John Bolton's Scathing Indictment of Trump

From the excerpts of John Bolton's new book that have been released by the Washington Post, New York Times and Wall Street Journal, the worse views of Donald Trump by myself and many others have been confirmed.  Indeed, it is even more crystal clear that Trump is unfit to occupy the White House and constitutes a danger to both Americans and the rest of the world.  He is every bit the self-centered malignant narcissist that many in the mental health field said he was back before the 2016 election and afterwards.  Worse yet, he is utterly ignorant on a host of issues and has little interest in educating himself. While all of this has been known for years now, Bolton failed his duty to America by refusing to testify during the impeachment proceedings and put a lucrative book deal ahead of the interests of the nation.  For that he needs to be repeatedly condemned. A column in the Washington Post looks at the horrors Bolton reveals and also excoriates Bolton for his failure to expose Trump far earlier. Here are highlights:

Welcome to the “Never Trump” camp, John Bolton. It took you a long time to get there. In 2016, you gave this vapid celebrity TV host credibility on the right by praising him for having a “serious” foreign policy vision. You did not join the “War on the Rocks” letter signed by 122 Republican national security professionals, including me, warning that Donald Trump would “make America less safe, and … diminish our standing in the world.” You chose to ignore those warnings. Was it perhaps because you wanted to preserve your lucrative career as a right-wing lecturer and talking head — and your ambitions for higher office?

But better late than never. Reading the excerpt from your new book in the Wall Street Journal, along with summaries of it in The Post and the New York Times, makes clear that you are confirming in every particular — and then some — the indictment of Trump by his critics. The president is every bit as ignorant, incompetent, capricious and heedless of the public interest as many of us have been saying while you stayed silent or supported him.

You write: “I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my White House tenure that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations,” and you provide ample documentation for that grave charge. Indeed, you quote Trump asking Chinese President Xi Jinping to help his reelection campaign.

You then demonstrate Trump’s contempt for human rights when you quote him urging Xi to build concentration camps for China’s Uighurs — “which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do.” His hostility for human rights abroad was matched by his hostility for human rights at home: You quote him saying that reporters were “scumbags” who should be jailed or even executed for failing to reveal their sources. This makes clear that the private Trump is every bit as odious as the public one.

While obsequious to our enemies, you note, Trump is hostile to our friends. You reveal that during a NATO summit in July 2018, Trump said he had decided to withdraw from NATO if the allies did not commit to massively increase their defense spending within six months. According to your book, he dictated a message to you: “We will walk out, and not defend those who have not [paid].”  He did not carry out that threat because — mercifully — he has the attention span of a hyperactive 6-year-old.

You confirm that Trump’s ignorance is as vast as his ego, writing that he did not realize that the United Kingdom was a nuclear power and that he wondered if Finland was part of Russia. You also suggest that Trump is simply unhinged: You quote him saying it would be “cool” to invade Venezuela and that that nation is “really part of the United States.”

In sum, your book presents an ironclad case that Trump is utterly unfit for the office you thought he should win in 2016. As you write: “He second-guessed people’s motives, saw conspiracies behind rocks, and remained stunningly uninformed on how to run the White House, let alone the huge federal government.”

But here’s the thing you may not realize. The stronger you build the case against Trump — and you have constructed a titanium-strength case — the more you indict yourself for not speaking out sooner. You could have helped stop Trump in 2016 — when all of his deficiencies were evident — by endorsing his opponent. More recently, you could have aided the impeachment managers by testifying under oath. But you refused to do that.

And yet you have the gall to write: “Had Democratic impeachment advocates not been so obsessed with their Ukraine blitzkrieg in 2019, had they taken the time to inquire more systematically about Trump’s behavior across his entire foreign policy, the impeachment outcome might well have been different.” There is no one who could have done more to aid a wider impeachment inquiry than you — but you failed us when the nation needed you most. You are, as Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D.-Calif.) says, an author but not a patriot.

I hope you will at least now have the decency to campaign against Trump as he seeks a second term to continue the calamitous foreign policy you now decry.

Why People Talk About Invoking the 25th Amendment

Watch Donald Trump's bizarre press conference declaring a bogus national emergency on the US/Mexico border and then watch old news reel footage of Hitler's unhinged ranting or Mussolini posturing and suddenly one realizes what the 25th Amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution. We have a mentally deranged individual in the White House which is the real national emergency facing the nation.  Everything else pales in comparison (national Democrats worried about ancient black face photos in Virginia need a serious reality check).  We face a clear and present danger that needs to be addressed immediately.

As for Trump's still loyal supporters, they are really no better than the ugliest elements of Hitler's base who were motivated by anti-Semiticism, hatred and bigotry, or greed over the money they thought they could make.  I truly do not know how otherwise sane Republicans cannot feel alarm as Trump increasingly shows he is not tethered to objective reality.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the bizarre spectacle that took place in the White House rose garden.  Here are highlights:  

There was no sign of alarm as administration officials and journalists assembled Friday in the Rose Garden under a perfect blue sky amid unseasonable warmth. Nor was there any sense of crisis conveyed by President Trump, scheduled to fly to his Mar-a-Lago resort later Friday.

His topic demanded utmost solemnity: The situation on the border is so dire, such a crisis, that he must invoke emergency powers to circumvent Congress, testing the boundary between constitutional democracy and autocracy. But with the nation watching, Trump instead delivered a bizarre, 47-minute variant of his campaign speech.

He boasted about the economy, military spending and the stock markets (“we have all the records”), and he applauded the Chinese president’s pledge to execute people who deal fentanyl (“one of the things I’m most excited about in our trade deal”). He said Japan’s prime minister had nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize. He declared Ann Coulter “off the reservation” but praised his favorite Fox News hosts and celebrated Rush Limbaugh’s endurance . . . .

[H]e declared the “eradication of the caliphate” in Syria (his top general in the region begs to differ). He introduced his new attorney general, disparaged the Democrats’ “con game,” criticized retired House speaker Paul Ryan, invoked campaign promises, recited the “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan and pronounced his reelection prospects excellent. He pinged from regulations to Britain to MS-13 to “monstrous caravans” to an apocryphal story about women gagged with duct tape.

Oh, and he also mentioned his emergency declaration — specifically, that it isn’t necessary. “I didn’t need to do this,” he said in response to a question from NBC’s Peter Alexander. It’s just that the emergency declaration lets him build a border wall “faster.” He acknowledged that “I don’t know what to do with all the money” . . . Somewhere, administration lawyers were face-palming.

On Thursday came reports that former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe had confirmed that Justice Department officials discussed the possibility of removing Trump under the 25th Amendment for incapacity. The president then spent the next 30 hours showing exactly why some people think him incapacitated.

Prayers and frantic reassurance: This is how Republicans deal with an erratic president determined to defy an overwhelming bipartisan majority in Congress, take money from the military (the Pentagon’s uses for it “didn’t sound too important to me,” Trump said) and set a precedent for future presidents to declare emergencies for their pet projects.

When President Barack Obama attempted a less aggressive use of executive power in 2014, Republicans denounced him as a “tyrant” and “dictator,” . . . Trump seemed not to have heard such warnings as he ricocheted from topic to topic in the Rose Garden. He carried a speech to the lectern but mostly ignored it as he spun fantasies.

Evidence that most of the illegal drugs pass through legal border crossings? “It’s all a lie.”  CNN’s Jim Acosta pointed out that border crossings are near record lows and illegal immigrants are not disproportionately criminal.  “You’re fake news,” Trump replied.

Playboy’s Brian Karem asked Trump to “clarify where you get your numbers.” “Sit down,” Trump told him, declaring that “I use many stats.” Minutes later, he pumped a fist in the air and departed.

“What about the 25th Amendment?” Acosta called after him. Trump’s performance had already provided a compelling answer.

Trump is not mentally well - and neither are those who continue to support him (e.g., evangelical Christians) and/or make endless apologies. 

Trump’s White House: Totally Out of Control

Elect an individual utterly unfit for office and expect chaos in the White House.  Elect a malignant narcissist and the chaos will be multiplied ten fold.  That's more or less the premise of Cliff Sims' new tell-all book, “Team of Vipers,” which goes on sale next week.  The portrait it paints of Der Trumpenführer and his regime of misfits ought to disturb, if not terrify, patriotic Americans.  The Washington Post secured an advanced copy of the book and provides a glimpse of the malfeasance and danger to democracy that Trump - and I'd add, Mike Pence - poses to the nation.  Despite all this, Congressional Republicans remain Trump's political whores giving him the political equivalent of daily fellatio.  Here are article highlights:

President Trump watched on television, increasingly angry as House Speaker Paul D. Ryan criticized his handling of the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville. He held the remote control “like a pistol” and yelled for an assistant to get the Republican leader on the phone.

“Paul, do you know why Democrats have been kicking your a-- for decades? Because they know a little word called ‘loyalty,’ ” . . . Why can’t you be loyal to your president, Paul?”

The tormenting continued. Trump recalled Ryan distancing himself from Trump in October 2016, in the days after the “Access Hollywood” video in which he bragged of fondling women first surfaced in The Washington Post.

“I remember being in Wisconsin and your own people were booing you,” Trump told him, according to former West Wing communications aide Cliff Sims. “You were out there dying like a dog, Paul. Like a dog! And what’d I do? I saved your a--.”

The browbeating of the top Republican on Capitol Hill was one of the vivid snapshots of life inside the Trump White House told by one of its original inhabitants, Cliff Sims, in his 384-page tell-all, “Team of Vipers,” which goes on sale next week and was obtained in advance by The Post. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Sims, who enjoyed uncommon personal access to Trump, recounts expletive-filled scenes of chaos, dysfunction and duplicity among [Trump] the president, his family members and administration officials.

Unlike memoirs of other Trump officials, Sims’s book is neither a sycophantic portrayal of the president nor a blistering account written to settle scores.

The author reconstructs in comic detail the Trump team’s first day at work, when the president sat in the residence raging about news coverage of the relatively small size of his inauguration crowds, and White House press secretary Sean Spicer scrambled to address it.

Spicer had worked the team “into a frenzy,” and it fell to Sims to write the script for his first statement to the media. . . . And in their rush to satisfy the impatient [Trump] president, nobody checked the facts. Spicer, he writes, was “walking into his own execution.” . . . The book’s scenes are consistent with news reporting at the time from inside the White House.

Sims depicts Trump as deeply suspicious of his own staff. He recalls a private huddle in which he and Keith Schiller, the president’s longtime bodyguard and confidant, helped Trump draw up an enemies list with a Sharpie on White House stationery. “We’re going to get rid of all the snakes, even the bottom-feeders,” Trump told them.

Sims recounts that Kelly once confided to him in a moment of exasperation: “This is the worst [expletive] job I’ve ever had. People apparently think that I care when they write that I might be fired. If that ever happened, it would be the best day I’ve had since I walked into this place.”

As White House director of message strategy, Sims regularly met Trump at the private elevator of the residence and accompanied him to video tapings — carrying a can of Tresemmé Tres Two hair spray, extra hold, for the boss. At one such taping, about an hour after Trump had tweeted that he saw MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski “bleeding badly from a facelift,” the president sought feedback from Sims and Spicer. . . . [Trump] The president then raged about the “Morning Joe” program on which Brzezinski appears and instructed Spicer, “Don’t you dare say I watch that show.”

At times, Trump evinced less rage than a lack of interest. Sims recounts one time when Ryan was in the Oval Office explaining the ins and outs of the Republican health-care bill to [Trump] the president. As Ryan droned on for 15 minutes, Trump sipped on a glass of Diet Coke, peered out at the Rose Garden, stared aimlessly at the walls and, finally, walked out. . . . Apparently, he had had enough of Ryan’s talk. It fell to Vice President Pence to retrieve Trump and convince him to return to the Oval Office so they could continue their strategy session.

He paints Spicer, counselor Kellyanne Conway and communications adviser Mercedes Schlapp in an especially negative light, calling Conway “the American Sniper of West Wing marksmen” and describing her agenda as “survival over all others, including [Trump] the president.”

Perhaps the book’s most cinematic chapter of chaos is “The Mooch Is Loose,” a reconstruction of Anthony Scaramucci’s 11 days as White House communications director. . . . “Can you believe this guy?” [Trump] the president told Sims. “He’s completely out of his mind — 

 Be very afraid.

Shutdown Is Pushing Farm Country to Breaking Point

Rural areas predominantly voted for Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, and now the chickens are coming home to roost as farming communities find themselves reeling as the Trump forced government shutdown grinds on.  Not that Trump has the slightest empathy for those being harmed since his sole concern is to be viewed as "winning" by his despicable base.  Yes, in many cases these voters brought their misfortunes upon themselves by voting for an individual utterly unfit to occupy the White House, but I do worry about the children and youths bearing the cost of their elders' bigotry and racism.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the spreading financial pain being experienced in farm country where some are set to default on mortgages or not receive payments key to their financial survival.  Here are article highlights:

In Georgia, a pecan farmer lost out on his chance to buy his first orchard. The local Farm Service Agency office that would have processed his loan application was shut down.

In Wisconsin’s dairy country, a 55-year-old woman sat inside her new dream home, worried she would not be able to pay her mortgage. Her loan had come from an Agriculture Department program for low-income residents in rural areas, but all of the account information she needed to make her first payment was locked away in an empty government office.

And in upstate New York, Pam Moore was feeding hay to her black-and-white cows at a small dairy that tottered on the brink of ruin . . . .  their last lifeline was an emergency federal farm loan. But the money had been derailed by the government shutdown.

Farm country has stood by President Trump, even as farmers have strained under two years of slumping incomes and billions in losses from his trade wars. But as the government shutdown now drags into a third week, some farmers say the loss of crucial loans, payments and other services has pushed them — and their support — to a breaking point.

While many rural conservatives may loathe the idea of Big Government, farmers and the federal government are welded together by dozens of programs and billions of dollars in spending.

Now, farmers and farm groups say that federal crop payments have stopped flowing. Farmers cannot get federally backed operating loans to buy seed for their spring planting, or feed for their livestock.

“This is real,” said Jeff Witte, president of the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture and New Mexico’s agriculture secretary. “You had farmers who were in the process of closing a loan or getting an operating loan. Now there’s nobody there to service those.”

All week, Joe Schroeder has been listening to shutdown stories pouring into Farm Aid’s hotline. There was the cotton farmer who could not get disaster assistance to help him recover from Hurricane Michael. The woman in her 90s facing foreclosure on her family farm. The dairy farmer trying to make one last attempt to renegotiate her loan with the Farm Service Agency.  “You cannot reach anybody,” Mr. Schroeder said.

Many farmers, including David Nunnery, 59, of Pike County, Miss., have stayed unflinchingly loyal to Mr. Trump and his demands for $5.7 billion for a border wall, even as the shutdown threatens their livelihood.  “I may lose the farm, but I strongly feel we need some border security,” Mr. Nunnery said.

But Davinder Singh, 41, the Georgia pecan farmer, said the border wall was not worth the price he had already paid — losing out on the chance to finally buy his own orchard instead of working other people’s land.

States like Wisconsin, which lost at least 638 dairy farms last year, are particularly vulnerable.  The new farm bill passed in December contained programs to help dairy farmers weather swings in the market, and to help farmers struggling with stress and depression get mental health services. But those programs cannot be put in effect during the shutdown, said Senator Tammy Baldwin, Democrat of Wisconsin.

“We’re being played the stooge,” he said.

In New York’s farming communities, the shutdown is heaping additional pain onto farmers after a year of tariff losses, destructive weather and labor shortages because of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdowns.

In Ovid, N.Y., it has left John Myer seething at Mr. Trump as he waits for at least $15,000 owed to him under the trade bailout. . . . “You could hardly call it a political stunt,” said Mr. Myer, who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. “It’s a personal power stance because he doesn’t really care about anything, I don’t think, besides himself.”

This week, as Ms. Moore, the struggling dairy farmer, sipped coffee at Sallie’s Country Kitchen on Main Street in the 2,500-person town of Nichols, she said it felt like her financial problems were closing in. . . . . With little money left for food, she went to a food pantry on Thursday afternoon, picking out frozen fruits and vegetables, pasta, bread, dried beans and some onions to cook when her 9-year-old grandson visited later in the week.

For those who voted for Trump and continue to support him, I will pull out my tiny violin.  For others who oppose Trump's toxic regime and are suffering harm, especially children, I do feel great sympathy, even as Trump cares nothing about their pain.  All that matters is "winning" to satiate his foul ego.  Not my president.

Trump Propels the Government and Markets into Crisis

The image above must be how Vladimir Putin looks today in Moscow: a big grin as America lurches into crisis at the hands of Putin's operative (see this piece in Forbes) in the White House.  He's also smiling as the United Kingdom approaches the Brexit cliff and chided Theresa May to NOT hold a second referendum to avoid economic catastrophe - something that Putin sought when Russia played a major role in stoking pro-Brexit frenzy in the UK before the ill-fated vote in 2016.  Meanwhile, the knuckle draggers in Trump's base are too blinded by their hate of others and overt racism to see that they are cheering on perhaps the worse traitors in American history.  On top of all of this, Virginia governor Ralph Northam - a neurosurgeon - described Trump as mentally ill.  Be very afraid for where the nation is headed.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the looming crisis facing the United States due to the Trump goaded on by Fox News where to be an anchor one must (i) have a lobotomy or (ii) be a raging white supremacist (think Tucker Carlson).  Here are article highlights:  

Trump began Thursday under siege, listening to howls of indignation from conservatives over his border wall and thrusting the government toward a shutdown. He ended it by announcing the exit of the man U.S. allies see as the last guardrail against the president’s erratic behavior: Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, whose resignation letter was a scathing rebuke of Trump’s worldview.

At perhaps the most fragile moment of his presidency — and vulnerable to convulsions on the political right — Trump single-handedly propelled the U.S. government into crisis and sent markets tumbling with his gambits this week to salvage signature campaign promises.

Hawks condemned his sudden decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria. Conservatives called him a “gutless president” and questioned whether he would ever build a wall. Political friends began privately questioning whether Trump needed to be reined in. . . . And officials said Thursday that Trump is preparing to send thousands of troops home from Afghanistan, as well.

Leon Panetta, who served as defense secretary, CIA director and White House chief of staff for Democratic presidents, said, “We’re in a constant state of chaos right now in this country.” He added, “While it may satisfy [Trump’s] need for attention, it’s raising hell with the country.”

Panetta said the resignation of Mattis is a singular moment and that his letter, which underscores how Mattis sees Trump’s approach as misguided, “puts the security of the nation right now at some degree of risk.”

Trump has been isolated in bunker mode in recent weeks as political and personal crises mount, according to interviews with 27 current and former White House officials, Republican lawmakers, and outside advisers to the president, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer candid assessments. “There’s going to be an intervention,” one former senior administration official said speculatively. “Jim Mattis just sent a shot across the bow. He’s the most credible member of the administration by five grades of magnitude. He’s the steady, safe set of hands. And this letter is brutal. He quit because of the madness.”

On Thursday, as criticism over his capitulation on the wall grew louder by the hour, Trump complained to friends and aides that he felt politically shackled. He had no plan but was spoiling for a fight. By midday, the president picked one.

“I’ve made my position very clear: Any measure that funds the government must include border security. Has to,” Trump said Thursday. He added that he had “no choice” but to act.

Trump’s advisers acknowledged that the funding may not be secured in the end but boasted that the spectacle would be remembered favorably by his base voters as proof of his mettle.

[O]n Fox News Channel and across conservative media, there was a brewing rebellion. Prominent voices urged Trump to hold firm on his wall money and warned that caving would jeopardize his reelection.

Rush Limbaugh dismissed the compromise bill on his radio program as “Trump gets nothing and the Democrats get everything.” Another firebrand, Ann Coulter, published a column titled “Gutless President in Wall-less Country.” Trump even found resistance on the couch of his favorite show, “Fox & Friends,” where reliable Trump-boosting host Brian Kilmeade chided him on the air Thursday.

“One of the things he’s most vulnerable to is mockery and mockery by his own supporters,” said Mark Krikorian, a leading anti-immigration activist.  Members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus joined in the rebellion.

The administration drama comes at an especially perilous juncture for Trump, following his thumping at the polls in November’s midterm elections. Democrats are preparing to take control of the House in January and to use their subpoena power to investigate Trump’s finances and conduct in office, as well as alleged corruption in the administration.

Meanwhile, Republicans, in their last gasp of unified government, are divided. . . . . Inside the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump was in what one Republican close to the White House described as “a tailspin,” acting “totally irrationally” and “flipping out” over criticisms in the media.

Even as aides argued to him that protesting over wall funding could deprive government workers of paychecks over Christmas, Trump warned in private conversations with Republican lawmakers that they all would get “crushed” if they did not get the wall built.

If Republicans get "crushed" it will not be due to the wall funding but rather because they were cowardly political whores who failed to put the interests of the country first.  As for Trump, who doesn't read or know history, someone needs to slip him a brief summary of what happened to an equally unhinged Nicolae Ceaușescu in 1989. 

Chief Justice Roberts Rebukes Trump

Chief Justice John Roberts.

Since entering the White House - thanks to Electoral College electors failing to protect the nation as envisioned by the Founders - Donald Trump has proceeded to undermine and destroy public confidence in America's core institutions, including but not limited to the federal court system.  No doubt Vladimir Putin is smiling broadly as he watches from afar and sees Trump trying to replicate Putin's dictatorial rule in Russia.  Typically, the Supreme Court remains aloof from political disputes - although this may change given Trump's placement of rank partisans Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh on the Court - but this week Chief Justice John Roberts found he could no longer bite his tongue and issued a rebuke to Der Trumpenführer's attacks on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that sounded like it came from Hitler or Putin's playbook of how to emasculate the judiciary and turn it into a tool of autocracy.  A piece in NPR looks st this rare but much needed rebuke of the foul individual at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  Here are highlights:

In a rare moment of direct criticism, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts rebuked President Trump on Wednesday for [Trump's] the president's description of a federal judge who ruled against his asylum policy as "an Obama judge." Within hours, the president fired back on Twitter, launching an unusual conflict between the executive and judicial branches.

"We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges," Roberts said in a statement. "What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them."

"That independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for," Roberts said. Roberts has never responded to any president so directly and publicly before.

Trump's initial response was to a ruling by U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar, who issued a temporary restraining order against Trump's asylum policy Monday, saying it violated a provision of the asylum law. Trump called the decision a "disgrace," adding, "this was an Obama judge and I'll tell you what, it's not going to happen like this anymore."

Trump went on to excoriate the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals which he wrongly blamed for the ruling, saying, "Every case that gets filed in the Ninth Circuit, we get beaten. And then we end up having to go to the Supreme Court, like the travel ban, and we won," Trump said.

However, Tigar is a district court judge who sits in San Francisco, and the Ninth Circuit, which encompasses much of the western United States, has not yet been asked to rule on his decision. Tigar's decision is also temporary, lasting only until Dec. 19 when the judge is scheduled to hear arguments about whether the order should remain permanent.

This is not the first time Trump has criticized a judge. During the presidential campaign, he called one judge with a Spanish surname who ruled against him a Mexican, alleging he couldn't rule fairly because of Trump's proposal to build a wall along with border with Mexico and called another who ruled against his travel ban "a so-called judge."

The American Bar Association joined in the criticism of Trump's comments.

"Disagreeing with a court's decision is everyone's right, but when government officials question a court's motives, mock its legitimacy or threaten retaliation due to an unfavorable ruling, they intend to erode the court's standing and hinder the courts from performing their constitutional duties," said ABA president Bob Carlson.  

The Post also noted the rare rebuke to the man seeking to destroy the independent judiciary: 

[I]t appeared Roberts, when asked to comment by the Associated Press, was eager to counter Trump’s criticism Tuesday of District Judge Jon S. Tigar. The Roberts statement did not mention the president by name.

The chief justice is an aggressive defender of the judiciary and has frequently expressed concern about attacks on its impartiality, whether they come from the left or the right. In 2010, he called the timing of President Barack Obama’s criticism of the court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC during the president’s State of the Union speech “very troubling.”

Roberts made it clear last month that he is particularly sensitive about the image of the courts because of the recent partisan battle over the confirmation of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.

At an event at the University of Minnesota just after Kavanaugh’s confirmation, Roberts said the court served “one nation” and not “one party or one interest.”

“Our role is very clear: We are to interpret the Constitution and laws of the United States, and to ensure that the political branches act within them,” he said. “That job obviously requires independence from the political branches. The story of the Supreme Court would be very different without that sort of independence.”

Bob Woodward's New Book Paints a Damning Portrait of Trump

Those of us of a certain age remember the Watergate crisis all too well.  We also remember two journalist who helped pave the way for the ultimate removal of Richard Nixon from the Oval Office: Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.   Now, Woodward has a new book about to hit the stands entitled "Fear" that paints a picture of a hideous and unstable regime that has Der Trumpenführer in spittle flecked rants. The Washington Post looks at the book that once again tells Americans that Trump is unfit for office, something that was always obvious to Americans not consumed by greed and religious and racially based hatred of their fellow citizens.  The take away?  Be very, very afraid. Secondly, Trump voters DO deserve to be viewed with contempt and derision.  Here are article highlights (read the entire piece): 

Woodward depicts Trump’s anger and paranoia about the Russia inquiry as unrelenting, at times paralyzing the West Wing for entire days. Learning of the appointment of Mueller in May 2017, Trump groused, “Everybody’s trying to get me”— part of a venting period that shellshocked aides compared to Richard Nixon’s final days as president.

The 448-page book was obtained by The Washington Post. Woodward, an associate editor at The Post, sought an interview with Trump through several intermediaries to no avail. The president called Woodward in early August, after the manuscript had been completed, to say he wanted to participate. The president complained that it would be a “bad book,” according to an audio recording of the conversation. Woodward replied that his work would be “tough,” but factual and based on his reporting.

A central theme of the book is the stealthy machinations used by those in Trump’s inner sanctum to try to control his impulses and prevent disasters, both for the president personally and for the nation he was elected to lead.

Woodward describes “an administrative coup d’etat” and a “nervous breakdown” of the executive branch, with senior aides conspiring to pluck official papers from the president’s desk so he couldn’t see or sign them.

Again and again, Woodward recounts at length how Trump’s national security team was shaken by his lack of curiosity and knowledge about world affairs and his contempt for the mainstream perspectives of military and intelligence leaders.

At a National Security Council meeting on Jan. 19, Trump disregarded the significance of the massive U.S. military presence on the Korean Peninsula, . . . . After Trump left the meeting, Woodward recounts, “Mattis was particularly exasperated and alarmed, telling close associates that the president acted like — and had the understanding of — ‘a fifth- or sixth-grader.’ ”

In Woodward’s telling, many top advisers were repeatedly unnerved by Trump’s actions and expressed dim views of him. “Secretaries of defense don’t always get to choose the president they work for,” Mattis told friends at one point, prompting laughter as he explained Trump’s tendency to go off on tangents about subjects such as immigration and the news media.

White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly frequently lost his temper and told colleagues that he thought the president was “unhinged,” Woodward writes. In one small group meeting, Kelly said of Trump: “He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in Crazytown. I don’t even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I’ve ever had.”

Reince Priebus, Kelly’s predecessor, fretted that he could do little to constrain Trump from sparking chaos. Woodward writes that Priebus dubbed the presidential bedroom, where Trump obsessively watched cable news and tweeted, “the devil’s workshop,” . . . .

A near-constant subject of withering presidential attacks was Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Trump told Porter that Sessions was a “traitor” for recusing himself from overseeing the Russia investigation, Woodward writes. Mocking Sessions’s accent, Trump added, “This guy is mentally retarded. He’s this dumb Southerner. … He couldn’t even be a one-person country lawyer down in Alabama.”

With Trump’s rage and defiance impossible to contain, Cabinet members and other senior officials learned to act discreetly. Woodward describes an alliance among Trump’s traditionalists — including Mattis and Gary Cohn, the president’s former top economic adviser — to stymie what they considered dangerous acts.

Cohn came to regard the president as “a professional liar” and threatened to resign in August 2017 over Trump’s handling of a deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville. Cohn, who is Jewish, was especially shaken when one of his daughters found a swastika on her college dorm room.

Trump was sharply criticized for initially saying that “both sides” were to blame. At the urging of advisers, he then condemned white supremacists and neo-Nazis, but almost immediately told aides, “That was the biggest fucking mistake I’ve made” and the “worst speech I’ve ever given,” according to Woodward’s account.

Dowd then explained to Mueller and Quarles why he was trying to keep the president from testifying: “I’m not going to sit there and let him look like an idiot. And you publish that transcript, because everything leaks in Washington, and the guys overseas are going to say, ‘I told you he was an idiot. I told you he was a goddamn dumbbell. What are we dealing with this idiot for?’ ”

Later that month, Dowd told Trump: “Don’t testify. It’s either that or an orange jumpsuit.” . . . . “I’ll be a real good witness,” Trump told Dowd, according to Woodward.  “You are not a good witness,” Dowd replied. “Mr. President, I’m afraid I just can’t help you.”  The next morning, Dowd resigned.

America: Tyranny of the Minority, and Rogue Nation Status

Watching Donald Trump - in my view, the most morally bankrupt and dangerous narcissist to ever occupy the White House - wreak havoc on the world order, igniting a trade war that will cost American consumers dearly, shredding long standing alliances, and even seeking to over through the current government in the United Kingdom (all of which likely thrills Vladimir Putin) makes it hard to reach any conclusion other than America is a rogue nation.  Disturbingly, many of Trump's tactics both domestically and internationally mirror the conduct of Adolph Hitler in the early 1930's.  Meanwhile, Trump's rural base cheers as the destruction takes place and the eunuchs in the Congressional GOP do nothing to rein in or remove an unfit occupant of the White House.  How did we reach this point where ignorance and racial hate and bigotry are celebrated by the party controlling the federal government?  A piece in The Economist - one of the few things currently stable in the UK - blames a design flaw in the United States Constitution which now allows a tyrannical and toxic minority of rural voters/states to negate the wishes of the majority of citizens. Even with massive Democrat turnout, it will prove difficult to alter the downward spiral of American politics and, I would argue, morality.   Here are article highlights:

EVERY system for converting votes into power has its flaws. Britain suffers from an over-mighty executive; Italy from chronically weak government; Israel from small, domineering factions. America, however, is plagued by the only democratic vice more troubling than the tyranny of the majority: tyranny of the minority.

This has come about because of a growing division between rural and urban voters. The electoral system the Founders devised, and which their successors elaborated, gives rural voters more clout than urban ones. When the parties stood for both city and country that bias affected them both. But the Republican Party has become disproportionately rural and the Democratic Party disproportionately urban. That means a red vote is worth more than a blue one.

The consequences are dramatic. Republicans hold both the houses of Congress and the White House. But in the three elections in 2012-16 their candidates got just 46% of the two-party vote for the Senate, and they won the presidential vote in 2016 with 49%. Our voting model predicts that, for Democrats to have a better than 50% chance of winning control of the House in November’s mid-term elections, they will need to win the popular vote by around seven percentage points. To put that another way, we think the Republicans have a 0.01% chance of winning the popular vote for the House. But we estimate their chance of securing a majority of congressmen is about a third.

This imbalance is partly by design. The greatest and the smallest states each have two senators, in order that Congress should represent territory as well as people. Yet the over-representation of rural America was not supposed to affect the House and the presidency. . . . America has one party built on territory and another built on people.

By having elected politicians appoint federal judges, the American system embeds this rural bias in the courts as well. If Brett Kavanaugh, whom President Donald Trump nominated this week, joins the Supreme Court, a conservative court established by a president and Senate who were elected with less than half the two-party vote may end up litigating the fairness of the voting system.

[T]he built-in bias is obviously bad for Democrats. But in the long run it is bad for America as a whole, including Republicans. When lawmaking is paralysed, important work, such as immigration and entitlement reform, is too hard. The few big laws that are approved, like Barack Obama’s health-care reform or Mr Trump’s corporate-tax cuts, pass on party-line votes. That emboldens the opposition to reverse or neuter them when they take power. Meanwhile, the task of resolving the most divisive political issues often falls to the courts. The battle over Mr Kavanaugh’s confirmation will be a proxy war over issues, like abortion and health insurance, better suited to the legislature.

[R]ancorous political disputes—over guns, abortion and climate change—split so neatly along urban-rural lines that parties and voters increasingly sort themselves into urban-rural tribes. Gerrymandering and party primaries reward extremists, and ensure that, once elected, they seldom need fear for their jobs. The incentives to take extreme positions are very powerful.

Bitter partisanship, ineffective federal government and electoral bias poison politics and are hard to fix. Changing the constitution is hard—and rightly so. Yet the voting system for Congress is easier to reform than most people realise, because the constitution does not stipulate what it should be. Congress last voted to change the rules in 1967.

Voting reform is not the whole answer to partisanship and built-in bias, but it would help. It is hard, but not outlandish. To maintain the trust of all Americans, the world’s oldest constitutional democracy needs to reform itself.

I agree with the piece.  Wyoming with slightly less than 600,000 residents should not have two U.S. Senators. Ditto for other small, least educated, mot reactionary states.   The Electoral College - which utterly failed its purpose in 2016 - likewise needs to go.

Stop Giving Republicans and Trump the Benefit of the Doubt

One of the phenomenons that drives me to distraction is the false equivalency much of the news media gives to the Republican agenda and the contortions engaged in to give the GOP leadership and Donald Trump in particular the benefit of the doubt.  One need only look at the history of today's GOP and the career of Trump in New York City, replete with Mafia  connections and other sordid alliances to know that these are NOT nice or decent individuals who have a shred of concern for average citizens.  Sure, their talking points will claim that they are, but actions speak louder than words and in Trump's case, ties with despicable people speaks volumes. A column in the New York Times looks at this reality and the need for the media - and everyone else - to stop giving these individuals the benefit of the doubt.  Their motivations are not good or well intended and they are not honorable.  Here are column highlights:

After Donald Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in December, a number of companies gave their employees one-time bonuses, ostensibly sharing their new corporate windfall. As a PR stunt, these checks were a savvy investment; they allowed the companies to pander to the administration and made themselves look beneficent without incurring any long-term obligation to their workers.

Critics of the new law tried to point out that one-time bonuses are not the same as pay increases, and that the overwhelming majority of corporate savings from the tax cut was likely to go to shareholders. Nevertheless, in parts of the media, the idea that Republicans had been vindicated took hold.

Five months later, everything liberals said about the tax bill turned out to be true. Contrary to Republican claims, wage growth has been anemic. Instead of sharing the wealth with employees, companies have spent record amounts of money buying back their own stock. The tax cuts are creating larger deficits than Republicans predicted, and those deficits are now being cited as a pretext for cutting spending on the poor. They remain unpopular. Republicans in some districts have abandoned them as an election issue.

Watching this unfold should have helped inoculate commentators against Trumpist bamboozlement. It has not. In March, Trump spontaneously accepted an offer, conveyed to him by a South Korean envoy, to meet directly with the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. North Korea has sought a one-on-one meeting with a sitting American president for years, believing it would legitimate it as a global power, but previous administrations have refused.

Nevertheless, credulous commentators praised Trump for bringing North Korea to the table, as if a seat at the table wasn’t what North Korea wanted all along. And pundits, including some who are broadly critical of the president, hectored us to give him credit.

Due to Trump’s ignorance and vanity, South Korea’s dovish leader, Moon Jae-in, has been able to manipulate him into a position where he might make concessions to North Korea that no other president would dare. Given the risk of war, Moon’s maneuvering has been admirable. “In South Korea, it’s basically an open secret that this whole thing is flattering Trump,” Kelly said. “It kind of amazes me that Trump’s staff hasn’t picked up on this.”

Now, three weeks away from a summit that may or may not actually happen, reports show [Trump] a president terrifyingly unprepared for high-stakes diplomacy.  . . . “Mr. Trump’s aides have grown concerned that the president — who has said that ‘everyone thinks’ he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts — has signaled that he wants the summit meeting too much,”. . . . it’s now the American president who craves legitimation from the North Korean dictator.

Even a casual newspaper reader — which, of course, Trump is not — knows that when North Korea talks about “denuclearization,” it doesn’t mean unilaterally giving up all its nuclear weapons. A hastily arranged meeting between two bellicose egomaniacs, premised on a basic misunderstanding, is unlikely to resolve one of the world’s most intractable geopolitical conflicts; a flimsy agreement that roughly preserves the status quo seems like a best-case scenario. Yet for weeks, the pull to give Trump pre-emptive credit for a hypothetical victory has felt like a cultural undertow; you had to plant your feet firmly to resist it. . . . . Trump, whose only real talent is the manipulation of reality, exploits this impulse.

Of course, we all have a motive in playing along with the fiction that Trump has achieved a Korean breakthrough — it might stop him from starting a war. But it’s one thing to humor our idiot president, and another to let the gravitational pull of presidential power, and the deep desire for a minimally competent leader, warp reality. We all want to be open-minded, but con men should never be given the benefit of the doubt.

Trump's Continuing Michael Cohen Problem

Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, continues to blame all of his legal problems on a "horrible Witch Hunt and the dishonest media."   The problem with that claim, of course as one commentator noted, is that the witch hunt keeps finding witches as evidenced by the growing list of criminal indictments and cooperating witnesses.  Outside of Paul Manafort - who some believe was Trump's conduit to Russia during the 2016 campaign - Trump's biggest problem is his long time personal attorney and"fixer," Michael Cohen.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at Trump's behavior and the absence of the behavior of someone with nothing to hide.  Obviously, when one needs a fixer in the first place to clean up sordid affairs and who knows what other unsavory or illegal actions, there is always a risk that they can "flip" and provide very damaging information.  Here are article highlights:

Trump has not been tweeting like a man with nothing to fear.

Over the weekend, he tried to project confidence that his longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen — under federal investigation for possible bank fraud, wire fraud and campaign finance violations — will not flip to avoid legal trouble. But in doing so, and skipping a denial of wrongdoing, [Trump] the president implied two things.

One is that Cohen would need to strike a deal with prosecutors to avoid charges or prison time. Trump's tweet did not even entertain the idea that the investigation will turn up nothing because Cohen committed no crimes.

The second is that Cohen possesses damaging information about [Trump] the president. Trump said he believes Cohen will keep his mouth shut, not that Cohen can talk all he wants because there is no dirt to dish.

[O]n Monday, Bloomberg's Justin Sink said the president's Twitter thread “prompts two questions: The first is what the president believes his personal attorney might have done to get him in trouble with the government. And, secondly, what [Trump] the president's done that he is worried Michael Cohen could flip about.” “The president's been clear that he hasn't done anything wrong,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders replied. . . . I don't have anything to add.”
 It is the absence of “anything to add” that is striking. The simple, playing-it-cool response would be that the president encourages Cohen to cooperate fully with an investigation that will surely end in exoneration. But the White House hasn't said anything of the kind. In fact, the White House appears to be leaving open the door to a presidential pardon for Cohen — which, of course, would be necessary only if there were a crime to pardon. Trump seems clearly worried about Cohen, and he and his White House aren't doing anything to change that perception.

Trump's "Treason" Remarks Take Demagoguery to Dangerous Heights

During last week's State of the Union address Donald Trump declared, “I call upon all of us to set aside our differences, to seek out common ground and to summon the unity we need to deliver for the people.” Like almost everything that comes from the man's lips, the statement was a lie. This week, Trump is back to being a prime cause of hate and division as he stated that anyone who does not applaud him is guilty of treason.  Yesterday, his chief of staff, John F. Kelly (who seems to have truly sold his soul), attacked Dreamers accused those who had failed to register for protected status with the federal government of being “too afraid to sign up” or “too lazy to get off their asses.”  Kelly's remarks were in keeping with his furthering of Trump's racist agenda.  Trump's accusations of treason show an even more sinister movement in the Trump/Pence regime: any criticism and exercise of one's First Amendment rights is to be attacked and condemned.  One would think we were living in Hitler's Germany or Putin's Russia.  A column the New York Times looks at this disturbing demagoguery.  Here are excerpts:

I’m now told that I have betrayed my country and committed the ultimate crime.  I did not clap during President Trump’s State of the Union address.

But even if could, I wouldn’t have. That’s not because I’m rooting against America. It’s because I’m rooting for it — and believe that we deserve better than a leader who uses language as sloppily and poisonously as Trump does, who reacts to every unwelcome message by smearing the messenger, and whose litmus test for patriotism is this and this alone: Do you worship me? On Monday afternoon he visited a manufacturing plant outside Cincinnati, where of course he complimented himself, lavishly. . . . But something that he said stood out, not just because it went so ludicrously far, even by Trumpian standards, but because it so perfectly captured his distinctive madness and meanness. Recalling that many Democrats sat on their hands for much or all of his speech before Congress last week, he pronounced them “un-American,” adding: “Somebody said ‘treasonous.’ I mean, yeah, I guess, why not? Can we call that treason? Why not? I mean, they certainly didn’t seem to love our country very much.”

My favorite touch is the “somebody.” With Trump, the darkest and most conspiratorial notions are never his doing or responsibility. He heard it somewhere. He read it someplace.

That meandering air masks a considered ploy: As a distraction and deflection, he routinely accuses his adversaries of the very wrongdoing that can more credibly be attributed to him. “Treason” is a word too grand to be thrown around casually, but it applies better to a president who minimizes and denigrates clear evidence that a foreign power meddled in an American election — and makes no real effort to prevent that from happening again — than it does to a bunch of lawmakers who decline to salute him. Their actions are largely theatrical. His are substantively dangerous. Democrats, he said, were “selfish,” putting their own feelings above the country’s welfare. The man who signed tax legislation that benefits his business empire and spends roughly one of every three days at a Trump-branded property wouldn’t know anything about that. If journalists are documenting his falsehoods, they themselves must be fabulists. If judges rule against him, they must be biased. If federal law enforcement officials have suspicions about him or people who worked for him, they must be corrupt hacks. If Democrats don’t congratulate him for making America great again, they must be traitors.

Soon there is no one to trust but Trump, or no one to trust at all. That’s the point. He’s inoculating himself, and no price — not the reputations of individuals who have behaved honorably, not the viability of institutions that are crucial to the health of our democracy — is too steep to pay.

[I]f you accept his loose definition of treason, hasn’t he committed it? I’m not referring to Russia; I’m referring to his effort to delegitimize President Barack Obama by insisting, with no evidence, that he was born outside the United States. That’s infinitely more defiant and destabilizing than Nancy Pelosi’s inert hands and anguished mien as Trump delivered his big speech. I think it’s more patriotic to withhold applause than to grant it too readily.

I will never applaud the man.  I view him as a toxic poison that needs to be purged from the American landscape - the sooner the better given the harm that he is doing to American institutions and the hatred that he is fanning. 

Today's Republicans: They Have No Sense of Decency

In his remarkable inaugural address yesterday Virginia Governor Ralph Northam addressed what may be one of the biggest domestic threats to America today:  the utter loss of decency and morality among the nation's politicians, particularly Republicans who continue to refuse to counter or rein in the toxicity flowing daily from the White House.  Northam said in part as follows:

My dad’s advice stayed with me when I reached the Virginia Military Institute and was given a different kind of compass, in the simple words of the VMI honor code: “A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, nor tolerate those who do.” Those words have stuck with me all these years because they’re so clear. They have become a kind of moral compass for me. They always call me back home safely.

Virginia and this country need that more than ever these days. It can be hard to find our way in a time when there’s so much shouting, when nasty, shallow tweets take the place of honest debate, and when scoring political points gets in the way of dealing with real problems.

If you’ve felt that way, I want you to listen to me right now: We are bigger than this.We all have a moral compass deep in our hearts. And it’s time to summon it again, because we have a lot of work to do.

Sadly, as noted, these concepts appear to be lost or non-existence among today's congressional Republicans who could, if they wanted to, counter Trump or even remove him from office.  Yet it seems Republicans no longer have any sense of decency.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at this threat and the question that moral people need to loudly ask Republicans.  Here are column excerpts:

“Have you no sense of decency?” It’s the question that the members of the Republican majority in the Congress—51 senators, 239 representatives—might bear in mind, in the “shithole” era.

If only two of those senators would stand up against Donald Trump, with their votes rather than just their tweets or concerned statements, they would constitute an effective majority.

With the 49 Democratic and independent senators, these two would make 51 votes, which in turn would be enough to authorize real investigations. They could pass a formal resolution of censure. They could call for tax returns and financial disclosure. They could begin hearings, on the model of the nationally televised Watergate hearings of 45 years ago.

They could behave as if they took seriously their duties to hold the executive branch accountable. They could make a choice they know will be to their credit when this era enters history — as did the Republicans who finally turned against their own party’s President Nixon during the Watergate drama, as did the Democrats who finally turned against their own party’s President Johnson over the Vietnam war, as did the Republicans who finally turned against their own poisonous Senator McCarthy in the episode that gave rise to “Have you no sense of decency?” more than 60 years ago. They could spare themselves the shame that history attaches to people who did the wrong thing, or nothing, or kept looking the other way during those decisive periods.

If any of these two, or some other pair from the thirty-plus remaining Republicans, decided to take a stand, they would not change everything about  this perilous moment in politics. But they would do something, about the open secret of a destructive presidency that nearly all of their colleagues are aware of and virtually none is doing anything about.

They could remind their colleagues of the Senate’s appropriate check-and-balance function.

And they could spare themselves, in history’s perspective, the question Joseph Welch so memorably asked the rampaging Senator Joe McCarthy, during the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954.

From the Senate’s own historical  site:  As an amazed television audience looked on, Welch responded with the immortal lines that ultimately ended McCarthy's career:

"Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness." When McCarthy tried to continue his attack, Welch angrily interrupted, "Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?"

Have you no sense of decency? It is a question worth pondering, in the shithole era.