John Bolton: Proof That Prostituting Oneself to a Narcissistic is a Bad Idea

I have never been a fan of now former National Security Adviser John Bolton.   I have always seen him as dangerous and a threat to the international alliances that has served the USA well. Indeed, I'd even call Bolton a war monger.  But compared to Donald Trump, Bolton is sane and rational and my have restrained some of Trump's more insane and dangerous impulses. With Bolton gone, many worry who will replace him and what further damage can Trump inflict on the nation and world given his disturbing mental state. Meanwhile, the lesson to be learned from Bolton's demise is that endeavoring to prostitute oneself to a malignant narcissist is a dangerous game and the likely loser will be one's reputation and place in history.  A column in the Washington Post by a former Republican looks at the troubling situation we face.  Here are excerpts:

John Bolton should never have joined an administration in which the president was overtly corrupt, sympathetic to dictators, weirdly beholden to Russian President Vladimir Putin and a pathological liar. Like so many others, Bolton will go down as someone driven by unquenchable thirst for relevance and power with the hubris to think he could bend President Trump to his will. Instead, Bolton became an enabler for a president who allowed himself to be snowed by North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and revealed he never had a game plan for Iran . . . .
 Rather than quit on principle at dozens of junctures, Bolton clung to his job, only to be rudely fired. Bolton, to put it mildly, never played well with others and therefore was uniquely unqualified for the job of national security adviser, who is supposed to be the honest broker in government. It would be an understatement to say both anti-Trump conservatives and Democrats are positively giddy seeing the blusterous, aggressive adviser end his career in semi-disgrace. Quite apart from the double scoop of schadenfreude, many in the foreign policy community are genuinely relieved. “I’m just thankful we got through Bolton’s tenure without him starting a war,” said Max Bergmann of the Center for American Progress and a former State Department official. “He no doubt tried, but was boxed in by the administration’s own incompetence and his inability to convince others to go along.” Others, however, are more worried now. Former ambassador to Turkey, Eric S. Edelman, told me, “For his flaws, I think John was one of the few forces really holding Trump back from doing some crazy things. This is is just one more indication that we are now facing Trump unplugged. He is really thrashing around. It is very worrisome.” Veteran diplomat Aaron David Miller notes, “You can only play Dr. No so many times. Bolton was out of sync with Trump on Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan and Venezuela." He added, “[Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo played the game of Trump whisperer better than Bolton.” Precisely because Bolton differed with Trump on all these topics, sycophantic Sens. Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz and other uber-hawks who thought they, too, could bend Trump toward their view should wise up. Trump is not a valiant defender of the West and protector of our allies. He’s a dangerous and corrupt patsy in the hands of strongmen. Likewise, Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.), who served in the Obama administration, said, “No glee [here]. I’ve obviously never been a Bolton fan, . . . . However, he said, Bolton “was fired for something he was right about — his opposition to capitulating to the Taliban — and because Trump doesn’t like being laughed at and needed to lash out at someone. I worry about who and what comes next.” This is also a dicey move for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who sacrificed bipartisan friendship with the United States to gain favor in the eyes of Trump. Netanyahu kids himself if he thinks Trump would let Israel stand in the way of the historic deal he is itching to sign. Former Israeli ambassador Daniel Shapiro tells me, “Trump fired Bolton over disagreements they had. Chief among them was Bolton’s support for ever-escalating pressure on Iran versus Trump’s desire for talks on a new nuclear deal.” He adds, "Israel and the Gulf states have to wonder if this move presages not just a meeting between Trump and [Iranian President Hassan] Rouhani, but a real move by Trump toward a modestly upgraded Iran nuclear deal. It sure looks like it.” In fact any deal is likely to be worse, given that the Iranians know Trump is the worst negotiator on the planet. Other allies should be equally nervous since when unrestrained, even from questionable advice, Trump does things such as invite the Taliban to Camp David, side with Putin over our intelligence community, try to pullout abruptly from Syria, attack allies (even Denmark), involve us in a no-win trade war and make the United States a laughingstock on the international stage. If Bolton wants to save his reputation, he can render one final service: Collect up all the former national security officials and tell the American people just how unfit is this president. It’s time for the sycophancy and careerism to end and the patriotism to start.

Moron Donald Trump Says Wind Turbines “Cause Cancer”

Ever the malignant narcissist, Donald Trump thinks he knows everything about every subject and never hesitates to shoot off his mouth spewing idiocy.  The behavior says a lot about Trump - none of it good - but even more about the morons in his base who believe the falsehoods he routinely shouts out (evangelical Christians are the least educated of any religious group, which may explain their continued allegiance to a pathological liar). Indeed, its to a point where if Trump makes a claim, the safest course is to presume he is lying until proven otherwise (which will not happen often).  A case in point is Trump's attacks on wind power even as he supports coal, perhaps the dirtiest and one of the most toxic energy sources on the planet.  Vanity Fair looks at Trump's idiocy and lies.  Here are excerpts:

Donald Trump has a long history of attacking wind energy, which he views as a threat to coal and his campaign to transform the planet into a truck-stop urinal, the kind you have to unlock with a key attached to a giant steering wheel. “It’s Friday,” he tweeted one innocent afternoon in August 2012. “How many bald eagles did wind turbines kill today?” A couple months later, he opined: “If Obama keeps pushing wind turbines our country will go down the tubes economically, environmentally & aesthetically,” not mentioning that his own personal aesthetic could be best described as “Louis XIV projectile vomit.” He spent most of 2013 and 2014 fighting Scotland‘s First Minister over plans to build an offshore wind farm near his Aberdeenshire golf course, telling an Irish paper that “wind farms are a disaster for Scotland, like Pan Am 103 . . . Returning to his avian anxieties, the noted animal-rights activist told a West Virginia crowd last summer, “You look underneath some of those windmills, it’s like a killing field [for] birds.” 

His concerns, it seems, aren’t limited to wildlife. “If Hillary got in. . . you’d be doing wind. Windmills. Weee,” he told the crowd at a rally in Michigan last week during an aside that, were he not president, would be submitted as evidence to have him committed. “If it doesn’t blow, you can forget about television for that night. ‘Darling, I want to watch television.’ ‘I’m sorry! The wind isn’t blowing.’ I know a lot about wind.”

[O]n Tuesday [Trump] launched his latest wild attack on wind turbines, an energy source that has long attracted his ire.  “They say the noise causes cancer,” [Trump] the president remarked of the turbines at the National Republican Congressional Committee fund-raiser in Washington, D.C. “If you have a windmill anywhere near your house, congratulations—your house just went down 75 percent in value.”

As virtually everyone on the Internet was quick to point out, out here, on planet Earth, cancer is not caused by noise, wind-induced or otherwise. Meanwhile, an energy source that does tend to cause health issues, as New York’s Jonathan Chait notes, “is coal, an extremely dirty fuel Trump loves and has attempted to bolster, with almost no success. Aside from costing more to produce than other sources of power, and in addition to enormous air-pollution side effects, coal also emits greenhouse gases in large amounts.”

“Wind turbines cause cancer” isn’t the first piece of medical advice Dr. Trump has dispensed to his followers. In April 2012, he tweeted a story claiming that “people who live up to 2 miles away from the turbines develop such things as sleep, stress and mood disorders once wind farms go up.” (More likely, experts say, the symptoms are psychosomatic.) That same year, he warned that L.E.D. light bulbs cause cancer, and that one must “be careful,” because “the idiots who came up with this stuff don’t care.” Meanwhile, he believes fracking poses “ZERO health risks” and is, in fact, good for you.

Trump is a moron and liar.  His followers are even worse when it comes to stupidity.

Why the Trump "Reset" Effort Won’t Work

As Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, headed off on his first foreign trip, a number of pundit posited that this was an opportunity for Trump to "reset" the narrative and salvage his presidency. That, of course, did not happen for more than a few hours - even before Trump's disastrous display in Europe.  Add to that the string of bombshell stories that broke each day while Trump was out of the country, and one is left with a metastasizing political shit storm.   The biggest obstacle, however, to stabilizing the Trump/Pence regime is Trump himself.  Many of us during the campaign predicted precisely what we are witnessing.  A piece in the New Yorker lays out the case of why efforts to reset the Trump regime will fail.  Here are highlights:

The latest Trump Administration reset has begun, or so we are being asked to believe. On Tuesday, Mike Dubke, the White House communications director, confirmed that he was leaving his job after just three months. There is also talk of the Administration setting up a “war room” to deal with the Russia scandal, and assembling an all-star legal team to defend President Trump.

To put it in business terms, the White House’s problem can’t be resolved by firing the marketing team and hiring some external consultants. The problem is the obvious shortcomings of the primary product, Donald J. Trump. Here are six of them:
 1. He isn’t Presidential.Even in an era of hyper-partisanship, the Presidency retains an aura that can lift up the person occupying it. During the first part of his trip to the Middle East and Europe last week, Trump largely stuck to his prepared script, stayed off Twitter, and let the Presidency work for him. As pictures of him being feted in foreign lands were beamed back home, his approval rating rose five points, according to Gallup.

But Trump couldn’t see the trip through without a blowup. When he got to Brussels, he berated his fellow NATO leaders in public. Then he attacked the Germans, saying they were “bad, really bad” for exporting so many cars to the United States. After he arrived back home, this weekend, he quickly got back on Twitter and wailed away at his usual targets: the leakers, the media, and the Democrats. (For good measure, he also criticized Germany again.)

2. He has limited bandwidth. And that’s putting it nicely. Presidents don’t need to have Ph.D.s. They do need to be able to ingest a lot of information, focus on particular issues, and learn new things. In public, at least, Trump’s advisers insist that he can do this.

Why, then, did Trump launch his diatribe against the Germans on the eve of the G7 summit? On top of coming across as a boorish guest, he displayed his ignorance on trade—one of his signature issues. Evidently, he was oblivious to the fact that BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Volkswagen have all set up factories in the United States, where they assemble many of the vehicles they sell here.

Was Trump briefed on the structure of the global auto industry before he spoke? It might not have made much difference.  . . . his attention span is so short that intelligence briefers are encouraged to keep written presentations to a page and to include a lot of visual aids, such as maps, charts, and photographs.

3. He won’t (or can’t) stick to a message. The most dramatic example of this came after the James Comey firing, when Trump contradicted the White House’s official version of events, which was that the President had merely endorsed a proposal to get rid of the F.B.I. director that had come from Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General. That departure from script wasn’t a one-off: Trump does it all the time.

Unless Trump can somehow be persuaded to be more consistent, it doesn’t matter who holds the positions of White House spokesman and director of communications. They will both have to spend most of their time trying to repair the damage that their boss inflicts on his own message.

4. He won’t delegate real authority. All Administrations have rival factions, but most Presidents empower someone—their chief of staff, usually—to enforce discipline. . . . The only thing that’s clear about the power structure in the current White House is that Trump is in charge.

5. The Russian saga is now a morass. In firing Comey, Trump transformed a troublesome story that was causing him great irritation into a potential constitutional crisis. The appointment of Robert Mueller as a special counsel gave him another chance to pull back, but he failed to take it.

With Mueller in place, Trump could conceivably have changed tack. Rather than consistently belittling the F.B.I.’s Russia investigation, he could have said that he understood why many Americans have serious concerns about Moscow’s involvement in the 2016 election. He could have said that he had nothing to hide and that he welcomed the appointment of a new, independent figure to oversee the investigation.

Such a course of action might have given Trump a bit of leeway, but, instead, Trump retreated further into his bunker on Tuesday, repeating one of his discredited theories about the origins of the investigation. . . . . Coming on top of the recent reports suggesting that Kushner tried to set up a back channel of communication with the Kremlin last December, such statements only fuel the suspicion that Trump is trying to cover up something.

6. He’s stuck with unpopular Republican policies. When a President sees his popularity dip, the obvious response is to do something that voters like. But Trump has committed himself to two policy measures that are anything but popular: the House Republicans’ health-care-reform bill and a big tax cut for rich people and large corporations.

In a piece at the Federalist a few days ago, Ben Domenech, a conservative-leaning journalist and radio host, argued that Trump ought to back away from the Republican Party’s agenda and look to strike a deal with congressional Democrats on a number of big issues, including health care and taxes.

This is an interesting idea. But it presupposes that Trump still has enough political capital to alienate members of the Republican leadership and the big conservative donors who back them. That’s far from clear. With the Democratic Party increasingly focussed on impeachment, Trump surely needs to retain all the Republican backing he can in Congress. Pursuing a strategy that endangers the continued support of Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan would be a risky punt—it would take an artful and self-disciplined politician to pull it off. From all we know about Donald Trump, that isn’t him.

100 Days: Trump Fails Even Low Expectations

100 days into the misrule of Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, thankfully little has been accomplished.  I say thankfully, because so much of the Trump/Pence and GOP agenda is bad and threatens to harm average Americans, including those who were stupid enough to fall for Trump's racist and xenophobic campaign rhetoric.  Thankfully, the renewed GOP to destroy health care for millions is as of this morning once again on the back burner.  As for the Trump "tax plan" a New York Times headline describes the one page exercise in irresponsible behavior this way:  "Plan Redistributes America’s Wealth to Its Richest Families." Among those families, of course is Trump's own.  The atmosphere that is net result of this incompetent and deranged presidency is aptly described in a New York Times op-ed this way:  

"Fans of old TV series may remember a classic “Twilight Zone” episode titled “It’s a Good Life.” It featured a small town terrorized by a 6-year-old who for some reason had monstrous superpowers, coupled with complete emotional immaturity. Everyone lived in constant fear, made worse by the need to pretend that everything was fine. After all, any hint of discontent could bring terrible retribution. . . . . Actually, it feels a bit like that just living in Trump’s America."

What is most baffling - until one looks at and understands to white rage that powered Trump to office and his legitimizing of the same - is that surveys show that 96% of voters are happy with Trump's performance even though he has delivered little or nothing to date.  A column in the Washington Post by a conservative columnist looks at Trump's inability to meet even exceedingly low expectations.  Here are highlights:

As we cross the finish line of President Trump’s first 100 days, no leader in recent memory has benefited more from low expectations. A more typical president who tumbled from an approval rating in the high 60s to one in the low 40s would be in a political crisis. Trump’s current performance is only a slight dip from his divisive norm.

A president with pretensions of rhetorical coherence would be embarrassed by gaffes and mediocre speeches. For Trump, gaffes and inarticulateness are part of the package. A president with high standards of integrity would be mortified by a brewing scandal that seems to involve smarmy aides and a foreign government. For Trump, well, what would you expect?

The president is particularly proud of the consequential elevation of Neil M. Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. But this action invites a comparison. Trump’s one unquestioned achievement consists of appointing another man who actually has thoughtful convictions.

Much of Trump’s 100-days defense could have been employed by the pharaoh who ruled after the one in the book of Exodus. The cattle haven’t all died. We’ve seen less fiery hail. And pestilence has been kept to an acceptable minimum.

[A]t least, in polling language, he is a “strong and decisive leader.” This is a conceit that becomes harder and harder to maintain. . . .  Consider Trump’s interaction with China. On the campaign trail, the Chinese were currency manipulators who were too weak on North Korean nukes. In his first meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, the American president got his first glimpse of the Chinese perspective and was transformed.
It seems the case that one of America’s main strategic rivals was, quite literally, schooling the American president on economics and foreign policy.

A similar picture has emerged in Trump’s dealings with Congress. When the Freedom Caucus defied him on health care, the administration’s blustery threats against the dissenters came to nothing. House Republicans ignored his tantrum and continued their work. 

Ultimately, Trump is failing because he has little knowledge of the world and no guiding star of moral principle. The best of our leaders — think Abraham Lincoln — have been sure about the truth and uncertain about themselves. Trump is the opposite. His mind is uncluttered by creeds. He knows what he wants at any given moment, but it can bear little relation to the moment following. Who really believes that he would be sleepless if the wall were not built or if NAFTA ultimately survived? Who believes he would not be sleepless because of a nasty joke at his expense during a dinner party?

Trump clearly wants to be judged by a frenetic level of activity. But the issue at hand is direction, not momentum. It is useful to undo some past liberal excesses, as Trump has done. But negation can’t be confused with inspiration. There can be no measure of political progress without a measuring stick of political conviction. Instead, we are treated to hysterical self-praise. Appalling — but, hey, what did we expect?

Trump Undergoing Major, Public Ego Injury Tantrum

With a new Washington Post/ABC News poll showing him to be the least popular president in modern history and no legislative accomplishments as he nears the first hundred day benchmark, Der Trumpenführer is doing what he does most: lying and engaging in fact free claims as his fragile ego grapples with the fact that a majority of Americans hate him.  This reality should come to little surprise given that less than 30% of registered voters supported him and that Hillary Clinton garnered nearly 3 million more votes in the past presidential election.  But Trump lives in a fact free world dominated by his own narcissism and egomania.  Here are some highlights from the poll findings from the Washington Post:

President Trump nears the 100-day mark of his administration as the least popular chief executive in modern times, a president whose voters remain largely satisfied with his performance, but one whose base of support has not expanded since he took the oath of office, . . .

But the president’s balance sheet overall tilts toward the negative. Majorities of Americans say Trump has not accomplished much during his first months as president. Meanwhile, he shows little improvement on his temperament and honesty, and while he’s gained ground on empathy, over 6 in 10 still say he does not understand the problems of people like them.

Trump and others in his administration have attacked the courts, accusing them of overreach, but nearly 6 in 10 people see their actions as a legitimate role for the judicial branch.

The president’s approval rating stands at 42 percent, the lowest recorded at this stage of a presidency dating to Dwight Eisenhower. Trump’s 53 percent disapproval rating is 14 percentage points higher than Bill Clinton’s 39 percent disapproval in April 1993, the worst before Trump. Eight years ago, then-president Barack Obama’s approval was 69 percent, his disapproval 26 percent.

The Post-ABC poll finds 43 percent of Americans said they strongly disapprove of Trump’s performance.   That’s also the worst by far of any president since George H.W. Bush by more than double.

Of those who say Trump has not accomplished much, 47 percent pin the blame on him while about a quarter blame congressional Republicans. Only 7 percent say Democrats are to blame.

One of Trump’s biggest deficiencies compared with other presidents is whether he is honest and trustworthy. Fewer than 4 in 10 (38 percent) say he is. At this point in their presidencies, 74 percent said Obama was honest, 62 percent said George W. Bush was honest and a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll showed 61 percent said Clinton was honest.

Another gap is on the question of whether Trump can be trusted in a crisis. The poll finds that 43 percent — about the same as Trump’s approval rating — say he can be trusted; 73 percent said so for Obama and 65 percent for George W. Bush at this point in their presidencies.

Not exactly supportive findings for a man who likes to claim his own magnificence. A piece in Talking Points Memo looks at the public tantrum on display.  Here are excerpts:

We know that President is undergoing a major, public ego injury tantrum because he has failed to manage any major legislative accomplishments in his first 100 days in office. The scale of the failure is so total one would almost need a Kelvin Scale of fail to capture its full extent. But in addition to all the other panicked flailing, there’s this gambit that seems to have gotten fairly little notice.

President Trump has now at least opened the door to denying he’s not even at 100 days, that people are miscounting and that is in fact at only just over 60 days. 

When asked about the situation with Obamacare Repeal and tax reform Trump told the Associated Press this (emphasis added) …

I’ve been here 92 days, but I’ve only been working on the health care, you know, I had to get like a little bit of grounding, right? Health care started after 30 day(s), so I’ve been working on health care for 60 days. … we’re very close. And it’s a great plan … we have to get it approved.

In this exchange Trump doesn’t go the whole way to demanding a comprehensive new day score. For the moment he’s only creating a new carve out 60 count for repealing Obamacare since “health care started after 30 day”. But clearly he’s preparing a broader sort of 100 day truth movement to claim the measure should be taken from February 21st, 2017 rather than January 21st, 2017.

The same day as the interview, Trump initially claimed that the entire 100 day metric is artificial and stupid.

But Trump more than anyone has made it more central by insisting it was the metric against which he wanted to be judged. The new effort to demand a different count or the “30 day reset/handicap” proposed to the AP is likely a sign that he knows he’s shackled himself to the 100 day mast.

Not tears or sympathy for this horrible, amoral bastard from me.

Will the GOP Save Us From the Trump Monster?

Personally, I gave up on the Republican Party many years ago when I resigned from the party when it became clear to me that the GOP could no longer grasp or respect the concept of the separation of Church and state.  In the intervening years, the GOP has gone form ugly to downright hideous and grotesque.  Racism, white supremacy, religious extremism and contempt for objective facts and science are now the GOP norm.  It was a very different party in the days of my parents and grandparents. Now, with the election of Donald Trump as the Republican president of this once great nation, the GOP has reached a new low.  Lying and "alternate facts" pass for integrity and and honesty.  Thus, the question becomes that of who will save America from the Frankenstein monster it has unleashed?  I myself put almost zero faith in the willingness or ability of the GOP to redeem itself and save the nation.  I think that new popular forces and  new political approaches are all that stand between America and fascism or Trumpism, things that are not all that different.  Yet a column in the Washington Post calls of the GOP to rise to the occasion.  I will not hold my breath, but here are column excerpts:

What we know so far is that the man is who he is. There is no larger, finer man inside him trying to get out. Everyone who is paying attention knows this. Flags flying at the Capitol, the U.S. Marine Band, gray eminences in black coats, and He Who Is Smarter Than Those With Intelligence delivers 16 minutes of hooey and horse hockey about corrupt politicians betraying the people, and American carnage, and patriotism healing our division, though the division is mainly about Himself and though love of country does not necessarily make people stupid.

There might as well have been a 14-year-old boy at the lectern  . . . . The next day he motored out to the CIA and stood before the memorial wall honoring heroes who gave their lives in anonymity and he bitched about his newspaper coverage. The next day he boasted that his inauguration’s TV ratings were higher than those in 2013. The day after that, he told the congressional leadership that he lost the popular vote because millions of illegal votes were cast, which everyone in the room knew was a bald-faced lie, except perhaps Himself. The man is clueless, tightly locked inside his own small bubble. A sizable minority of Americans, longing for greatness or wanting to smack down an ambitious woman and to show those people in the hellhole coastal cities what the real America is all about, has elected him. To him, this minority is a mass movement such as the world has never seen. God have mercy.

Everyone knows that the man is a fabulator, oblivious, trapped in his own terrible needs. Republican, Democrat, libertarian, socialist, white supremacist or sebaceous cyst — everyone knows it. It is up to Republicans to save the country from this man. They elected him, and it is their duty to tie a rope around his ankle. They formed a solid bloc against President Obama and held their ranks, and now, for revenge, they will go after health insurance subsidies for people of limited means, which is one of the cruelest things they can possibly do. . . . . when upward of 30 million are left high and dry, people will suffer horribly.

The question is: How cynical are we willing to be and for how long? How long will Senate Republicans wait until a few of them stand up to the man? Greatness is in the eye of the beholder. American self-respect is what is at stake here, ladies and gentlemen. The only good things to come out of that inauguration were the marches all over the country the day after, millions of people taking to the streets of their own free will . . . . That’s the great America I grew up in. It’s still here.

Trump's Fact Free World and Why It Matters

Frighteningly, we are already seeing evidence where Trump, a/k/a Der Fuhrer, lives in a fact free fantasy world where objective reality and empirical facts simply do not matter.  Worse yet, he wants the rest of us to inhabit the same bizarre world that only serves to satiate his ego and narcissism. Something as simple as the size of the inauguration crowd on January 20, 2017, is open to debate - at least in Der Fuhrer's mind.  By all reports and based on countless photos, transit system numbers and other provable measures, Trump had a lousy turn out for his inauguration yet the man boasts that it was the largest turn out ever.  His claim, like most of what Trump says, is an outright lie.  To admit the reality that he is NOT liked and NOT popular with a majority of Americans is impossible for a narcissist like Trump.  Meanwhile, unprecedented numbers of protesters turned out yesterday in Washington, DC, that dwarfed the inaugural turn out. What is most frightening is the fact that this rejection of fact and reality will spill over into everything this dangerous sociopath does while in office.  A piece in NPR looks at the lies being put out by Der Fuhrer's henchmen.  Here are highlights:

The Trump Administration spent its first full day in office taking shots at the media and arguing about crowd sizes at Friday's inauguration.

Press Secretary Sean Spicer delivered a fiery broadside against the Fourth Estate from the White House Briefing Room Saturday evening, claiming that reporters had engaged in "deliberately false reporting" in the past 24 hours since President Trump took the oath of office. And, after berating the press, he walked away without taking any questions.

He blamed new floor coverings on mall areas that "had the effect of highlighting any areas where people were not standing, while in years past the grass eliminated this visual." And Spicer claimed that fences and magnetometers going further back than ever prevented "hundreds of thousands of people from being able to access the mall as quickly as they had in years past." However, CNN reporter Ashley Killough tweeted out a photo showing that floor coverings had in fact been used at Obama's second inauguration.

But then Spicer went on to make his own estimate on the crowd size and incorrectly claimed that the number of people who used the Washington D.C. Metro on Friday had outpaced the number of people who used the service during President Obama's second inaugural.

In 2009, 317,000 people had, in fact, used the Metro by 11 a.m., according to WMATA, as Spicer cited. But the White House press secretary then claimed that 420,000 people had used the Metro on Friday; by 11 a.m. only 193,000 people had ridden Metro. For the whole day on Friday, 570,000 people used the system, but in 2013 there were 782,000 riders and 1.1 million riders in 2009 — both much larger than Trump's inauguration.

Why dispute something that people could see with their own eyes?  It all plays into the insanity of the occupant of the White House and his effort to discredit the media which will otherwise try to hold him accountable and expose the endless tide of lies that we can expect going forward.  An activist friend shared some thoughts on Facebook that seem to describe the coming disinformation campaign:

If you are puzzled by the bizarre "press conference" put on by the White House press secretary this evening (angrily claiming that Trump's inauguration had the largest audience in history, accusing them of faking photos and lying about attendance), let me help explain it. This spectacle served three purposes:

1. Establishing a norm with the press: they will be told things that are obviously wrong and they will have no opportunity to ask questions. That way, they will be grateful if they get anything more at any press conference. This is the PR equivalent of "negging," the odious pick-up practice of a particular kind of horrible man (e.g., Donald Trump).

2. Increasing the separation between Trump's base (1/3 of the population) from everybody else (the remaining 2/3). By being told something that is obviously wrong—that there is no evidence for and all evidence against, that anybody with eyes can see is wrong—they are forced to pick whether they are going to believe Trump or their lying eyes. The gamble here—likely to pay off—is that they will believe Trump. This means that they will regard media outlets that report the truth as "fake news" (because otherwise they'd be forced to confront their cognitive dissonance.)

3. Creating a sense of uncertainty about whether facts are knowable, among a certain chunk of the population (which is a taking a page from the Kremlin, for whom this is their preferred disinformation tactic). A third of the population will say "clearly the White House is lying," a third will say "if Trump says it, it must be true," and the remaining third will say "gosh, I guess this is unknowable." The idea isn't to convince these people of untrue things, it's to fatigue them, so that they will stay out of the political process entirely, regarding the truth as just too difficult to determine.

This is laying important groundwork for the months ahead. If Trump's White House is willing to lie about something as obviously, unquestionably fake as this, just imagine what else they'll lie about. In particular, things that the public cannot possibly verify the truth of. It's gonna get real bad.

A piece in Vox elaborates further on this effort:

Delegitimizing the institutions that might report inconvenient or damaging facts about the president is strategic for an administration that has made a slew of impossible promises and takes office amid a cloud of ethics concerns and potential scandals. 

It also gives the new administration a convenient scapegoat for their continued struggles with public opinion, and their potential future struggles with reality. This kind of “dishonesty from the media,” Spicer said, is making it hard “to bring our country together.” It’s not difficult to imagine the Trump administration disputing bad jobs numbers in the future, or claiming their Obamacare replacement covers everyone when it actually throws millions off insurance.

 Be very, very afraid for the future.

Saturday Night Live Spoofs Trump and Reality

 Once again Saturday Night Live did a great spoof on Donald Trump over the weekend,.  Sadly, what is frightening is the fact that the spoof likely exposes the reality of what the Trump/Pence/Putin regime will bring to America.  Trump has no allegiance to anyone but himself and his overweening ego.   This country has been truly betrayed by those who voted for Trump and, of course by Trump himself who doesn't give a rat's ass about America or the cretins who voted for him,   I truly hoe that Trump voters quickly begin to reap what they sowed and they deserve every misfortune, betrayal and calamity imaginable. It may sound cruel, but I hope they suffer immeasurably.  And some of us will unmercifully remind them that their suffering is self-inflicted and the direct result of their laziness and willingness to fall for appeals to bigotry, racism and misogyny.  There are no limits to the suffering that these individuals deserve. .   

Trump As A Useful Idiot - Putin's Hope to Destabilize America

A post yesterday looked at the dangers posed by Donald Trump's likely refusal to concede his loss to Hillary Clinton if he loses on November 8, 2016.  Yes, Trump is a shallow, ego driven narcissist.  But as a column in the Washington Post outlines, Trump may also be playing a game designed by Vladimir Putin.  Playing the role of Putin's useful idiot, whether willingly or not.  Whatever Trump's motivation may be, the end result may be the same: a destabilized America and an even more fractured society.  If, as some suggest, Trump is beholden to Russian funds to keep his real estate scheme alive, then money may be Trump's base motivation.  The other option is that he is a narcissistic idiot playing directly into Putin's scheming hands.  Here are column excerpts:

In the fall of 2004 Vladi­mir Putin suffered a blow he has never forgotten. The fraudulent election of a pro-Kremlin Ukrainian president, which Putin had directly and brazenly engineered, was overturned by a massive popular uprising. What came to be known as the “Orange Revolution” created a model for resistance to rigged elections in autocracies across Eurasia — in Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Azerbaijan and, in 2012, Russia itself.

Most of the rebellions didn’t succeed. But Putin developed an obsession with “color revolutions,” which he is convinced are neither spontaneous nor locally organized, but orchestrated by the United States — and in the case of the Moscow protests four years ago, by Hillary Clinton herself.

That’s the context in which Russia’s intervention in the 2016 U.S. presidential election must be understood. Putin is trying to deliver to the American political elite what he believes is a dose of its own medicine. He is attempting to ignite — with the help, unwitting or otherwise, of Donald Trump — a U.S. color revolution.

Let’s look at the way those revolts unfolded. In every case, they pitted an outsider political movement against an entrenched elite willing to employ fraud and force to remain in power. The outsiders mobilized their followers to collect evidence of rigging on election day and, when they could, conducted exit polls and “quick counts” to obtain vote totals they could contrast with official results. They disseminated their findings through satellite channels and other foreign media. When the inevitable victory of the ruling party was announced, they called their followers to the streets for mass protests they hoped would cause the regime to crumble — or at least discredit its phony election triumph.

Of course, Trump’s populist campaign is no more comparable to the pro-democracy insurgencies in formerly Soviet lands such as Ukraine and Belarus than Clinton’s administration-in-waiting is to the Putin regime. But Putin’s audacious goal is to create the illusion that they are. “He’s trying to establish that our system is just as bad, just as corrupt, as his,” says Brian Whitmore, a senior editor of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

The first step of the campaign was to hack the computers of the Democratic National Committee and senior party figures and distribute — sometimes with alterations — material that was purported to show Clinton’s rigging of the system.

Next came the suggestions that the balloting itself might be tampered with. Most likely, that was the point of the hacking probes into the voting systems of more than 20 states, including key battlegrounds such as Pennsylvania and Florida. 

Trump meanwhile plays his part; he could not be doing more to aid the Kremlin’s narrative if he were reading from a script. (Which in some cases, he literally is: See his citation last week of a Clinton-related email doctored by the Moscow-run Sputnik news service.) Repeatedly warning that the election may be rigged, Trump has been enlisting his supporters as observers to watch “certain areas” he is likely to lose, such as Philadelphia.

That, in turn, will prompt reactions like that already heard from a Trump supporter at a Mike Pence rally last week. After raising the specter of rigging, she said: “If Hillary Clinton gets in, I myself, I’m ready for a revolution, because we can’t have her in.” After a thousand cable broadcasts of that moment, Putin surely was still smiling.

And the revolution? Putin understands that Washington is not Kiev; mobs are unlikely to mass in front of the White House or Congress. But rebellions can happen online: Imagine a blizzard of Internet posts, reinforced by the Kremlin’s paid trolls, its satellite television network and the Trumpian corners of Fox, alleging that what Trump calls the “political establishment” has stolen the election for Clinton.

Clinton would start her term politically wounded, both domestically and abroad. Putin will have obtained payback. And Trump will have shown himself to be a most useful idiot.

Trump's Biographers: Trump is a Very Dangerous Man

I try to remain upbeat and convince myself that a majority of Americans are sane enough to realize that Donald Trump poses an existential danger to American democracy.  True, the Christofacists (especially the most parasitic of them) and white supremacists continue to blindly support Trump, but god help us, the do not represent a majority of the populace.  A piece in Politico Magazine looks at the the reactions of past Trump biographers and their conclusions are frightening.  Trump is nothing short of dangerous and, as the biographers make clear, mentally unstable based on my reading of the piece.  Here are article excerpts:

Back in early March, Politico Magazine brought together five Donald Trump biographers for a conversation over lunch at Trump Tower. At the time, the country was just beginning to grapple with the reality that the presidential nominee from one of the two major American political parties stood a good chance of being a real estate mogul and entertainer. Wayne Barrett, Gwenda Blair, Michael D’Antonio, Harry Hurt and Timothy O’Brien knew him better than anybody, had studied him more than anybody, had written an aggregate 2,195 pages in books.

In a conference call on Monday with Barrett, Blair, D’Antonio and O’Brien, the biographers were unanimous in their assessment of what we are seeing: They are not surprised. Trump is who they thought he was. This, they said, is not a show. It is not an act. This is the man they wrote about. In 1992. In 1993. In 1999. In 2005. In 2015. This is a man who has been one of the most famous people in America for going on 40 years. Only now, though, are many people, finally, really, getting to know Donald John Trump.
He is, the biographers said, “profoundly narcissistic,” “willing to go to lengths we’ve never seen before in order to satisfy his ego”—and “a very dangerous man for the next three or four weeks.”

[O]n the one hand, this seems all totally unprecedented in American politics; on the other hand, it seems somehow utterly predictable in the context of the personality of Donald Trump.

Michael Kruse: So this past Friday when you all heard the hot mic tape from the gossip show bus, were you surprised?
 Gwenda Blair: No.

Michael D’Antonio: Raise your voice if you were surprised.

Blair: Yeah. I don’t think any of us were surprised.
 Kruse: Why not?

Wayne Barrett: Well, I would have to say that “grabbing by the pussy” was a little surprising to me. You know, thrusting his tongue down whatever mouth was available wasn’t much of a surprise, but “grabbing by the pussy” was not something I had anticipated.

Timothy O’Brien: I think he’s always been a skirt chaser. I guess, you know, in that context, it didn’t surprise me. I think he’s always boasted about the things that he’s the most insecure about, which is his wealth, his intellect and his sex appeal.

Barrett: They talk about this as if this is locker room bragging, and really, I was in a lot of locker rooms and I never heard anything like this. Men don’t brag about forcing themselves on women. They want to paint themselves as desirable, and, you know, he doesn’t look like a stud here. He looks like a predator.

D’Antonio: . . . .And the thing that I found consistent where Donald is concerned is that this kind of language and act is in his mind. I mean, that’s the thing that really shocks me is that he’s so predatory and so oriented toward seizing what he wants rather than relating to a person that, you know, it’s pathological. I’ve never heard anyone say this kind of thing ever, and the way that he’s talking about it, as if it’s locker room talk, is just ridiculous.

O’Brien: Graydon Carter in Vanity Fair, in the most recent issue, recounted inviting Trump to one of the Vanity Fair parties in the ’90s and seating him next to Vendela Kirsebom, the Swedish model. And about halfway through the dinner, she comes running up to him quasi-hysterical because she can’t handle sitting next to Trump any longer because of all of his lewd behavior.

But the problem with reporting all of these things is that the women involved often are afraid to go on the record. I know that his ex‑wives, when I was reporting, were very wary of being interviewed and running afoul of him by doing so, at least when they spoke with me.

D’Antonio: Well, I think that what Tim is saying is consistent with the guy who would decide to have this campaign in the first place. You know, who would proceed knowing that he has all of these problems in his background, knowing how much audio and video exists, having been on “Howard Stern” and said horrible things? He just doesn’t seem to recognize his own issues and problems and how he’s perceived. So maybe for the next three weeks, he’s going to be trying out, you know, Breitbart TV and proving to the masses that follow him that he’s as red in tooth and claw as he seems to be. And, as Tim said, he’s already laid the groundwork to declare it was rigged in the first place.

There's more.  The take away? Trump is a dangerous psychopath. 

New Hitler Book Could As Easily Describe Trump

I have been blasted by some for my comparisons of Donald Trump and Adolph Hitler.  In my opinion both represent narcissistic demagogues subject to tempestuous love affairs with themselves.  Both pandered/pander to hate and bigotry and viewed scapegoating others as a means to power. Trump may have come a background of wealth and comfort whereas Hitler came from a meager background, yet the self-importance ascribed to themselves is remarkably similar.  Likewise, temper tantrums and violent out bursts follow criticism or  suggestions that they were not always right.  If you don't believe me, you need to read a new New York Times book review of “Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939,” by historian Volker Ullrich, and think of Trump as you read the review.  The book could as easily describe Trump's tactics today as those of Hitler in his rise to power.   Here are review highlights:

How did Adolf Hitler — described by one eminent magazine editor in 1930 as a “half-insane rascal,” a “pathetic dunderhead,” a “nowhere fool,” a “big mouth” — rise to power in the land of Goethe and Beethoven? What persuaded millions of ordinary Germans to embrace him and his doctrine of hatred? How did this “most unlikely pretender to high state office” achieve absolute power in a once democratic country and set it on a course of monstrous horror?

A host of earlier biographers (most notably Alan Bullock, Joachim Fest and Ian Kershaw) have advanced theories about Hitler’s rise, and the dynamic between the man and his times. Some have focused on the social and political conditions in post-World War I Germany, which Hitler expertly exploited — bitterness over the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles and a yearning for a return to German greatness; unemployment and economic distress amid the worldwide Depression of the early 1930s; and longstanding ethnic prejudices and fears of “foreignization.”

Other writers — including the dictator’s latest biographer, the historian Volker Ullrich — have focused on Hitler as a politician who rose to power through demagoguery, showmanship and nativist appeals to the masses.

In “Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939,” Mr. Ullrich sets out to strip away the mythology that Hitler created around himself in “Mein Kampf,” and he also tries to look at this “mysterious, calamitous figure” not as a monster or madman, but as a human being with “undeniable talents and obviously deep-seated psychological complexes.” This is the first of two volumes (it ends in 1939 with the dictator’s 50th birthday) and there is little here that is substantially new. However, Mr. Ullrich offers a fascinating Shakespearean parable about how the confluence of circumstance, chance, a ruthless individual and the willful blindness of others can transform a country — and, in Hitler’s case, lead to an unimaginable nightmare for the world.

Mr. Ullrich, like other biographers, provides vivid insight into some factors that helped turn a “Munich rabble-rouser” — regarded by many as a self-obsessed “clown” with a strangely “scattershot, impulsive style” — into “the lord and master of the German Reich.”

• Hitler was often described as an egomaniac who “only loved himself” — a narcissist with a taste for self-dramatization and what Mr. Ullrich calls a “characteristic fondness for superlatives.” His manic speeches and penchant for taking all-or-nothing risks raised questions about his capacity for self-control, even his sanity. But Mr. Ullrich underscores Hitler’s shrewdness as a politician — with a “keen eye for the strengths and weaknesses of other people” and an ability to “instantaneously analyze and exploit situations.”

• Hitler was known, among colleagues, for a “bottomless mendacity” that would later be magnified by a slick propaganda machine that used the latest technology (radio, gramophone records, film) to spread his message. A former finance minister wrote that Hitler “was so thoroughly untruthful that he could no longer recognize the difference between lies and truth” and editors of one edition of “Mein Kampf” described it as a “swamp of lies, distortions, innuendoes, half-truths and real facts.”

• Hitler was an effective orator and actor, Mr. Ullrich reminds readers, adept at assuming various masks and feeding off the energy of his audiences. Although he concealed his anti-Semitism beneath a “mask of moderation” when trying to win the support of the socially liberal middle classes, he specialized in big, theatrical rallies staged with spectacular elements borrowed from the circus. Here, “Hitler adapted the content of his speeches to suit the tastes of his lower-middle-class, nationalist-conservative, ethnic-chauvinist and anti-Semitic listeners,” Mr. Ullrich writes. He peppered his speeches with coarse phrases and put-downs of hecklers. Even as he fomented chaos by playing to crowds’ fears and resentments, he offered himself as the visionary leader who could restore law and order.

• Hitler increasingly presented himself in messianic terms, promising “to lead Germany to a new era of national greatness,” though he was typically vague about his actual plans. He often harked back to a golden age for the country, Mr. Ullrich says, the better “to paint the present day in hues that were all the darker. Everywhere you looked now, there was only decline and decay.”

• Hitler’s repertoire of topics, Mr. Ullrich notes, was limited, and reading his speeches in retrospect, “it seems amazing that he attracted larger and larger audiences” with “repeated mantralike phrases” consisting largely of “accusations, vows of revenge and promises for the future.” But Hitler virtually wrote the modern playbook on demagoguery, arguing in “Mein Kampf” that propaganda must appeal to the emotions — not the reasoning powers — of the crowd. Its “purely intellectual level,” Hitler said, “will have to be that of the lowest mental common denominator among the public it is desired to reach.” Because the understanding of the masses “is feeble,” he went on, effective propaganda needed to be boiled down to a few slogans that should be “persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea that has been put forward.”

• Hitler’s ascension was aided and abetted by the naïveté of domestic adversaries who failed to appreciate his ruthlessness and tenacity, and by foreign statesmen who believed they could control his aggression. Early on, revulsion at Hitler’s style and appearance, Mr. Ullrich writes, led some critics to underestimate the man and his popularity, while others dismissed him as a celebrity, a repellent but fascinating “evening’s entertainment.” Politicians, for their part, suffered from the delusion that the dominance of traditional conservatives in the cabinet would neutralize the threat of Nazi abuse of power and “fence Hitler in.”

• “Many Germans jumped on the Nazi bandwagon not out of political conviction but in hopes of improving their career opportunities, he argues, while fear kept others from speaking out against the persecution of the Jews. The independent press was banned or suppressed and books deemed “un-German” were burned. By March 1933, Hitler had made it clear, Mr. Ullrich says, “that his government was going to do away with all norms of separation of powers and the rule of law.” 

• Hitler had a dark, Darwinian view of the world. And he would not only become, in Mr. Ullrich’s words, “a mouthpiece of the cultural pessimism” growing in right-wing circles in the Weimar Republic, but also the avatar of what Thomas Mann identified as a turning away from reason and the fundamental principles of a civil society — namely, “liberty, equality, education, optimism and belief in progress.”

Sound frighteningly familiar?  I hope and pray that a majority of voters will wake up and save America from repeating the tragedy of Germany.  Having read a great deal about Hitler's rise to power, I continue to be amazed at how the man manipulated people and played to their ugliest instincts - just like Donald Trump.