It Looks as if I Can't Stop Writing About Trump Just Yet

Believe me, I'd really like to. Believe me, I completely understand those of you who never want to read another word about him. But he hasn't gone away yet. From strong hints that he would run for President again in 2024, Trump has shifted, according to accounts so numerous and similar that it has become impossible to dismiss them, to the belief that he will be reinstated as President in August 2021.

Charles CW Cooke's National Review article ends by describing him, on the issue of his reinstatement, as "so unmoored from the real world that it is hard to know where to begin in attempting to explain him."

I agree. My only issue here is, this describes him in general, not just on this issue, and for a long time -- since long before 2015 -- not just recently, as Cooke seems to believe. The GOP has been following "a world-historical buffoon," as James Carville so beautifully put it.

The problem is not that Trump is a moron. There have always been lots of morons, and the world deals with them, keeps them safe and away from sharp objects and so forth. The problem with this moron is that he's got millions of dedicated followers. You'd think that more Republicans would know better. You'd think that more of the ones who know better would have the guts to stand up to him. 

 

I've got to stop over-estimating Republicans.

 

Good News Bad News

On January 20, 2017, I didn't think Trump's Presidency would last into 2018, not because I think the Republicans in Congress are good people, but because I thought they'd be smart enough to see that Trump would drag them down if they stuck with him. And he is dragging them down. #BigBlueTsunami Like Deep Throat said to Bob Woodward about Nixon's WH staff: "These are not very bright guys." (I'm talking about the present-day Congressional Republicans; in the case of Trump's WH staff, it's obvious enough that you don't need a muttering chain-smoking insider wearing a trench coat in a parking garage to point it out to you in the middle of the night.)

The good news, and also the bad news, is that the GOP is actually so dumb -- as a whole, with some isolated exceptions ignored by the majority as they scream and rave about what the party is doing to itself -- that they think they have to stand by Trump. They either can't see that that will lead to them losing huge in the mid-terms, or they do see that, but think they have no alternative.

The alternative is shockingly obvious: impeach Trump and remove him from office, as quickly as possible, go with Pence. That alternative was going to be better for them the sooner they did it. They've done huge damage to themselves as a party by putting it off for so long, but it still would be a better alternative than continuing to pretend that they don't see that Trump is a crook, a perv, a traitor and an unstable psycho.

The good news is that Republicans in Congress are actually going to stick with Trump. This is good news because it means that many of them will lose their seats to Democrats in November.

The bad news is that Republicans in Congress are actually going to stick with Trump. This is bad news because Trump has no respect for the rule of law or for anything else, and no decency, and no brains, and that, because Trump is what he is, we -- by "we" I mean human beings -- might all be dead by November.

Never say never. I suppose it's possible that eventually, some awful shocking thing oozing from the Trump administration could actually be awful and shocking to Trump's base, which would lead the Congressional GOP to action. But of course, Trump's base make the Congressional GOP look like a cross between the Algonquin Round Table and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. This is why a political party's elite should actually lead the base instead of following it.

(But the Republican elite is actually too dumb to grasp that, which is where I came in. From Lincoln, to this: that is a long, long, long drop, even when you consider that it took a century and a half.)

"Urban Democratic Elitists" Don't Exist

(PS, Later the Same Day: Okay, I was a little angry when I wrote that and blamed the rural Democrats for their own problems. I felt I was being lashed out at, and in return I lashed out. Maybe the best approach would be if all Democrats try to appreciate and support other Democrats, and to always think about how they themselves can improve what they're doing. All of this time and energy Democrats spend blaming each other for this and that could be much better spent making the case for the entire party and against the Republicans.)

I am so sick of hearing about "urban Democratic elitists." The Republican Party is the elitist party in the US; they're the ones cutting taxes for the rich and cutting support for the poor. The Republicans, not the Democrats, are the ones who marginalize, exclude, exploit and otherwise eff over people who are not white, male, and heterosexual and do their best to look like they just stepped out of the 1950's.

It's one thing to hear the "urban elitist" charge from Fox News and their proletarian dupes. It's quite another to hear rural Democrats blaming things on the Democratic elitists who don't exist. Rural Democrats such as Terry Goodin, a Democrat who's been in the Indiana House of Representative since 2000, and the subject of this below-average analysis from POLITICO. Goodin describes the main planks of his political platform as "the importance of public education, affordable health care and a living wage, and the moral necessity of addressing the opioids scourge."

And with that platform, he couldn't sell Hillary Clinton to his constituents over Donald Trump.

And it doesn't seem to occur to Goodin and some other rural Democrats that their inability to get out the vote for Democrats might be their own damn fault.

That maybe the divisiveness in the Democratic Party might be partly their own damn fault. Goodin complains about "identity politics." What the Hell is identity politics except another Fox News talking point, another spoonful of Republican snake oil swallowed by a lot of dumb people, not all of whom are Republicans? Goodin claims that the Democratic "urban elites" are no longer "inclusive," because they don't understand him and his people. But when people complain about "identity politics," what are they complaining about? They're complaining that traditionally-oppressed demographics, such as African-Americans, Native Americans and LGBT's, are finally, gradually -- PARTIALLY -- getting more rights and more equality. Who's resisting inclusion here?

From the POLITICO article:

"Goodin’s Indiana District 66 went heavy for Trump. One reason: It used to have plenty of decent-paying, union-boosted jobs, anchored by the Morgan Packing plant."

Jesus H Christ: These people were too dumb to see which party is pro-union and which party is rabidly anti-union? And the fault with people misunderstanding something so basic and plain lays with -- urban Democrats hundreds or thousands of miles away?

You want party unity, Terry Goodin? You want all of us Democrats pulling on the same rope? How about you enjoy a nice steaming-hot mug of STFU about these "elitist urban Democrats" who supposedly don't care about you and your constituents, and take a good long look in the mirror instead? Yes, there is some divisiveness in the party. But when it comes to who's responsible for it and who needs to shape up to fix it, you got it exactly backwards, my friend. We urban Democrats are on the side of people who need help, just like you are. You need to do a much better job of explaining to your friends and neighbors who we are.

When Lyndon Johnson was an up-and-coming politician -- you don't get a whole lot more Democratic and rural than Lyndon Johnson -- did he complain about that God-damned urban elitist FDR? No! He was known as a "110% FDR man." To the many people in the Hill Country outside Johnson City, Texas, who were suspicious of "that Commy" FDR, he explained to them who FDR really was. And that he was on their side.

Worked pretty well. Among many other things, it brought rural electrification to the Hill Country for the very first time, and it started a politician on his way to the White House, who signed the major civil rights bills of 1964 and 1965. Food for thought, maybe.

How Long Can This Go On?

What's today's most frivolous legal action: Trump attempting to get Bannon to cease and desist being interviewed in a book written by someone else, or Paul Manafort suing the Justice Department for arresting him? And when are Republicans in the White House and Congress going to start saying publicly what they've been saying privately, and what Republicans not in the White House or public office have been saying publicly all along -- along with the rest of the God damn world? Namely, that Trump is crazy, stupid, a crook, a thug, a traitor, and utterly unfit to lead?

How long will the Trump administration adhere to its policy of determining which side is the most popular with regard to an issue, and then taking the other side, after having lied by saying it would never do any such thing? (Today Jeff Sessions reversed Obama-era policy allowing states to declare marijuana legal, and Trump signed an executive order allowing offshore oil drilling in areas which have been legally off limits since the 1970's.)

How badly do the Republicans want to lose in November? Are some of them moles whose real endgame is to destroy the party once and for all? Or are they all just really, really, really stupid?

Dream Log: A Piece of Urban Real Estate, Status Uncertain

I dreamed that I and a few other poor people were living in abandoned cars parked on a rectangular patch which was about fifty yards wide and jutted out about twenty yards, like a cliff, from the middle of the downtown of a city with many tall buildings. One of the fifty-yard-long sides of the area was level with the developed city around it; off of the other three sides, there was a fifty-foot drop to another relatively-flat area covered with limited-access roads.

At the beginning of the dream there were three abandoned vehicles on this patch of ground, and five of us living in them. But more people kept moving in, some bringing vehicles or tents with them.

It was entirely unclear how much the ground we were living on was man-made and built up from the lower level, and how much had been there, with the upper level of ground, before humans built anything there. The mix of concrete and earth, and of jumbles of pipes and trees sticking out from the concrete and earth, made it very hard to tell which was more primary, and which had been added on.

At some point it started to seem to me like a good idea to encourage the homeless people who were passing through to stay and to build up actual homes here, and to invite other people to do the same. There was a vague feeling that developers were going to come and claim the -- the land? the building? whatever it was -- and have us all kicked out. They hadn't tried to do that so far, but it seemed to me that the more of us there were, and the more we had done to make the place a real home, the harder it would be to remove us, when and if someone tried.

Someone donated some solar panels and batteries to us, and soon that led to our having electrical heat on cold nights, and cold for storing food, and heat for cooking it without having to build a campfire. Some lawyers started working building a case for our right to stay, when and if someone challenged that right. We started to hold free classes on engineering, architecture and law, and used what we learned in those classes to strengthen our hold on the area, physically and legally.

Television news crews stopped in now and then to film and to talk to us. Republicans sometimes yelled and threw rocks or beer cans at us out of the windows of their trucks as they drove past on the street adjacent to and level with us. Democrats walked past and were much friendlier. Often they waved and flashed peace signs or held up clenched fists. Sometimes they stopped to talk.

No one was charged any money to stay there as long as they wanted, or to eat some of our food, or to take something else if they needed or wanted it: clothes, or books, or a phone, or what have you. It got to the point where the thing which most frequently made people want to move on was overcrowding. Ordinarily, I'm one of the first to feel crowded. But in this place, my fascination with everything that was going on outweighed my discomfort over the crowding.

A lot of what was going on was high-level education. It had started out with engineering, architecture, law and medicine, for purposes of the self-preservation of the community, and although classes quickly branched out into many other subjects, those four areas remained prominent among the things we taught. It had started out with people coming and helping us, but soon we were going out into the city to help people install solar power or repair their dwellings, or to represent them in court, or to check on their physical health, or to volunteer in other ways.

One area of the law in which we soon became well-known was advocating in favor of the legalization of marijuana. Some of the people who lived with us began to complain about the pot smoke, and so we agreed to smoke pot only in one designated area, which was designed to ventilate and blow the smoke away from the rest of the community, puffing merrily out through a smokestack and carried by the prevailing winds safely away from those who chose not to partake. If you wanted to get high, and you went to the designated smoking area, at some times it wasn't necessary to puff on anything, because enough people were in there going to town on bongs and joints, and the smoke was so thick, that if you just stood or sat there for a few minutes, you'd definitely get high.

Vegans were very prominent in our community. Some of them, unfortunately, were intolerant in their rhetoric about non-vegans. It was very tiresome. On the other hand, they made vegan food which, everyone agreed, was amazingly delicious.

I had begun there as a homeless person who'd crawled into an abandoned car to try to keep from freezing to death. But soon -- despite the overcrowding, which was definitely an issue for me -- it became the best home I had ever had.

And then I woke up.

How The Tax Bill Actually Could Be a Win For the GOP

I finally figured out one way that passing the most unpopular piece of major Federal legislation since the 1980's actually could be considered a win for the GOP. It still doesn't make them look like better human beings. In fact, if anything, it might make them look a bit worse.

You may recall that a few days ago there was a strange story about Paul Ryan: a supposedly reliable source said that the Speaker was very moody and had talked about not running for re-election in 2018, and ending his political career.

Then very quickly after that Ryan denied that this story was true. He said that everything was wonderful and that he had no plans to retire. But a lot of reporters continued to act as if the story hadn't been a mistake at all. And if anyone might be in a position to know where the story had come from and how reliable it was -- it's those reporters.

Now, all reliable polling on the planet shows that the Republicans just keep getting less and less popular, and that many Republican members of Congress might be retired after the 2018 mid-terms -- voluntarily or not. Whether Ryan runs or not, the Speaker of the House might well be a Democrat after the mid-terms. Their sinking popularity might mean that this tax bill -- if it passes. It hasn't passed yet -- might not just be the first big bill passed by the GOP during Trump's term in office -- it might be the first and the last.

And so, it might very well be that many Republican Senators and Congresspeople regard this bill as their retirement program, their golden parachutes. They feel they can't impeach Trump -- it doesn't make sense to me that they feel can't impeach him, but it seems more and more as if they feel that they just can't. Trump is extremely unpopular, and getting more unpopular, and he is dragging the rest of the GOP down with him. And so the Republicans in the Senate and House are cashing in, as big as they can, before the voters retire them.

Now, that's certainly evil, but it's a rational sort of evil, based on a realistic assumption about the future: the assumption that the Democrats will control Congress after the 2018 mid-terms, and that if the Republicans want to get richer by ripping of the US in a huge way, they have to do it right now, because right now is going to be their last chance.

But I could be completely wrong. Time after time I've given the Republican leadership way too much credit: Assuming that they wouldn't be dumb enough to actually impeach Bill Clinton in 1998 with the ridiculous case that Kenneth Starr handed them. Assuming that they would manage to nominate someone other than Trump. Assuming that they would impeach Trump rather than let Trump destroy their political careers along with his own. Etc, etc. Perhaps, again, in this case, they're simply less fact-based than I could imagine, and they really believe that their tax bill will lead to budget surpluses instead of deficits, and that they will win instead of lose in the mid-terms, and that Trump will be re-elected and go down in history as the greatest American President of all time, and that Trump and Sarah Huckabee are honest and straightforward. Etc.

Again, though -- the bill hasn't passed yet. There still is time for individual Republican legislators to figure that their prospects for a political career in the future are worth more than what they would make from the bill. Or even to have a fit of conscience, and to stand up and say that this bill is wrong and disgusting and that they can't vote for it for those reasons. No, I don't think that's likely. But you never know. It might play very well politically for some individuals in the GOP. And they actually are human beings.

The GOP in Alabama and Nationwide

The Alabama Political Reporter has published a good piece by Josh Moon in which he asks, referring to Roy Moore, how low the Alabama Republican Party is going to sink. Josh Moon draws a distinction between the Alabama GOP and the party nationwide, and it's true that some Republican politicians outside of Alabama have called upon Moore to resign from the special election for US Senator on December 12, and that no Republican politicians from inside Alabama have done so. Still, the parallels between the disastrous state of things in Republican-led Alabama on the one hand, and the Trump administration and the response of most Republican politicians nationwide to Trump, are striking. Moon asks:

"What’s it going to take before you realize that your family values, my-sin-is-better-than-your-sin, conservative voting approach has produced a state government filled with lying, cheating, sexually assaulting, money-grubbing criminals who have embarrassed us countless times, and on top of everything, mismanaged the hell out of this place?"

That's Moon talking about Alabama, but how many words would you have to change before it's a perfectly legitimate question to ask of Republicans in general, and of their response to the Trump administration in particular? One, at the most, I think.

That's the very same Trump administration whose Attorney General is Jeff Sessions, recently US Senator from Alabama, whose vacated seat Moore and Doug are Jones set to contest on Dec 12, unless Moore withdraws from the race over revelations of sexual misconduct with girls as young as 14 years old.

It seems clear to me that the bottom for the GOP is not going to be determined by ethics, but by poll numbers. There's hardly any leadership left in the party: they just keep following the crazy right-wing fringe of their base further and further down into a sewer of insanity. When -- not if -- the GOP and their polling numbers shrink enough, one of two things is bound to happen: either 1) their leadership will made a profound change and lead again, and say no the right-wing fringe, and no to accepting horrible behavior as long as the perpetrator gets elected, or 2) they will simply cease to be a significant factor in US politics, leaving the Democrats in firm control and the Greens and the Libertarians to scrap over the #2 spot. The most significant question is how much suffering the GOP will cause in the meantime. Assuming that 3) doesn't happen, that they don't literally kill off the entire human race.

Trump's Going on Vacation for 17 Days -- What Does it Mean?

Maybe it means nothing. Maybe it's as pointless to look for meaning in this as in many things Trump does, doesn't do and says.

Maybe it means he's close to taking a permanent vacation from the job, resigning, retiring, working on his golf game full-time. He doesn't seem to be having fun Presidentin', he's complained about how hard the job is.

Maybe new White House chief of staff General Kelly, highly praised by Republicans and Democrats alike as someone highly skilled in bringer order to chaotic situations, encouraged the Main Agent of Chaos to take a very long vacation, hoping to make the White House as orderly as possible during those 17 days. And maybe Kelly will make the administration ship-shape. Still, when/if Trump returns on August 21, how long could the most stable state of order last?

Mueller is not taking a vacation. He's begun issuing grand jury subpoenas. Talking heads on TV, specialists in such things, are opining that the President has already publicly admitted to obstruction of justice, in an interview with Lester Holt. Prosecutors are saying they've indicted people for much less than what everybody already knows Trump has done. More Congressional Republicans are standing up to Trump. Polls show that his approval rating among his base is finally beginning to erode -- which may be the only reason that more Republican Congresspeople have found the guts to openly talk about what a mess he is. Trump's job can't be getting more fun.

Go ahead, Donald: work on your golf game full-time. Except when you take the time to tell wildly-cheering crowds of sheer idiots about how your Presidency was sabotaged and ended by a witch hunt by the liberal elites.

You Can't Compromise With Extremists

I'm so sick of all these dodos saying, "Both parties need to sit down and compromise and work things out," as if the Democrats and Republicans were equally to blame for Everything. This seems to be more of the damage done by so-called objective journalism, making people unwilling or unable to see that one party may actually be more to blame for some things than the other.

In reaction to the latest Republican health-care proposal, the one they put together in a completely unprecedented secretive manner and apparently hoped to slip past the Democrats and parts of their own party into law while no one was watching, just what exactly would it mean for the Democrats to "come together" with the Republicans and "work together"? Only causing 11 million people to lose their health insurance instead of 22 million? Something like that?

"Working together" with them -- would that mean re-allowing only some of the toxins going back into our air and water since the Trump administration took over? Deporting only some of the people the Republicans want to deport based on ethnicity or religion? Acting as if only some of the things Trump pulls out of his ass are facts? Saying that maximum sentences are okay in only some drug-related cases? Allowing only some of their anti-LGBT legislation? Acting as if it's only sort of the 1950's?

What the Democrats need to is tell the truth and get out the vote. Not just every 4 years, and not just every 2 years, although even that, sadly, would be a great improvement. No, Democrats need to turn out for every election. Republicans do this better than we Democrats do, and that is why they keep kicking our asses even though there are more of us than of them. We need to vote for President, Senator, Representative, Governor, Mayor, City Council, School Board, Judge, Sheriff, Comptroller, EVERYTHING. There are more of us than there are of them! If we ACTED like it, their right-wing evil bullshit would be left in the past where it belongs.

Comey vs Ryan on Trump

Today, James Comey said:

"It confused me when I saw on television the president saying that he actually fired me because of the Russia investigation, and learned again from the media that he was telling privately other parties that my firing had relieved great pressure on the Russian investigation. I was also confused by the initial explanation that was offered publicly that I was fired because of the decisions I had made during the election year. That didn't make sense to me for a whole bunch of reasons, including the time and all the water that had gone under the bridge since those hard decisions that had to be made. That didn't make any sense to me. And although the law required no reason at all to fire an FBI director, the administration then chose to defame me and more importantly the FBI by saying that the organization was in disarray, that it was poorly led, that the workforce had lost confidence in its leader. Those were lies, plain and simple."

That's the kind of comment that earns you a reputation for honesty.

Today, Paul Ryan said:

"The president’s new at this. He’s new to government, and so he probably wasn’t steeped in the long-running protocols that establish the relationships between DOJ, FBI and White Houses. He’s just new to this."

That's not.

What Comey said was surprising, not because it's news to anybody that the President is a pathological liar, one of the biggest liars most of us have ever had the misfortune to encounter. It's surprising because so few of the leaders of the US and so few of the leading journalists covering US politics are coming right out and saying what we all know. It was also surprising because Comey is a Republican, and almost all of the Republicans are still doing what Ryan is doing: saying ridiculous things to try to cover up what everybody can plainly see: that the President is a liar, a crook, a bully, a sociopath and utterly unfit to hold any public office.

The Republicans are wasting so much time, saying so much weasel-mouthed infuriating garbage like Ryan excusing the President's behavior with comments like "He's new to this," letting things get so much worse and worse, before doing what we all know they are going to have to do: remove Trump from office. Unless they actually put that off until after the 2018 mid-term elections, when, if they still haven't done it, presumably enough of them will lose their seats to Democrats that removing Trump from office won't be up to them any more.

For years now, Republicans in elected office have failed to do the most important thing political leaders are supposed to do: lead. They've been following the base, and this has shown what following the base does: it makes the base stupider. It seems clear that the only thing which will cause the Republicans to impeach and remove Trump is Trump's approval rating sinking to a certain point. Now, if they were real leaders, and explaining to their constituents how horrible Trump is and how important it is to get rid of him, that would surely make Trump's approval ratings sink quickly. But that would be leadership. That would be integrity. That would be country over party. That would improve the party, give it some dignity. That would be the sort of thing Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt did. But of course, today's Republicans are just about exactly the opposite of Lincoln and Teddy. One of the last times I can remember a Republican elected official leading instead of following was during the 2008 Presidential campaign, when John McCain was taking questions at a campaign event, and a woman in the crowd said some birther nonsense about Obama, and McCain corrected her. I don't like John McCain very much, but unlike Paul Ryan, he does seem to have at least some principle and backbone.

Although today, at the hearing where Comey was testifying, McCain was very interested in Hillary's email, and at one point addressed Comey as "President Comey." McCain insisted that Comey was setting a "double standard" because the FBI investigation into Hillary's possible improper behavior with her emails was now closed, and this investigation into the Trump administration was not.

Yesterday McCain seemed very troubled by the state of the Trump administration. It seems we can't be sure which McCain we're going to get from one day to the next. He may not be the man to turn the GOP toward leadership, toward integrity, and toward doing the right thing with Trump.

Trump Is Threatening GOP Lawmakers

Trump is threatening Republican Congresspeople and Senators with consequences if they don't pass the messed-up GOP replacement for Obamacare, and pronto. (News flash: the Republican repeal-and-replace bill is going nowhere pronto.)

What consequences? That's the question those Republicans are asking themselves if they're smart, I think. Trump's approval rating is 37% and dropping. One poll says that only 3% of Trump voters regret voting for him. But I think people may be giving that poll too much weight. I think that questions which are equally important, or more, are: how many people who didn't vote in the 2016 Presidential election, or voted for Stein or Johnson or someone else, now regret not voting for Hillary? Over 110 million people eligible to vote didn't vote, and Johnson got 4,489,221 votes, Stein 1,457,216, and 1,884,459 votes were cast for someone other than Trump, Hillary, Stein or Johnson. That's over 117,830,896 people who didn't vote for either Trump or Hillary. What do they think of Trump? how will they be voting in the future? Maybe I'm missing something, but I can't imagine how the numbers add up to anything but good news for Democrats and bad news for Republicans, and especially bad news for Trump and those Republicans seen as especially close to Trump.

Let me repeat that Trump's approval rating is 37% and dropping. The Presidency of the United States is the brightest spotlight in the history of the human race so far, it's the position which gives its occupant less room to hide than any other, and although Donald has his niche, the more that humanity in general gets a good look at him, the less they like what they see.

Most of the Republican Congresspeople and Senators who are not with Trump and Ryan on this health care bill are from districts and states which were either close in the Presidential election or went for Hillary. For those politicians, it may be worse for them if Trump supports them than if he doesn't.

The special election for Georgia's 6th congressional district will be held on April 18, to fill the seat vacated by Tom Price, who resigned to become Trump's Secretary of Health and Human Services. A lot of politicians are watching this special election very carefully. The 6th district has been Republican since 1979, since Newt Gingrich won the first of his 10 consecutive terms there from 1979 to 1999. A lot of those Republican wins since Newt won his first term have been quite lopsided. The 6th district in Georgia has been considered a very safe seat for the Republicans. But Donald Trump has a way if changing things. It looks quite possible that a Democrat, John Ossoff, could win the special election in April, despite the GOP spending a huge amount of money to try to keep the seat. If Ossoff wins, or even if he come close to winning, it could be seen as one more sign that Republican politicians don't need to feel threatened by Trump, except in the sense that being closely associated with him could hurt them.

"I'm Not On Obamacare"

Now, if the GOP succeeds in doing away with the ACA, and can convince their supporters who were on ACA plans and are outraged that the ACA is gone, and who still think Obamacare and the ACA are two completely different things, that the ACA disappearing is completely Obama's fault -- well, I guess that would be just more of the same. And speaking of Holy Shit: the Republicans, not just Trump but Republican legislators, are talking about building that fucking wall. "Mexico will pay us for it after it's done." You'd figure at some point their BS would become too stupid to fly anymore. However...

Open Letter To Robert Reich

Robert Reich on Facebook, 28. October 2016, recording a conversation he had with a Republican who disapproves of Trump but is afraid to say so:

"He: At least I’m no Giuliani or Gingrich or Pence. I’m not a Trump enabler.

"Me: I’ll give you that."

Wrong, Robert. Don't give him that. Don't let him off the hook. He is a Trump enabler, and so is every other Republican who doesn't speak up and lets people assume he or she approves of Trump. A Republican who claims to you in a private conversation that he's reasonable, but is afraid to behave in public as if he is reasonable, is not reasonable. Sometimes being reasonable requires the courage to let it show.

"Me: Wait a minute. Isn’t this how dictators and fascists have come to power in other nations? Respected leaders don’t dare take a stand."

You're absolutely right about that. Well, that's part of it: people who let fascists rise up in their own ranks, who are just cowards and won't speak up against it. Another part is the rest of the people letting the fascists and their cowardly colleagues get away with it. In this case by not giving Republicans nearly enough blame for Trump and other right wing monsters. That makes the rest of us enablers too. Trump will certainly not be the last prominent Republican fascist, he is not the only prominent Republican fascist now, and this is much too important for you and I too be polite about it.

I know that you and many other Democrats, including Barack Obama, want to be conciliators and foster a more civilized and respectful political discourse. And a more civilized and respectful political discourse would be a good thing.

But conciliation only happens when both sides give. You and Obama and other would-be centrist Democrats keep reaching out, and keep getting punched in the face and used for your trouble, and we all suffer from it. Obama appoints a Republican like Comey to the head of the FBI, where Comey perpetuates the same decades-long fishing expedition against the Clintons in which he participated back in the 90's when he was working for Kenneth Starr. (I know that Comey insists that he is no longer a Republican. He's a Republican and he lies about it.) Just one recent example of how conciliation doesn't work when it's one-way, when only one side is centrist. You need to wake up and realize that it has been decades since there has been anything like a reasonable Republican who's interested in working with Democrats for the good of all, and act accordingly. It has been a long, long time since any part of the GOP was still in any way the party of Lincoln. Teddy Roosevelt was the last thoroughgoing example of that. The Republicans who have spoken up against Trump aren't doing it out of friendship for the Democratic Party, they're just trying to keep the Republican Party from destroying itself. If they had ever been interested in working with Democrats, they would have spoken out against extremists in their own ranks long before anyone suspected that Trump was, or would become, a Republican.

Cheer Up, Everybody

And by everybody, I mean: Democrats. Republicans: don't cheer up. You have no reason to do so. As FiverThirtyEight, Nate Silver's website, points out, Trump really is losing badly.

The main question now is how many Republican Senators, Congresspeople, governors, mayors, judges, city councilpeople, dog catchers, etc, etc, Trump will drag down to defeat with him. And there's nothing for Republicans to cheer up about there, either. A few months ago very few people were talking about the possibility of the GOP losing control of the Senate. Now we see headlines like: it's possible the GOP will keep the Senate, despite Trump.

Yeah, and it's also possible that your guy won't keep shooting his mouth off, GOP. And that the huge and growing wave of prominent Republicans renouncing Trump won't convince a lot of people that Trump isn't really your guy. It's possible, in sort of the same way that monkeys might fly out of my butt.

Also possible, and much more likely, in my opinion, is that Trump has peaked, and that his peak looked a whole lot bigger in the GOP primaries than it will from here on in, and that it's all downhill from here for him. Nothing gets more people more intimately familiar with someone than running as a Democrat or Republican for POTUS, and it's possible that the better the general public gets to know Trump, the less they will like him.

It also seems that as people get to know Hillary better, less of them hate, distrust and fear her. Seems some people are beginning to see through some of the bullshit which the GOP had flung at her over the decades and which stuck. Trump's base may never get tired of hearing nonsense about Hillary's emails and about Ben-Gazhi; the general public seems to be getting tired of that sort of thing.

And that's just more bad news for Republicans, because, unlike the jaw-dropping things Donald says, the smear campaign against Hillary is mainstream Republican stuff. The less Republicans succeed in making Hillary look bad, the more dishonest and unprincipled they themselves seem.

And all of this is before we even get to the actual issues of policy on things like women's health and freedom to choose, green energy, tax breaks for Big Oil, labor unions, whether one fears that the government has too much control over corporations or that corporations have too much control over the government, whether the best way to help all of us is to help the poorest and weakest or the richest and most powerful, whether or not everyone should have access to affordable health care, whether too many tax breaks are available to corporate CEO's making 8 figures a year or more or to teachers and firemen making $50,000 a year or less, whether GLBT's don't have enough rights or whether they have too many, whether or not it's time to revoke the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, whether or not drilling for oil and gas in national parks would be a good idea, whether it should be easier or more difficult for people in the US to obtain guns and ammo, whether or not Obama is a secret Kenyan Muslim Communist, etc. On every single one of those topics, the majority of voters favor Democratic positions more than Republican ones.

Imagine if undecided voters actually educated themselves on things like candidates' positions on things like those, and voted accordingly... *sigh* That'd be sweet.

Straight Democratic ticket is what I recommend. On some ballets you can still choose a straight party ticket. On others you have to try a little harder to make sure you actually voted the way you wanted to. Resources like Vote 411 are helpful with that. Or ask your local Democratic Party HQ.

I'm Glad Republicans Are Denouncing Trump

I'm glad that Republicans are denouncing Trump, because I want the biggest possible Democratic landslide in November. But the denunciations are hypocritical, because the only thing Trump is doing wrong from a Republican perspective is saying and doing things publicly which they say and do behind closed doors, away from live cameras and microphones -- usually, hello, 47 percent Mitt! Hey, by the way, when are we going to see your tax returns?

It's nice to see Republicans distancing themselves from Trump, but it's too bad that non-Republicans are giving them too much credit for doing so, saying what swell people they are. Do you see any Republicans anywhere denouncing the systematic Republican interference with the attempts of ethnic minorities to vote? Has there suddenly been a huge drop in Republican support for oil companies? No, because, of course, that would mean a big drop in financial support by oil companies for Republican political campaigns, and, just in case you hadn't noticed, Republican politicians are for sale.

Is there a big wave of Republicans suddenly acknowledging the findings of climatology and supporting wind, solar or other clean energy? Are Republicans suddenly in favor of affordable health care care for everyone? Women's right to choose? LGBT rights? Spending on education and infrastructure? No, no, no, no and no.

In fact, in a way it's not so great to see Republican politicians distancing themselves from Trump, because they're doing so out of a desire to be elected or re-elected in November, which doesn't fit in at all with the aforementioned Democratic landslide.

Don't suddenly forget who these people were their whole careers long, right up until they spoke out against Trump, and who they continue to be.

Stave Off Idiocracy, Call An idiot an Idiot Today!

I suppose nothing should surprise me which goes through the weak minds of people who think that it'd be a good idea to elect Donald Trump President of the United States, but the level of their idiocy has still managed to surprise me twice in the past couple of days, both times having to do with the intersection of politics and show biz.

First, fans of the movie Murrkin Sniper were outraged because the star of the movie, Bradley Cooper, attended the Democratic National Convention, in clear violation of the agreement he signed, never to attend any political function without the approval of Murrkin Sniper's director, Clint Eastwood --

Wait, wait. I forgot: Cooper never signed such an agreement. No actor has ever signed such an agreement upon making a movie, no author when publishing a book, no recording artist, ever, either (more about that shortly).

And even if Cooper did sign such an agreement, which apparently exists in the minds of some of his most moronic fans, not even Clint Eastwood, enormously overrated as an artist, and dumb enough to talk to an empty chair at a Republican National Convention for the length of an entire excruciating sketch, not even Mumblin' Clint is stupid enough to think he has any right to tell actors what their politics need to be just because they've slummed and worked with him.

Then I saw a headline about how Katy Perry's fans were furious with her for singing at the Democratic Convention. I stared at that headline and strained to imagine how Katy Perry's fans could think this was somehow there business. I've thought of her music, her videos, her general demeanor all as exuding messages like "You are amazing, everybody!" and "Sexuality is fun, hahaha!" rather than things like "Bow down in shame before Jesus!" Has Katy Perry recorded some gospel music? Yes, it turns out she has, but not since she was a teenager in the earliest months of the 21st century. But what is ticking these fans off is not what Katy did when she was a teenager, but before that: she was born to evangelical pastors. Because of how she was born, some of her Republicans fans are trying to tell her what's what. Those parents are still around, and they're still evangelicals and they're Republicans, but as far as I can tell they still get along with Katy and treat as if she has the right to live her own life.

Oh, but parents is one thing, fans is another.

I might not ever get famous before I die. I hope I do, and that I get a whole bunch of crazy fans I can insult in my daily life and in my work and in interviews, and take out restraining orders against. But just in case I die before I get fans who expect things from me, let me just say to each and every one of them right now, in a special individual posthumous message for each one: Fuck you, you psycho. Get your own damn life. This one was mine.

Of course, that's just me talking to imaginary posthumous fans. How Cooper or Perry react to their psycho fans -- is no more my business than what Cooper or Perry do is those fans' business.

But I feel like I do have more of a right, somewhat more, to say to the MSM: tell us all how stupid these people are. Say it, on the air and in print, don't wait until the commercial break to explode, if you do that you're wasting the best you have to give: the TRUTH. Tell us how stupid, how frigging INSANE they are. Tell them. Admit to yourselves, at long last, that that whole thing about "objective journalism" was a mirage and a mistake. Give the public the benefit of your knowledge before morons who think the politics of movie stars and recording artists is their business take over the whole damn country because you were too "objective" to warn anyone. When one side is normal, clear-thinking people and the other side is a bunch of idiots and sociopaths, and you struggle and strive to act as if both sides were the same, that's not objectivity, it's a strong right-wing bias.

Sing us out, Katy, Snoop!

Only Republicans Can See The Problems With Solar Energy, The Rest Of Us Are Blind To Them

In my last post I mentioned Forbes sadly telling its readers that this solar craze is based on bad math and gummit handouts. Since then, researching the topic, the only additional naysayers I've found are the Wall Street Journal, Howard C Hayden, author of The Solar Fraud: Why Solar Energy Won't Run the World, and the Heartland Institute, a wonderful buncha guys who, like Hayden, whom they love, say that humans aren't affecting the climate, and have advocated for Big Tobacco and fracking. Recently they've decided they're not going to disclose their sources of funding anymore, and they disrupted the Pope's Council on Climate Change... they're just a bunch of peaches, I tell ya!

Only Republicans can see what a huge disaster and waste solar energy is. Everyone else, each and every one of us, has been duped. And I don't believe that the Amazon customer reviewers who gave Hayden's book 5-stars even though they're hard-core environmentalists who've worked in the solar-energy industry for 40 years -- are actually hard-core environmentalists who've worked in the solar-energy industry for 40 years. Cry wolf often enough and people can start to tell that you're lying sacks of crap.

The bullshit they make up: that electric cars, sadly, aren't actually environmentally friendly because the lithium-ion batteries cause... some sort of huge ecological disaster. Ask a Republican about it. (No-one else has has heard of this problem, because we're all blind, blind, yaaaarggghh!) That smoking hasn't ever made anybody sick. And second-hand smoke much, much less than that! That electric windmills are killing vast quantities of birds who apparently think the windmills are their mothers. (Or something. Again, you'll have to ask a Republican. They're the only ones alert to this environmental danger.) That fracking is safe, that natural gas is clean and that nuclear power is ultra-safe. (I don't know how Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima don't directly contradict that last point, but that's okay: just ask a Republican!)

That solar energy will either make a pitifully tiny amount of electricity, or so much electricity that it will overload and blow up all the grids -- cause, it's not as if an electrical generator could ever be turned off, or anything like that.

Republicans were glad when Angela Merkel of the conservative CDU became Chancellor of Germany in 2005. But I bet that since 2005 meetings between Merkel and Republicans have occasionally been tense, because Merkel has spearheaded a massive increase of government-subsidized solar energy in Germany, which now has more overall installed photovoltaic capacity than any other country on Earth and generates more than 30% of all of its electricity from renewable sources. Somehow those well-meaning, abysmally-ignorant environmentalists got to Merkel. It's only a matter of time now before Germany explodes. (Or something. Once again, you're going to have to ask a Republican, because the horrible dangers inherent in these developments in Germany are way over everybody else's heads.)

Politics And Idealism

There's that great scene in Wall Street where Lou Mannheim (Hal Holbrook) tells Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) that money "makes you do what you don't want to do." One of two great scenes with Holbrook and Sheen.



Well, politics also makes you do what you don't want to do. Even more so than money. There's no way to get anything done in politics without behaving in an un-idealistic manner, without compromising, without doing something you find odious in order to achieve something you consider noble -- if, that is, you're the type of politician who cares at all about doing good for other people. It seems that politicians who are not that type can thrive. And you have to deal with them.

I'm not saying this as a criticism of politics, but as a criticism of idealism. It's correct that idealism is portrayed as the opposite of realism, because idealism avoids dealing with reality.

In Germany, where the Green Party started and where it wields great power, there have long been two factions known as the Realos and the Fundis. "Realos" translates to "realists," or to "realpolitikers," and "Fundis" to "fundamentalists," or "idealists." Joschka Fischer is the most successful Realo in the history of Germany's Green Party. He was one of the 3 most powerful politicians in Germany during Gerard Schroeder's administration, from 1998 to 2005, and he has often been #1 in polls of Germany's best-liked politicians. Who are some of the leading Fundis? Screw them, I'm not going to even do them the courtesy of naming them, because, like all political idealists, they're just morons who are in the way, who never help anyone but the other side. They accused Fischer of selling out for starting to wear suits and ties when he became Germany's Foreign Minister in 1998. Namby-pamby bullshit like that. They're in the way. Joschka Fischer, Realo, realist, real politician, an effective player who gets all sorts of things done, getting Greens into a state administration for the first time in 1998 being just one of a long list of things he's gotten done, Fischer realized that if he continued, as Foreign Minister, to wear the traditional Green uniform of jeans and sneakers, the way he dressed would impair his effectiveness as he met with the most powerful politicians on Earth and brought the Green agenda of environmentalism, gay rights, military de-escalation, etc, etc, with him. Fischer continued to kick ass, and didn't seem too bothered by the Fundis wailing that wearing Armani constituted selling out.

The Green Party has been able to achieve and hold positions of power, political elected offices, because Germany, like most countries, has proportional representation. An individual doesn't have to win a majority or plurality of votes in order to take office: Germans vote for parties, and if a party has more than 5% they're in. (Germany instituted the so-called "5% hurdle" after WWII to stop the proliferation of whacko fringe parties.)

Unfortunately for us Amurrkins, we in the US have winner-takes-all elections of individuals instead of proportional elections of parties, which means that there are no Green Realos in the US. The US Green Party has only hopeless fools, Fundis, idealists, morons who are in the way. A vote for Green in the US is a vote for the GOP, because only the GOP or the Democrats are going to win any election, and if you like Green politics you should vote for the Democrats because they're much closer to to your positions than the Republicans. Yes, some Democrats are going to do things and vote for bills which offend you. But Republicans are much worse, and you are responsible for them and their racist, sexist, anti-science, pro-oil politics just as much as any Democrat if you vote Green. If you voted Green in the US you gave up the real power of your vote in favor of idealism, which is a dream world. Greens in the US like to think of themselves as fighting the Matrix,



but in the US, the Greens are a part of the Matrix.

The 2014 Mid-Terms And The Can't-Do Attitude Of Some Leftists

First of all, let's try to shake off this reluctance to call ourselves Leftists if we're left of center. Let's get a grip and speak plainly: yes, there are some Communists in the Democratic Party. And there are some Nazis in the Republican Party. And that's one of the long list of reasons why the Democratic Party is much better than the GOP.

It irks me so to hear people say that they "usually" vote Democratic, but they hate doing it, because Democrats and Republicans "are all pretty much the same," all "bought and paid for by corporations," and "things will never really change" because "those in power" don't want them to.

Things change all the time, so there's one of those premises I don't buy. You can read about some dramatic changes about to occur as a result of the mid-terms in this brief, accurate and depressing portrait of Jim Inhofe, who will probably be the next chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The stupidity of the readers' comments on the article are even more depressing, matching the stupidity of the US public's behavior this past Tuesday. There may be changes in Social Security and Disability checks received by the elderly and disabled. There will be changes in policy on women's rights, minority rights, affirmative action, voting rights, LGBT rights -- if you feel that Americans have entirely too many rights and that poor people have it too good and that it's time for billionaires to finally catch a break, the election returns should gladden your heart.

No, I don't buy the premise that Democrats and Republicans are the same. It astounds me that anybody could think they are.

Corporations aren't all the same either. Yes, they contribute heavily to the campaigns of both Democrats and Republicans, but they don't all contribute the same to both sides of the aisle. It'd be pretty stupid for oil companies to give as much to the party trying to take away their tax exemptions -- that'd be the Democratic Party, including that notorious wimpy centrist corporate stooge Barack Hussein Obama -- as they give to the party stamping at the bit to open up Keystone XL and remove restrictions on fracking -- yes, Sparky, that'd be the Republicans.

Also, one of the two big parties is trying to reverse the cynically-named Citizens United and VASTLY REDUCE the amount of money given to political campaigns, and no, Sparky, it ain't the GOP.

I don't buy that "those in power" all want the same things. I put the phrase in quotes because power constantly shifts, there isn't one clearly-defined Them running everything, that's a paranoid fantasy. In reality, individual human beings wield power, people who by no means always agree about everything, even when they're in one and the same of the 2 major parties. party. To those who feel powerless -- if you occasionally try to DO something to change the things which dissatisfy you, your chances of actually having more power yourself are better than if you just sit there and bitch and vote 3rd-party and stupidly, smugly believe yourselves to be morally superior to all of us who are actually trying to do something.

I'm talking to you, Greens. Yes, I blame you for Inhofe, and yes, I still blame you for W beating Gore, and no, I don't want to try to explain to you how the one individual most responsible for bringing global warming to the attention of the general public is different from the Republican POTUS whose administration shored up the near-unanimous Republican position that global warming isn't happening, if you really are too stupid to see the difference.

Oh well. About all we can do now is hold on for 2 years, dig in and try to keep the GOP from killing us all, and hope that the stupidest among us re-learn what they learned between 2010 and 2012 and then forgot again.

Yeah, I'm a little bit steamed. Just a tad.

There's No Difference Between Democrats and Republicans Except --

-- on women's health and freedom to choose, green energy, tax breaks for Big Oil, labor unions, whether one fears that the government has too much control over corporations or that corporations have too much control over the government, whether the best way to help all of us is to help the poorest and weakest or the richest and most powerful, whether or not everyone should have access to affordable health care, whether too many tax breaks are available to corporate CEO's making 8 figures a year or more or to teachers and firemen making $50,000 a year or less, whether GLBT's don't have enough rights or whether they have too many, whether or not it's time to revoke the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, whether or not drilling for oil and gas in national parks would be a good idea, whether it should be easier or more difficult for people in the US to obtain guns and ammo, whether or not Obama is a secret Kenyan Muslim Communist...

That's just off the top of my head. But yeah, if none of the above matters to you, you might as well vote Green. Or Libertarian. Or not at all, depending on what kind of stupid you are.