March 31, 2018: Young Americans Consider Trump "Racist," Ted Nugent Calls Parkland Kids "Soulless," and Your Pet Might Be Delicious

 

3/31/18: In a recent poll only 33% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 approve of the job the president is doing. 

 

Make America Great Again, c. 1960. 

Luckily for Republicans, people in this age bracket turn out to vote at far lower rates than old codgers with walkers. 

More ominously, for the GOP, 47% of the younger demographic say they’re paying greater attention to politics since Trump was elected. More than 7 in 10 say Trump “doesn’t reflect my personal values [emphasis added].” What! No pussy grabbing! No hating on Mexicans! No banning LGBT soldiers from the military! 

Come on young people! Make America Great Again, c. 1960, when America was 90% white, interracial marriage was illegal, and you could ban people of skin tones you didn’t like from eating in your restaurant. 

Also, women knew their place, which, among other things, meant no opportunities in sports. 

But lots of chances to be secretaries! 

Other poll findings paint a grim picture for President Trump. Six in 10 young Americans think he’s “mentally unfit,” 62 percent believe he’s “generally dishonest” and 63 percent consider him “a racist.” Almost 7 in 10 favor a pathway to legal status for DACA recipients and others brought to the country illegally as children. 

Finally, 6 in 10 young Americans want the government to take steps to address climate change. This probably has something to do with the fact that all the old people who don’t believe in climate change, like the president himself, will die off relatively soon. The young know they may be stuck living on a planet where the damage becomes acute. 

With that depressing future in mind, 55 percent of those polled favor legalization of recreational marijuana.

Cloned pets (explained below).

 

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FORMER ROCK STAR and draft-dodger Ted Nugent – also a major fan of President Trump – decides to wade into the discussion of the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. 

It really gets Ol’ Ted riled up to think that surviving students are protesting against gun violence. On The Joe Pags Show, Nugent lets rip: 

The dumbing down of America is manifested in the culture deprivation of our academia that have taught these kids the lies, media that have prodded and encouraged and provided these kids lies. I really feel sorry for them because it’s not only ignorant and dangerously stupid, but it’s soulless.

 

 [He went on to say] to attack the good, law-abiding families of America when well-known, predictable murderers commit these horrors is deep in the category of soulless. These poor children, I’m afraid to say this and it hurts me to say this, but the evidence is irrefutable, they have no soul. ... These children can’t be critical of any of the propaganda that they’re fed and that’s just sad.

 

I would doubt it “hurt” Nugent to say the survivors of the bloody slaughter were soulless. I can say it hurt me to listen. 

Ted is also a board member of the N.R.A.

 

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Get that fish a chin-lift!

LAST BUT NOT LEAST, for today: We have fresh proof that the Top 1% don’t have enough money to spend and desperately need tax cuts. 

The Asian arowana, popular with fish-collecting enthusiasts, can sell for as much as $300,000. Known as the “long yu” (or “dragon fish,” in Chinese), most go for a few hundred dollars. The most “attractive” can go for tens of thousands, including that aforementioned arowana, sold reputedly to a Chinese communist official for six figures. Kenny Ng, a premier cosmetic surgeon – for fish – operating in Singapore, will give your arowana an eyelift ($90) or a chin-lift ($60) if you think it might help. 

Of course, in desperate times – say if you were trapped in your house by zombies – the fish might save your life. 

You could always eat it if you were starving. 

This is probably more than you can say for Barbara Streisand and her dogs, Miss Violet and Miss Scarlett. Both are cloned from her deceased pet, Samantha, a Coton de Tulears breed. 

Cost per clone: $50,000. 

Then again, I guess, if you were desperate, you could make Miss Violet breakfast and save Miss Scarlett for lunch. 

Again, assuming, zombies. 

Bring on the tax cuts!

August 31, 2018: The Witch Hunters Find a Real Witch

 

8/31/18: At this point, if federal investigators caught President Trump with a conical hat on his head, a book of spells in his hands, and a bubbling brew of noxious ingredients in a cauldron in the Oval Office, his Helen Keller-like fans would still insist he has nothing to do with witchcraft. 

 

Another witch is brought to justice. 

Friday, prosecutors bring another witch to justice. This witch, like several others recently, pleads guilty and agrees to cooperate with authorities. This time the man in the pointed black hat is W. Samuel Patten, heretofore a little-known Republican lobbyist. What makes Patten interesting in the Russia story is that he has long had ties with Paul Manafort, the convicted felon. 

Like Manafort, Patten worked secretly for a pro-Russian Ukrainian political party, backed by Vladimir Putin. In the process he earned a cool million dollars plus for his services. If the Russians killed a few thousand Ukrainians in attacks along their country’s border, Patten wasn’t bothered. 

Hey, a million dollars plus!

 

Patten, left, heads to court with wife.

Patten also formed a company with Konstantin Kilimnik, a former Russian intelligence agent (naturally). 

Kilimnik was indicted along with Manafort recently, in a separate federal investigation. Both are scheduled to stand trial starting September 24; but Kilimnik will decline to attend. He has fled to Russia. 

Patten pled guilty to funneling a $50,000 donation from foreign sources to the Trump Inaugural Committee, which is, for obvious reasons, illegal. That crime may not seem like much to Trump’s base. Patten copped to a single felony, while admitting to several more.

 

Is there anything else fishy, regarding the Trump Inaugural Committee? Vice chairmen of the Committee included, Elliott Broidy, a bigtime Republican financier, and Rick Gates (now a convicted felon). A year ago, the “Fake News Media” revealed that Broidy had agreed to a $1.6 million hush money payment to a Playboy Bunny who claims he impregnated her Bunny self. That Bunny went on to have an abortion (because, of course, Republicans want to overturn Roe v.  Wade). 

Who set up that lucrative deal? It was Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer (now a felon).

 

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AT LEAST ONE REPUBLICAN, Michael London, a former member of the Trumbull, Connecticut Town Council announces he is quitting the party. 

Why? 

London is blunt. In an op-ed published by the Hartford Courant, London says his decision to quit the party and register as an unaffiliated voter was “something that I never thought I would do.”  

I blame President Trump for turning the Grand Old Party into a lame, extreme right-wing group of people unwilling or unable to see the truth. But Trump is not alone in causing my disillusionment.

 

I have had it with the state and federal branches of the Republican Party that tolerated the president’s behavior. None of our GOP candidates for governor denounced Trump. None of the leaders of Connecticut’s GOP will speak out.

 

Trump, he added, with complete disgust, is “the worst president our country has had — ever.”

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE (5/30/22): It would be comical, were it not sad, but Elliott Broidy later gets indicted, convicted in a scheme to funnel foreign money to Trump-affiliated groups, and then gets a last-minute pardon, as Trump heads out the door. 

Thomas Barrack, head of the Trump Inaugural Committee is, as I type this note, under indictment for the same kind of crimes.