It would take nuclear bombs to accomplish total destruction and, call me naive, I am assuming nuclear is off the table. We could maybe level the center city of a few major cities but the rest of Iran would still be standing. Threatening annihilation is an idle threat and everybody knows it.
  2. It is also nearly impossible, at least in the short term, to destroy a civilization. Both Japan and Germany recovered quite nicely after World War II which was the last time we experimented with total annihilation. There were a lot of dead people and burned out buildings but both nations recovered. So, even, if the worst were to happen (see point 1) the Iranian people and their civilization will survive. The hated Iranian government might even survive.
  3. It does not help that Trump at numerous times have told us that the Iranian military and the nuclear capability has been destroyed while also threatening to destroy Iranian military capabilities. Sometimes even in the same statement. Which begs the question, what is left to destroy?
  4. The snarkiness about Muslim culture might feel good in the moment but keep in mind we are depending on some Muslim allies in the region for bases in which to wage the Iranian war. They are already taking missiles for us, they may feel a little less inclined to assist if they think we are antagonistic to Islam.
  5. If Trump wants to help the Iranian people, he might try to co-ordinate his war making with Iranian critics in Iran. He may be doing that but his tone suggests he is not. What reasonable Iranian ally would want to see the total destruction of their civilization?

Trump’s go to tone is the aggressive attacking of his opponents and then when you are done attacking them, go back and attack them again. It has worked well for him in the past but is wrong for this moment. He might even consider just keeping his trap shut for a few days just to see if people are more amenable to what he is trying to do. It is worth a try.

And, if he can’t see his way into keeping his trap shut, this is the time for his allies and supporters to tell him to do so. They are failing miserably in their responsibility here. Pissing off half the nation and our allies is a terrible strategy for winning a war. But, hey ho, at least I learned the difference between Muslim Iranian culture and Persian culture. Very helpful that.

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I once worked in a company where everyone, and I mean everyone, hated the Vice President for Human Resources. Being new to the corporate environment, I asked an executive in the know why then does she keep her job then. He just laughed and said she knows where all the bodies are buried, implying, in the process, that the President of the Company was greatly dependent on her discretion because of his many indiscretions. This analysis was proven correct because when a new President took over and she was the first person shown the door.

Which brings me to Pam Bondi. One of the dangers of firing and humiliating someone who knows where the bodies are buried is that person, once removed from office, can opt for revenge. I don’t know how angry Bondi is, I am hoping really pissed off, but she might, if sufficiently pissed off, be willing to reveal the graveyard map of Trump’s many indiscretions.

I do know that she was given an impossible job with high expectations from an unreasonable boss. Since she failed to satisfy the tyrant, her professional reputation in tatters because she tired to keep in happy and was humiliated by the boss in the process, she has absolutely nothing to lose any more and might be willing to point people to the relevant graves. Given Trump’s experience with troublesome ex-employees, I suspect he has paid Bondi off in some way or has something on her that will buy her silence. On the other hand, as the old saying goes: Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, we might be in for a summer of fun.

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Donald Trump acknowledged that he calls the Iranian military operation instead of a war because of legal reasons. Congressional Authorization, then, boils down to what the President calls his action rather than a universal understanding of what war is. You say potato, I say … Sorry, that old saying does work in writing but you catch my drift. Also, just as a reminder to the President, parsing phrases to avoid the unlikely retribution of Congress only really works if you don’t tell everyone what you are doing otherwise, in legal terms, this is known as a confession.

But, never mind — a military operation it is. This military operation has been going on a good month. Now I can quibble, and I will, about bombs and targeted assassinations being acts of war, but, say I wanted to be generous to Trump here, and agree with his characterization of those actions as being a military operation instead of a war.

When does a military operation become a war? And, just like that, an answer appears — when you send 50,000 ground troops. Bombing plus troops surely adds up to war. Or are we in some semantic Hell where Trump can call a war anything he wants and the Congress will agree to in order to avoid the wrath of Trump’s more rabid supporters. Apparently it is semantic Hell.

This whole operation is caught up in different definitions of words. Trump supposedly can only act without Congressional Authorization if it is an emergency. The USA would have to be in immediate and grave danger. My understanding of this power would be an impeding attack of USA was about to take place. There is absolutely no evidence that this was the case.

But the Iranians were trying to restart their nuclear program. No doubt, however, according to Trump the Iranian nuclear program was destroyed in a previous attack so the idea that so the idea that the Iranians had miraculously resurrected their nuclear capability to the point of an immenent attack is unbelievable. I am fairly certain there was more than enough time for Congress to review the problem and give its consent.

The Iranian, dare I call it, War is a disappointing display of hubris on the part of Trump and cowardice on the part of Congress. The whole point of Congressional Authorization for wars is that war is a serious business for a country. If we are going to take on such a responsibility it needs to come after careful consideration from the body that represents the all the people of the USA. For wars, particularly messy and potentially long term commitment wars to be won, everyone needs to be on board. This has not happened.

Instead we have semantic parsing of words so one man can drag a nation of 300 million plus people into a war dressed up like a military operation.

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The problem that many people, including myself, have with Donald Trump is he is, above all else, an asshole extraordinaire. That this detestable prick is president of the United States is both extremely depressing and a source of conflicting feelings about what he does.

So let me lay it out for my present destress:

  1. I dislike Donald Trump and disagree with most, if not everything, he does.
  2. I like the United States. It is my home.
  3. Donald Trump is the president of the United States.While I think he is a fuck up and fucking up everything he lays his tiny hands on, he also leads my country.
  4. I want my country to succeed whenever possible.

Which leads to the question, how can I hope for the best for my country with this miserable little shit running the country?

For example, the war with Iran. I think it is a big mistake. On the other hand, I think the world would be a worse place if the United States lost it. Muslim extremism, chaos in Iran and in the neighboring region, Women’s rights, Gay rights, things could get a whole lot worse if he were to lose. I can’t see how any of this would be better if the United States lost.

But, then, Trump is such a detestable man, if he wins, he will take credit for the victory and thus become even more insufferable. He will think he is smarter than he actually is and will continue governing as he had thinking he is wiser than he is. Thus making him even more likely to make even more risky decisions because he keeps rolling the dice and coming up a winner.

My one fond hope, though highly unlikely, is that Trump will be forced to work with Congress and our Allies to obtain a settlement that frees Iran from Muslim extremism while also bringing some peaceful resolution to the troubles in the region. So what I want, I guess, is for Trump to succeed only after he throws himself on the mercy of Congress and our Allies in order to ensure the victory.

Barring that, all I see is a mess.

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The one thing that keeps haunting me about Jeffrey Epstein is how many seemingly decent people knew something was wrong but did nothing. How can this be? Whenever I think the Holocaust, I think it couldn’t happen again because surely somebody would speak up before things got out of hand. Yet, Epstein Island, the Lolita Express come along to prove me wrong.

Jeffrey Epstein is a very small part of the problem too. There will always be assholes but, hopefully there are more decent people willing to stop injustice. This didn’t happen, at least, not for the longest time. Workers at his home, guests for the weekend all just continued on as if this was a normal way for a rich man to behave. Who am I to stop him?

There is the crux of the problem here when someone has money and power. What can I do stop him and, more importantly, what can he do to hurt me. Being in the warm sunshine of wealth and power has a price and that price is silence to their crimes. Who wants to tangle with a billionaire? They have more money and will probably win any legal struggle and not before bankrupting you.

The rich and powerful sometimes pay the price but, more often than not, they get off scot-free.

And it is still going on. All the lawyers redacting documents at the Department of Justice — marking through the names of the rich and powerful people who Epstein entertained — shielding them from justice for a few more years as many of these suspects race with death. Why exactly are they being protected? Their reputations?

I disagree that they should get this protection if all they did was spend the weekend with a known sexual predator, but it is something I could live with if I believed that anyone who partook of more than food, drink and place to sleep were being pursued. But, unless I am missing something, redaction also means the end of any investigation into what happened on Epstein Island, so I say fuck them, embarrass away. Embarrass so they lose their jobs. Embarrass so they can’t show their faces at Cape Cod. Embarrass so they can’t get their kids into elite schools.

If they are avoiding prison, they can, at the very least, be forced to hang their heads in shame. These seemingly decent people didn’t act and, if they get away with it, they will continue to keep their mouths shut as the rich and powerful continue their crime spree through 21st century America.

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I might be barking up the wrong tree here but something that rarely gets talked about regarding the Epstein Files really bothers me. Why didn’t the Biden Justice Department take action on these files when they had a chance in those long years between 2020 and 2024? It is baffling.

What is even more baffling is that until MAGA Republicans made an issue of releasing the Epstein Files, I was blissfully unconcerned about their existence or what should be done with them. I can’t recall it being an issue until the 2024 election which, in and of itself, reveals a lot. Nobody wanted to talk about it, so nobody was making an issue of it.

The question is why. I will take a wild guess here and say that they were protecting Democrats and Democratic donors from embarrassment.

Thanks to a bunch of MAGA yahoos the Epstein Files regained notoriety during the 2024 Election. They thought they could use them as a cudgel to swing at Democrats during the election. And swing they did. So hard, in fact, that Donald Trump, who probably thought he would never be forced to release them, joined in the swinging. It became an issue.

So Trump got elected, and some of his supporters continued to campaign, much to the chagrin of Trump, to see the Epstein files. Democrats, now in the minority and desperate find their own cudgel to knock Trump and the Republicans around, decided it was time for their release. Forced to do so by his Republican allies, Trump and his Justice Department redacted the files in such a way as to protect Trump and his allies while pointing the finger at the Clintons and their allies. Unfortunately for Trump, even the redacted files held a trove of information implicating Trump in Epstein’s crimes.

Now this is where things gets tricky for me. Thinking that I am a smart person and a political realist, I thought there could be nothing in the Epstein Files that actually could serve as hard evidence that Trump committed a crime. Why would the Biden Justice Department sit on evidence that could, if nothing else, damage Trump’s campaign for the presidency and elect a Democrat. Politics is rough and tumble enterprise. If you have to throw dirt on your opponent, your throw that dirt — particularly if the election is going to be close as the 2024 election was.

Yes, your allies might suffer some embarrassment or, even, God forbid, some legal trouble, but it would be worth it in order to defeat Trump — a right wing ideologue who’s personality was ill-suited for the presidency. You throw in everything plus the kitchen sink Well, apparently, I was wrong, you keep the most damaging information possible from the public.

Someone somewhere in the Biden Justice Department realized that they couldn’t just release files that were damaging to Trump. They would have to release all the files, even the ones damaging to Democrats, or nothing. Surprisingly, they opted for nothing. Protecting their allies was, then, more important than defeating Donald Trump.

Now here we are in the second year of a mad man wrecking the world all because people were afraid to reveal the bad behavior of their allies. To say that these people have distorted values is an understatement. They are willing to prop up a rotting system with an array of bad actors. Why? Well, maybe, we might be about to find out.