August 5, 2019: The Nation Mourns El Paso and Dayton Massacres

 

8/5/19: The nation comes to grips with the tragic events of the weekend. TV screens fill with sad images. Three daughters of David Johnson talk with Anderson Cooper. They tell him their dad shielded their mother and a nine-year-old granddaughter when the El Paso killer opened fire at point blank range. Johnson was hit several times and paid with his life. 

All three young women start to cry. 

 

____________________ 

The problem Trump doesn’t dare address is the problem itself.

____________________

 

 

The name of Arturo Benavides, 60, scrolls across the screen. An army veteran, who liked to talk about his time in the service, Benavides was killed not on a battlefield but shopping at a store. Maribel Latin, describes being wounded in the arm and the foot, playing dead, counting shots fired as she lay. She feared the next bullet might be for her. Paul Gilbert Anchondo, age two months, was grazed by a bullet but survived. Both parents were killed. Now he’s a “mass murderer orphan.” So are his sisters, Skylin, 5, and Victoria, 2. Javier Amir Rodriguez, 15, played soccer in high school last year. He won’t be playing again this fall. Angelina Englisbee, 86, survived eight decades on earth, only to be cut down at Walmart. 

The husband of Elsa Libora Marquez speaks, in a sense, for all the grieving families, when he remembers his wife in a Facebook post. “I say goodbye to my partner, the most wonderful woman, a being full of life who will continue to light our path [emphasis added, unless otherwise noted] for the time that life gives us…we will miss you my love!!!!” 

The story in Dayton is equally bloody and grim. Megan Betts, the “bubbly” sister of the killer, is among those gunned down. Derrick Fudge, 57, is purchasing food at a taco truck when caught by a burst of semi-automatic fire. Lois Oglesby, 27, a young mother, will never tuck her two daughters in bed again. Logan Turner, 30, described by his mother “as the world’s best son,” is dead.

 

* 

Pitting group against group. 

AT 10:00 A.M., President Trump appears before cameras in the White House Diplomatic Reception Room. VP Pence stands, a step back, at his side. Trump talks about what he believes must be done. 

A “wicked man,” he says, went to Walmart in El Paso and opened fire. In Dayton, a “twisted monster” blasted innocent bystanders at a popular night-life spot. The president’s speech hits mostly correct notes, although Trump seems to be delivering it with the enthusiasm of a child served succotash. He appears to be reciting what’s on the teleprompter and doesn’t appear moved. 

“These barbaric slaughters are an assault on our communities,” he recites, “a crime against all humanity.” It is odd to hear the words “all humanity” issue from his lips. Trump spent his entire time running for office, and all his time since, dividing humanity into groups and pitting group against group. 

Still, he soldiers on, saying, at least three years too late, that, “in one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy. These sinister ideologies must be defeated. Hate has no place in America. Hatred warps the mind, ravages the heart, and devours the soul.”

 

This blogger freely admits he finds this president to be a despicable human being. He would credit Trump for such words if he thought they came from someplace in his heart. But it’s easy to check the internet site which compiles all of Trump’s tweets. The site allows a search by word or phrase. 

The phrase, “all humanity” has never appeared. 

“Hate,” however, comes up hundreds of times, sometimes in harmless fashion, often not. Trump howls about political foes who “HATE our country.” There are “haters and losers,” “Trump haters,” CNN pundits who “hate” him, and a single “Hate Crime” that riles Trump up. 

(Until this moment, the only hate crime Trump had ever tweeted about was the case of Jussie Smollett, who faked an attack on himself – and claimed the attackers were men in red MAGA hats.) 

 

“The inherent worth and dignity of every human life.” 

“Since Columbine,” Trump continues with his White House recitation, we have “watched, with rising horror, and dread, as one mass shooting has followed another, over and over again, decade after decade.” 

“We can and will stop this evil contagion,” he adds, but says it must be done in “a true bipartisan manner.” 

In perhaps the most ironic passage of all, Trump looks at the teleprompter and intones: “Cultural change is hard. But each of us can choose to build a culture that celebrates the inherent worth and dignity of every human life.” In what sounds like an aside, diverging from the script, he adds, with what seems to be a brief touch of sincere emotion, “That’s what we have to do.”

 

The president talks for ten minutes. It’s hard not to notice he avoids the main point. “We must reform our mental health laws to better identify mentally disturbed individuals,” make sure they get treatment, but face “involuntary confinement” if required. He talks about regulating “violent video games.” He seems to believe all mass murderers are “mentally disturbed,” but says he wants to add the death penalty in such cases. There’s no evidence a deranged killer would care. The problem Trump doesn’t dare address is the problem itself. Both shooters, as is almost always the case where mass murder occurs, were armed with military-style weaponry. And – more generally – the problem is that the country is awash with three hundred million guns. 

Instead, Trump hits a key right-wing talking point in his speech. We don’t need gun control. “Mental illness and hatred pulls the trigger, not the gun,” he insists. 

His task nearly complete, Trump wraps up the speech he has no choice but to give. “If we are able to pass great legislation after all of these years, we will ensure that those who were attacked will not have died in vain.” He offers blessings to the memory of the people who died in El Paso. Then: “May God bless the memory of those who died in Toledo. May God protect them.” 

It’s a bizarre slip of the tongue, but Trump doesn’t correct himself. Moments later, he concludes his performance. He exits the room, as if making his escape, without taking a question from the press.

 

* 

THE DAY DOES NOT END, however, before several Republicans make colossal asses of themselves. 

Once again, we hear them argue that banning assault-style rifles won’t help because killers can still use knives. It’s the same line they trot out every time a mass shooting occurs. Killers can use cars, too. 

Oh, fuck it. Why not just argue that they can use nine irons, two-by-fours, and frozen turkey legs as clubs? 

(Next, they’d howl: “Liberals want to take away your drumsticks!”)

 

Ohio state Rep. Candice Keller, the biggest fool of all, places blame for gun violence right where it “belongs.” 

In a Facebook post she writes, “After every mass shooting, the liberals start the blame game. Why not place the blame where it belongs?” She kicks off her list: “The breakdown of the traditional American family (thank you, transgender, homosexual marriage, and drag queen advocates)...” 

It’s an idiotic response. And to be fair, the Ohio Republican Party chairwoman calls on Rep. Keller to resign.

 

* 

LEST WE FORGET, there are and always have been Republicans and conservatives who stand for principles any decent human can respect. Nebraska state Sen. John S. McCollister, a lifelong Republican, issues a series of searing tweets: 

The Republican Party is enabling white supremacy in our country. As a lifelong Republican, it pains me to say this, but it’s the truth.

 

I of course am not suggesting that all Republicans are white supremacists nor am I saying that the average Republican is even racist.

 

What I am saying though is that the Republican Party is COMPLICIT to obvious racist and immoral activity inside our party.

 

We have a Republican president who continually stokes racist fears in his base. He calls certain countries “sh*tholes,” tells women of color to “go back” to where they came from and lies more than he tells the truth.

 

We have Republican senators and representatives who look the other way and say nothing for fear that it will negatively affect their elections. No more. When the history books are written, I refuse to be someone who said nothing...

 

We all like to cite Abraham Lincoln’s Republican lineage when it is politically expedient but NOW is the time to ACT like Lincoln and take a stand.

 

With, that, he posts this picture and calls it a day.

 

 

 

Within hours, the chairman of the Nebraska GOP drums McCollister out of the Republican Party. 

And so it goes.

August 7, 2019: President Trump Identifies the Real Victim of the El Paso and Dayton Massacres

 

8/7/19: According to President Trump we now know who the biggest victim of the El Paso and Dayton massacres was. No – not the dead and wounded. No – not the grieving families. No! It’s not first responders, police, emergency squad personnel, ICU nurses and trauma surgeons who deal with the wreckage of bodies. No. No. No. No. No one has suffered more than…. 

…Donald J. Trump.  

 

____________________ 

“There’s no longer any doubt that the president has blood on his hands.” 

Governor William Weld

­­­____________________

 

 

We know this, because Trump is up early Wednesday, preparing for his trip to Dayton and El Paso, and totally focused on the victims and families of…. 

Nope. Not even close. 

At 5:32 a.m., he’s rage-tweeting, obsessing over a changed headline, the day before, in The New York Times. 

“Trump Urges Unity Vs. Racism,” was the correct description in the first headline by the Failing New York Times, but it was quickly changed to, “Assailing Hate But Not Guns,” after the Radical Left Democrats went absolutely CRAZY! Fake News - That’s what we’re up against...

 

Unlike most Trump supporters, this humble blogger subscribes to and regularly reads The New York Times. The changed headline has nothing to do with the gist of the story that followed. 

Yes, the first headline indicated: “Trump Urges Unity Vs. Racism.” 

That doesn’t mean anyone thought the president was sincere. Not under any headline you might conjure.

Some of the real victims.

 

* 

“I think my rhetoric brings people together.” 

A FEW HOURS LATER, speaking to reporters on the White House lawn, before leaving for Dayton and El Paso, Trump insists that Democrats are trying to score political points by attacking him. 

A reporter asks, “Do you think your rhetoric is fueling the violence?” 

“I don’t think my rhetoric does at all,” the president replies. “I think my rhetoric brings people together.” 

With that, it was off to Dayton, where the visit went off without any serious problems, with only a few dozen protesters gathered at the hospital and a couple hundred more at the site of the massacre. The mayor and Sen. Sherrod Brown, both Democrats, say the visit went “well enough.” 

And away Trump goes!

 

On to El Paso, where thousands are waiting to protest. And where he will bring solace, in part, by calling the mayor of that city a RINO. (“Republican in Name Only,” if you don’t know.) 

Here, Trump runs into the kind of trouble that dogs him at so many points. First, eight shooting victims and their families at the University Medical Center in El Paso refuse to meet him. Next, he’s filmed talking to medical staff at the hospital. The topic of discussion? He’s bragging about how big his crowd was when he visited El Paso for a rally earlier this year. Even worse, Trump can’t get past the tragedy of his persecution. Yes, 31 Americans have been massacred. Trump is suffering most. 

He has been shot in the orange ego. 

Flying home to Washington, he goes on the attack. Democrats, he howls, are trying to politicize the carnage! 

Well, take this: 

Watching Sleepy Joe Biden making a speech. Sooo Boring! The LameStream Media will die in the ratings and clicks with this guy [emphasis added]. It will be over for them, not to mention the fact that our Country will do poorly with him. It will be one big crash, but at least China will be happy! 

 

Ponder this a moment. Trump seems to believe the real issue for the day is “clicks,” website traffic, like “clicks” on cute cat videos and stupid young men managing to hit themselves in the nuts. 

Next, Trump takes a poke at Fox News! “Watching Fake News CNN is better than watching Shepard Smith, the lowest rated show on @FoxNews. Actually, whenever possible, I turn to @OANN!” 

Ah! Low TV ratings – worse than blood in the streets. 

Next, we get bragging: 

Leaving El Paso for the White House. What GREAT people I met there and in Dayton, Ohio. The Fake News worked overtime trying to disparage me and the two trips, but it just didn’t work. The love, respect & enthusiasm were there for all to see. They have been through so much. Sad!

 

Indeed, the “love, respect & enthusiasm” for Donald J. Trump is all that Donald J. Trump cares about.

 

In the meantime (and Trump must have missed this, or he’d have had to unleash Twitter hell again), former Gov. William Weld, a Republican, blisters the president’s response to the shootings. 

Appearing on MSNBC, Weld is blunt. “There’s no longer any doubt that the president has blood on his hands. You could draw a direct line from that manifesto from the shooter in El Paso to the Trump handbook. Every week it seems the president gets a bit more unhinged.”

Donald Trump Ruins the World

In this post we cover July, August and the first 23 days of September 2019.

We pick up the trail for 9/24-30/19 in a separate post, as the story of Trump asking the president of the Ukraine for help in the 2020 election explodes in the president’s face.

***

July 1, 2019: No single day of record-high temperatures, no single month of highest average temperatures in one state, or one nation, and certainly no cold snap in winter, wherever Trump has plumped down his fat fanny, proves nor disproves climate change.  

What if it was sixty degrees warmer?

We do know that climate change, as Trump often claims, is not a “hoax.” The last twenty years, globally, have virtually the entire science community spooked. In 2018 the world’s oceans—measured at 3,000 locations, down to depths of 6500 feet—had their hottest year ever.

Even worse, as National Geographic explains, oceans have been acting as giant “thermal sponges.” They have sopped up 93% of all extra heat generated since the start of the Industrial Revolution. As a result, slowly rising ocean temperatures will have long lasting, potentially irreversible effects.

Experts don’t mince words:

“The oceans are the best thermometer we have for the planet,” says Zeke Hausfather, an energy and climate scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, who used the ocean heat data published today in an analysis published last week in Science. “We can really see global warming loud and clear in the ocean record.”

In fact, scientists say that if the oceans weren’t absorbing all that heat, the atmosphere might have warmed by sixty degrees.

That’s no typo.

Any other worrisome signs? Globally, June turned out to be the hottest June on record, part of a daunting arc. National Geographic notes that the five hottest summers on record in Europe in the last 500 years are 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018. This summer is starting off even worse.

In California, to start July, record highs at Bodega Bay, fifty miles north of San Francisco, left “scores of dead mussels on the rocks, their shells gaping and scorched, their meats thoroughly cooked.” Christopher Harley, a biologist at the University of British Columbia, warns, “Mussels are one of the canaries in the coal mine for climate change.”

Or, a more apt metaphor might be: We humans are going to end up like the lobster in the pot. (See also: 7/4/19, 7/10/19, 7/11/19, 7/18/19, 7/21/19 and 7/25/19.)

 

7/2/19: President Trump spends the day putting the final touches on his “Salute to America (And Look at Me!)” parade and fireworks display. Naturally, there will be a featured speaker for the Fourth of July show.

Trump.

There is probably no truth to the rumor that Trump would like to wear a military-style uniform, cut to make him look less rotund. It is said his epaulets will carry seven stars. That would be more stars than any general in U.S. history. The president will also have all kinds of service ribbons to emblazon his chest. There will be a white and black campaign ribbon, black center, with a white, skeletal foot representing heroism in the face of crippling bone spurs. He’ll have a ribbon, alternating green and white stripes, with “oak leaf clusters,” for surviving divorce, representing two divorces—and a third time Melania found out he was having sex with a porn queen. Trump will have a “Marksman” ribbon for hitting mostly correct buttons while tweeting, and a large gold medal on a ribbon of white stars on a light blue background. This will be modeled after the Medal of Honor, but carry the words: “Greatest President Ever.”

*

REAL HEROES have their doubts about the parade. Active duty military are reluctant to criticize the plan and risk irreversible damage to their careers. Retired officers have been blunt.

“I think it’s absolutely obscene.”

“This looks like it’s becoming much more of a Republican Party event — a political event about the president — than a national celebration of the Fourth of July, and it’s unfortunate to have the military smack dab in the middle of that,” said retired Army Lt. Gen. David Barno, who commanded U.S. troops in Afghanistan under President George W. Bush.

“The president is using the armed forces in a political ploy for his reelection campaign and I think it’s absolutely obscene,” added retired Army Maj. Gen. William Nash, a veteran of Vietnam, the Gulf War and peacekeeping operations in the Balkans.

“Military displays like this are a favorite tactic of those who want to wrap themselves in the symbols of who we are rather than really celebrating who we are,” said Jason Dempsey, a former Army major who studies the military and society at the Center for a New American Security, a nonpartisan think tank. “The military is playing an ever more central role in American political life,” Dempsey added. “This fits into this larger, troubling trend of identifying America itself as a military state. 

Barno called the Fourth of July plans “very unusual.”

“I think one of the big risks is that the military is being used in some ways as a political prop,” he said. “It’s looking highly politicized by anybody’s yardstick.”

“I hope the speech doesn’t become partisan, because troops shouldn’t be listening to the president talk about the other party,” agreed retired Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré. “Presidents usually leave their party business out when they talk in front of military audiences, but people are becoming numb to it [to Trump’s braggadocio].”

No one knows what the total cost of Trump’s “Salute to America (And Look at Me!)” show will be. Frankly, the White House doesn’t want us to know.

Still:

The military display on Thursday could be expensive. For example, flying a B-2 stealth bomber will likely require a journey from an Air Force base as far away as Missouri or Florida.

“That will be millions of dollars in and of itself,” estimated Rick Berger, a Defense budget expert at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

Berger did say a display like the one Trump has planned might boost recruiting and that would be a positive.

Just don’t expect a Trump to serve. 

7/3/19: The National Park Service has been forced to divert $2.5 million from a fund intended to improve parks around the country to pay for Donald R. Trump’s “Salute to America (And Look at Me!)” parade.

Meanwhile, the president has managed to terminate the Iran Deal (“worst deal in history”) and end up with nothing to show, except that Iran has decided to restart its nuclear program.

From worst deal ever—to no deal whatsoever—and most dangerous scenario possible. Way to go, Trump!

Left with few options, the president decides to tweet a new threat: “Iran has just issued a New Warning. Rouhani says that they will Enrich Uranium to ‘any amount we want’ if there is no new Nuclear Deal. Be careful with the threats, Iran. They can come back to bite you like nobody has been bitten before!”

7/4/19: The nation awaits the kickoff of the “Salute to America (And Look at Me!)” extravaganza. There will fireworks and tanks, like Tiananmen Square in 1989, only with less running over of civilians.

Not everyone is thrilled with the concept of Trump and a whole bunch of GOP VIP’s and big GOP donors watching from front row seats—reserved just for them—as Trump uses what he has called “his military,” surrounded by “his generals,” with all kinds of warplanes flying overhead. It’s all really a backdrop to make himself look less like of a buffoon than he is.

Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, a retired four-star Marine general and former head of United States Central Command, for one, has made it clear he’s concerned about the image this parade will send. “Put troops out there so we can thank them,” he says, “leave tanks for Red Square.”

(Is that a “Trump loves Putin” slam?)

Reporters ask retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal if he’d attend if he was on active duty. His answer is instructive. “If my soldiers were forced to come on a holiday and stand in the sun to do an event, I’d want to be there alongside them.” Of course, McChrystal has been critical of Trump before. Asked last January if he’d consider working in this administration, he said no. “It’s important for me to work for people I think are basically honest, who tell the truth as best they know it.”

Trump, of course, responded maturely….

Nope.

“‘General’ McChrystal got fired like a dog by Obama,” he tweeted. “Last assignment a total bust. Known for big, dumb mouth. Hillary lover!”

(Trump has probably insulted more American military heroes and leaders than any other president in history.)

Speaking of military leaders—retired, so they don’t have to worry about career damage—who have been highly critical of the current occupant of the White House, let’s add Adm. William McRaven, who led the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. In May, he made it clear. He thought the biggest threat to the nation was not terrorists, but Donald R. (for “Russia”) Trump.

“An attack on the press or an attack on the Department of Justice, or to imply that there are dirty cops at the F.B.I. or to ignore the intelligence community, I think, really undermines our institutions. And that makes me fearful of the future direction of the nation.”

This criticism from military leaders causes Super Patriot Lou Dobbs to lose his red, white and blue marbles, and rant and rave about generals he says are “snowflakes” and “haven’t won a war since 1991.”

Dobbs, of course, is one of those rabid patriots who never served, although he was a perfect age to go to Vietnam and get shot at had he wished. Like Trump, Dobbs decided he’d rather not get wounded or killed if he could avoid it.

 *

THE BIG MOMENT arrives. The parade kicks off without a hitch. Trump gets to give his speech. But it rains a lot. The fireworks turn out to be cool and nobody gets run over by a tank. So our freedoms remain intact.

We owe those freedoms to the men and women who serve, as well as past leaders who believed in the rule of law. You know: Washington and Monroe, Zachary Taylor and Grant, Hayes and McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt and Truman, Eisenhower and Bush 41, people who didn’t talk about having the military on “their” side.

Guys who served when they had a chance.

“I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump – I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they [his political opponents] go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.”

Trump to Breitbart News, February 2019

The president does have one epic moment during his speech. Referring to the heroic efforts of our military men and women in 1781 (Deborah Sampson, anyone), he talks of their hard-won success. “The Continental Army suffered a bitter winter of Valley Forge, found glory across the waters of the Delaware and seized victory from Cornwallis of Yorktown. Our Army manned the air, it rammed the ramparts, it took over the airports, it did everything it had to do.” 

Yes, the Continental Army “manned the air.” They “rammed the ramparts.” They “took over the airports.”

Apparently, Washington’s soldiers bombed the hell out of the Redcoats, catching Lord Cornwallis “of Yorktown” by surprise, making the stunned British wonder where the hell those airplanes came from.

The Continental Army on the way to the Trenton airport.

*

IF TRUMP’S SPEECH was good for a laugh, up in Alaska the people of Anchorage weren’t exactly having a typical Fourth of July. The city and surrounding area were under a “burn ban” advisory. Sixteen straight months of above average monthly temperatures had dried out much of the state. The National Weather Service was predicting that Alaska’s largest city would hit a high of 85 degrees, for the day, possibly topping the all-time record.

(In fact, Anchorage hit 90° F for the day.)

Daniel Swain, a University of California, Los Angeles, climate scientist, tweeted earlier in the week:

“Southern Alaska’s ongoing #heatwave is expected to intensify significantly over coming week. Strength of high-pressure ridge at mid-levels of atmosphere may exceed all-time records over much of state. Surface temperatures may also reach all-time records in southern areas.”

A quick visit to showyourstripes.info makes clear the same trend round the world. Blue bars indicate years which were cooler than average for the period measured. Around the globe, including Alaska, temperatures in recent years are shattering records. Temperatures for Alaska span the years 1901-2018:

*

FINALLY, REP. JUSTIN AMASH (R-MI) announces he is leaving the party. “Today, I am declaring my independence and leaving the Republican Party. No matter your circumstance, I’m asking you to join me in rejecting the partisan loyalties and rhetoric that divide and dehumanize us.”

Trump immediately proves Amash was right to be concerned, tweeting:

7/5/19: Reporters manage to stop Trump outside the White House and pose a few questions. Trump never holds real press conferences because he’d face tough questioning and have to offer follow up. Then he’d get logic tangled in hopeless wads and have to start lying again.

What happened with that speech, someone asks, the part where Washington “took over the airports” during the Battle of Yorktown? Well, the president admitted, rain knocked out his teleprompter.

(Trump and Fox News used to hate it when Obama used a teleprompter and sounded articulate and spoke in complete sentences.)

“That’s not a good feeling when you’re standing in front of millions and millions of people,” he added.

Still, he said his memory was sharp as a bone saw, and his speech, it would probably live forever in the annals of presidential speech-making, like the Gettysburg address, only more creative. Luckily, he says, “I knew the speech very well so I was able to do it without a teleprompter. And it was actually hard to look at anyway because of the rain.”

So, the part about Washington taking over the airports was in the original speech? Meaning, whoever wrote the speech was a nincompoop?

And the person delivering it was too dense to realize immediately, that that couldn’t be right?

*

ANOTHER REPORTER manages to ask the president if he realizes the Trump Organization has been employing undocumented workers for years?

“I don’t know, because I don’t run it,” the president said. “But I would say this: Probably every club in the United States has that because it seems to be, from what I understand, a way that people did business.”

Ironically, Trump was about to board a helicopter for another trip to his Bedminster, N.J. club, where many of the undocumented worked as recently as 2018. Once the free press started interviewing workers at Trump properties who admitted they were in this country illegally—workers who said their employer knew they had phony papers and even helped them get those phony papers—the Trump Organization leaped into action.

As the president explained, again in Gibberish, his preferred language, his clubs were now following tougher standards. “But we’ve ended—whatever they did, we have a very strict rule that, those rules are very strict.” 

*

IT TURNS OUT, the president isn’t the only Trump who knows the Gibberish tongue. Last January, Eric, who now runs the Trump Organization, along with Don Jr., claimed the fact that all Trump properties seemed to have hired undocumented workers and employed them for years—well, that was a sign that the U.S. immigration system—not the Trump Organization—was messed up.

Eric did want to make clear. He had a heart. True, it was a Trump heart, but a heart with real valves and chambers. “I must say, for me personally, this whole thing is truly heartbreaking. Our employees are like family, but when presented with fake documents, an employer has little choice.”

WTF! Did he just admit there are good people who sneak into this country and don’t want to rape and kill?

What about the monsters of right-wing fever dreams, the drug mules “with calves like cantaloupes?” What about the “animals” crossing illegally so they can join MS-13 and disembowel Americans in red MAGA hats? What about the “invaders” his dad always describes: “A lot of young men, strong men. And a lot of men that maybe we don’t want in our country.”

Was Eric admitting there were actual human beings who came across the border, people who were like “family” to him?

Let’s give the final word to Victoria Morales, an undocumented worker from Guatemala. She worked for the Trump Organization for years, both before the president turned over control to his sons, and after. “How can the president profess to not know we were undocumented workers if we have all [now] been fired?” she said recently. “I cleaned his house. I cleaned Ivanka’s house. He saw me all the time. I’m sure he figured I didn’t have papers.”

7/6/19: The U.S. added 224,000 jobs last month. This means 5,613,000 jobs have been added in the first 29 full months of President Trump’s term. In other words, it’s a good jobs report.

It’s just not as good as the 6,359,000 jobs added in Obama’s last 29 full months in the White House.

7/7/19: We learn today, that leaked emails from Sir Kim Darroch, ambassador from the United Kingdom to the United States, paint a less-than flattering picture of President Trump.

As the BBC explains:

In a message sent last month, Sir Kim branded US policy on Iran as “incoherent, chaotic”.

Mr Trump’s publicly stated reason for calling off an airstrike against Tehran with 10 minutes to go - that it would cause 150 casualties – “doesn’t stand up”, Sir Kim said.

Sir Kim said it was “unlikely that US policy on Iran is going to become more coherent any time soon” because “this is a divided administration”.

“You really had to pretend you were talking to a seven-year-old.”

Ambassador Darroch’s files cover the period since the Inauguration, up to the current day. Early on, he warned 10 Downing Street that media reports of “vicious infighting and chaos” in the White House were “mostly true,” describing them as “knife fights” in a “deeply dysfunctional environment.” The crew at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, he warned, was “clumsy and inept.”

As for allegations that “dodgy Russians” helped Trump win, he warned, “the worst cannot be ruled out.”

He also warned the home government, “I don’t think this administration will ever look competent.”

Sir Kim was saying what most fair-minded observers have been saying since Trump took charge. Trump, he told superiors, fills his speeches with “false claims and invented statistics.” If you wished to talk to him, you really had to pretend you were talking to a seven-year-old. “You need to start praising him for something that he’s done recently,” the Ambassador advised. “You need whenever possible to present them [policy suggestions] as wins for him.” In talking to Trump, it was important to keep points “simple” and avoid stirring him up. “For a man who has risen to the highest office on the planet,” Darroch explained, “President Trump radiates insecurity.” 

This blogger takes a much-needed vacation to Yellowstone.

7/8/19: Believe it or not, Trump’s approval ratings are up, to 45.1 percent (vs. 52.4 percent disapproval).

That upward tick may not last. CNN reports that previously convicted felon Elliott Broidy, and Trump bosom buddy, is again under investigation. Federal prosecutors have requested information about “contacts with foreign leaders and businesses while working for President Donald Trump’s inauguration.”

The request comes as part of a probe into whether Broidy, a Los Angeles private investor, sought to sell his influence with the Trump administration.

The US attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York in April subpoenaed the President’s Inaugural Committee seeking documents and records relating to Broidy, five companies associated with him and foreign politicians—including the presidents of Angola and the Republic of Congo and two Romanian politicians, the sources said.

The grand jury subpoena also requests information about George Nader, a key witness in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation who was arrested last month on child pornography charges.

CNN notes that a representative of the Inaugural Committee declined to comment for the story. (See: 7/19/19.)

7/9/19: President Trump is by no means the only big name involved; but when the Jeffery Epstein scandal explodes, he’s right where you might expect in a story about sexual abuse of young women.

Epstein and Trump? And Epstein and Bill Clinton?

The fuse is lit on July 6, when F.B.I agents arrest registered “sex offender” and multi-millionaire Jeffrey Epstein at the Teterboro, N.J. airport on arrival from France. At that moment, other agents, are using a crowbar to enter the front door of his 21,000 square foot Manhattan townhouse. In a locked safe they discover “a vast trove of lewd photos” of young looking women and girls.

Epstein, of course, had been busted before, for the same kind of crimes with which he’s charged once more: sex-trafficking scores of girls, some as young as 13 or 14.

First, let’s admit this sordid tale might have enough juice to interest decent human beings of every stripe, from flaming liberal to Neolithic conservative. It turns out Trump was once a friend of Epstein’s. So was Bill Clinton. And as soon as Fox News hears that last detail, you know they are going to gear up a hundred “fair and balanced” reports about the Epstein-Clinton link. Sean Hannity is quick, that same day, to air a show on the topic and it makes him so mad you almost expect to see spit flying from his lips.

Clinton! That pervert!

But wait…

Epstein was first arrested in Florida on similar charges in 2008, where he may have molested as many as a hundred young victims. Nevertheless, he got off with a sweetheart legal deal. He would plead to one count of soliciting prostitution and serve thirteen months in jail—but with work-release privileges six days a week—meaning he spent only one day and nights behind bars.

The prosecuting attorney who cut the deal?

That would be Alexander Acosta, currently Secretary of Labor in the “drain the swamp” Trump administration.

Can we find a more direct connection between Epstein and Trump? As President Obama might have said, “Yes, we can.”

“I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,” Trump told New York magazine in October 2002. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side [emphasis added]. No doubt about it – Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”

Yes, “younger,” as in girls as young as 13. Or, as the Miami Herald put it in describing the charges leveled against Epstein a decade ago: 

Palm Beach multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein, 54, was accused of assembling a large, cult-like network of underage girls—with the help of young female recruiters—to coerce into having sex acts behind the walls of his opulent waterfront mansion as often as three times a day, the Town of Palm Beach police found.

A “lot of fun to be with,” for sure.

There’s some good news, however: Namely, Epstein is denied bail and will remain behind bars till trial.

Alicia Arden comes forward to add testimony to the case against the alleged child molester. “His weapons were his hands,” she says, describing her rape when she was a teen. 

If you watch Fox News, you already know about the connections between Epstein and Bill Clinton. But if Clinton is guilty of questionable behavior, it would not shield Trump if he were guilty himself. We know that in 1992, George Houraney, a Florida businessman, agreed to fly in 28 young women for a “calendar girl” party at Mar-a-Lago. As he recently explained to reporters for The New York Times, there were only two men present at the party.

Epstein and Trump.

*

AT THE VERY LEAST—and there is a chance Trump is only tangentially involved—and Clinton, too—calls for Acosta to be booted from the cabinet are heard.

Could it be worse? And much worse, by far? It could be bad for Bill Clinton, or Trump, or anyone else, who might have partied in years past with the pedophile. And here we should note: at least one 13-year-old has alleged that both Trump and Epstein raped her in 1994 and threatened her if she talked.

(Don’t expect Sean Hannity to mention this.)

Her case was withdrawn from the courts in 2016; but if new accusers surface her claims may gain validity.

We can’t yet know. But the “rogue’s gallery” of men, as one Miami Herald reporter describes them, who may be tainted or tarnished or in legal jeopardy could prove stunning in the end.

According to Gawker, a defunct website, the names of many powerful men and women appeared in a “little black book” belonging to Epstein. That book was stolen by his house manager. A copy was provided to Gawker in 2015.

President Clinton’s name does not appear; but Doug Band’s name does, above the line, “Office of William Clinton.” A long list of contacts follows. Not everyone whose name is listed is an accomplice or victim. Dr. Eli Wiesel, the noted writer and Holocaust survivor, and his wife are listed. So is Ivana Trump.

So is Ivanka.

Epstein was rich and handsome and ran in rarified circles. Naomi Campbell, the super model, has an entry. So does Mick Jagger. The Duke and Duchess of York are listed separately, following their divorce. Ethel Kennedy, Sen. Ted Kennedy and Ted Kennedy Jr., David Koch, “Miss Manners” and Charlie Rose appear, most likely harmlessly, in these pages.

(Okay, Charlie Rose might be a bad sign.)

But Alfredo Rodriguez, the house manager who swiped the book (he hoped to sell it for $50,000) also added marginal notes. There were arrows pointing to specific contacts he believed would be important in any investigation. He circled dozens of entries, in a book that runs to 92 pages, people he believed were accomplices, addresses and organizations where crimes were committed, people he thought were “material witnesses,” and victims. Again, Clinton is not named; but Clinton often flew with Epstein on one of his private jets, which reporters later labeled “The Lolita Express.” Donald Trump’s name is circled for reasons unknown. Rock star Courtney Love’s name is circled, as is the name of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

Rodriguez eventually served eighteen months in jail for obstruction of justice, after taking the address book rather than provide it to investigators. That was longer than the time Epstein, himself, spent behind bars.

So, what do we know for sure? Epstein was super wealthy; but how he made his money remains unclear. His townhouse in Manhattan is estimated to be worth $77 million. He owned six homes, an apartment in Paris and a private island in the Caribbean where he went to relax—and allegedly molest girls.

Authorities now suspect he preyed upon underage victims not just in Florida and New York, but in Ohio, California, New Mexico, Paris and the United Kingdom. The name of Les Wexner, the billionaire owner of Victoria’s Secret and other well-known clothing brands, is marked in Epstein’s stolen book. Former New Mexico Governor Bruce King and former New Mexico Governor and presidential hopeful Bill Richardson’s names are circled. The entry for Peter Soros, nephew of billionaire George Soros, is marked. So, the rich and powerful may have had reason to hope the story of Epstein’s crimes would receive a prompt burial in 2008.

Again, the address book hints at how the alleged sex-trafficking ring worked. One address for New York City is marked “apt. for models.” The name of Flavio Briatore, an Italian businessman who served two prison terms for fraud in the 80s, is circled. So is the name of Alan Dershowitz, the prominent lawyer. Virginia Roberts Giuffre, one of the victims in the Florida case, said in court filings that Epstein ordered her to have sex with Dershowitz on multiple occasions. Mr. Dershowitz denies the charge.

According to the Daily Beast,

she was 15 and working a summer job at Mar-a-Lago in 1998 when British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell allegedly recruited her as a masseuse for Epstein. Giuffre said Epstein kept her as a “sex slave” until 2002 and that she was forced to have sex with his friends, including Prince Andrew and Dershowitz. (Both men have adamantly denied the allegations.)

In September 2015, Giuffre filed a defamation suit against Maxwell after she called Giuffre’s claims “obvious lies” and, according to the complaint, “undertook a concerted and malicious campaign to discredit Giuffre and to so damage her reputation that Giuffre’s factual reporting of what had happened to her would not be credited.” The case was settled in May 2017, records show.

No one associated with Epstein is entirely safe and no one has so far been proven guilty. The address book has a separate entry for “65TH STREET,” in New York City, with the names Joseph and Florina Rueda and Sarah Kellen (Epstein’s appointments secretary) circled. Under “FINANCE” Colonial Bank and PB National are circled. Under “FRANCE,” we have, “Paris – Massage.”  Under “ISLAND, Massage –” the entry for Michelle Campos is marked with the notation, “fired S’cty.” Dershowitz’s name is circled. So is the name of Cindy Buklarewicz Lopez, who ran a modeling agency, an arrow pointing to her parents’ contact info. Les Wexner’s home in London, his home in Aspen and his home in New Albany, Ohio are circled. “Massage – UK” is circled. Under “MEDICAL,” the name of Dr. Bruce Moskowitz is circled. An entry under “CLEANERS” and another under “RUGS” are circled. “New Mexico – Massage” is circled. Finally, on page 92, the last entry for “Mr Chow, New York” is not circled.

Donald J. and Melania Trump, Epstein and Maxwell.

*

IN RECENT YEARS, the Miami Herald has done brilliant investigative work on this story. And remember that next time you hear the president—or anyone else—attacking the free press. The lawyer for the 16-year-old girl who state prosecutors say was “the victim attached to the mysterious plea deal given to multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein says neither he nor his client was informed that it was her case that ended Epstein’s prosecution.” As the Herald notes, the victim, now 31, “wasn’t among Epstein’s youngest victims, but she was among those who were more brutally sexually assaulted, repeatedly, by both Epstein and others, according to records.”

At Epstein’s sentencing, the judge asked Assistant State Attorney Lanna Belohlavek whether there was more than one victim. “There’s several,’’ Belohlavek replied.

“Are all the victims in both these cases in agreement with the terms of this deal?’’ Pucillo asked. “Yes,’’ Belohlavek said.

But emails and letters show that Assistant U.S. Attorney Marie Villafaña wanted state prosecutors to tell the judge as little as possible, telling Epstein’s lawyers “I would prefer not to highlight for the judge” how many victims were involved — which at the time was almost three dozen girls, ages 13 to 17.

How did the sex-trafficking ring operate? Again, the Herald uncovered the story:

[Robert] Josefsberg’s client, labeled Jane Doe 1 for this story, told police what happened to her in a sworn statement in 2005, obtained by the Herald. In it, she said that sometime in 2004, when she was 16, she was approached by another girl, Jane Doe 2, who attended Royal Palm Beach High School in West Palm Beach.

Jane Doe 2 asked the girl whether she wanted to make some money by giving massages to a man named Jeffrey Epstein, who lived in a mansion on Palm Beach island. Jane Doe 1 had heard that a lot of girls at the high school were making money doing these massages, and she agreed to go, the report said.

She was taken there by Jane Doe 2 and introduced to Epstein and his scheduling secretary, Sarah Kellen. (Kellen also was given immunity.) Jane Doe No. 1’s description of what happened matched those of dozens of other girls: She was led up a back stairway to a master bedroom and bath where Epstein appeared in the room, clad only in a towel. She was instructed to strip down to her underwear and begin massaging his back.

Shortly thereafter, he flipped over, dropped his towel and began masturbating while fondling her with a vibrator. She and Jane Doe 2 were each paid $200.

Jane Doe 1 said she went to Epstein’s house about 15 times, and each time, the encounters became more sexual, and eventually led to full intercourse with Epstein and Marcinkova, according to the statement that Jane Doe 1 told Palm Beach Detective Joe Recarey, who died last year. She also told Recarey that she brought two other girls to Epstein’s house, and was paid $200 for each girl.

She was among three dozen underage girls listed by the U.S. Attorney as victims of Epstein. Sixteen of those victims were represented by Josefsberg, who was designated to assist them in receiving civil restitution from Epstein as part of the plea agreement.

After Jane Doe 1 was interviewed by police, other witnesses, including two of Epstein’s butlers, confirmed that they had seen several of the girls, among them Jane Doe 2, coming and going from Epstein’s house at all hours of the day and night.

Police had corroborating evidence, including phone records and messages with the girls’ names, phone numbers and appointment times.

Who else might have assisted Epstein is his schemes? According to Washington Monthly, Ghislaine Maxwell, a 57-year-old British socialite and publishing heir, has been accused of working as Epstein’s madam. Jean-Luc Brunel, who was partners with Epstein in an international modeling company might also face legal jeopardy.

For her part, Maxwell, whose social circle included such friends as Bill and Hillary Clinton and members of the British Royal family, has been described as using recruiters positioned throughout the world to lure women by promising modeling assignments, educational opportunities and fashion careers. The pitch was a ruse to groom them into sex trafficking, it is alleged.

More accusers soon came forward with similar tales of massages and molestation in exchange for $200 or even $1,000 per visit. Some claimed that Epstein would force them to have intercourse with him or a young woman described as his Eastern European “sex slave.” Epstein’s assistant, Sarah Kellen, allegedly kept a Rolodex of underage girls to recruit for her employer.

Yet, for reasons mystifying to say the least, the Florida plea deal granted immunity to any alleged co-conspirators, “including but not limited to” recruiters Kellen, Adriana Ross, and Lesley Groff, and the alleged sex slave, Nadia Marcinkova.

A woman named Maria Farmer claimed this past April in a new affidavit that Epstein sexually assaulted her at Les Wexner’s mansion in Ohio in 1996, and that he molested her 15-year-old sister in New Mexico. She said that Dershowitz used to frequent Epstein’s Upper East Side mansion as girls in school uniforms paraded in for “modeling” calls. Dershowitz denies the claims.

As Washington Monthly carefully notes, Wexner and Epstein did not respond to requests for comment.

7/10/19: U.S. Customs and Border Protection announces that a vessel seized after docking at Philadelphia in June was carrying 20 tons of cocaine, with an estimated street value of $1.3 billion.

This would never happen if we had a big, beautiful wall along the southern border. (See: 7/12/19.)

*

TRUMP NATIONAL DORAL makes news when the club cancels a charity golf event in the wake of bad publicity. “The Shadow All Star Tournament” was originally organized by a strip club and the Trump Organization thought it was a good idea. Golfers were going to have a chance to bid on scantily-clad “dancers” to serve as caddies. 

When it comes to keeping young women safe, canceling a strippers/golf tournament looks like a good idea. Locking up Jeffrey Epstein forever is an even better idea. Jennifer Araoz, 32, comes forward to add fresh accusations against him. She says she was approached by a woman several times outside her high school, when she was fourteen. Epstein, she was told, could help launch her Broadway career.

As Time describes it:

Araoz said her first few encounters with Epstein and the woman at Epstein’s home were friendly—they talked, she was given wine and $300 after every visit. Eventually she began meeting with Epstein alone, and that’s when the sexual abuse began, she alleges.

At first, she was paid for stripping down to her underwear and giving him massages. Soon after she turned fifteen, he held her down during a visit and raped her. She never returned to his home again.

*

IN ANY CASE, if Epstein, his enablers, and his powerful friends made America unsafe for teen girls, Trump climate change denials have made Planet Earth unsafe for all 7.6 billion people riding this big carousel round the sun.

Fresh warnings of danger are issued when scientists note that the Thwaites glacier in Antarctica, a glacier the size of Florida, is becoming unstable. It could begin breaking up soon.

The science, if you check the original report, is incredibly complex—and could never be explained in a Trump tweet. 

I'm not even going to try to explain this chart.

The danger, however, is clear from the first sentence of the report: “We also find that the collapse of marine ice sheets makes worst-case scenarios of rapid sea-level rise more likely in future projections.”

This one is clear.

*

MEANWHILE, CBS NEWS REPORTS that the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) is deserted. The last three staffers left the building June 30. Eleanor Celeste, assistant director for biomedical and forensic sciences, tweeted, “Science division out. Mic drop.”

She included the picture below, before leaving for the last time. 

No truth to the rumor that Trump hopes to create a White House Office of Tweeting and Putting.

7/11/19: Researchers from the University of Wyoming report unexpected developments with the Greenland ice sheet. That sheet, in most places, is more than 1.2 miles thick.

In an effort to reach Trump fans let’s reduce complex science to: 

“This is a crazy statistic, which is not good for Greenland or sea-level rise.”

Nathan Maier

If you’d prefer to be a little better informed, however, Time magazine explains the growing danger:

“Mass loss from Greenland’s [ice sheet] has been increasing and over the last decade is at its highest level ever recorded,” [Nathan] Maier [a leading author of the latest study] said. “There have been some really cool papers to come out recently that make this clear. One by Mouginot et al. in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences looked at the mass loss over the last five decades and found that it increased six fold. This is a crazy statistic, which is not good for Greenland or sea-level rise.”

Furthermore, this June, the ice sheet experienced a record melt event, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).

Do not expect the president to tweet about the findings of the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

It is highly unlikely he knows it exists.

*

SPEAKING OF ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE, we learn that the Department of Agriculture (USDA) has decided to suspend its survey on bee populations, “pausing data collection for one of the few remaining government sources tracking bees and their rapid decline.” Bees pollinate one third of all U.S. crops, including blueberries, almonds, apples and squash, and add an estimated $15 billion in value to America’s agricultural output yearly. But if the USDA kept reporting on the drop in bee populations, Americans might get worried about overuse of pesticides and Trump’s pals in the pesticide industry might not keep pouring donations into Republican campaign coffers.

As The Hill explains, “The USDA has said it was forced to suspend data collection on bees due to last year’s budget cuts. In announcing the move, the department said the decision ‘was not made lightly but was necessary given available fiscal and program resources’ after the cuts.”

Trump, of course, does not care about bees or the environment. He cares about the holding properties of hair spray. 

7/12/19: It turns out that Carla Provost, who President Trump appointed to head the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol in 2018, was a member of a secret Facebook group (recently revealed by ProPublica.).

When the secret group—and it’s often vulgar, racist and sexist posts—was first revealed, Provost responded forcefully. “These posts are completely inappropriate and contrary to the honor and integrity I see—and expect—from our agents day in and day out. Any employees found to have violated our standards of conduct will be held accountable.”

It turns out that top officials with the Border Patrol are members of the Facebook group. So is Provost.

Seeing the humor in “floaters.”

As The Intercept explains,

ProPublica was first to report the existence of the secret Border Patrol group on July 1, revealing that members used the page to joke about migrant deaths and share sexually violent and threatening posts about several Democratic lawmakers, including, in particular, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, D-N.Y. Politico followed up by reporting that senior officials in the Border Patrol, as well as CBP public affairs officials, had known about the group for years and used it as an “intelligence” stream to monitor the sentiment of the workforce.

The Intercept then reported that the public revelations sparked an internal purging of the Facebook group’s content, but not before we archived hundreds of posts shared over multiple weeks.

Agents in the group found humor in describing immigrants who died trying to cross the Rio Grande as “floaters,” humorously threatened violent rape of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and touted their love for Trump. One popular meme showed the president using a hand at the back of her head to force Ocasio-Cortez’s face into his crotch.

Rep. Elijah Cummings, chair of the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight Committee, failed to see the humor and called for an investigation. Cummings also called on Facebook to “preserve all documents, communications, and other data related to the ‘I’m 10-15’ group” including “log files and metadata.”

This demand pisses off the president—whereas depictions of rape, hey, no big deal. (See: 7/27/19.)

*

WHEN IT COMES to pissing off the president, any criticism will do. On this fine day in July, Putin’s favorite presidential puppet lashes out at former GOP House Speaker, Paul Ryan. Ryan has been critical of Trump in a soon-to-be-released book, American Carnage by Tim Alberta.

Trump deals with the situation in a patented Twitter tantrum. For the sake of brevity, we will sum up. According to the president, Ryan’s record of achievement “was atrocious (except during my first two years as President).” He “quit Congress because he didn’t know how to Win.”

Politico highlights some of the most damning assessments in the book:

“I told myself I gotta have a relationship with this guy [Trump] to help him get his mind right,” Ryan told Alberta in another excerpt released by The Washington Post. “Because, I’m telling you, he didn’t know anything about government. ... I wanted to scold him all the time.”

Ryan also said he saw his retirement from the House in 2018 as an escape hatch after working with the president for two years.

“We’ve gotten so numbed by it all,” Ryan said. “Not in government, but where we live our lives, we have a responsibility to try and rebuild. Don’t call a woman a ‘horse face.’ Don’t cheat on your wife. Don’t cheat on anything. Be a good person. Set a good example.”

Too bad Speaker Ryan lacked the courage to say all of this (and more) before he left the building.

*

THE U.S. COAST GUARD releases dramatic footage of crewman leaping aboard a narco-submarine, busting open the hatch, and intercepting a shipment of 17,000 pounds of cocaine. The cargo has an estimated street value of $232 million. This brings to 14 the number of drug-smuggling subs stopped by the U.S. Coast Guard along the coasts of Mexico, Central America and South America from May to July of this year, carrying a combined 39,000 pounds of cocaine.

Clearly, the drug cartels are not going to be daunted by the Great Wall of Trump. (See: 7/10/19.)

7/13/19: Right-wing pundits continue to attack Megan Rapinoe, star of the U.S. National Women’s Soccer Team. Howard Kurtz of Fox News complains that Rapinoe is spoiling what might have been “a wonderful, unifying moment for the country:” Namely, the team’s win of the 2019 World Cup.

Sadly, Rapinoe “has just been constantly giving interviews, dissing Donald Trump, dissing the White House, dissing the national anthem. I think that is a shame. She is happy to accept an invitation to go on the Hill from [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], but really attacking the president,” Kurtz complains.

“She is very liberal, and she can’t stand this president,” he continued. “She is using the platform—I’m sorry to say this—to in some ways mar or spoil or tar what could have been this great unifying moment.”

Kurtz is appalled because an American citizen has criticized Fox News’ favorite president. (There was a time when criticizing Barrack Obama was the network’s lifeblood.) It’s ironic to speak of a “unifying moment” in criticizing Rapinoe, for in many conservative circles, her lesbianism would exclude her from any “unity.”  Rapinoe understands this—feels it in her core—and realizes the president supports groups and individuals who would cheer her exclusion.

In fact, Rapinoe has been clear. Her protests during the National Anthem have to do with protesting racial injustice and the second-class citizenship experienced by LGBTQ human beings.

She’s not against the flag.

She’s not against this country.

You have to ignore realities to claim she is.

Rapinoe and her teammates draped themselves in the Stars and Stripes when they won the tournament. By their actions on the field, they displayed the drive and determination and love for the game and each other that should make any American proud. Even Howard Kurtz.

Indeed, why would anyone expect Rapinoe to show up at the White House and stand smiling behind Trump, for another photo op with a president skilled in hating so many of the people he was elected to serve?

Asked during a recent interview what her message would be to the president if he was watching, Rapinoe responded,

You’re excluding me. You’re excluding people that look like me. You’re excluding people of color. You’re excluding Americans that maybe support you. I think that we need to have a reckoning with the message that you have and what you’re saying about “Make America Great Again.” I think that you’re harking back to an era that was not great for everyone.

Her message was simple and clear during a speech earlier in the week, following a ticker tape parade in New York City. Americans should “love more” she said, and “hate less.”

Nothing divisive in that message.

Postscript: In his Fox News diatribe, Kurtz failed to mention several salient points. First, Rapinoe was not alone in insisting she would not visit the White House if invited. Several teammates were on record, including Alex Morgan, the face of the team. President Trump has failed to invite the team, in any case. He could invite them. He promised he would, “win or lose,” in a June 26 tweet:

I decided to go to Twitter and check Rapinoe’s feed. You know—see how the invitation was coming.

Still nothing from the Orange Coward.

As for celebrating the victory, at least one U.S. President was happy with the team’s phenomenal success:

7/14/19: Sunday morning, a splenetic president decides to attack four members of Congress, all Democratic women of color.

Time to tweet:

So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly......

....and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how....

....it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough.

Reaction to this trio of tweets is—shall we say—less than positive among the general population. First, three of the four women were born in this country. Second, most Americans still believe in the U.S. Constitution and checks and balances. Members of Congress are free to criticize the president. Third, the First Amendment guarantees free speech and expression.

Finally, many Americans sniff racism in the tweets—Trump attacking people of color, again—“crime infested places” often being code for, “dark-skinned people are always dangerous.” (See: 7/16/19.)

*

TRUMP’S MOOD does not improve when a new batch of leaked cables from the British ambassador in Washington has him describing Orange Leader’s decision to abandon the Iran deal as “diplomatic vandalism” to spite his predecessor. Trump and his advisers, he explains, had no “day after” strategy on what to do once they killed the deal. 

Iran is now gearing up its nuclear program. (See: 9/15/19.)

*

IN OTHER NEWS, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) tries to stave off defeat in the 2020 election (if he’s not jailed for misusing campaign funds) by putting out an anti-Islamic mailer to raise campaign funds.

On one side, we have a picture of the terrorist attack on the 1972 Olympics. Hunter’s opponent in 2020 will be Ammar Campa-Najjar, whose deceased grandfather is alleged to have had ties to the attackers. It shouldn’t matter, since his opponent is not responsible for what happened half a century ago. Still, for context, we should mention that Campa-Najjar is a Christian. On the back we have this “warning,” designed to create maximum paranoia among the grossly uninformed. “Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ammar Campa-Najjar ... these three radical Democrats want you to forget their anti-semitism or family-terrorist ties!”

Hunter adds, “But as a Marine I’ll never forget the 1983 Beirut bombings and the 1972 Olympic murders!”

It is worth noting that Campa-Najjar was born in 1989. So, we can assume he hasn’t “forgotten” the attacks.

Meanwhile, Hunter and his wife are accused of misusing campaign funds as recently as 2016. Rep. Hunter has blamed Mrs. Hunter for the problems, but prosecutors recently submitted evidence showing Rep. Hunter used some of the funds to carry out a series of five affairs.

Since polygamy is allowed under Islamic law, you kind of wonder...did Rep. Hunter ever think of converting?

7/15/19: Kevin Burns, the CEO of Juul Labs, the leader in vaping technology, wants parents to know how sorry he is that his company made a product that got their teens addicted to nicotine. Not so sorry, of course, that he would stop pushing the company’s product. Nor is he sorry enough to return the $12.8 billion Altira, the leading cigarette manufacturer, recently paid for a 35 percent stake in Juul.

“First of all, I’d tell them that I’m sorry that their child’s using the product,” Burns told a reporter he’d tell parents. “It’s not intended for them. I hope there was nothing that we did that made it appealing to them. As a parent of a 16-year-old, I’m sorry for them, and I have empathy for them, in terms of the challenges they’re going through.”

Testimony from teens who spoke before Congress, however, quickly undercut Burns’ claims. Juul went so far as to pay schools to be allowed to talk to teens about “healthy lifestyles.” A charter school operation in Baltimore took a check for $134,000 to allow the company to implement a five-week summer camp to teach teens about “good choices.” Others received checks for $10,000 to allow company representatives to talk about addiction—and these representatives told audiences that Juul products were “totally safe.” 

For one group of ninth graders who listened, this was reassuring. “For my classmates who were already vaping, it was a sign of relief because now they were able to vape without any concern,” remembered one impressionable listener. “I believe that after this meeting, kids were more inclined to vape because now they thought it was just a flavor device that didn’t have any harmful substances in it.”

According to the Food and Drug Administration, vaping is now an “epidemic,” with one in five American teens using the electronic “cigarettes,” and many addicted to nicotine.

The CEO of Juul is sorry.

7/16/19: President Trump’s tweets aimed at four Democratic members of Congress, all women of color, calling on them to “go back where they came from” are not going over well with many Americans. True, many Trump fans loved them—which is part of the problem with many Trump fans.

Pollsters say that 7 out of 10 Americans believe the president’s attacks were offensive. That includes 45% of Republicans who said his tweets were “racist.” It also strikes many of those polled that telling four women to “go back where they came from” was stupid, since three of four were born in this country.

In fact, the family of Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), one of the lawmakers, has been in this country longer than Trump’s.

*

THIS TIME, even a few GOP lawmakers find it in their souls to criticize the Hater-in-Chief. Asked if she found Trump’s tweets “racist,” Sen Joni Ernst responded, “Yeah, I do.”  Rep. Will Hurd of Texas said the president’s words were “racist and xenophobic.”

Sen. Mitch Romney said if a measure to condemn the president reached the Senate floor, he’d support it. “A lot of people have been using the word [racist],” he told a reporter. “My own view is, that what was said and what was tweeted was destructive, was demeaning, was disunifying and, frankly, was very wrong. It’s clearly destructive and it has the potential to being dangerous as well.”

Meanwhile, Rep. Ralph Abraham, for one, was happy to back the president all the way. “I’ll pay for their tickets out of this country if they just tell me where they’d rather be.”

Other Republicans sought cover by criticizing the four women first, then daintily criticizing Trump—as if a president’s words from the Bully Pulpit don’t carry more weight than the words of four new members of Congress. Sen. Tim Scott admitted that Trump had engaged in “unacceptable personal attacks and [used] racially offensive language.” Rep. Chip Roy was correct in saying Trump “was wrong to say any American citizen, whether in Congress or not, has any ‘home’ besides the U.S.”  Rep. Fred Upton said both sides were wrong, but admitted he was “appalled by the President’s tweets.” Rep. Elise Stefanik made it clear she disagreed with the four Democrats on policies and rhetoric, but added, “the President’s tweets were inappropriate, denigrating, and wrong. It is unacceptable to tell legal U.S. citizens to go back to their home country.”

“As Jews, we’re all too familiar with this kind of divisive prejudice... the president is echoing the racist talking points of white nationalists.”

Jonathan Greenblatt

Trump couldn’t admit he was wrong and went on to defend his language, saying without evidence, that the four women “hate our country.” All four, he said, again without evidence, had talked of “evil Jews.”

Trump tried to defend himself by saying the four were anti-Israel. But the Anti-Defamation League, an international Jewish organization that has long fought anti-Semitism and racism, blasted his position.

“As Jews, we’re all too familiar with this kind of divisive prejudice,” Jonathan Greenblatt, League CEO and national director, responded. “While the ADL has publicly disagreed with these congresswomen on some issues, the president is echoing the racist talking points of white nationalists and cynically using the Jewish people and the state of Israel as a shield to double down on his remarks.”

Cynical racism?

That’s the Trump brand.

“The worst president in the history of this country.”

Longtime Texas judge Elsa Alcala announces that she has finally had enough. She is leaving the Republican Party. “It has taken me years to say this publicly but here I go,” she said in a Facebook post. “President Trump is the worst president in the history of this country. Even accepting that Trump has had some successes—and I believe these are few—at his core, his ideology is racism,” she continued. “To me, nothing positive about him could absolve him of his rotten core.” 

Worst president ever?

Presidential historian Jon Meachem is blunt in his assessment. “And what the president’s done here is, yet again, because he did it after Charlottesville and I think he did it, frankly, when he was pushing the birther lie about President Obama,” Meachem explained to Newsweek, “is he has joined Andrew Johnson as the most racist president in American history.”

(Meachem later makes it clear he means the most racist since the Civil War, which ended slavery.)

*

IN NON-RACIST news involving Team Trump, Jason Miller, former communications chief for the 2016 campaign and the Trump transition team admits in a court deposition that “he hired numerous prostitutes and visited ‘hand job’ massage parlors as recently as a few months ago.”

Miller is suing the website Gizmodo for defamation, after a reporter posted a story (based on court documents) saying Miller slipped an “abortion pill” to a Florida strip club dancer he impregnated.

In initial court hearings, Miller puts some dents in his defamation case when he admits visiting “happy ending” massage parlors as recently as this past spring. And he does recall having sex with an “escort” in 2015 and again in the early months of 2017. By that time, President Trump had named him communications director for the new administration. But Miller’s chances for a plum position were quashed when the “Fake News” folks began turning up evidence that he had been conducting multiple affairs while working on the 2016 campaign. At the time, Miller’s wife, Kelly, had been pregnant.

A final dent to Miller’s position came when defense attorneys quizzed him about those affairs. “Your mistress got mad at you because she thought you were sleeping with … your [other] mistress; correct?” an attorney for Gizmodo inquired.

Yes, the plaintiff agreed.

And did we mention that Miller impregnated one of his mistresses, who did at least go on to have his child.

Can someone get the guy a box of condoms!

7/17/19: Eric Trump washes up on Fox & Friends in the morning. He’s there to defend his father—who is taking heat (again) for sounding like a racist! Young Mr. Trump insists that nearly every man, woman and child in America agrees with dad.

Apparently, he carries the same genetic defect as his father and cannot grasp numbers that involve two or more digits.

“My father is in there,” Eric insists, “and he’s fighting every single day. And he has to fight against the media. He has to fight against these lunatics. And guys, I’m telling you, 95% of this country is behind him in this message. I mean, people love this nation.”

None of the hosts blink at Eric’s math. This is Fox News where no claim damaging to foes of the president is questioned. If young Trump had said Obama was known to have been a cannibal the entire time he lived in the White House, Steve Doocy would have continued to wear a sappy grin.

Anyway, message delivered!

The real problem is the media—who keep reporting what President Trump says. And who needs a free press, anyway! The people who oppose his father and insist he sounds exactly like a racist are lunatics. And anyone who disagrees with the president should go back to the country where he or she came from.

*

ON THE TOPIC OF LUNATICS: Nicholas Zuckerman, 25, is one of those “95% of Americans” who agree with the president that dark-skinned people should leave the country if they don’t like everything about it.

Mr. Zuckerman is sentenced to 15 months in prison for sending threats, via Instagram, to blow up a Harvard graduation ceremony honoring African American students. “If the blacks only ceremony happens,” he wrote in 2017, “then I encourage violence and death at it. I’m thinking two automatics with extendo clips.”  

Later that day, the young white man posted under the username “russian_goalkeeper94” This time he went with a kind of Unabomber vibe: “#bombharvard and end their pro-black agenda.”

As Reuters noted, “Cara McNamara, his attorney, in court said that Zuckerman had a history of mental illness. She sought to frame his threats in broader context, saying he was “operating in an environment where people every day are pushing the limits.”

Cough, cough.

Trump. 

*

ONCE ZUCKERMAN gets out of jail he should make a beeline for the First Baptist Church in Appomattox, Virginia, where he may find welcome.

After Trump says the four dark-skinned Democratic women should go back where they came from, Pastor E. W. Lucas decides to capture the message of Jesus on the billboard in front of his church. “I thought I was going to make some remarks regarding the situation in Washington,” he told ABC News. “It just came to me … America, I love it. If you don’t love it, leave it.”

“People that feel hard about our president and want to down the president, and down the country and everything,” he continued, “they ought to go over there and live in these other countries for a little while.”

As one of the five percent (according to Trump Family Math) who disagree with the president and his attacks, and who believe the First Amendment always matters, I might suggest—tongue in cheek—that Pastor Lucas and Eric Trump and the three hosts of Fox & Friends go live in North Korea “for a little while.” Let them test the joys of surviving in a country where critics of the Great Leader are dispatched with flamethrowers, nerve agents and anti-aircraft guns.

Screw it. Thrown in Howard Kurtz, too. (See: 7/13/19.) 

Postscript: Regarding Pastor Lucas, good news. The following Sunday his congregation walked out of the 11 a.m. service in protest.

*

AS FOR KEEPING AMERICA SAFE, it would appear the gravest danger to our country comes not from dark-skinned, female members of Congress or dark-skinned asylum seekers arriving on our southern border.

The real threat is from within—from drug cartels—namely the manufacturers of legal opioids, Big Pharma!

A newly released report from the Drug Enforcement Agency finds that between 2006 and 2012, the big drug manufacturers flooded the streets of this nation with 76 billion pain pills like oxycodone and hydrocodone. That would be equal to 234 pills for every man, woman and child in the country.

*

AT A RALLY in North Carolina, Trump fans enjoy chanting, “Send her back!” after Orange Leader attacks Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Somali by birth, but now a U.S. citizen and a member of Congress. (See: 7/19/19.)

7/18/19: Andrew Wheeler, the rebranded Big Coal lobbyist, continues to run the EPA as if the initials stand for “Every Pollutant Allowed.” Despite warnings from EPA scientists, Wheeler and the political hacks he brought in to run the agency decide not to ban chlorpyrifos, a chemical linked to serious health effects in children. This is seen as a victory for the chemical industry—and farmers.

Children?

Not so much.

According to EPA experts, now ignored with Wheeler at the wheel, “Chlorpyrifos can cause cholinesterase inhibition in humans at high enough doses; that is, it can overstimulate the nervous system causing nausea, dizziness, confusion, and at very high exposures (e.g., accidents or major spills), respiratory paralysis and death.” Other recent EPA decisions allow the increased use of pesticides that beekeepers say “decimate beneficial insects,” and rolled back regulations regarding the use of asbestos, a known carcinogen.

Meanwhile, “Snowball” Jim Inhofe gives a speech on the U.S. Senate floor. He claims that the “Trump Administration may go down as one of the truly great environmental administrations” in the history of our country. He has a chart, showing that since 1970 combined emissions of the six most common pollutants have declined by 74%. 

Apparently, all environmental progress in the last half century is the result of the efforts of Donald J. Trump.

Still, for Inhofe (who once said climate change couldn’t be real because he had made a snowball in Washington D. C. in January) to talk about protecting the environment was akin to Jeffrey Epstein talking about how the Girl Scouts could improve cookie sales.

To prove his point—that the United States needs to do nothing at all to protect the environment, because the environment is doing great, Snowball Jim cited the work of Richard Lindzen of MIT. Lindzen, he said, has been “calling out climate alarmists for years.” 

It takes almost no effort to find a letter in which 22 other leading scientists at MIT make clear, Lindzen’s positions regarding climate change and contributing pollutants are pretty much bullshit. (See: 8/29/19.)

*

IN OTHER NEWS, a “high-end Russian hooker ring” is broken up in Florida, operating out of Trump Tower Miami. 

You can’t make this up.

7/19/19: George Nader’s legal problems grow. Already locked in the can, with bail denied, the former Trump adviser is charged with sex trafficking of an underage minor, a 14-year-old boy.

As the Associated Press notes (and even Fox News picks up the story):

Nader’s name shows up more than 100 times in [Special Counsel Robert] Mueller’s report. It details his efforts to serve as liaison between a Russian banker close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and members of President Donald Trump’s transition team.

Nader also served as an adviser to the United Arab Emirates, a close Saudi ally, and in April 2017 wired $2.5 million to a top Trump fundraiser, Elliott Broidy, through a company in Canada….The goal was to persuade the U.S. to take a hard line against Qatar, a longtime American ally but now an adversary of the UAE.

Diplomacy for sale.

*

THE PRESIDENT takes serious heat, even from allies, but tells reporters he didn’t like the “send her back chant” aimed at Rep. Ilhan Omar at his rally in North Carolina. He claims he started talking quickly to quiet the crowd. (See: July 17, above.)

Only video shows he didn’t.

So, the president changes his tune again (also known as: Trump lying) and says the people chanting were “incredible patriots.” 

*

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION is also pushing the idea of cutting the number of refugees allowed to enter the country to zero.

This attitude of unconcern for those suffering from injustice and abuse is made manifest when Nadia Murad visits the Oval Office. A Yazidi woman who lost six brothers and her mother, and who was repeatedly raped by ISIS fighters, before winning the Nobel Prize, she has a story to share. Speaking to the president, she talks about the deaths of her seven family members. 

The president looks like he’s having trouble pretending to listen. His expression is glum. He does not appear shocked or sympathetic in the least. Finally, he asks, stupidly, regarding her family: “What happened to them?”

  

It’s classic Trump. The man has no empathy and lives to golf and tweet and bitch about the free press.

7/20/19: Donald R. Trump (we are giving him the honorary “R.” for Russia) spends his morning tweeting, like any other 73-year-old with time on his hands and nothing better to do. Only this time he’s retweeting posts from Katie Hopkins, a British woman known for her racist rants.

Naturally, she’s one of Trump’s biggest fans.

How racist is she? In one column, Hopkins compared dark-skinned refugees coming to Europe to “cockroaches.” As for news that hundreds were drowning in the Mediterranean as they tried to cross to Europe, she responded, “No, I don’t care. Show me pictures of coffins, show me bodies floating in water, play violins and show me skinny people looking sad. I still don’t care.”

After a terror attack in Manchester in 2017, Hopkins responded to the very real horror by suggesting a far greater horror, a “Final Solution” for Muslims living in the U.K. It was no coincidence she used the same slogan Hitler used to describe the extermination of millions of Jews.

In 2018, Hopkins called a Twitter critic a “jigaboo,” clinching her blue-ribbon racist credentials.

Then admit he’s a hater for sure.

Naturally, a racist is going to support a racist president, even though Hopkins insists Trump is not a racist. He has, instead, she claims, made 2020 a “binary choice.” It’s Trump. Or it’s those four congresswomen, all of whom just so happen to have dark skins. It’s Trump’s way. Or it’s socialism—higher taxes on billionaires—and the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse.

Think Trump’s not a racist? Then admit he’s a hater for sure. The Know Nothing Party of the 1850s was made up of haters of immigrants. Hitler was a hater of Jews. Members of the Westboro Baptist Church hate LGBQT folks. Kim Jong-un is a hater of critics. Trump is a hater, too.

At heart, all haters are alike. 

7/21/19: Scientists in Iceland plan to install a monument at the site of the now-extinct Okjökull glacier, the first glacier on the island to be lost, irrevocably, to climate change.

The monument will carry a warning about the bleak outlook for Iceland’s 400 remaining glaciers and point to the urgent need facing humanity to deal with the growing menace of climate change.

(See also: July 1, 2019; 7/4/19; 7/10/19; 7/11/19; 7/18/19 and 7/25/19.) 

*

SPEAKING OF THREATS to humanity, Charlie Rispoli, a Louisiana police officer, picks up the Trump vibe and makes it clear how he feels about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In a Facebook post he writes, “This vile idiot needs a round. And I don’t mean the kind she used to serve.”

The Democratic lawmaker used to work as a bartender before she decided to make a run for office.

Not only did Officer Rispoli sound like a fascist, to make his fascism worse, he was a stupid fascist. He was responding to a satirical post, one clearly marked as satire, which made it sound as if Ocasio-Cortez had criticized the U.S. military and said the troops were paid too much.

And that made him mad.

And that made him want to grab his gun.

Postscript: On a positive note, Rispoli, and a second officer who “liked” his post, were quickly fired.

7/22/19: Reporters manage to question the president briefly before a closed-door meeting with Imran Khan, the Prime Minister of Pakistan. Trump assures them that if the Taliban won’t agree to a peace deal, he has a plan to end the war in Afghanistan in a week. This is surprising news, since the U.S. has been bogged down in Afghanistan since shortly after the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

“I just don’t want to kill 10 million people.”

Trump is frustrated because the U.S. can’t declare victory and go home. That means he can’t take credit and brag. “If we wanted to fight a war in Afghanistan and win it, I would win that war in a week,” he tells the press. “I just don’t want to kill 10 million people. Does that make sense to you?”

Um…that should make sense to anyone.

Naturally, his remarks raise “concerns in national security circles, as the estimated death toll implied a threat of nuclear force.”

This marks the third time the President Who Cried Wolf has threatened nuclear holocaust. He once said he would unleash “fire and fury” on North Korea. He said he would “end” Iran. Now he was talking about obliterating a third of the Afghan population, people we were there to help.

“I have plans on Afghanistan that, if I wanted to win that war, Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the earth,” he said, on second thought giving himself a bit more flexibility. “It would be over literally in 10 days. I don’t want to go that route.”

No sane individual would. 

7/23/19: Trump suffers fresh defeat in the “War on Coal” when Blackjewel, the mining affiliate of Revelation Industry, and Revelation Industry, file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. As for the miners, they learn the news the hard way, when final paychecks bounce.

Suddenly, 1,700 men and women across several states find themselves blocked from pulling money from 401(k) programs, wondering if they’ll be repaid for the bounced checks and not sure they have health insurance.

The reaction of Mark Turner, a Kentucky miner is typical. “It’s been very hard,” he tells reporters, “not knowing if you’re going to be able to put food on the table for your three kids.” He’s not sure he’ll be able to meet his next house payment, keep the electricity on, or buy new clothes and school supplies for his children when the school year begins.

The more you delve into this story the more malodorous it smells. Blackjewel withheld $1.2 million from payroll earmarked for miner’s 401(k)’s. The company failed to deposit an additional $900,000 in matching funds. The company withheld $8.3 million in social security contributions and taxes, but neglected to hand it over to local, state and federal governments. Blackjewel fell in arrears to the tune of $63 million in royalties owed for mining on federal lands.

Meanwhile, CEO Jeff Hoops was doing well enough, as late as this past March, to sink $30 million into a resort project in West Virginia. The “Grand Patrician Resort,” he said, would include an upscale hotel, a chapel for destination weddings, a nine-hole golf course, replicating famous par three holes round the world, and a 3,500-seat coliseum modeled on the Colosseum in Rome.

In a recent court hearing, it was also revealed that Hoops transferred a total of $79 million between Blackjewel and his private bank accounts—and then sometimes back again the same day. He may have kept $34 million for himself.

7/24/19: Robert Mueller testifies for nearly six hours in front of two congressional panels. He refuses to go beyond what the report he has submitted says. For example, he refuses to say if the president “took the Fifth” in answering written questions.

Mueller is precise, measured in response, even dull.

The partying at the White House immediately begins. There are no “bombshells” in the televised testimony! The president will later call Mueller’s performance the worst in all the storied history of congressional hearings.

Total exoneration, baby!

*

IF YOU WATCHED all six hours of testimony—and took notes—you know the president was not exonerated.

Dull or not, the facts Mueller laid out were damning.

It will require a special blog post to address this topic; but a few highlights should suffice till then. First, Mueller slapped away the idea that he had hired a team of “angry Democrats” to frame Trump. In twenty-five years with the Justice Department he had never inquired about the political leanings of any of his hires. “It just isn’t done,” he told a Republican lawmaker who questioned him. He hired lawyers he felt could do the best work, men and women he knew for “integrity,” above all.

In six hours of testimony, not one Republican member of either committee used the word “integrity” to describe Donald R. Trump.

Meanwhile, Democrats focused on massive evidence of obstruction of justice. We learned, for example, that Trump called Attorney General Jeff Sessions at home and tried to get him to un-recuse himself and fire Mueller. Trump ordered White House Counsel Don McGahn to get rid of Mueller, too.

“Did the president ask McGahn to lie?” one questioner asked Mueller. The Special Counsel often answered with one word.

“Yes,” he said.

Dull? Okay. But the Special Counsel had just said the president lied—and lied in a failed attempt to obstruct justice.

When Louis Gohmert (R-TX) had his turn to speak and rambled on for five minutes and tried to make Mueller sound like the crook, Mueller’s response was, “I take your question.” Nothing more.

Mueller had dignity to consider.

Gohmert was a clown.

Jim Jordan (R-OH) spent his five minutes asking why Mueller never charged Josef Mifsud, a secondary figure in the investigation—as if something nefarious must have been afoot.

Neither he nor any other Republican wanted to know why the following members of Team Trump were now convicted felons, or felons before they joined the Team: Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, General Michael T. Flynn, Michael Cohen, Felix Sater, George Papadopoulos, George Nader and probably Roger Stone (currently under indictment for witness tampering and scheduled for trial this fall).

Mueller was also asked, “Isn’t it true that an unsuccessful attempt to obstruct justice is still a crime?”

“Correct,” he said. He did not elaborate because the statement stands as made.

Rep. Mike Johnson had the closing five minutes for the Republican side during the first hearing and tried to insist that President Trump had never mislead anyone and cooperated fully.

“I gather you think knowingly accepting foreign help in an election is an unethical thing to do?”

Rep. Adam Schiff

In the second session, Val Demings, a Florida Democrat and former police chief of Orlando, asked Mueller why his team never asked Trump to sit down, face to face, and testify under oath.

Mueller explained that the president and his lawyers had stalled the investigation for a year, and it was important to turn the report over to Attorney General William Barr, so he might make the decision about what came next.

Mueller admitted that Trump left several questions, submitted in writing by investigators, blank.

“Did he plead the Fifth?” Demings wanted to know.

Mueller refused to answer. “I’m not going to get into that,” he replied. He was sticking to what was in the report.

The rest of her questioning went pretty much like this:

“Trump did not answer follow up questions?” Demings asked, trying a different tack.

“No.”

“Many questions he didn’t answer at all?”

“True.”

“His answers were often contradictory and incomplete?”

“True.”

Did he give answers that “contradicted other evidence?”

“Yes.”

Could the Special Counsel say that “the President was credible?”

Mueller: “I can’t answer that question.”

Is it fair to say, she asked, that Trump’s answers “showed that he wasn’t always being truthful?”

“I would say, generally.”

Those are the exact answers Mueller gave—what pundits were saying made for “boring” TV.

But Mueller wasn’t a TV prosecutor. He was a real prosecutor, with decades of law enforcement experience. He was laying out facts. He did not need to elaborate. He did not need to showboat, like GOP lawmakers trying to make even the most absurd points. All the damning evidence anyone might need to begin impeachment was there in the Mueller Report.

The best exchange of the day may have come when, during afternoon hearings, Adam Schiff, the Democratic chair of the House Intelligence Committee, asked Mueller a series of simple questions.

“I gather you think knowingly accepting foreign help in an election is an unethical thing to do?”

“And a crime,” Mueller interjected, his stoic manner momentarily animated.

“And unpatriotic?” Schiff added.

“True.”

“And wrong?”

“True,” Mueller said again, displaying a trace of disgust, no doubt with the current occupant of the Oval Office.

Republicans and Trump’s avid fans, who purport to love their country far more than his opponents, should try to remember a time where their orange hero ever said we need to protect our elections from Russian interference. Mueller might not have stirred the masses with his precise answers; but he was perfectly clear when he said Russian interference in our elections was “among the most serious” challenges he had seen in all his years in law enforcement. Russia, he said in answer to a question from Rep. Will Hurd, the only member of his party to ask about Russians all day, did interfere in the 2016 election.

They were, he said, interfering “as we speak.”

They would interfere again.

A Democrat asked the Special Counsel if he thought this was the “new normal,” that politicians would accept help from foreign powers to win future elections.

“I hope this is not the new normal,” Mr. Mueller replied, “but I fear it is.”

7/25/19: The “new normal” arrives almost immediately. We won’t know this for some weeks. But the day after Mueller testifies, President Trump calls up the new President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky.

He wants the Ukrainian leader to do him a favor. He want’s him to investigate Hunter Biden and his dad.

*

IN OTHER NEWS, Daniella Stella, the Republican candidate chosen to run against Trump nemesis Rep. Ilhan Omar, turns out to be less than an ideal choice. First, she turns out to be an advocate of the QAnon conspiracy theory.

QAnon believes the president is locked in battle with “a global cabal of elite liberal pedophiles.”

Stella is also battling demons of her own—namely, kleptomania. The 31-year-old special education teacher (somebody check her teaching license) has described Minneapolis as “the crime capital of our country,” and promised to help “overworked and overburdened” police if elected. She’s a crime wave in and of herself, having been arrested twice this year for shoplifting: $2,300 dollars’ worth of merchandise from Target and $40 from a Cubs Food grocery store.

Following her arrest at Target, Stella told police she remembered “arriving at Target and then nothing else,” and blamed her sticky fingers on PTSD, related to a violent assault she says she suffered years ago.

Ms. Stella failed to show up for a court appearance on the first charge (more PTSD?) and a warrant was issued for her arrest.

Then she got caught, allegedly for shoplifting, again. This time she was hiding tick spray for her cat and other cat-related merchandise under her purse when she exited the store without paying.

(Police records also indicate that in 2009, the future candidate for Congress was arrested for driving while impaired and attempting to flee.) 

*

IN MORE IMPORTANT, but less eye-catching news, four of the world’s biggest auto makers announce plans to stick with a voluntary agreement they made previously with the State of California. The state is seeking to impose stricter mileage and emission standards, starting in 2020, under formulas advanced by the Obama administration.

Naturally, the Pollution administration…um…the Trump administration…wants to eliminate those standards entirely and see just how much smog the average American can inhale.

Ford, Honda, VW and BMW can see the future, and appear to realize change must come, sooner or later.

*

DID WE SAY, sooner or later? Probably sooner. Across Europe, record temperatures are recorded all week. Paris hits 108.6 degrees Fahrenheit, the hottest day in the history of the City of Light. Thermometers in Cambridge, England touch 100.5 F, only the second time the British Isles have ever seen triple-digit temperatures. Belgium (104 F) The Netherlands (105.3 F) and Germany (106.7 F) all record the hottest temperatures ever measured in those countries.

Scientists say that Europe’s hottest seventeen summers in the last 500 years have all come in the last seventeen years. Once again, they issue fresh warnings, which President Trump and his fans will ignore.

“Such intense and widespread heatwaves carry the signature of man-made climate change,” said Johannes Cullmann, director of World Meteorological Organization’s climate and water department, in a statement on Wednesday. “This is consistent with the scientific finding showing evidence of more frequent, drawn out and intense heat events as greenhouse gas concentrations lead to a rise in global temperatures.”

7/26/19: President Trump is in a foul mood. It’s like he had a Playboy Bunny mistress and she dumped his lard butt, and nobody loves him.

(Really, the man desperately needs therapy.)

A Fox News poll shows Trump losing a hypothetical 2020 election to Joe Biden and losing badly (10 points). Trump is having none of it and that means tweets!

Angry tweets!

This time we have this: “@FoxNews is at it again. So different from what they used to be during the 2016 Primaries, & before - Proud Warriors! Now new Fox Polls, which have always been terrible to me (they had me losing BIG to Crooked Hillary), have me down to Sleepy Joe.” 

A quick reality check—because this blogger is not on hallucinatory drugs—shows that Fox polls had Trump down 4 points to Clinton on the eve of the 2016 election. The polling average had Trump down 3.2 points. Clinton won the popular vote by a 2.1point margin. That would indicate to non-delusional individuals that if the election were today, Trump would be in trouble.

Unless…hey…he always has the Russians!

7/26/19: President Trump is in a foul mood. It’s like he had a Playboy Bunny mistress and she dumped his lard butt, and nobody loves him.

(Really, the man desperately needs therapy.)

A Fox News poll shows Trump losing a hypothetical 2020 election to Joe Biden and losing badly (10 points). Trump is having none of it and that means tweets!

Angry tweets!

This time we have this: “@FoxNews is at it again. So different from what they used to be during the 2016 Primaries, & before - Proud Warriors! Now new Fox Polls, which have always been terrible to me (they had me losing BIG to Crooked Hillary), have me down to Sleepy Joe.” 

A quick reality check—because this blogger is not on hallucinatory drugs—shows that Fox polls had Trump down 4 points to Clinton on the eve of the 2016 election. The polling average had Trump down 3.2 points. Clinton won the popular vote by a 2.1point margin. That would indicate to non-delusional individuals that if the election were today, Trump would be in trouble.

Unless…hey…he always has the Russians!

7/27/19: The president wakes up in a sour state of mind Saturday, even though at 11:15 he’ll head for one of his private golf courses and spend his weekend flailing away at the little, white ball. He’s sulky because we still don’t have a border wall to keep all Americans cozy and safe—at least the ones who vote for Trump. Plus, he needs to get busy on Twitter and do some insulting of Rep. Elijah Cummings and pretty much everyone else who lives in Baltimore.

Cummings has been critical of conditions under which asylum seekers and others are being held at the border. Trump decides to strike back.

It’s what Trump does best: insult individuals, and often entire groups of human beings. He uses the loudest megaphone in the world to spread the hate.

Alright, then, here we go:

6:14 a.m.:

Rep, Elijah Cummings has been a brutal bully, shouting and screaming at the great men & women of Border Patrol about conditions at the Southern Border, when actually his Baltimore district is FAR WORSE and more dangerous. His district is considered the Worst in the USA......

(Cummings was upset to learn that a secret Facebook group of border agents was advocating rape and violence against Democratic women in Congress.)

6:24 a.m.:

Why is so much money sent to the Elijah Cummings district when it is considered the worst run and most dangerous anywhere in the United States. No human being would want to live there. Where is all this money going? How much is stolen? Investigate this corrupt mess immediately! 

(How much is “stolen?” Does the president have any evidence that Cummings is stealing money? Once again, Trump of Trump University, Trump of Stiffing Undocumented Polish Workers, Trump of Bankrupting Casinos, Trump of Not Revealing His Taxes and Trump of Paying off Porn Stars, is projecting. He’s a giant orange crook. He assumes others have the same morals and ethics—that is, none—as he does.)

Finally, just before lunchtime, it’s off to Trump National Golf Club, in Potomac Falls, Virginia. A round of golf is next, then perhaps a shower, and back he comes to the Twitter attack:

4:35 p.m.: “Elijah Cummings spends all of his time trying to hurt innocent people through ‘Oversight.’ He does NOTHING for his very poor, very dangerous and very badly run district! Take a look.... #BlacksForTrump2020”

8:50 p.m.: .@RepCummings, why don’t you focus on your district!?

(This time we have a video clip of a garbage-strewn, abandoned row house in Baltimore.)

8:54 p.m.: “RT @kimKBaltimore: More trash. More concerned residents. People live in the home with the silver van. This is @RepCummings district. This h…”

(It’s another video of a trash-choked neighborhood.)

9:02 p.m.: .@RepCummings — your district!

(Yes, the president has found another video, an African American woman complaining about Cummings.)

Finally, at 10:35 p.m., the president closes with this: “So sad that Elijah Cummings has been able to do so little for the people of Baltimore. Statistically, Baltimore ranks last in almost every major category. Cummings has done nothing but milk Baltimore dry, but the public is getting wise to the bad job that he is doing!”

You wonder, of course, why the president didn’t call up Secretary Ben Carson over at Housing and Urban Development and see what HUD could do to help Baltimore clean up those trash-strewn areas.

After all, when Baltimore was suffering in 2015, Trump was clear about who was to blame for the mess.

In fact, Trump was so sure he could work his magic, he retweeted this from a fan: 

So, what has Trump done since taking office to help cities like Baltimore? He has called for $8.8 billion in budget cuts for HUD for Fiscal Year 2019. Congress refused to go along.

He’s trying  again for Fiscal Year 2020, asking Congress to cut the HUD budget once more, this time by 16.4 percent.

We know he won’t be going to Baltimore to assess the situation this week, because he wouldn’t care if all the people in Baltimore were dead. They won’t vote for him, so why would he help? The man shows no more empathy than a pumpkin, although if you think about it, they do have a similar shape and coloring. (See: 7/29/19.)

7/28/19: This turns out to be Stephen Romero’s last day on earth. The six-year-old is shot and killed, along with two other innocent bystanders, while enjoying himself at the Gilroy, California Garlic Festival.

The shooter turns out to be a 19-year-old man armed with an “AK-47 style” assault rifle (which was purchased legally in Nevada). A 13-year-old girl and a man in his 20’s are also killed and a dozen others wounded.

Police respond within a minute—the proverbial good guys stopping bad guys with guns—and kill the shooter. Gilroy police chief Scot Smithee praises the bravery of three officers who returned fire, and unintentionally hits on a problem facing our entire nation. “Despite the fact that they were outgunned with their handguns against the rifle, those three officers were able to fatally wound the suspect,” Smithee says.

They were outgunned; and the gory toll is advanced again, another fifteen killed and wounded. Americans are gunned down at work, in driveways, at Walmart and Kroger. They are slaughtered in synagogues and churches, at high schools and colleges, in suburban bars and at house-warming parties. They die on baseball diamonds, while pumping gas and minding their business at home, at country music festivals and, now, Stephen Romero, 6, has been killed at the Garlic Festival.

Trump will not act on gun violence.

Trump will tweet about how we need a multi-billion-dollar border wall to keep ourselves safe.

*

SEN. MITCH McCONNELL is pissed because the hashtag #MoscowMitch is trending on Twitter. Trump fans don’t remember—or don’t care to remember—but when President Obama wanted to issue a warning (before voters went to the polls) about Russian meddling in the 2016 election, Moscow Mitch  refused to go along until the warning was watered down.

Now Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch with ties to organized crime, is offering to build a $200 million aluminum factory in McConnell’s Kentucky backyard, which looks more than a little like payback for services rendered.

Next come the moves that earn McConnell a new sobriquet. The House of Representatives passes a pair of bills to protect the 2020 election.

Senate Democrats demand a vote on the same.

One measure would require states to use paper ballots (or keep paper ballots for backup, in case computer systems are hacked). It would also increase funding for the Election Assistance Committee, to protect the vote.

A second measure would require candidates to report any offers of election-aid from foreign governments to proper law enforcement authorities. But that might cramp President Trump’s style.

“Moscow Mitch” blocks both bills from reaching the Senate floor. 

7/29/19: Trump is still bitching about Rep. Elijah Cummings, who is black. Baltimore is basically a “shithole,” you know he wants to say.

The president hasn’t offered to be dropped into Baltimore to fix the mess he said Obama should have fixed four years ago, a mess he swore he could clean up with ease. At least he’s back at the White House for now, following another weekend of golf. According to Google Maps, Trump National Golf Club, is 29.7 miles from Washington D.C. But it costs the Secret Service extra—some say the tab is now more than $102 million—every time the president leaves the White House to visit another one of his courses.

If Trump really wanted to do the job, he could have demanded that the Secret Service haul his lazy butt in a different direction, only 38.3 miles north to Baltimore for the weekend. He could have rolled up his sleeves, talked to people in poor neighborhoods, listened to their problems, and called a cabinet meeting this morning to see what might be done to address the issues. (See: 7/27/19.)

*

THE PRESIDENT stops to chat with reporters on the South Lawn. He grumbles that U.S. intelligence communities have “run amok” and must be reined in—mainly because they keep coming up with conclusions that bruise his fragile ego.

That means Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, highly respected for his work, is out.

Rep. John Ratcliffe, who has virtually zero experience in the intelligence field, is the choice to fill his shoes. Why Ratcliffe? Trump loved his performance during the televised Mueller hearings. That is, Ratcliffe did his best to savage Mueller and shield Trump, no matter what. He’s a hack. He’s a toady.

He’s the kind of sycophant Donald R. (for “Russia”) loves.

*

TRUMP BRAGS about being down at Ground Zero on 9/11, right there with all the other first responders.

His claim is both weird and grotesque. 

7/30/19: Back in March 2018, the president was busy patting himself on the back, as he loves to do. He was bragging about his deal-making skills where China was concerned. The tariffs he had imposed were taking a bite out of the Chinese economy and the Chinese were ready to give up. “Under our potential deal with China, they will purchase from our great American farmers practically as much as our farmers can produce,” the President of the United States said.

Now, Trump is mad. Sixteen months after he made that great deal, the Chinese have failed to come through.

It was no deal at all.

Trump learns again—or at least should—that diplomacy is a bitch. And it’s easy to complain about what your predecessors failed to do.

But you’ll fail too.

Capitalism helping communism to cut its own throat.

This blogger agrees: We should press the Chinese on trade. But a large part of our problem has been that big America corporations are happy to shift jobs to China, something Karl Marx could have never foreseen. That is, capitalism helping communism, as it were, to cut its own throat.

Most of the jobs we’ve lost aren’t coming back. They’ll shift again, to Vietnam, Sri Lanka or Bangladesh.

It’s a reality Trump and the GOP dare not address. If workers lack power to make demands for higher pay and benefits, the iron law of supply and demand decrees: Employers shall seek the cheapest labor available.

It “worked” when slave labor was free.

It “worked” when poor families had no choice but to put young children in factories.

It “works” today, when companies, including the Trump Organization, hire undocumented labor.

It “works” when Chinese employees put in ninety hours a week and aren’t in position to demand overtime.

It “works” in Bangladesh, where safety standards are lax to the point of non-existence. Big corporations are happy to ask the Bangladeshi to slave away in unsafe conditions. If a factory catches on fire and dozens of workers are killed, or a factory collapses on workers’ heads, killing 1,100?

Supply and demand.

Go find some other desperately poor people who haven’t been smushed and they’ll sew your jeans and assemble your tennis shoes and do it cheap.

*

TO SAY THAT JULY is not ending well for the 45^th President of the United States is an understatement. The three top religious officials at the Washington National Cathedral in Washington D.C. decide they must speak. In a statement titled, “Have We No Decency?” they write,

As faith leaders who serve at Washington National Cathedral – the sacred space where America gathers at moments of national significance – we feel compelled to ask: After two years of President Trump’s words and actions, when will Americans have enough?

We have come to accept a level of insult and abuse in political discourse that violates each person’s sacred identity as a child of God. We have come to accept as normal a steady stream of language and accusations coming from the highest office in the land that plays to racist elements in society.

This week, President Trump crossed another threshold. Not only did he insult a leader in the fight for racial justice and equality for all persons; not only did he savage the nations from which immigrants to this country have come; but now he has condemned the residents of an entire American city….

Make no mistake about it, words matter. And, Mr. Trump’s words are dangerous.

These words are more than a “dog-whistle.” When such violent dehumanizing words come from the President of the United States, they are a clarion call, and give cover, to white supremacists who consider people of color a sub-human “infestation” in America. They serve as a call to action from those people to keep America great by ridding it of such infestation. Violent words lead to violent actions.

When does silence become complicity? What will it take for us all to say, with one voice, that we have had enough? The question is less about the president’s sense of decency, but of ours.

As leaders of faith who believe in the sacredness of every single human being, the time for silence is over. We must boldly stand witness against the bigotry, hatred, intolerance, and xenophobia that is hurled at us, especially when it comes from the highest offices of this nation. We must say that this will not be tolerated. To stay silent in the face of such rhetoric is for us to tacitly condone the violence of these words.

“When such violent dehumanizing words come from the President of the United States, they are a clarion call, and give cover, to white supremacists who consider people of color a sub-human ‘infestation’ in America.”

Statement from the Washington National Cathedral

7/31/19: The Wall Street Journal breaks the news that the FAA was aware, after the first Boeing 737 Max crashed in October 2018, killing all 189 passengers and crew, that it “didn’t take that much” for sensors to malfunction and repeatedly push the nose of the plane down.

The FAA decided that airlines should warn pilots that a similar disaster was possible. Nothing more.

This was done, as CNBC explains, “to give Boeing and regulators enough time to certify a permanent fix without removing planes from the sky.”

Unfortunately, in March 2019 a second 737 Max removed itself “from the sky,” nosing straight into the ground.

All 157 passengers and crew died.

Good work, then, Daniel K. Elwell, Trump’s choice to head the FAA until that second crash. And welcome, Stephen Dickson, Acting Director of the FAA till last week! Dickson was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on July 24, in a narrow 52-40 vote. Democrats mostly voted nay, after senators learned that while Dickson was senior vice president for flight operations at Delta, he was involved in a whistleblower case—and not in a good way. When a pilot named Karlene Pettit expressed safety concerns, she was removed from the cockpit. In retaliation, she claims, she was ordered to undergo a psychiatric exam and failed. She was grounded for more than a year, “until outside experts overruled Delta’s hand-picked doctor and determined she was mentally fit to fly. She is now suing Delta in a Labor Department proceeding.”

The moral of the story: In Trumpistan government regulations are always bad and businesses should regulate themselves.

Too bad if the passenger jet you’re on plows up some ground.

*

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS leads constituents north, crossing the Canadian border, to get drugs!

Heading for the nearest pharmacy, they purchase life-saving insulin that would cost $340 per vial in the United States, but sells for $32 in Canada. Canada offers universal health care, which is “socialism” of the worst sort. 

August 1, 2019: Scientists report that July beat out June 2016 for the hottest month, globally, on record. 

8/2/19: Once again, through the miracle of Twitter, President Trump proves he’s a giant dick.

The relevant tweet:

The President of the United States, who says he wants a big beautiful border wall to protect us all from murderers and rapists, thinks it’s funny that Rep. Elijah Cummings’ house was burglarized.

*

NOT ONLY is Trump a dick, he’s a sap. Fourteen months ago, he claimed North Korea was no longer a nuclear threat. So far, he has not convinced Kim Jong-un to give up a single nuke.

The Donald is 0-for-his presidency.

So, while North Korea continues to build its nuclear arsenal, and has started launching missiles again, Trump can only tweet his way out of the conundrum.

His tweets, slightly edited:

Kim Jong Un and North Korea tested 3 short range missiles over the last number of days. These missiles tests are not a violation of our signed Singapore agreement, nor was there discussion of short range missiles when we shook hands [emphasis added]... 

....Chairman Kim does not want to disappoint me with a violation of trust....

....Chairman Kim has a great and beautiful vision for his country, and only the United States, with me as President, can make that vision come true. He will do the right thing because…he does not want to disappoint his friend, President Trump!

His “friend?”

Trump should be learning what every American president since 1898 has learned. Diplomacy on a world stage is a bitch and it’s hard to get foreign nations to do what we want.

Only Trump isn’t learning.

*

THE PRESIDENT suffers another blow to the orange ego, when it becomes clear that Rep. John Ratcliffe, his pick to be the next Director of National Intelligence is not going to be the next DNI.

That means Ratcliffe, tapped on July 29 to head up one of the most sensitive posts in the U.S. government, didn’t make it a week before his nomination went down in flaming wreckage.

Naturally, the president blames Democrats and the “Fake News” crowd for derailing his fine pick. He tells reporters that news organizations have treated Ratcliffe “very harshly and very unfairly.”

The president goes on to say that Republicans in the U.S. Senate would have loved Ratcliffe, if Democrats and the free press hadn’t been mean. He says he and Ratcliffe decided it wasn’t worth it to go through a confirmation hearing, even though Moscow Mitch and the GOP had 53 votes in the upper house and had previously proven willing to vote “yes” on a tomato plant if Trump sent up a nomination.

The real problem was Ratcliffe’s thin-to-nonexistent qualifications. First, reporters discovered that the poor dolt had claimed a leading role in prosecuting U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation, an important antiterrorism case. When ABC News checked, no one involved in the case remembered Ratcliffe. It didn’t help to find Ratcliffe had claimed to have put all kinds of terrorists in jail. The “enemies of the people” (a.k.a. reporters) discovered that the only case he ever prosecuted involving a terrorist was an Iraq War veteran with PTSD. Finally, Trump’s pick for DNI claimed he had “arrested 300 illegal aliens in a single day.” That claim was…how shall we say…fictitious. 

Raids across several states, involving multiple jurisdictions, swept up undocumented workers in various poultry plants. All Ratcliffe really did was “disarm” workers who were cutting up chickens.

Even Moscow Mitch and his crew knew the only reason Trump picked Ratcliffe for the job was that Ratcliffe tried to make Robert Mueller look bad during public testimony on July 24. (See: 7/24/19.)

8/3/19: Saturday morning, Orange Leader’s Twitter feed reveals again, how dangerous his rhetoric can be.

“Language is the soil of thought.”

James Russell Lowell

Just hours before the massacre in El Paso, Trump is retweeting a post from Katie Hopkins, a Brit, who has compared migrants and refugees to cockroaches. This morning, Hopkins happens to be focusing on a Syrian immigrant (dog whistle: “Muslim”) who used a machete to hack to death some poor fellow (dog whistle: white gentleman, eating a crumpet) on a London street.

She is stirring as much visceral fear as she can. Trump decides it would be great to magnify the reach of her hate.

The morning is still young. Trump retweets Hopkins again. This time the hate (and hate’s handmaiden: fear) is directed at London’s mayor, which makes you wonder why the president is at all concerned. Hopkins has referred to the mayor, who is short of stature and a Muslim as, “The nipple-height Mayor of Londonistan [who] has NEVER been so unpopular. He has MINUS approval ratings because we are stab-city.…”

It’s the ultimate, bloody irony. Trump, on Saturday morning, is focused on the crime problems of London, where a noticeable uptick in stabbing attacks has occurred. Suddenly, gunfire erupts in El Paso, Texas. “An Anglo man came here to kill Hispanics,” a local sheriff will say. Heavily armed, carrying military-style weaponry, he kills and wounds 46 human beings.

Consider the similarities in the language of the hater with the gun and the hater with the Twitter account. “You look at what is marching up, that is an invasion!” Trump told fans at a recent rally, warning against migrants approaching our southern border. 

“Language,” James Russell Lowell once said, “is the soil of thought.”

Trump plants noxious weeds and claims innocence when they grow. In a Trump 2020 campaign add on Facebook, we hear him shout: “We have an INVASION! It’s CRITICAL that we STOP THE INVASION!” And with that, the soil for slaughter in El Paso is prepped. 

“This attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas,” the killer claims.

The soil of thought.

*

PREDICTABLY, almost as soon as the smoke stops curling from the barrel of the killer’s automatic weapon, the hypocrites begin offering up hollow response. In El Paso, 20 are dead, 26 wounded. Many of the victims have been hit multiple times. Sen. Mitch McConnell, the second most powerful man in Washington, says the victims are in his and his wife’s thoughts and prayers.

(The N.R.A., however, is in his pockets.)

At that moment, by cosmic mischance, “Massacre Mitch” is sitting on a bill, passed by the House of Representatives, to require universal background checks before anyone can purchase a gun. McConnell has refused to allow the bill to come to the floor for debate. In fact, GOP senators are terrified that if they address the problem of gun violence, the N.R.A. will turn against them. The American people, generally, agree that action is long overdue. A recent Harvard University study found that 83 percent of gun owners approved of expanded background checks.

Fox News reports that 91 percent of all Americans favor universal background checks, 84 percent favor mental health checks on gun buyers and 72 percent support raising the age to purchase a gun to 21. Six in ten would ban the sale of assault rifles and semi-automatic weapons.

8/4/19: Sunday, shock and anger turn to outrage. Americans wake to the news that there has been a second bloody slaughter, this time in Dayton, Ohio. Nine are dead, twenty-seven wounded.

The shooter manages to inflict this damage in thirty-two seconds. Fortunately, nearby police on patrol arrive quickly and shoot him dead. The killer is using a drum magazine, holding 100 rounds.

He’s carrying an assault-style rifle, of course. We learn later that he’s wearing a mask, body armor and hearing protection. His attack, like the attack in El Paso, has been carefully planned.

Numbed by the news, I rub sleep from my eyes and turn to Fox News to see how the story is covered. Rep. Kevin McCarthy is guest on Maria Bartiromo’s show. If you watch much Fox, you can predict what she’s going to ask—and if you’ve ever listened to McCarthy you know his answer. 

Bartiromo wonders if McCarthy believes video games are the problem. “Is this mental?” she adds.

McCarthy refers to the killers as “monsters,” but utters not a syllable about how we can keep automatic weapons out of such hands.

Bartiromo talks about anger on social media. “Words matter,” she says.

(Yes, we know.)

We can predict, again, that they won’t bring up the fact Trump recently complained about crime in Baltimore but failed to offer help. Instead, he mocked the city and its mostly African American political leadership (the “other” in the eyes of his predominantly white base), using the homicide rate to score political points. It should have been a vomit-inducing moment for anyone possessed of normal human emotions, but it was no surprise coming from Trump.

The Baltimore Sun, however, provided an outraged summary of events:

Minutes into his Thursday night campaign rally in Cincinnati, President Donald Trump continued his nearly weeklong bashing of the city of Baltimore.

Early in his speech, the Republican president railed against cities led by Democrats.

“The Democrat record is one of neglect and corruption and decay, total decay,” Trump said to applause.

He then turned to Baltimore.

“The homicide rate in Baltimore is significantly higher than El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala,” Trump told his supporters. He paused.

“Gimme a place that you think is pretty bad. Gimme a place,” Trump said, adopting the intonation of a stand-up comic and motioning to someone in the crowd. “The guy says, ‘Afghanistan.’ I believe it’s higher than Afghanistan. In our country. Think of that.”

Trump’s voice turned sarcastic.

“If we’re wrong, they’ll tell us tomorrow. It’ll be headlines: ‘Trump exaggerated.’ I do believe the rate is higher than Afghanistan,” the president said.

Trump doesn’t really care about the blood and the gore. Trump is scoring points with his base by instilling fear of the “other.” The African Americans in a crime-ridden city. The Muslim mayor and the Muslim immigrant in London.

“Stab city.”

The “other,” in Trump’s telling, those people with menacing, darker faces.

“Cockroaches,” one might start to think. (See: 8/3/19.)

*

I SOON GIVE UP on Fox News and begin switching between channels and go online for information.

First, we can start with Trump’s tone-deaf comments about Baltimore. It’s a city of 610,000 and suffered 318 murders last year. The president turns this bloody mess into a point of mockery. He’s not going to visit Baltimore or any of the other cities that have worse murder rates, not even crime-ridden cities in the reddest of states. He’s going to stick to private golf clubs every weekend instead. Statistics vary slightly, but in 2018, Baltimore was the seventh most deadly city in the U.S., with .52 murders for every 10,000 residents. East St. Louis was worst with 1.0 murders per 10,000. Lakeworth, Florida rounded out the “Top 30,” with .26.

What about London, where a Muslim mayor runs the show and Muslim immigrants run amok with machetes in their hands?

The city of 8,100,000 had 119 homicides as of November 13 last year, putting it on pace for 140 for the year.

That rate would be .02 homicides per 10,000.

Stabbings and all.

*

A SUNDAY AFTERNOON spent channel surfing proves grim. We’ve seen this gory scene play out before. What were the killer’s motives? Pundits offer theories. Police describe the armament employed. Politicians agree lessons must be learned. A trauma surgeon in El Paso stands before the cameras and updates us on the condition of the wounded. Shaken survivors in Dayton describe what they saw in the dark hours Sunday morning. Then they weep. Even law enforcement authorities weep. Experts appear on every cable channel and describe the warning signs if you think someone you know, or know of, might have violent intent. Journalists look glum.

Jake Tapper on CNN seems unusually stony-faced. Words matter, of course. He wonders if Trump’s words have fueled the hate. In May, for example, this exchange at a Trump rally occurred. Tapper plays a clip. Trump asks the crowd for ideas to block migrants trying to cross the border:

“How do you stop these people?” he asks.

“Shoot them!” a man in the audience shouts.

The crowd laughs and Trump smiles. “That’s only in the Panhandle you can get away with that stuff,” he says. “Only in the Panhandle.”

So, the killer in El Paso does just that. He drives down to the border and opens fire, just like the man at the rally said.

*

IT WAS OBVIOUS from the start. Trump is a hater of the worst kind. We had our first warning signs when Trump claimed for six years that President Obama (the “other” in right-wing land) wasn’t a U.S. citizen. Candidate Trump relented in a nine-word statement in 2016, only because campaign advisers warned his perceived racism was hurting his chance of winning. But, like Hitler and every other demagogue, Trump stirred crowds to hate from the start. Hate and fear Obama. Hate Mexicans, those dark-skinned “others,” those “murderers” and “rapists,” with perhaps an occasional good person mixed in. Like any other demagogue, Trump set out to foster the fear.

Since taking office, he has lashed out in all directions as only a skilled hater can. N.F.L. players who protested police brutality and protested the president’s policies, were “sons of bitches.”

That is: You had a U.S. president labeling the mothers of African American football players “bitches.” And maybe, he added, those players “shouldn’t be in this country” at all.

No other president has ever hated more Americans.

Is the president a racist? Trump hates so many groups and so many individuals, it’s hard to be sure. Hitler had his “untermenschen” or “under men.” The Jews were “vermin” who must be extirpated. Trump retweets Katie Hopkins, with her “cockroach” comparisons and complains about “lowlifes” again and again. Andy McCabe, Ted Cruz, Elizabeth Warren and Omarosa—who he hired to work at the White House—are lowlifes. Omarosa is also a “dog.” Criminals are rabid “animals” in Trump’s mind. As such, they can be shot on sight. Muslims, as a group, are a threat. By the thousands, Trump claimed, they cheered in New Jersey on 9/11 when the Twin Towers fell. That hate-based claim won him a “Pants of Fire” rating from political fact-checking sites; but the seeds of hate took root, exactly as Trump intended.

Trump hates so many people, it’s difficult to keep track of all he despises. He hated and still hates Obama. He hates Alec Baldwin and the producers of Saturday Night Live. He hates Meryl Streep and Robert DeNiro. He hated John McCain most of all. He hates Jeff Bezos and Peggy Noonan and Don Lemon and LeBron James. He hates Rosie O’Donnell and calls her a “fat pig,” and Stormy Daniels, the porn star with whom he had sex, who he refers to as “horseface now.”

Dehumanization is Trump’s stock in trade.

Stoke hate. Stoke fear. That’s what this president does. Race can be Trump’s fuel. Religion can be his fuel. Hate of the “other” can be his fuel. Fear that America is being destroyed by “liberals” can be his fuel. “I don’t believe the four Congresswomen are capable of loving our country,” he says recently, stirring the anger and hate, referring to four female Democratic lawmakers. It’s “our country,” he wants supporters to believe. It’s not their country. The four may be American citizens. No matter. They are “other.” Two are Muslim American. All four have brown skin. But they are “weak & insecure people who can never destroy our great Nation.”

“Our great Nation.”

Not the nation of those “others.”

No way.

In tweet after tweet, Trump employs the word “destroy” to provoke irrational fear. Obama, he claimed, was out to destroy the “American dream.” Obama didn’t love this country. According to Trump, his enemies never do. “If @BarackObama really loved this country, he wouldn’t be destroying it.”  Obama destroyed our children’s futures. He destroyed the middle class.

“Obama is destroying the U.S.,” Trump howled.

Trump’s world is crammed with enemies. Paranoia is a guiding principle. When five police in Dallas were gunned down by a black man in 2016—a heinous act without doubt—Trump stoked the fear of “others” again, this time the “criminal” blacks. “Our convention occurs at a moment of crisis for our nation,” he warned at the Republican National Convention that July. “The attacks on our police, and the terrorism in our cities, threaten our very way of life.”

The killer of those officers was a hater, too. All haters are fundamentally alike. Some hate the Jews. Some hate the police. Some hate reporters who question what they say and do.

You might have thought, after these most recent killings, that Trump would be fired up about all the white mass murderers, who have done even worse damage than the Dallas murderer. These attackers are home-grown white men. These are haters who shot up Santa Fe, Texas (10 students and teachers killed), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (11 cut down at the Tree of Life synagogue), Thousand Oaks, California (12 killed in a bar), Parkland, Florida (17 students and teachers riddled with bullets), Sutherland Springs, Texas (26 slaughtered at prayer), and Las Vegas, Nevada (58 massacred with music in their ears). Trump does not rail about these shootings because the shooters are not “other.” He cannot use them to stir the hate of his base.

No American president has ever hated more Americans than Donald J. Trump. He hates “liberals” and Democrats. Special Counsel Robert Mueller headed up a “gang of Democratic thugs.” The Democratic candidate for governor of Georgia planned to “destroy a great state.” The Mainstream Media is “corrupt and deranged.” Reporters who criticize the president are “crazed lunatics.” They are, in his view, “enemies of the people,” a line that echoes Herr Hitler in 1934. People who investigated his campaign and its many contacts with Russians were guilty of “TREASON.” Democrats who don’t support his border wall are “treasonous,” too.

The punishment for treason is death.

Trump, you see, is master of the hater’s game—and his hateful words matter a great deal. Patrick Crusius, the suspect in the El Paso shooting, says in a 2,300-word “manifesto” that he was “simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion.”

“My country,” he says.

Trump’s words echo loud.

8/5/19: The nation comes to grips with the tragic events of the weekend. TV screens fill with sad images. Three daughters of David Johnson talk with Anderson Cooper. They tell him their dad shielded their mother and a nine-year-old granddaughter when the El Paso killer opened fire at point blank range. Johnson was hit several times and paid with his life. All three young women start to cry.

The name of Arturo Benavides, 60, scrolls across the screen. An army veteran, who liked to talk about his time in the service, Benavides was killed not on a battlefield but shopping at a store. Maribel Latin, describes being wounded in the arm and the foot, playing dead, counting shots fired as she lay. She feared the next bullet might be for her. Paul Gilbert Anchondo, age two months, was grazed by a bullet but survived. Both his parents were killed. Now he’s a “mass murderer orphan.” So are his sisters, Skylin, 5, and Victoria, 2. Javier Amir Rodriguez, 15, played soccer in high school last year. He won’t be playing again. Angelina Englisbee, 86, survived eight decades on earth, only to be cut down at Walmart.

The husband of Elsa Libora Marquez speaks, in a sense, for all the grieving families, when he remembers his wife in a Facebook post: “I say goodbye to my partner, the most wonderful woman, a being full of life who will continue to light our path for the time that life gives us…we will miss you my love!!!!”

The story in Dayton is equally bloody and grim. Megan Betts, the “bubbly” sister of the killer, is among those he gunned down. Derrick Fudge, 57, is purchasing food at a taco truck when caught by a burst of semi-automatic fire. Lois Oglesby, 27, a young mother, will never tuck her two daughters in bed again. Logan Turner, 30, described by his mother “as the world’s best son,” is dead.

*

AT 10:00 A.M., President Trump appears before cameras in the White House Diplomatic Reception Room. VP Pence stands, a step back, at his side. Trump talks about what he believes must be done.

A “wicked man,” he says, went to Walmart in El Paso and opened fire. In Dayton a “twisted monster” blasted innocent bystanders at a popular night-life spot. The president’s speech hits mostly the correct notes, although Trump seems to be delivering it with the enthusiasm of a child served lima beans. He appears to be reciting what’s on the teleprompter and doesn’t appear moved.

“These barbaric slaughters are an assault on our communities,” he recites, “a crime against all humanity.” It is odd to hear the words “all humanity” issue from his lips. Trump spent his entire time running for office, and time since, dividing humanity into groups and pitting group against group.

Still, he soldiers on, saying, at least three years too late, that, “in one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy. These sinister ideologies must be defeated. Hate has no place in America. Hatred warps the mind, ravages the heart, and devours the soul.”

This blogger freely admits he finds this president to be a despicable human being. He would credit Trump for such words, if he thought they came from the heart. But it’s easy to check the internet site which compiles all of Trump’s tweets. The site allows a search by word or phrase.

The phrase, “all humanity” has never appeared.

Not once.

“Hate,” however, comes up hundreds of times, sometimes in harmless fashion, often not. Trump howls about political foes who “HATE our country.” There are “haters and losers,” “Trump haters,” CNN pundits who “hate” him, and a single “Hate Crime” that riles Trump up.

(Until now, the only hate crime Trump had ever tweeted about was the case of Jussie Smollett, who faked an attack on himself—and claimed the attackers were men in red MAGA hats.)

“Since Columbine,” Trump continues with his White House recitation, we have “watched, with rising horror, and dread, as one mass shooting has followed another, over and over again, decade after decade.”

“We can and will stop this evil contagion,” he adds, but says it must be done in “a true bipartisan manner.”

In perhaps the most ironic passage of all, Trump looks at the teleprompter and intones: “Cultural change is hard. But each of us can choose to build a culture that celebrates the inherent worth and dignity of every human life.” In what sounds like an aside, diverging from the script, he adds, with what seems to be a brief touch of sincere emotion, “That’s what we have to do.”

The president talks for ten minutes. It’s hard not to notice he avoids the main point. “We must reform our mental health laws to better identify mentally disturbed individuals,” make sure they get treatment, but face “involuntary confinement” if required. He talks about regulating “violent video games.” He seems to believe all mass murderers are “mentally disturbed,” but says he wants to add the death penalty in such cases. There’s no evidence a deranged killer would care. The problem Trump doesn’t dare to address is the problem itself. Both shooters, as is almost always the case where mass murder occurs, were armed with military-style weaponry and—more generally—the United States is awash with three hundred million guns.

Instead, Trump hits a key right-wing talking point in his speech. We don’t need gun control. “Mental illness and hatred pulls the trigger, not the gun,” he insists.

His task nearly complete, Trump wraps up the speech he has no choice but to give. “If we are able to pass great legislation after all of these years, we will ensure that those who were attacked will not have died in vain.” He offers blessings to the memory of the people who died in El Paso. Then: “May God bless the memory of those who died in Toledo. May God protect them.”

It’s a bizarre slip of the tongue, but Trump doesn’t correct himself. Moments later, he concludes his performance. He exits the room, as if making his escape, without taking a single question from the press.

*

THE DAY DOES NOT END, however, before several Republicans make asses of themselves.

Once again, we hear them argue that banning assault-style rifles won’t help because killers can still use knives. It’s the same line they trot out every time a mass shooting occurs. Killers can use cars, too, they like to add.

Oh, fuck it. Why not just argue that they can use nine irons, two-by-fours and frozen turkey legs as clubs?

(Now liberals want to take away your drumsticks!)

Ohio state Rep. Candice Keller, the biggest fool of all, places blame for gun violence right where it “belongs.”

In a Facebook post she writes, “After every mass shooting, the liberals start the blame game. Why not place the blame where it belongs?” She kicks off her list: “The breakdown of the traditional American family (thank you, transgender, homosexual marriage, and drag queen advocates)...”

It’s an idiotic response. And to be fair, the Ohio Republican Party Chairwoman calls on Rep. Keller to resign.

*

LEST WE FORGET, there are and always have been Republicans and conservatives who stand for principles any decent human can respect. In that vein, Nebraska state Sen. John S. McCollister, a lifelong Republican, issues a series of searing tweets:

The Republican Party is enabling white supremacy in our country.  As a lifelong Republican, it pains me to say this, but it’s the truth.

I of course am not suggesting that all Republicans are white supremacists nor am I saying that the average Republican is even racist.

What I am saying though is that the Republican Party is COMPLICIT to obvious racist and immoral activity inside our party.

We have a Republican president who continually stokes racist fears in his base.  He calls certain countries “sh*tholes,” tells women of color to “go back” to where they came from and lies more than he tells the truth.

We have Republican senators and representatives who look the other way and say nothing for fear that it will negatively affect their elections. No more. When the history books are written, I refuse to be someone who said nothing...

We all like to cite Abraham Lincoln’s Republican lineage when it is politically expedient but NOW is the time to ACT like Lincoln [emphasis added] and take a stand.

With, that, he posts this picture and calls it a day.

Within hours, the chairman of the Nebraska GOP drums McCollister out of the Republican Party.

And so it goes.

8/6/19: In the wake of a trio of deadly shootings in California, Texas and Ohio, debate swirls around what to do and whom to blame.

In a front-page editorial the New York Post (a paper owned by Rupert Murdoch) calls for a ban on “weapons of war.” The editors direct their argument to the President of the United States.

God save us all, sir. People all across the nation are scared; many feel like the country is spinning out of control. They’re looking to their leaders for more than prayers.

America is terrified.

President Trump, you are positioned to assuage that fear. On gun control, you are a pragmatic centrist, someone who knows there is a vast majority of Americans who are not to the extreme left or right on this issue. They just want the killings to stop.

Yes, we know the president regularly praises the Second Amendment and received the National Rifle Association’s support in the 2016 race.

But the Second Amendment leaves ample room for regulating gun rights, just as every other constitutional right has its limits.

…Come up with answers. Now. Beginning with the return of an assault weapons ban.

Meanwhile, the president is preparing to visit Dayton and El Paso on Wednesday. Many residents of the Texas city, where 85 percent of the population is Hispanic, don’t want him to show his mug.

The killer name-checked President Trump.

Critics on the left are quick to mock his response to the slaughter, delivered the day before. “Teleprompter Trump,” they admit, sounds like a president. Trump, in the raw, sounds like a white supremacist, but one who can’t bring himself to come out of the closet and admit who he is.

New details emerge. We learn that the El Paso killer praised the Christchurch, New Zealand murderer, who killed 51 Muslims at prayer this past March. Like links in a diabolical chain, the Christchurch killer name-checked Trump, calling him “a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose.” Words matter, of course, and Trump has vilified Muslims more than once.

*

WHAT ELSE has happened since the triple mass killings? In Ohio, Gov. Mike DeWine tried to talk to a Dayton crowd and was shouted down. “Do something! Do something!” the angry throng demanded.

Rep. Mike Turner, a Republican who represents the city in Congress, made an abrupt about face and called for a ban on military-style weapons and large-capacity magazines. This change was influenced in part by the fact his daughter was across the street at the very moment the Dayton killer opened fire—and by the knowledge that the murderer managed to unleash at least 41 rounds in less than a minute. Turner, who had previously earned “A” ratings from the N.R.A., because of opposition to a ban on assault-style rifles, explained his change of heart:

This weekend, a shooter wearing body armor opened fire in downtown Dayton with a weapon he had modified to be able to hold 100 rounds of ammunition. Dayton Police ran towards the shooter and neutralized him in less than thirty seconds, saving countless lives. In those few seconds, the shooter was able to murder nine people, injure at least 27, and deeply impact the entire community. If the police had not been present and able to instantly respond, the casualties would have been astronomical.

President Obama—who has been reluctant to criticize the current occupant of the White House (who, by contrast, has missed no opportunity to criticize him)—issues a rare public statement. Without mentioning Trump by name, he takes our current leader to task for his fearmongering. 

We should soundly reject language coming out of the mouths of any of our leaders that feeds a climate of fear and hatred and normalizes racist sentiments; leaders who demonize those who don’t look like us, or suggest that other people, including immigrants, threaten our way of life, or refer to other people as sub-human, or imply that America belongs to just one certain type of people.

It has no place in our politics and our public life.

And it’s time for the overwhelming majority of Americans of goodwill, of every race and faith and political party, to say as much—clearly and unequivocally.

Frank Keating, the former Republican governor of Oklahoma also faults Trump. Keating knows white supremacist extremism from bloody experience, having been governor in 1995, when Timothy McVey bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. That bombing left 168 Americans dead. That included 19 children, at a daycare center on the bottom floor of the building. Another 680 men, women and children were injured in the blast.

Now, Keating warned that the president had to learn how to choose his words. “He needs to realize the lethality of his rhetoric [emphasis added]. The truth is the president is the secular pope and he needs to be a moral leader as well as a government leader, and to say that this must not occur again—exclamation mark.”

The student newspaper at Oklahoma University, where Keating is a regent, seeks him out for further comment. Keating makes it clear he sees no reason for ordinary citizens to own assault-style weapons:

“We simply can’t have this again. When I was growing up, and I believe largely when my children were growing up, we didn’t have this,” Keating said. “The contempt for human life, the dismissal of an individual’s right to be left alone, and the use of race, sex and nationality as an excuse for killing.”

Easy access to “war weapons” also enabled the attacks, Keating said, adding that the shooters had no previous criminal records and were able to legally purchase the weapons they used in the attacks.

“Why are people who are not fighting wars allowed to buy war weapons,” Keating said. “You can’t buy a flamethrower, you can’t buy a bazooka, why should you be able to buy an AR-15?”

Keating tells student reporters he owns several guns and uses them for recreation. He supports the Second Amendment. “This isn’t the (Second) Amendment, to say that I can arm myself with every weapon of modern warfare,” Keating adds. “That’s ridiculous in an urban, civilized society.

*

SO, HOW DID TRUMP spend his time before heading off to Dayton and El Paso. He went to work on Twitter.

In one tone-deaf tweet he decided it would be a brilliant stratagem to bring the country together by attacking Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat running for president, based on his name and poll numbers.

Low poll numbers! Low poll numbers in Trump’s mind are more hideous than torn, bleeding bodies.

Beto (phony name to indicate Hispanic heritage) O’Rourke, who is embarrassed by my last visit to the Great State of Texas, where I trounced him [Trump has previously claimed he had much bigger crowds for a rally] and is now even more embarrassed by polling at 1% in the Democrat Primary, should respect the victims & law enforcement - & be quiet!

It was the essence of Trump, petty and whiny, and anti-First Amendment rights for critics, all in a single tweet.

* 

SPEAKING OF ESSENCE, Monday we had the essence of Fox News. Fox News—where if President Trump pushed a baby off the top of a ten-story building, Sean Hannity would claim, against all logic and visible evidence, that his crime paled in comparison with Hillary’s missing emails.

This time the job of denying reality fell to Tucker Carlson. As if the shooting in El Paso had never happened, Carlson weighed in on the topic of the day. White supremacist violence? Not a problem! 

Below we provide our assessment.

CARLSON: It’s not the job of this show to defend the president and everything he says [Carlson claimed Monday night].

BLOGGER: That is his job. It’s the job description of Tucker and Sean, Ainsley and Brian K., of Lou Dobbs, the perpetually angry host of the Fox Business Channel, and four of every five panelists on “The Five.”

CARLSON: Some things we are not going to defend [Tucker continued]. But in point of fact, [Trump] never endorsed white supremacy or came close to endorsing white supremacy. That’s just a lie. But he condemned it anyway. Their response, “he didn’t really mean it.”

BLOGGER: Who thinks Trump might be endorsing white supremacy, besides Democrats running for president? White supremacists! After the president attacked four Democratic congresswomen of color, Andrew Anglin, who runs Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website responded:

Man, President Trump’s Twitter account has been pure fire lately. This might be the funniest thing he’s ever tweeted. This is the kind of WHITE NATIONALISM we elected him for. And we’re obviously seeing it only because there’s another election coming up. But I’ll tell you, even knowing that, it still feels so good.

CARLSON: If you were to assemble a list, a hierarchy of concerns of problems this country faces, where would white supremacy be on the list?

Right up there with Russia probably.

BLOGGER: Maybe on Fox News, where Tucker is contractually bound to defend everything Trump does and says, up to and including urinating in the punch at a White House press reception, Russia is not a problem.

We who consult other sources of news, know that the following Trump campaign aides and family members have admitted suspicious and/or illegal contacts with Russians during the 2016 election cycle: General Michael T. Flynn (now a convicted felon), Carter Page (not charged), Michael Cohen (felon), Felix Sater (a felon before joining Team Trump), George Nader (also a felon before joining the team; currently indicted anew), George Papadopoulos (felon), Roger Stone (under indictment at this time), Michael Caputo (not charged), Donald J. Trump Jr. (not charged), Jared Kushner (not charged), Paul Manafort (felon) and Rick Gates (felon).

CARLSON: [White supremacy?] It’s actually not a real problem in America. The combined membership of every white supremacist organization in this country would be able to fit inside a college football stadium.

BLOGGER: Um…that’s a lot of people…and just one guy in one hypothetical seat went out and gunned down 46 people.

CARLSON: This is a country where the average person is getting poorer, where the suicide rate is spiking—“white supremacy, that’s the problem”—this is a hoax. Just like the Russia hoax, it’s a conspiracy theory used to divide the country and keep a hold on power.

BLOGGER: If you’ve never noticed, there are a lot of “hoaxes” in the land of the right-wing nuts. Trump himself has called climate change a hoax and said President Obama’s American citizenship was a hoax. 

The Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre was a hoax.

The Parkland, Florida student protesters were “actors” and their outrage at seeing teachers and classmates murdered was a hoax.

The Trump supporter who sent pipe bombs to more than a dozen leading Democrats and Trump critics…that was a hoax, too. The Democrats set that one up! They mailed bombs to themselves!!!

Of course, lawyers for Cesar Sayoc, the man who sent the bombs, demolished that claim this same week. Their client, they argued in a plea for mercy before sentencing was handed down, was “a Donald Trump superfan.”

“In this darkness,” the lawyers wrote in a sentencing memo, “Mr. Sayoc found light in Donald J. Trump.”

Mr. Sayoc listened to Mr. Trump’s self-help books and championed him on social media. He watched Fox News religiously while working out at the gym.

“Because of Mr. Sayoc’s mental illness, this type of [dangerous] rhetoric deeply affected him because he so greatly admired the president,” one of Mr. Sayoc’s lawyers, Ian Marcus Amelkin, said in court. “It is impossible, I believe, to separate the political climate and his mental illness.”

Last fall, Mr. Sayoc’s lawyers wrote, the “slow-boil of Mr. Sayoc’s political obsessions and delusional beliefs” led him to build and send his 16 packages to 13 intended victims he considered to be Mr. Trump’s enemies. 

In other words, Trump’s unhinged rhetoric had further unhinged the unhinged.

8/7/19: According to President Trump we now know who the biggest victim of the El Paso and Dayton massacres was. No—not the dead and wounded. No—not the grieving families. No! It’s not first responders, police, emergency squad personnel, ICU nurses and trauma surgeons who deal with the wreckage of bodies. No. No. No. No. No one has suffered more than….

…Donald J. Trump.

We know this, because Trump is up early Wednesday, preparing for his trip to Dayton and El Paso, and totally focused on the victims and families of….

Nope. Not even close.

At 5:32 a.m., he’s rage-tweeting, obsessing over a changed headline, the day before, in The New York Times.

“Trump Urges Unity Vs. Racism,” was the correct description in the first headline by the Failing New York Times, but it was quickly changed to, “Assailing Hate But Not Guns,” after the Radical Left Democrats went absolutely CRAZY! Fake News - That’s what we’re up against...

Unlike most Trump supporters, this humble blogger subscribes to and regularly reads The New York Times. The changed headline has nothing to do with the gist of the story that followed.

Yes, the first headline indicated: “Trump Urges Unity Vs. Racism.”

That doesn’t mean anyone thought the president was sincere. Not under any headline you might conjure.

*

A FEW HOURS LATER, speaking to reporters on the White House lawn, before leaving for Dayton and El Paso, Trump insists that Democrats are trying to score political points by attacking him.

A reporter asks, “Do you think your rhetoric is fueling the violence?”

“I don’t think my rhetoric does at all,” the president replies. “I think my rhetoric brings people together.”

With that, it was off to Dayton, where the visit went off without any serious problems, with only a few dozen protesters gathered at the hospital and a couple hundred more at the site of the massacre. The mayor and Sen. Sherrod Brown, both Democrats, say the visit went “well enough.”

And away Trump goes!

Here, Trump runs into the kind of trouble that dogs him at so many points. First, eight shooting victims and their families at the University Medical Center in El Paso refuse to meet with him. Next, he’s filmed talking to medical staff at the hospital. The topic of discussion? He’s bragging about how big his crowd was when he visited El Paso for a rally earlier this year. Even worse, Trump can’t get past the tragedy of his persecution. Yes, 31 Americans have been massacred; but Trump is suffering the most.

He has been shot in the orange ego. 

Flying home to Washington, he goes on the attack. Democrats, he howls, are trying to politicize the carnage!

Well, take this:

Watching Sleepy Joe Biden making a speech. Sooo Boring! The LameStream Media will die in the ratings and clicks with this guy. It will be over for them, not to mention the fact that our Country will do poorly with him. It will be one big crash, but at least China will be happy! 

In fact, Trump seems to believe the real issue for the day is “clicks,” website traffic, like “clicks” on cute cat videos and stupid young men managing to hit themselves in the nuts. And might we point out once more, there has never been a major stock market crash when a Democrat is in the White House.

Next, Trump takes a poke at Fox News! “Watching Fake News CNN is better than watching Shepard Smith, the lowest rated show on @FoxNews. Actually, whenever possible, I turn to @OANN!”

Ah! Low TV ratings—worse than blood in the streets.

Next, we get bragging:

Leaving El Paso for the White House. What GREAT people I met there and in Dayton, Ohio. The Fake News worked overtime trying to disparage me and the two trips, but it just didn’t work. The love, respect & enthusiasm were there for all to see. They have been through so much. Sad!

Indeed, the “love, respect & enthusiasm” for Donald J. Trump is all that Donald J. Trump cares about.

“There’s no longer any doubt that the president has blood on his hands.”

Governor William Weld

In the meantime (and Trump must have missed this, or he’d have had to unleash Twitter hell again), former Gov. William Weld, a Republican, blisters the president’s response to the shootings.

Appearing on MSNBC, Weld is blunt. “There’s no longer any doubt that the president has blood on his hands. You could draw a direct line from that manifesto from the shooter in El Paso to the Trump handbook. Every week it seems the president gets a bit more unhinged.”

8/8/19: Let’s start with a simple story and work our way up the ladder of horribleness that is life with President Trump.

First, a Montana man is in trouble, as a local TV station explains:

A man accused of attacking a 13-year-old boy for not removing his hat during the national anthem at a rodeo was released without posting bail, despite having a criminal record.

His attorney said his client believed he was acting on orders from the commander in chief.

Curt Brockway, 39, was released Monday, but that release comes with a list of the following conditions: He is required to wear a GPS, he cannot have any contact with the victim, the victim’s family or witnesses; and he can only leave his parents’ home for work, doctor appointments and court appearances.

The mother of the victim said her son is traumatized and is in recovery. The boy was airlifted to a hospital with a concussion and a fractured skull after the attack.

The attorney for Brockway said Wednesday his client is a U.S. Army veteran who believed he was acting on an order from President Donald Trump [emphasis added].

…Brockway told a sheriff’s deputy that he asked the boy to remove his hat out of respect for the national anthem before the start of the county rodeo, Mineral County Attorney Ellen Donohue wrote in the document describing the attack. The boy cursed at Brockway in response, and the man grabbed him by the throat, “lifted him into the air and slammed the boy into the ground,” Donohue wrote.

*

MORE GENERALLY, the discussion for the day continues to revolve around guns, nuts with guns, white supremacist nuts with guns, and nuts who love white supremacists nuts with guns. The president and the Republican Party are stuck playing defense, with Democrats running for president either hinting or insisting that Trump is a white supremacist.

There are a lot of Democrats in the 2020 race and they’re ganging up on poor Don.

It doesn’t help his case, to say as the president recently did, that, “I am the least racist person in the world,” when we keep finding out that avowed racists love what Trump says and does.

An “essential first step.”

On 8chan, the secretive website where racist speech thrives and the El Paso killer went for support, one commenter described Trump’s recent attacks on four Democratic women of color as an “essential first step.”

First, the president normalizes racism, making it clear he doesn’t have to put up with shit from brown and black individuals.

Next:

[He makes clear that] it is ok for him not to want to be swamped by brown scum that clearly despise him, that these invaders have stepped well out of line making demands of us, and that if they don’t like the way we run things they can go the hell back. These are the ideological seeds from which actual revolutions begin. When someone with perceived authority like Trump comes along and says them, it carries weight with many people. The jewish media is right to be terrified of these ideas becoming normalized.

Of course, Trump, and fans of Trump, and Tucker Carlson, and fans of Carlson, could always insist that Carlson was correct in arguing that white supremacy wasn’t an issue…

Then, presto!

David Duke rears his head (you can’t always tell when he rears his head because Duke favors pointy hats and white sheets:

“Tucker is RIGHT!” White Supremacy is a ZioMedia Conspiracy Theory!” the former Grand Wizard and sometimes GOP candidate for office tweets. “The term is itself a lie. Millions of White activists are NOT ‘supremacists’ We seek NOT to oppress or destroy any race! Human Rights for all - EVEN FOR WHITE PEOPLE! Stop antiWhite racism!”

Was white supremacy a problem? Was Trump tapping into the hate?

You can read what the Anti-Defamation League says. Again, the man who runs the Daily Stormer supports Trump and Trump fans who chanted that dark-skinned U.S. citizens should go back where they came from.

As the ADL explains:

Andrew Anglin again praised the President, writing on the Daily Stormer the day after the rally: “Telling those women to go back to their countries is by far the most racist thing he’s ever said – especially since one of them was a black American, descended from slaves. And by refusing to apologize, he has effectively normalized the opinion among the masses of goyim that you can believe that America is a white country, for white people – and that brown people are our guests and if they don’t like being guests then they have to go home.”

Anglin was most excited to see that Trump had included Rep. Ayanna Pressley, an African American born in Cincinnati, in the group of four. “So this is not some half-assed anti-immigrant white nationalism. Trump is literally telling American blacks to go back to Africa.”

If you go looking for evidence of a certain synergy between “Least Racist Person You Know” Trump, and really racist persons who wear their racism like badges of honor, you find there are quite a few links in the chain.

Right Wing Watch, picked out a few Twitter gems:

Paul Ray Ramsey, a white nationalist who is known as “Ramzpaul” online, tweeted that the progressive congresswomen were “elected from their fellow tribesmen who were imported into America” and only love the United States for “the wealth that they can loot.” He added that “they dance with glee with the thought of eliminating us.” Patrick Casey, the leader of the white nationalist organization Identity Evropa (which has rebranded under a new name), wrote on Twitter that although he still has reservations about the Trump administration’s current policy trajectory, “Trump escalating his attacks on these four horrid women—women who simply do not belong in America, let alone in our government—is more than a little satisfying.”

…But not everybody’s happy. White nationalist Matt Parrott ruefully wrote that Trump “doesn’t create white tribalism” with racist tweets, but rather “exploits the white tribalism [emphasis added] which has been bubbling up and boiling over long before he even rode down the gilded escalator.” 

(Blogger takes break to go vomit.)

*

ONE WHITE NATIONALIST who said he was no longer interested in Trump—or events in El Paso—or the four members of Congress with dark skins—would be Matthew Heimbach. Heimbach was only recently released from jail after serving 38 days for a probation violation.

His probation status was the result of a guilty plea involving Heimbach’s harassment of—you can probably guess—a black protester at a Trump rally in 2016.

Once known as the “affable, youthful face of hate in America,” the former head of the neo-Nazi Traditionalist Workers Party (TWP) has fallen on hard times, as has his now-defunct party.

In the way of much-needed “comic relief,” let the website Talking Points Memo tell the sad story of a hater’s downfall.

Well, several haters:

But TWP’s disarray truly broke into public view in March, when Heimbach was arrested at his home in the Paoli, Indiana trailer park that doubled as TWP’s headquarters. The embarrassing details were laid out in the police report for all to see.

The white nationalist leader is married to Brooke Heimbach, step-daughter of TWP’s chief spokesman Matthew Parrott. But he was carrying out an affair with Parrott’s wife, Jessica Parrott, and was caught out when his wife and then-spokesman watched them canoodling through the Parrott’s trailer window.

The scene devolved into chaos, with Matt Parrott and Matthew Heimbach brawling. After police arrived, Heimbach went after his wife, kicking the wall, grabbing her face, and throwing her violently onto a bed—all in full view of their two young sons, as Brooke Heimbach told the arresting officer.

Matthew Heimbach was taken into custody and charged with felony domestic battery in the presence of a child under 16 and one misdemeanor count of battery.

On the police report, all four listed their professions as “white nationalists.”

(Blogger takes second vomit break.)

8/9/19: President Trump and “Massacre Mitch” are daintily considering legislation to require universal background checks for gun purchasers. It all depends on if the N.R.A. will give permission.

The N.R.A. normally argues that the solution to gun violence is guns for everyone, from teachers to preachers to ticket takers at theaters. But Wayne LaPierre, who heads up the organization, is almost too busy tending to his own guns and ammo to put up the usual fight. The N.R.A.is riven. Members are quitting, and those remaining are wondering why the organization was thinking about buying Wayne and his wife Susan a 10,000-square foot mansion in a gated golfing community.

With a lake view!

That deal fell through when reporters got on Mr. and Mrs. LaPierre’s trail. As part of the deal, it was revealed that the couple hoped to keep the previous owner’s “golf cart if possible.” Mrs. LaPierre was thinking about renovations. She noticed a lack of space in the men’s walk-in closet off the master bedroom. And Wayne needs space. That may have much to do with the fact leaked documents show he spent more than $274,000 at one high-end Beverly Hills clothing store.

For his part, LaPierre had insisted he needed that big house for security reasons. He said he feared being “targeted” after the Parkland, Florida massacre. That was just one of dozens of times he had insisted guns weren’t the problem—and the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun was a good guy with a gun. Or a good guy with a $6 million mansion, in a gated community, where he could hide out.

Whether he and the missus got the house or not, he planned to struggle along on a salary of $1,370,000 per year. 

*

THIS LATEST ROUND of debate over guns and gun legislation, bloodbaths and assault rifles, and countless deaths and injuries, made this blogger go back and check the U.S. Constitution.

Ratified in 1789, without a Bill of Rights, Article I listed the duties of Congress.

Including: 

So, the Founding Fathers gave Congress the power to regulate arming of the militia. And the Second Amendment did not then exist.

That amendment, adopted as part of the great Bill of Rights in 1791, reads as follows:

“A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

The Bill of Rights

Clearly, both the original Constitution and the Second Amendment assume the militia will be “well-regulated.” The Founding Fathers vested the power to regulate the arming of that militia in Congress from the start.

In other words, if “Massacre Mitch” and President “I’m the Real Victim” had a modicum of courage, they could start regulating guns with at least as much fervor as the GOP shows in regulating uteruses. 

8/10/19: The president is on vacation today. So maybe he won’t say anything stupid…

Too late.  He’s up and tweet-bitching early and often:

Maggie Haberman of the Failing @nytimes reported that I was annoyed by the lack of cameras inside the hospitals in Dayton & El Paso, when in fact I was the one who stated, very strongly, that I didn’t want the Fake News inside & told my people NOT to let them in. Fake reporting!

For a fifth day in a row, Trump is acting like he’s the true victim of the El Paso shooting, and the true victim in the Dayton shooting and the true victim of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

One would be forgiven for being reminded of the words of wisdom once supplied by John Wooden, the legendary basketball coach at UCLA. Wooden reduced his advice for success in life to a few simple rules:

“Never lie. Never cheat. Never steal.

Don’t whine. Don’t complain. Don’t make excuses.”

Coach John Wooden

President Trump breaks at least one of those rules every day, and on most days, breaks all six.

*

MEANWHILE, WE LEARN that Trump had himself posed with a baby orphaned during the El Paso massacre.

(That baby, 2-month-old Paul Anchondo, was nicked by a bullet and suffered two broken fingers before being saved.)

That meant we got a photo—complete with presidential grin—as if to say, “This is great, maybe this will make it look like I care about the baby and not just how I want my hair to look.”

The thumbs up gesture says it all.

Nothing says "tragedy" like a thumbs up and a grin.

*

IN OTHER GUN NEWS, a Toledo, Ohio man, Timothy Ireland, 41, is arrested after threatening to shoot Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of four nemeses of Donald J. Trump. Having posted a threat on Facebook, Ireland adds, “Can’t fire me, my employer would load the gun for me.” Ireland, who has multiple felonies to his discredit, which should make him ineligible to own guns or ammo, is charged by law enforcement authorities with illegal possession of both.

We also learn that Conor Climo, 23, of Las Vegas, yet another neo-Nazi in the news, was arrested and charged with plotting to bomb a gay bar and a synagogue in that city. After his arrest, Climo told authorities he had also hoped to mobilize an eight-man sniper “platoon” to take out Jews.

It seems there are a lot of white supremacist nuts with lots of guns.

8/11/19: At 5:01 p.m. Saturday the president retweets a clip of some random African American guy named Terrence K. Williams. Williams puts forward, loudly, but without evidence, the theory that Bill or Hillary Clinton, or both, or Chelsey and the grandkids, ordered Jeffrey Epstein bumped off.

(Epstein was found hanged in his cell the day before.)

It is of grave importance to understand that the President of the United States is retweeting drivel.

Someone, perhaps Melania, apparently smacks Trump upside the head and takes away his iPhone. That makes for a quiet Sunday at Bedminster and the president does not tweet again for seventeen hours.

When he does, the Trump proves so petty, so consumed with fury over his image, that he spends vacation time insulting cable news hosts. There’s “Little Donny Deutsch” with “his own failing show.” Deutsch used to “beg” to be on The Apprentice “(along with @ErinBurnett & others),” Trump says. But neither he nor “Erin” had any talent. Then there were times Trump says he would watch Deutsch get pushed around by “Joe Scarborough & his very angry Psycho wife(?).”

That’s your president on Sunday, August 11, 2019. Bringing Americans together in a time of tragedy, once again.

8/12/19: The Trump administration decides to weaken protections for endangered species, including humans.

First, immigrants who enter the U.S. legally, but are deemed likely to end up requiring government assistance, will be denied permanent residency. On the other hand, wealthy immigrants will get green cards and may stay. So, Russian oligarchs can come and buy Trump Tower apartments and other Trump properties with a combined value of $109 million, in laundered cash.

(If you have Irish ancestors, as an example, be glad this policy was not in place in 1848, because your people, and this blogger’s people, would have been returned to Ireland to starve.)

As for other endangered species, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt announces plans to gut the Endangered Species Act. First, it will be easier to remove “endangered species” from the list entirely. (The new list will simply list them as, “Dead,” one might guess.) Second, protections for “threatened species” will be weakened. Third, regulators will be allowed to factor in economic costs when deciding whether any species should be protected.

In other words, people like Bernhardt, a former oil and mining lobbyist, will decide. Hey, these salmon are swimming in a river near where an oil company wants to drill! Fuck those fish.

Drill, baby, drill!

You say reefs are dying around the globe as ocean temperatures rise? Let’s burn all the coal we can find.

Bernhardt is who he is, a shill for the oil and mining interests. If every grizzly and every bald eagle in America died, covered in oil, he wouldn’t mind.

Environmental groups explode at news of this fresh approach. The Sierra Club is blunt in its characterization:

The Trump Extinction Plan would gut critical endangered species protections by making it much more difficult to extend protections to threatened species, delaying lifesaving action until a species’ population is potentially impossible to save; making it more difficult to protect polar bears, coral reefs, and other species that are impacted by the effects of climate change; allowing economic factors to be analyzed when deciding if a species should be saved; and making it easier for companies to build roads, pipelines, mines, and other industrial projects in critical habitat areas that are essential to imperiled species’ survival.

The Audubon Society condemns the changes, noting that since 1973, decisions to protect endangered or threatened species have been based, legally, on “the best available science.” Now “the best available science” is out.

“These changes crash a bulldozer through the Endangered Species Act’s lifesaving protections for America’s most vulnerable wildlife,” Noah Greenwald of the Center for Biological Diversity warns.

Other groups opposed to the changes include Defenders of Wildlife, the Endangered Species Coalition, Friends of the Earth, Wilderness Watch, The American Bird Conservancy, The National Parks Conservation Association, grey wolves, bison, most fish, monarch butterflies and honeybees.

The American Petroleum Institute is thrilled with the new rules.

8/13/19: The president is on vacation; but he’s still working his thumbs to be sure he stays in shape. In a single day we get 49 tweets and retweets.

Does he pay any taxes, himself?

Unfortunately, Trump still hasn’t figured out how tariffs work. In one tweet, he complains because China hasn’t followed through on a promise to buy more U.S. agricultural products. In another he insists tariffs placed on Chinese products are a “big gift” to the USA, “pumping vast sums of money into our system.” “Farmers,” he says, “are getting more than China would be spending.”

It’s more Magic Math from Donald J. Trump. China is paying the tariffs! U.S. consumers are not. Somehow, if China won’t buy their products, farmers are getting more money! It’s all going great.

If farmers are getting more money, they’re not getting it from the Chinese. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue says the Trump administration will provide a second round of aid to farmers who have lost a key market—tariff retaliation, by the Chinese, as any fool could have foreseen.

The total of two bailouts will exceed $30 billion.

All sympathy to America’s farmers. They work hard to feed the world; and this liberal does not begrudge them aid. But let’s be honest. The farmers are being bailed out by America’s taxpayers.

A keen observer might describe this as Trump’s foray into socialism. And does he pay any taxes, himself????

It must suck to be a Tea Party Republican today.

8/14/19: R.I.P. Tea Party Republicans. Your orange hero has watched federal spending reach a record high, $3.7 trillion in Fiscal Year 2019, so far.

As for the vaunted Trump Tax cuts “paying for themselves,” that pipe dream turns out to have been conservatives smoking crack. The federal deficit for FY 2019 has already topped $867 billion.

By the time FY 2019 ends on September 30, it is expected the federal deficit will reach $1,092,000,000,000.

Or, as the writer Molly Jong-Fast put it: “Maybe electing the guy with all the bankruptcies and debt was a bad idea?”

As this graphic shows, deficits with Trump in charge are getting worse and surpass deficits under President Obama, once the Great Recession had ended.

For comparison purposes, remember that the worst deficit ever was for FY 2009, at $1.4 billion, a deficit bequeathed to President Obama after George W. crashed the economy in 2008.

That deficit was nearly a trillion dollars higher than the deficit for FY 2008. The deficits for FY 2010 ($1.3 trillion), FY 2011 ($1.3 trillion) and FY 2012 ($1.1 trillion) caused apoplexy on the right. The blame for every dollar was laid at President Obama’s feet. The right did not want people to remember that the GOP had put two wars on the nation’s credit card. They didn’t want voters to notice that the Bush Tax Cuts weren’t “paying for themselves,” and that new Medicare prescription drug coverage for older Americans, also added under Bush, meant fresh trillions in red ink.

Slowly but surely, under Obama, and with the U.S. economy in rebound, deficits declined. The U.S. finished FY 2013 an additional $679 billion in the red. The deficit for FY 2014 dropped to $485 billion, and for FY 2015 dropped again, to $438 billion. FY 2016, with Republicans in control of both houses of Congress, saw a rising tide of red ink, to $585 billion. The deficit for FY 2017, with Republicans still grasping the purse strings, was $665 billion.

Then Trump took charge—with both houses of Congress in a firm GOP grip. Big tax cuts (especially for people like Trump)! Bigger military spending! On top of previous bigger military spending!

The first deficit under his watch, FY 2018: $779 billion.

Now, a second Trump budget baby waxes fat. If the deficit hits projected highs, Trump deficits in two years ($1.871 trillion for 2018 and 2019) will top Obama deficits for three years and part of a fourth ($1.688 trillion for three years, 2015, 2016, 2017, $183 billion during the first four months of 2014).

8/15/19: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a government agency which Trump and his fans have probably never heard of before, makes it official. July was the hottest month, globally, in history. The five hottest July’s have been the last five years. In just twenty-four hours, on July 31, an estimated 11 billion tons of ice melted in Greenland.

The evidence of manmade climate change continues to accumulate and only the uninformed and professional nitwits manage to ignore it.  

July proves to have been the hottest month, globally, ever recorded.

8/16/19: Sometimes you can lead a horse to water, but if you hit the horse upside the head with a garden spade, the horse will still not learn French.

Sen. John Cornyn proves this adage apt. Like “Snowball” Jim Inhofe, who made a snowball in January and declared therefore that climate change could not be real, Cornyn proves just as dense today.

First, let’s put up his lunkhead tweet, a response to a tweet by his colleague, Sen. Chuck Schumer: 

Then, let’s mourn the fact that science teachers failed miserably to educate Cornyn when he was a boy.

Now Cornyn helps baffle and befuddle the GOP base. Note the more than ten thousand “likes.”

Cornyn is back again tweeting soon after, claiming his first tweet was a light-hearted attempt at humor. The reaction of the “left” goes to show, he says, that the “left” is made up of generally terrible human beings.

The humorless “left” in this case would include just about every reputable scientist, every major scientific body, both the NOAA and NASA and the 195 signatory nations to the Paris Climate Accord.

All agree climate change is a metastasizing threat and will be no laughing matter for our children and grandchildren.

8/17/19: Vacation at his private Bedminster, N.J. golf club is not helping the president’s mood.

Saturday morning, for starters, Trump discovers that the bathroom scale in his suite has been rigged!

Having lumbered into the bathroom after a restless night, spent alone, he steps on the scales. The red numbers blink: 260. He’s headed for William Howard Taft territory if this keeps up.

“Who rigged this damn scale?” he shouts.

Trump sits down for breakfast soon after, a bowl of Fruit Loops drenched in cream. He turns on the television and tunes to Fox News.

“Holy hell!” he howls. “Fox & Friends has been rigged!” The hosts are reporting that if the election were held today, he would lose.

“There’s something going on at Fox,” the president mutters and clicks the remote several times more.

Idly, he channels surfs—the Cartoon Network, a favorite—the Home Shopping Network, the best! Unfortunately, while switching channels, he catches a story about large die-offs of salmon, sockeye and other fish in Alaska rivers. A reporter says unnaturally high water temperatures are to blame…”

“Global warming,” Trump sneers. “Those scientists don’t fool me. Their thermometers are rigged.”

An aide knocks at his bedroom door, interrupting the president’s vent. “Sir, the economic reports you wanted…”

“Get in here!” Trump shouts. His economic numbers—his pride and joy—his reason for being—are ready.

“Sir,” the aide says, “I think you should brace yourself. Economists say your tariffs are hurting farmers. The stock market is up a mere 1.7 percent since last August. The deficit for Fiscal Year 2019 is expected to surpass a trill…”

“RIGGED NUMBERS!” Trump barks. “I promised to wipe out the entire federal deficit in eight years. I’m right on track!”

“Sir, those deficit numbers come from…uh…the White House Office of Management and Budget.”

“RIGGGGGGGGGGGGED NUMBERS!” the president screams.

“Signs a recession might be coming are growing,” the aide tries again. “Even Fox News is reporting that the uncertainty brought about by your policies may be contributing to a global slow…”

RIGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGED NUMBERS!” Trump shrieks. With that, he hurls his bowl of Fruit Loops at the aide’s head.

The aide ducks and backs from the room.

8/18/19: The president spends all day Sunday tweet-fuming. “Rigged, everything is rigged against me!” aides hear him say as they pass his bedroom during the day. The New York Times, Trump tweets, is pushing a “Racism Witch Hunt.” He hammers furiously at the buttons on his iPhone: “‘Journalism’ has reached a new low in the history of our Country. It is nothing more than an evil propaganda machine for the Democrat Party. The reporting is so false, biased and evil that it has now become a very sick joke...#CROOKEDJOURNALISM.” Juan Williams, at Fox News, “is nasty and wrong.” Anthony Scaramucci, the man Trump once picked to be White House Chief of Communications, is now “a highly unstable ‘nut job.’”

Trump wiles away the hours which lie heavy on his hands. He watches golf on TV, tweets, and alternates between self-pity and consoling himself with his elevated opinion of himself. “Well, I still have my award from Michigan, where I was declared the state’s ‘Man of the Year,’” he says, to no one, but himself.

The shadows lengthen. Soon it’s dark. Bedtime approaches. Trump dons his Sponge Bob pajamas, climbs into bed—alone again—and reaches for a magazine on the nightstand. We know it was left there by mistake. The man hates to read.

“Newsweek,” he mumbles. “Shouldn’t I be on the cover?”

He flips a few pages, and by pure bad luck lands on the page where reporters describe having searched all the records available. Trump, they say, has never been awarded Michigan’s “Man of the Year.”

“RIGGGGGGGGGGGGED!” the president explodes.

And a tough weekend comes to an end.

8/19/19: President Trump takes another sock in the glass jaw today, after resurrecting the claim that millions of illegal voters stormed the polls to vote for Hillary in 2016. He hints darkly: They’ll be back again next year.

Before heading to New Hampshire for another one of his endless campaign rallies—which are not officially campaign rallies, so taxpayers must foot the costs—Trump stops to vent to reporters. He should have won the state in 2016, he claims. But you guessed it—the election was rigged! (See: 8/18/19.)

“New Hampshire should have been won last time,” he tells the press, “except we had a lot of people come in at the last moment, which was a rather strange situation. Thousands and thousands of people, coming in from locations unknown. But I knew where their location was.”

The president doesn’t elaborate. He doesn’t say where “where” was? So, do we guess? Was it Hillary Clinton’s basement?

Tahiti?

Mars?

Ellen Weintraub, the chair of the Federal Election Commission, has no choice but to respond. Appearing on CNN on Monday, she faults the president for what—if we were being frank—would be called a lie.

Weintraub is discreet, saying only, “There is no evidence of rampant voter fraud in 2016 or really in any previous election.”

In fact, she tells CNN’s John Berman, she sent a letter to the president the Friday before, asking him to share any evidence me might have to substantiate his claim. “To put it in terms a former casino operator should understand,” she wrote, “there comes a time when you need to lay your cards on the table or fold.”

“Facts matter,” she tells Berman. “And the people of America need to be able to believe what their leaders tell them.”

With Trump in office, most Americans don’t.

8/20/19: Some days, it sucks to be Trump. In no special order, let’s consider the headaches he has faced in the last 24 hours.

Signs show the U.S. economy may be slowing. Trump and his aides consider cuts in the payroll tax to goose consumer spending. This is amusing, because we were assured that the Trump Tax Cuts, “the biggest tax cuts ever,” were going to lead to robust economic growth.

Trump also decides to insult American Jews (why not!), telling reporters, “I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.”

Disloyalty? To whom? Israel?

Trump?

American Jews are Americans. They don’t have to be loyal to Israel. And they can vote for whomever they like. A quick check shows that 71% voted for Hillary in 2016, only 24% for Trump. Those figures are almost identical to the average in presidential elections since 1968.

Meanwhile, a quick check of records shows that Jared Kushner, given the task of coming up with a peace plan to bridge the Israeli-Palestinian divide, has so far not produced a peace plan at all.

Kushner did organize an economic conference in Bahrain in June. The proposal he put forward, boiled down, was essentially an attempt to pay off Palestinians so they would accept Israeli occupation of all their remaining lands—by promising to invest billions in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

Trump Tower Ramallah! Wouldn’t that be great!

In any case, that idea did not sell; and, in fact, 0 Palestinians showed up for the conclave in Bahrain.

That matched the 0 Israelis who made the trip.

“I Thank God everyday President Donald John Trump is President.”

Eric Lin, alleged neo-Nazi nut

As for American Jews and Trump, you can see why they might not be fans. On Tuesday, another neo-Nazi nut was arrested by the F.B.I.

As has often been the case, this neo-Nazi nut—a man named Eric Lin, 35—proved to be a big fan of President Trump. First, Lin allegedly checked the “anti-Hispanic” box, sending a threat to kill a female employee at a Miami restaurant. He said that it was his fondest dream to wipe out every Hispanic in the city.

Next, we had some neo-Nazi love for the President of the United States. “I Thank God everyday President Donald John Trump is President,” Lin allegedly wrote online, “and that he will launch a Racial War and Crusade.” Trump, he added hopefully, would handle every “dangerous non-White or Ethnically or Culturally Foreign group” like Hitler handled the Jews and the gays and all the other groups he hated back in 1939.

In America, Lin predicted, these groups—which would, of course, include Jews—would “either be sent to ‘Concentration Camps’ or dealt with Ruthlessly and Vigorously by the United States Military.”

And Lin wasn’t the only alleged neo-Nazi nut arrested this week. Joseph Rubino, 57, a man previously known to authorities for kiting checks, is likely headed for the slammer, too. A police investigation, launched after Rubino was involved in a car wreck, led to a search of his vehicle and apartment. That search turned up quite the stash.

As Reuters explained,

Law enforcement later found more than 20 weapons including several assault rifles, pistols, and a grenade launcher, as well as a ballistics vest, high capacity magazines, 70 grams of methamphetamine and seven kilograms of marijuana in Rubino’s car and at his home, prosecutors said.

Authorities also said they found a box containing clothing and bumper stickers with white supremacist and neo-Nazi symbols and racist propaganda, including a document that appeared to be an instruction manual for owning a slave.

Or, as Tucker Carlson said a few days ago (see: 8/6/19), white supremacy isn’t really a problem in America today.

It’s a “liberal hoax” to say that it is.

8/21/19: The president catches serious heat, including heat from leading Jewish-American groups, for saying Jews who vote for Democrats are “disloyal.”

This forces Trump to dig deep into his Twitter toolbox and find someone, anyone, to support his position.

Well, there’s always Wayne Allyn Root. “The Jewish people in Israel love him like he’s the King of Israel,” Root says of Trump. And Trump promptly quotes him. “They love him like he is the second coming of God...But American Jews don’t know him or like him. They don’t even know what they’re doing or saying anymore.”

One thing we can hope American Jews are not doing is listening to Root. For starters, Jews do not believe in a “second coming.”

Or a first.

In fact, Root is a nut. As CNN explains, he’s famous for saying that President Barack Obama “was sent here to destroy this country.” He claimed the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas was a “coordinated Muslim terror attack.” He suggested that the violence in Charlottesville Virginia was perpetrated by “paid actors & infiltrators hired by” Democratic megadonor George Soros, who happens to be Jewish. Root is a font of crackpot theories. He insisted Obama attended Columbia University as a “foreign exchange student.” Chief Justice John Roberts upheld the constitutionality of Obamacare because he was being blackmailed. The Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich was murdered by Democrats because he provided DNC files to WikiLeaks.

Root is a fountain of ridiculous shit. He suggested after the Parkland shooting, that we could protect schools with armed drones. He told his devoted listeners—people like President Trump—that both Hillary and Barack had had gay or lesbian relationships. Root also argued that all liberal men are gay. And when it came to dating liberal women, watch out. Root warned listeners that if those women also had cats, they’d “cut your pee-pee off, I promise you!!!!!!”

So, protect your pee-pees! Root is just the kind of guy you expect to find supporting Donald J. Trump.

8/22/19: More bad news for Trump and his Tea Party troops. The Congressional Budget Office now estimates that the deficit for Fiscal Year 2020 will rise to $1.01 trillion dollars. Part of the problem is that tax revenues have fallen short of estimates in 2018 and 2019 by $430 billion.

The Trump Tax Cuts did not pay for themselves.

CBO Director Phillip Swagel warns that the United States could well be in trouble in the future.

The nation’s fiscal outlook is challenging. Federal debt, which is already high by historical standards, is on an unsustainable course, projected to rise even higher after 2029 because of the aging of the population, growth in per capita spending on health care, and rising interest costs.

Good luck millennials, and future generations, whatever you may be called. You are going to inherit an orange mess.

8/23/19: The president goes off on another Twitter rampage. After Fed Chairman Jay Powell warns that Trump’s tariff policies are causing “turbulence,” in the markets, Trump loses his cool.

Again.

“The only question is, who is the bigger enemy, Jay Powel or Chairman Xi?” he tap-taps.

Fourteen minutes later, he corrects the spelling of Powell’s last name. But the damage is done. By the end of Friday trading, the threat of an escalating tariff war causes the Dow Jones average to drop 623 points.

(As much as Trump loves to brag about how great the markets are doing under his guiding hand, the Dow has been essentially flat since January 2018.)

*

IN OTHER FINANCIAL NEWS, David Koch, head of Koch Industries, passes away, after a losing battle with prostate cancer. “You can’t take it with you,” people say. But you can have the gall to protest increased taxes on people like yourself, as Koch—rest his immensely rich soul—did.

At his demise, it is estimated that after he paid all those abominable taxes he still had a few dollars here and there. He was worth $50.5 billion when he passed on to the Big Bank in the Sky.

In 2017, Forbes magazine estimated that Koch Industries had 120,000 employees. So, let’s imagine a boss wanted to reward workers for helping him pile up all that vast wealth. He could have said to himself, “These great people worked hard to help me make my company great. I didn’t pull this off by myself. I will divide up $12.5 billion among my employees. That will mean a bonus of $104,167 for each employee.”

Mr. Koch would have had $40 billion left.

Instead, he decided to give hundreds of millions of dollars to GOP causes and candidates, to ensure that Republicans would fight increases to the minimum wage and tougher environmental regulations. 

8/24/19: President Trump is attending the G-7 summit in France. Experts in international affairs figure it will be a successful meeting, so long as he doesn’t grab Angela Merkel you know where. We know the president is lonely, now that Vladimir Putin is no longer invited to these affairs. Trump has been lobbying hard for the other six members to let Russia back in and restore the G-8. That way, he’d have at least one leader at future meetings with whom he could relate.

*

BACK HOME, there’s fresh evidence that the government should never regulate big business, because—well—don’t all corporations love their workers all the time and treat them fairly?

Perhaps not.

Kentucky coal miners—“former Kentucky coal miners” to be more precise—are blockading a train full of coal.

Why are these former miners upset? Their company, Blackjewel, Inc., declared bankruptcy without notice on July 1. Also, Blackjewel decided it would be fun if workers kept showing up to dig coal till the moment the company closed—and Blackjewel could bounce their last paychecks.

Now the miners aren’t letting the train go, since the cargo, which they mined, may be worth $10 million.

*

SPEAKING OF STIFFING WORKERS, DoorDash, the nation’s largest restaurant food delivery service has decided to change pay policies because corporations are always looking out for employees first!

(Liberal sarcasm.)

That is why, starting in 2017, DoorDash applied any tips customers put on charge cards toward the delivery person’s hourly pay. Instead of the tip going to the person who brought the food, it offset company expenses.

The scam was revealed recently, thanks to the free press. Customers expressed outrage and the CEO said he felt bad and would start paying workers fairly this month. Not so bad that workers would get back pay they had lost previously, though. DoorDash is worth an estimated $12.6 billion, which means capitalism is working just the way God and the GOP intended.

8/25/19: President Trump gets confused at the G-7 summit and garbles his message. A reporter asks him if he thinks he can force U.S. companies to leave China. He could if he wanted, he says, channeling his inner Benito Mussolini.

Still, he adds, “I have no plan right now. Actually, we’re getting along very well with China right now. We’re talking.”

A reporter puts another question to him. Does he have any second thoughts about raising tariffs on China?

“Yeah, sure, why not?” Trump replies. “Might as well. Might as well. I have second thoughts about everything.”

(Including wedding vows.)

Trump keeps insisting that America’s farmers are doing great. Farm groups which have protested Trump administration tariff policies include:

The American Farm Bureau Federation

The National Pork Producers Council

Farmers for Free Trade

The Dairy Business Association

Concerned Brussel Sprouts Council

National Corn Growers Association

National Association of Wheat Growers

American Soybean Association

National Farmers Union

(Okay, one of those is made up.)

The collateral damage resulting from the Trump Trade Wars may be difficult to repair, even if China buckles soon. “Last year,” Bloomberg reported, “farm debt-to-income was at the highest level since 1984.”

*

TO BE FAIR, we should note that many farmers continue to support the president. All respect to the hard-working farmers of America.

This liberal blogger does not believe all Trump fans, farmers or not, are racists or morons. Nor does he believe Trump supporters are bad people, generally. 

Still, one must ask why it is that decent human beings refuse to acknowledge an underlying current of virulent hate in the president’s messaging. It should be clear he’s tapping into dangerous currents in American political thought. “Thought” being broadly defined. (See: 8/6/19 and 8/20/19.)

For example, these guys gathered for fun in Hillsborough, North Carolina this weekend. Note their banner:

*

THE PRESIDENT insists that even though the stock market took a dive Friday, he’s still doing a spectacular job and the market is booming, all because of him. He even caused the market to boom before taking office!

“My Stock Market gains,” Trump tweets, “must be judged from the day after the Election, November 9, 2016, where the Market went up big after the win, and because of the win. Had my opponent won, CRASH!”

We have said this before—and we keep believing Trump lovers will see the light. There is no evidence whatsoever to indicate that a market crash would have occurred if Hillary Clinton had won. Under President Obama, the market recovered from the second worst crash in history and rose 148.3 percent while he was in office. Under President Bill Clinton, the market rose 228.9 percent. The market fell 0.7 percent under Jimmy Carter, but posted gains under Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. The market did well with Franklin D. Roosevelt in the White House, too, up just under 200 percent on the day he died.

In other words, no Democratic president has ever crashed the stock market. Republicans cannot make the same claim. Herbert Hoover helped investors lose 82.1 percent of their money. Nixon saw the markets drop 28.3 percent before he was forced to resign. George W. Bush left office with the market in a catastrophic slide, having lost almost half of its value from a high in 2007, ending down 26.5 percent by the time he headed back to his Texas ranch.

*

WE ALSO LEARN that President Trump has been kicking around the idea that we could use some of our nuclear weapons to blow hurricanes up before they hit the U.S. coast. Aides are reluctant to tell him the truth.

Coming soon: radioactive fish!!!!

8/26/19: President Trump wraps up his trip to the G-7 summit and the other six leaders are just happy to know he’ll be heading home.

We find, for example, that there was an empty seat when the heads of Great Britain, Germany, Canada, Italy, Japan, and France met to discuss climate change. Lard Ass Trump skipped out.

To say that the current President of the United States is clueless where climate change is concerned would be polite. He’s not just clueless. After two-and-a-half years in office, with all the best science at his fingertips, he’s as dumb as he was the day he took the oath to support the Constitution. (He doesn’t get that, either.) Worse, he’s an active threat to the health of our planet.

As recently as March 2019, he was tweeting—typically—about a story he saw on Fox & Friends:

So, more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was good! Naturally, it was the job of the hosts of Fox & Friends to buy Moore’s spiel. And since Trump loves the show more than he loves applesauce, he bought Moore’s spiel, too.

Then 32,400 dupes retweeted the “news.”

Greenpeace quickly issued a statement. Moore was not a founder of Greenpeace. Nor has he been a person who speaks for Greenpeace for 30 years. Rather, “he is a spokesperson for the Nuclear Industry.”

Patrick Moore often misrepresents himself in the media as an environmental “expert” or even an “environmentalist,” while offering anti-environmental opinions on a wide range of issues and taking a distinctly anti-environmental stance. He also exploits long-gone ties with Greenpeace to sell himself as a speaker and pro-corporate spokesperson, usually taking positions that Greenpeace opposes.

Moore is, to talking about climate change, as President Trump would be, to acting as marriage counselor. 

*

SPEAKING OF FRAUDS, this seems like the perfect time to mention Stephanie Grisham, newest White House Press Secretary. Her “credentials” for the job are impressive. For starters, she’s a Press Secretary who likes talking to the press even less than her predecessor, Pinocchio Sanders. She hasn’t had a single on-camera briefing in two months on the job. She did, however, find time to sit down for an interview with Sinclair Broadcasting Group’s Eric Bolling.

  

Sinclair, if you’re into good journalism, is the cable TV giant that requires hosts on all its local channels to read from the same right-wing scripts.

It’s creepy, if you’ve never watched.

As for Bolling, he’s a former Fox News guy who had to leave amid accusations of sexual harassment, a surprisingly common problem at Fox. (See: Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly, Bill Shine, et. al.)

Grisham, herself, has a few skeletons rattling in her closet. As The New York Times reports,

Her career history contains red flags that most administrations might deem troubling. They include losing a private-sector job after being accused of cheating on expense reports, a later job loss over plagiarism charges and two arrests for driving under the influence, the second while working on Mr. Trump’s campaign.

Speaking of plagiarism, Grisham was working as spokesperson for the First Lady, when Mrs. Trump was caught, rather embarrassingly, giving a speech using lines cribbed from Michelle Obama.

If, like most Trump fans, you think The New York Times is “Fake News,” you can dig around and find details about Grisham’s brushes with the law at AZCentral:

On Jan. 9, 2013, when she was working for [Tom] Horne [Arizona Attorney General], Gilbert [Arizona] police arrested Grisham on suspicion of driving under the influence and driving faster than reasonable, records show.

She planned to go to trial and the matter dragged out for more than a year before she pleaded guilty to misdemeanor reckless driving in August 2014. She spent a night in jail and was placed on two years’ probation.

The case returned to court twice over Grisham's failure to pay the $779 in fines and her not completing a session with Mothers Against Drunk Driving about the impact of impaired driving.

Grisham failed to learn her lessons and was back in court on similar charges after going to work for Team Trump.

On Dec. 5, 2015, months after joining the Trump campaign, Grisham found trouble again.

Scottsdale police arrested her that night on suspicion of DUI and driving without her headlights on shortly after midnight.

She failed to show in court on Jan. 19, 2016, a day when Trump received the endorsement of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in Ames, Iowa. Her absence in court cost Grisham her driver’s license for a month.

Grisham pleaded guilty to misdemeanor DUI in July 2016, days before her attendance at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, where Trump officially became the GOP nominee.

As part of that case, she had to pay nearly $1,600 in fines and fees, records show.

Two weeks after Trump’s victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton, Grisham failed to appear in Scottsdale court again. That was the day Trump convened a meeting with national media figures at Trump Tower in New York to shred them for coverage of his campaign.

Grisham finished paying her debt in the case on Jan. 9, 2017, less than two weeks before Trump was sworn into office. 

Grisham has also been divorced twice, and what with her ethical lapses and legal issues, you figure she’s exactly the kind of upstanding individual you would expect to find working for President Trump.

8/27/19: Americans learn this week that the United States will be responsible for holding the G-7 summit in 2020. Well, then, where, oh where, would the best place to hold that meeting be?

If you said: “Trump National Doral Miami,” you win the prize.

According to the owner of said property, Doral would be perfect for such a gathering. Let our Commander-in-Chief explain the joys that would await leaders of the G-7 (or the G-8, if he can invite Putin):

“Everybody’s that’s coming, all of these people with all of their big entourages come. It’s set up so — and by the way, my people looked at 12 sites. All good, but some were two hours from an airport, some were four hours from, I mean they were so far away. Some didn’t allow this, they didn’t allow that.”

Yeah, imagine. Trump’s people looked hard at a dozen sites. And they realized, hey, Doral is the best!!!

With the whole world watching with amaze, and the G-7 in France wrapping up, Trump continued with his sales pitch.

“With Doral, we have a series of magnificent buildings, we call them bungalows. They each hold from 50 to 70 very luxurious rooms, with magnificent views. We have incredible conference rooms, incredible restaurants. It’s like, it’s like such a natural. ... And what we have also is Miami, and we have many hundreds of acres so that in terms of parking, in terms of all of the things that you need, the ballrooms are among the biggest in Florida, and the best. It’s brand new.” 

Plus, if hurricanes threaten—we have the nukes.

*

SPEAKING OF THREATS to the safety of millions of Americans, a judge in Oklahoma penalizes Johnson & Johnson $572 million for its role in marketing opioids and claiming they were perfectly safe. That judgment won’t bring back the tens of thousands who have died, of course.

News of that judgment spooks other pushers. Purdue Pharma, which marketed opioids most aggressively, and claimed they were the safest, has offered to settle in federal court and pay $10-12 billion in damages.

The victims of greed still won’t rise from the dead.

*

PRESIDENT OBAMA may be gone. The imaginary “War on Coal” he launched in the fever dreams of right-wingers continues to be fake fought.

U.S. coal demand fell in 2018 to the lowest level since 1979 and is expected to drop further this year.

*

WE MIGHT NOT be getting hurt in the tariff war, according to President Trump; but lobster fishermen would disagree. In the first six months of 2018, the Chinese bought 12 million pounds worth of the crustaceans from the U.S. And then Trump raised tariffs.

China retaliated as anyone could predict.

In the first six months of this year, U.S. sales of lobster to China fell 80 percent, to 2.2 million pounds.

Stephanie Nadeau, owner of The Lobster Company in Arundel, Maine, explains how tariff wars turn bloody in the real world. “They picked winners, and they picked losers,” she says of Trump and his economic advisers, “and they picked me a loser. There is no market that’s going to replace China.” 

Loss of market forced Nadeau to lay off seven of the fourteen people she once had working in wholesale.

Nadeau is hardly alone in her pain. One trade group estimates that Trump’s tariffs cost U.S. businesses $3.4 billion in June. 

8/28/19: No. No!

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!

Say it ain’t so!

The Trump-Fox News romance is dead.

Wednesday morning, the president flicks on the television, because, let’s be honest, watching TV is what he really loves to do. When he tunes to his favorite network, he can’t believe his eyes. Fox is letting Democrats appear on the air and Fox is letting them…wait for it…

…speak!

Trump explodes with anger, grabs his phone and starts to tweet like a man possessed. (The man also loves to tweet.)

Once again, we must quote him in full to capture the flavor of his spleen:

 Just watched @FoxNews heavily promoting the Democrats through their DNC Communications Director, spewing out whatever she wanted with zero pushback by anchor, @SandraSmithFox. Terrible considering that Fox couldn’t even land a debate, the Dems give them NOTHING! @CNN & @MSNBC....

...are all in for the Open Border Socialists (or beyond). Fox hires “give Hillary the questions” @donnabrazile, Juan Williams and low ratings Shep Smith. HOPELESS & CLUELESS! They should go all the way LEFT and I will still find a way to Win - That’s what I do, Win. Too Bad!....

....I don’t want to Win for myself, I only want to Win for the people. The New @FoxNews is letting millions of GREAT people down! We have to start looking for a new News Outlet. Fox isn’t working for us anymore!

A FRIENDLY LETTER TO THE MAGA FOLKS

Dear Trump fans:

Did you know your favorite orange-tinted authoritarian has tweeted 1606 times, as of this morning, telling you to tune in to Fox News? In other words, your president has been raising you on propaganda. It’s not as bad as Kim-Jong-un, requiring people to clap whenever he appears. Trump has shown no inclination to order journalists bumped off like his pal, Vlad. But Trump has pushed Fox & Friends in 577 tweets—which would be included in the 1606 above.

Trump, my fellow Americans, has fed your addiction like a Big Pharma executive sensing huge profit to be made pushing “perfectly safe” opioid drugs. He has touted Sean Hannity’s show (235 additional tweets), Tom Fitton’s show (77), Lou Dobbs’ show (70), Tucker Carlson’s show (44), the Ingraham Angle (41) and suggested you watch Judge Jeanine Pirro (36 tweets).

You, dear Trump fans—and I trust most of you love this country, just as I and my liberal friends do—you have been suckered for sure.

Your friend,

The Blogger

8/29/19: According to a number of sources, the president is so anxious to get the Great Wall of Trump built that he’s ready to ignore environmental regulations and grab private lands without going through the necessary legal steps to establish right of eminent domain. Aides have warned him that some of his ideas are illegal. Others are unworkable.

So, what’s a petty tyrant to do?

“Take it,” he says, in reference to the private lands. He promises he’ll pardon any aides who break the law.

You might figure this is “Fake News” if you are a big Trump fan. But when the Washington Post asked for comment, a White House official did not deny the comments. Instead, the official insisted the president was joking.

8/30/19: A massive hurricane, gathering strength over unusually warm waters in the Atlantic, is bearing down on Florida.

It has already sideswiped Puerto Rico, which gave Trump an excuse to call the Mayor of San Juan “incompetent” again.

This is how you offer sympathy to people in the path of a killer storm!

As of Friday, at 11:00 a.m., however, it is predicted that Hurricane Dorian will make landfall as a Category 4 storm, striking Palm Beach County, Florida a direct hit. Palm Beach County is home to Mar-a-Lago, the true love of Trump’s life. Not that we wish harm on the people of Florida. But if Dorian takes out Trump’s place, you wonder if Evangelicals might see it as a sign of God’s wrath, directed against a man who has broken these commandments with delight:

FOURTH: Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant …

This would cut into Trump’s time to play golf—and also the time undocumented workers that his clubs have hired spend making the beds, grooming the greens, etc., at his private courses.

SEVENTH: Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Too late.

EIGHTH: Thou shalt not steal.

Much too late.

NINTH: Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

Lost cause!

TENTH: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor’s.

Pussy grabbing; Trump University; Trump Foundation busted for scamming two million dollars, etc.

8/31/19: August ends in blood and gore, much as it began, with another pair of mass shootings. On Friday night we learn that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is if good guys never go outside. This time a shooting at a high school football game in Mobile, Alabama, leaves six teens wounded, five critically. According to USA Today, in a news conference, Mobile Police Chief Lawrence Battiste “cautioned people to be alert in public gatherings.”

Or, to be perfectly safe from now on, one should hunker down in a bunker. Don’t go to church. Don’t go to elementary school. Don’t go to the theater, to a concert, to a Walmart, to night clubs or bars, and—now—don’t attend high school football games.

Or drive.

This afternoon we have another mass shooting. Texas, again. White guy, again. Heavily armed, again. As far as we know, the bloodbath began when the suspect was stopped by a Texas Ranger for some driving infraction. The suspect then wounded the good guy with a lesser gun and started shooting at cars for no reason. Before the rampage ended, the murderer had hijacked at least one automobile, then a mail truck, and killed four bystanders and wounded 20.

So, let’s just be blunt. America has a gun problem and conservative voices offering up “thoughts and prayers” don’t cut it.

As is so often true, as when a first grader prays for a pony, and doesn’t get it, this blogger seriously doubts prayers will move President Trump or the Republican Party. GOP lawmakers fear the wrath of the N.R.A. like people in West Africa fear the first signs of Ebola.

Truck hit by gunfire.

*

HURRICANE DORAIN continues to bear down on the Eastern Seaboard, with pretty much every scientist worth a nickel saying, “We told you so.” As oceans warm, and they indubitably are, hurricanes grow stronger.

The latest evidence comes from our friends Down Under. Off the northeastern coast of Australia, the 1,400-mile-long Great Barrier Reef is dying. As oceans heat, reefs round the world are “bleaching.” The Great Barrier Reef has suffered significant bleaching events in 1998, 2002, 2016 and 2017.

The health of the Reef is updated every five years and this month it was downgraded from “poor” to “very poor.” As the government agency in charge of monitoring the situation notes, “Significant global action to address climate change is critical to slowing the deterioration of the reef’s ecosystem and heritage values and supporting recovery.”

Scientists warned earlier this year, that fresh evidence shows oceans are warming faster than expected. As that fount of “Fake News,” Scientific American magazine, notes, quoting Science magazine, that other fount of “Fake News:”

Multiple studies in the past few years have found that previous estimates from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change may be too low. A new review of the research, published yesterday in Science, concludes that “multiple lines of evidence from four independent groups thus now suggest a stronger observed [ocean heat content] warming.”

So: Hurricane Dorian is going to be stronger when it hits than it would have been in the past.

It’s that simple. But it’s still too difficult for the orange-colored simpleton in the Oval Office to grasp.

Again, “thoughts and prayers,” for the environment.

*

FOX NEWS HOST Tomi Lahren, who likes to push her patriotic “Freedom” line of athletic wear, admits…um…

Okay, her fine products are made in China!

“Like many American small business owners, Alexo [the company Lahren partners with] aims to be Made in America. We are working towards that,” Lahren, who has touted “American made” on her show, explains.

Amy Robbins, the Alexo CEO, tries to make a giant pile of horse manure look somehow appealing, and talks about how difficult it is to make clothing in the USA. You know—as if no one used to produce t-shirts in North Carolina, as recently as twenty years ago. “Due to the increased labor costs [emphasis added] and heightened regulations many US based manufacturers face,” Robbins says, “we were left with little option but to manufacture overseas to start out.”

Yes, you don’t want to have to pay U.S. workers a living wage to start out, not if you could get the Chinese to work for crap wages.

“We’re working diligently to bring our manufacturing back home to the US,” she promises, “and work with other hardworking companies that pride themselves on integrity and quality.”

“Integrity.”

That is not the first word that comes to mind, when one thinks of manufacturing products in Communist China.

*

SPEAKING OF INTEGRITY, that reminds us that President Trump ends the month tweet-hating on Fox News, because Fox has started reporting stories (occasionally) which make him look less than great.

When Trump rises on this last morning in August, he starts tweeting and retweeting like a fat man possessed. Tweet #1 comes at 6:45 a.m. The tweets come, fast and furious, from then on. Half an hour later, we get a gem: “Has anyone noticed that the top shows on @foxnews and cable ratings are those that are Fair (or great) to your favorite President, me!” Trump twits. “Congratulations to @seanhannity for being the number one shoe [sic] on Cable Television!”

Yes, a show that is “great” to the president is a great show, and everyone should watch. But Americans should NOT watch all the mean Fox News people who are reporting stories that “your favorite President” does not like.

Here, it would seem appropriate to provide the definition of propaganda: “information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.”

(By 8:07 a.m., when “your favorite blogger” takes time to check, President Trump is on Tweet #49.)

Speaking of “propaganda,” the White House announces that Trump is spending the weekend at Camp David, where he is focused on the threat from Hurricane Dorian. In other words, Trump is acting like a real president, albeit a real president addicted to tweets. Checking back later, we see that tweets #50-53 come by 10:18 a. m. Then Trump’s Twitter feed goes silent for three-and-a-half hours. Pool reporters explain that Trump has headed off to Trump National Golf Club in Potomac Falls, Virginia.

Okay, a little less presidential…

Next, The Hill posts a video which they say proves Trump got bored focusing on Hurricane Dorian and snuck off to go golfing.

Way less presidential, if true.

Reporters (a.k.a. the “enemies of the people”) pin down White House Press Secretary Grisham. Did Trump go golfing? Grisham doesn’t dare say “no,” lest more damning evidence surface.

She responds, lamely, “I have no idea what that video is.”

The video is not definitive. But does that mean Grisham has no idea where her boss has gone and she’s not going to bother to find out?

Or does she know where he is, what putter he prefers, and just doesn’t want to admit it? (See: 9/3/19.)

Even more August news: Jennifer Horn, former two-term chairperson of the New Hampshire GOP, quits the party, saying there is no way she could endorse Trump for re-election.

In her resignation letter, Ms. Horn notes that the president’s “regular verbal assaults against women, immigrants, elected members of Congress … and his willingness to stoke racial anger and unrest in order to advance his own political ambitions all subvert the founding principles of our great nation.”

We also learn that White House staffer Madeleine Westerhout has left the building for good. During an off-the-record discussion with reporters in a Washington D.C. bar, Westerhout, whose post had been right outside Trump’s door, had one drink too many. Or four.

First, she bragged that she had a better relationship with the president than his daughters. As for Tiffany, Westerhout laughed, her father probably couldn’t pick her out of a crowd. She added helpfully that Trump did not like to be seen in photographs with his youngest daughter, because he thought she looked fat.

That’s how bad this man is.

Trump was said to have grown quite fond of the attractive 28-year-old. Now that she was being relieved of her duties, there seemed to be concern about what Westerhout might say about how Trump behaves behind closed doors.

Of course, that meant a tweet:

While Madeleine Westerhout has a fully enforceable confidentiality agreement [emphasis added] she is a very good person and I don’t think there would ever be reason to use it. She called me yesterday to apologize, had a bad night. I fully understood and forgave her! I love Tiffany, doing great!

Yes, a fully enforceable confidentially agreement—which of course there would be no reason ever to enforce!

(Didn’t Trump say Michael Cohen was a “very good person” some time back?) 

Unlike her dad and brother, Don Jr., Tiffany never tried to get help from the Russians.

*

MORE PROOF, not even counting recent mass shootings, that the Great Wall of Trump might not keep us all toasty warm and safe from harm. The DEA launches a series of raids, netting 300 suspects, and shuts down a dozen Florida pharmacies, which are part of a highly organized drug ring. Forget undocumented immigrants with murder and mayhem in their hearts! Your pharmacist wants to kill you. More than 200,000 opioid pills, 35 weapons and $3.3 million in assets are seized.

In related news, a Utah man, Aaron Michael Shamo is convicted of running a multi-million dollar opioid ring, selling fake prescription pills laced with fentanyl, an extremely dangerous synthetic pain killer. He’s not a dangerous undocumented immigrant. He’s some white dude, whose lawyers describe him as “a clean-cut millennial who grew up in a family that belonged to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” And no drug mule snuck fentanyl across our southern border.

Shamo found it on the dark web and had it shipped from China by mail. Shamo and an assortment of native-born white guys were soon doing a booming business. They were selling tens of thousands of potentially deadly, fake pills monthly.

*

AS FOR KEEPING us safe with that big beautiful wall, which Trump swears is being built, but even Fox News admits is not, we will now be “Keeping America Great” by guarding against young immigrants who want to kill us by running us over in wheelchairs.

CBS explains:

Due to a change in policy by the Trump administration, hundreds of immigrant children receiving medical care in the U.S. are facing possible deportation. The children are in the country legally and many suffer from serious diseases, including cancer.

A vibrating vest, nebulizer and special medication help keep 16-year-old Jonathan Sanchez alive. He’s battling cystic fibrosis, a life-threatening disorder damaging his lungs and digestive system. It also claimed the life of his sister Samantha, back in Honduras, when she was just 6 months old.

The family came to the U.S. legally in 2016 and applied for “medical deferred action,” a program that allows immigrants to receive life-saving treatment for up to two years. But, this week they received a denial notice [for renewal], giving them 30 days to leave the country or face deportation. 

“To receive that letter is like a big hit,” said Gary Sanchez, Jonathan’s father. “I don’t know what will happen with the future.”

In fact, Jonathan knows exactly what will happen. “The letter, in the words, it said that we need to leave the country in 33 days. But in my perspective, it’s making legal homicide,” he says.

This new policy is so heartless that when CBS News seeks comment from officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which share responsibility for implementing the change, no one “would appear on camera.” An ICE official said the agency “was not consulted about the policy change and only learned of it once those letters were sent out.”

If Bueso is sent back to Guatemala she'll die.

Typical of those facing deportation and a tacit sentence of death, is Maria Isabel Bueso. Now 24, she came to this country at age 7, to receive treatment for a rare genetic disorder. Doctors enrolled her in several studies. With her help they managed to improve care for others suffering from the same crippling disability.

“I have been feeling super scared and overwhelmed,” Ms. Bueso told a reporter this week. As The New York Times explained, her lower body is paralyzed from the disease, an enzyme disorder that inhibits cells from processing sugars. “The treatment that I receive keeps me alive,” she says.

Well, too bad for you, young lady. Back to Guatemala, which you hardly remember, you go!

*

AS FOR “keeping us safe,” let’s give General James Mattis, first Secretary of Defense under Donald R. Trump, the final word for the month. Mattis pens an editorial which is seen as highly critical of the president and his “America First’ foreign policies. Mattis does not mention the president by name.

“Nations with allies thrive, and those without them wither.”

General James Mattis

It doesn’t take a genius to read between the lines. “When you’re going to a gunfight, bring all your friends with guns,” Mattis writes. “Nations with allies thrive, and those without them wither. Alone, America cannot protect our people and our economy. At this time, we can see storm clouds gathering.”

That is: Category 5 Hurricane Trump.

Jeffrey Goldberg, who has talked at length with Gen. Mattis, who went into a lot of gunfights during forty years with the U.S. Marines, explains that the general adheres to the belief that military men do not criticize the Commander-in-Chief. Mattis is going as far as he believes he can while keeping his integrity.

He may not stay silent forever.

Goldberg elaborates in an interview with David Green on NPR:

GOLDBERG: Jim Mattis has unique insight, and we know he’s on record with his [resignation] letter, with other things, things he said to me that he does not believe Donald Trump is a good president. I think that’s fairly clear from everything that he’s written. His book is one long indirect critique of the president. 

GREENE: Wouldn’t that be a violation of the duty that he said he’s so committed to if he does come out and start talking at some point?

GOLDBERG: I think he has in his mind, and I don’t know what they are. I think he has red lines in his mind. I think he does have—and, you know, one could argue that that Trump crossed them again and again—he quit over one of those red lines obviously. But I think he’s a little bit burdened by this dilemma. Everything in his character tells him—I don’t talk, but this is an unusual circumstance.

As in, Trump is a terrible leader, a terrible human being, and a threat to the long-term safety of these United States.

September 1, 2019: Hurricane Dorian, a Category 5 storm, and the most powerful storm since modern records have been kept, pummels the Bahamas, and threatens the Eastern Seaboard.

President Trump tells reporters,

We don’t even know what’s coming at us. All we know is it’s possibly the biggest. I’m not sure, I’m not sure I’ve ever even heard of a Category Five [emphasis added]. I knew it existed, and I’ve seen some Category Fours, you know you don’t see them that much, but a Category Five, is something that I don’t know that I’ve even heard the term, other than I know it’s there, that’s the ultimate. And that’s what we have, unfortunately.

This proves that the president is on top of the threat, save for the fact that he missed the following Category 5 storms that have hit since he took office. In September 2017, Hurricane Irma pounded parts of nine states. Hurricane Maria pulverized Puerto Rico the same month. Hurricane Michael tore apart communities in the Florida Panhandle in October 2018.

Other than that…okay, yeah, Dorian is a Cat 5, too.

*

MEANWHILE, THE DEATH TOLL in the Odessa, Texas mass shooting rises to seven as two of the wounded succumb. We learn that a 17-month-old baby has been shot in the face but should survive.

The killer, Seth Ator, was born in Amarillo in 1982, and was carrying an assault-style rifle during the shooting spree.

One man who knows exactly what must be done to end this scourge of heavily armed killers roaming our streets and slaughtering the innocent, is Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council.

As might be expected, he shows up on Fox News, where he makes it clear, guns aren’t the problem.

“It’s tragic and at some point we have to realize we have a problem as a nation, and the problem is not the absence of laws. It’s an absence of morality,” he insists, “really the result of a decades-long march through the institutions of America, driving religion and God from the public square.”

And you thought the problem was killers using assault-style rifles, able to unleash hails of bullets!

“We’ve taught our kids,” Perkins continues, “that they come about by chance through primordial slime and we’re surprised that they treat their fellow Americans like dirt.”

Of course! We’ve got to stop teaching evolution!

9/2/19: Apparently, not enough people in Ireland binge on Fox News, because the Irish are planning to plant 440 million trees in the next twenty years, to address the threat of climate change.

The planned mix will involve 70 percent conifers and 30 percent broad leaf trees and should create roughly 40 square miles of new forest annually.

9/3/19: We learn that President Trump went golfing twice this past weekend. The White House had been trying to make it appear as if he was focused on hurricane preparedness, like a real leader.

Press Secretary Grisham did her best to tap dance round the topic when asked about it by reporters. (See: 8/31/19.)

At the same time, Trump got mad after he said Alabama was one of several states likely to get hit hard by Hurricane Dorian. The National Weather Service quickly corrected his mistake and assured Alabamians they were safe. ABC News chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl then fact-checked the president and Trump got mad because facts made him look bad.

So: he picked a fight with the weathermen and weather women.

*

IN OTHER NEWS conservatives won’t like, McKrae Game, who ran the nation’s largest “gay conversion” ministry for twenty years, has come out and admitted he’s gay. He says he’s sorry for all the gays who had to suffer through his conversion sessions over the course of two decades. “Conversion therapy is not just a lie, but it’s very harmful,” he now admits, “because it’s false advertising.”

Game joins the likes of David Matheson, once a prominent “gay conversion” expert who turned out to be…gay…Norman Goldwasser, big proponent of making the choice to quit being gay, who posted on gay hookup websites…and got caught…Rev. Ted Haggard, who had to resign as president of the National Evangelicals Association…after a male prostitute said he smoked meth with Haggard and was paid for having sex…and assorted hypocrites on the right.

9/4/19: Vice President Jesus earned a few extra frequent flier miles this week, at taxpayer expense.

When President Golfing Fool decided to cancel a trip to Poland and focus on Hurricane Dorian—and his putting—he sent Mike Pence in his stead. On the way back, Pence made a stop in Ireland to speak to President Michael D. Higgins.

Tuesday morning, a dapper looking VP (you have to admit, the man looks good in a suit and tie) rose early, in a chipper mood.

Alas, his meeting was 181 miles away from the hotel where he stayed. He would need to down his waffles quickly and jump on Air Force Two and wing away. To Dublin, then—where for some odd reason, Pence had decided not to stay. By 5:00 p.m. all meetings and discussions were ended. VP Jesus hopped aboard Air Force Two and flew back from whence he came.

Night two, for the VP—his wife—his sister—and his mother—at that conveniently located property on the other side of Ireland. Namely: Trump International Golf Links & Hotel in Doonbeg.

VP Jesus’s family has roots on his mother’s side in Doonbeg, and we should not begrudge Clan Pence a visit to their ancestral home. Still, did they really need to fly back and forth on the public dime?

That answer, in Gaelic, would be: “Chan eil.”

“No.”

*

AS HURRICANE DORIAN slowly churns its way north, the catastrophic damage inflicted on the Bahamas is revealed. Scientists point out once again what has been obvious for some time.

“Was it caused by climate change?” Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University, asks rhetorically in a Twitter post. Could the fearsome power of the storm have anything to do with climate change?

“When it comes to hurricanes, that’s the wrong question,” from now on. “The right one is, ‘How much worse did climate change make it?’”

Florida was lucky this time; but, yes, Mr. Trump there are hurricanes that are measured as Cat 5’s. (See: September 1, 2019.)

*

LAST BUT NOT LEAST, several large retail chains, including Kroger, decide to tell shoppers not to bring their guns into stores.

This means that shoppers armed with AR-15’s will no longer be able to defend themselves from rogue cans of baked beans.

9/5/19: President Trump spends his morning studying climate science and boning up on how Category 5 hurricanes form.

You wish!

In fact, rather than address the growing threat, the Trump administration rolls back rules first passed in 2007 to require more energy efficient light bulbs in every socket in the land. Had the standards gone into final effect next year, they would have saved as much energy as can be produced by 25 large power plants. That would have been enough to light all the homes in Pennsylvania and New Jersey for the year. And, in the end, consumers would have saved money, switching out old bulbs.

It doesn’t matter, because Trump is busy trying to prove he was right when he said Hurricane Dorian was going to hit Alabama hard. He had a map from the National Weather Service he wanted everyone to see. With cameras in the Oval Office running, and an aide to help him hold his display, Trump shows reporters the evidence. But someone appears to have added a line, apparently using a black Sharpie, to show that the people of Alabama could have been wiped off the map.

The president's ludicrous map.

Let’s just say the “enemies of the people” were less than impressed. First, they found the original National Services map and posted pictures—showing—well—not showing a black line.

The original.

Nothing more than an ill-informed buffoon.

The dastardly New York Times had the nerve to go to sources and inquire about the bizarre discrepancy. “A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security said that he was unclear what the black line on the map was referring to and that he needed to gather additional information,” reporters noted. “He later referred questions about the map to the White House.”

This is how we pass the buck in Trumpistan.

Next, reporters asked the president, himself, how the black line could have ended up on the map he displayed.

“I don’t know,” he replied.

In any case, the President of the United States kept insisting he was right—even though, while other governors had declared states of emergency as Dorian threatened, the governor of Alabama did not.

This meant White House aides were forced to tap dance around hard facts, and spurred a new bout of lying by the president. Trump soon tweeted a new map, this time provided by the South Florida Water Management District. He said it supported his claim that the people of Alabama had been doomed. “This was the originally projected path of the Hurricane in its early stages,” he said. “As you can see, almost all models predicted it to go through Florida also hitting Georgia and Alabama.

“I accept the Fake News apologies!” he said.

Alas, sharp-eyed reporters noticed that the latest map Trump was waving around carried a disclaimer. Any information from the National Hurricane Center or local emergency officials would supersede it. “If anything on this graphic causes confusion, ignore the entire product.”

Trump had proved again that after 31 months in office, he was still nothing more than an ill-informed buffoon.

 9/6/19: In case you missed the August jobs report, preliminary figures indicate 130,000 Americans found employment. Figures for June and July were revised downward slightly. Unemployment stayed steady at 3.7 percent and the percentage of Americans in the workforce rose to 63.2 percent. That would be up from 62.9 percent when President Obama left D.C. and handed Trump “a mess.”

Once again, we check the numbers: Jobs added in Trump’s first 31 full months as president:

5,846,000 (188,581 per month).

Read ‘em and weep, liberal commie scum!

Then again, in Obama’s last 31 full months in office 6,910,000 jobs were added (222,903 per month)

9/7/19: Here in Ohio, three drug companies are forced to settle lawsuits with Cuyahoga and Summit counties.

Having pushed opioids as perfectly safe, despite evidence that the drugs were much less than safe the Big Pharma companies admitted, they were facing significant civil penalties. They knew they’d lose at trial. So, they settled. Allergan forfeit $5 million, Endo, $11 million (including free drugs to counteract addiction). Mallinckrodt coughed up a total of $30 million.

9/8/19: For the love of god, how often does this president play golf! Once again, Trump spends Sunday on the links. This follows on the heels of his last round of golf, way back on…Saturday.

He’s a golfing machine!

Also, a deal-making machine! Trump hatched another great deal which he was planning to close over the weekend. Here was his plan. He would invite representatives of the Taliban to Camp David for peace talks. (You’d think he might want them to stay at one of his plush clubs—like everyone else he meets—but no.) If all went well, he would close the deal with the killers who made it possible for Osama bin Laden to wreak havoc on our nation eighteen years ago.

Trump had a plan.

Trump would be the hero of Trump’s plan. Trump would end a long, expensive war. Trump would brag about ending that long, expensive war. Especially, the expensive part. Trump has no empathy for the dead or the maimed. Trump only cares about dollars. Best of all, there would be reporters and cameras. Those reporters and cameras would focus on Trump. Trump would love watching “President Trump” close the deal.

Trump would boast to the world. “President Trump achieved this historic peace all by himself! No one else helped President Trump.” He would refer to himself in the third person, as is his wont. At last, the people would love Trump more than his predecessor, Mr. Obama.

Even Melania would love Trump again.

There was only one problem. The Taliban is a blood-thirsty crew. And the Taliban kept doing what the Taliban likes to do. The Taliban kept on blowing innocent human beings to bits. In August they sent a suicide bomber to a wedding and he or she blew him- or herself up, killing 63, injuring 182. In July, they bombed the University of Kabul, killing 10 students and maiming 33.

The Taliban doesn’t like higher education much.

And, lo, it came to pass. Trump invited the Taliban to come to Camp David last week, and sit down, hands still red with innocent blood, three days before the eighteenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

But there was one giant, gory fly in the soup of Trump’s plan. The Taliban could not resist doing what the Taliban does best. In the days leading up to the secret meeting at Camp David, they kept blowing other people up. A series of suicide bombings killed and wounded 54 Afghan civilians. Another bombing killed an American, Sgt. First Class Elis A. Barreto Ortiz, the third American to die in Afghanistan in a week. The Art of the Deal president was stumped.

With that, the secret meeting was off. Trump headed for the links, instead, and yet another round of golf. 

Aftermath of Taliban bombing.

9/9/19: Trump starts Day 962 of his presidency the same way Day 961 ended. He’s up and tweet-hating by 5:21 a.m.

By 5:58, he’s warmed up and floats his first insult, mocking Mark Sanford, who plans to challenge him in the primaries next year. The former governor of South Carolina is famous for running off to Argentina to be with his mistress—but you figure Trump won’t bring that up, because…well…Stormy…and the Playboy Bunny…and the housemaid Trump knocked up.

This is Trump. So,he does bring it up:

When the former Governor of the Great State of South Carolina, @MarkSanford, was reported missing, only to then say he was away hiking on the Appalachian Trail, then was found in Argentina with his Flaming Dancer friend, it sounded like his political career was over. It was,.... 

Okay, one clueless tweet—one person insulted. But there’s more undignified work to be done:

...but then he ran for Congress and won, only to lose his re-elect after I Tweeted my endorsement, on Election Day, for his opponent. But now take heart, he is back, and running for President of the United States. The Three Stooges, all badly failed candidates, will give it a go!

There you are. A pair of insulting tweets before most people are up and eating scrambled eggs and toast.

The question then becomes: Is Trump totally losing his marbles? He has recently picked a Twitter fight with the actress Deborah Messing. He picked another with the singer John Legend and Chrissy Teigen, his “nasty mouthed wife.” Now he’s calling opponents “The Three Stooges.”

9/10/19: National Security Adviser John Bolton has been fired. Or resigned. Trump says he fired Bolton. Bolton says no. He resigned. So, the Trump White House can’t even get that right.

And on a similar note, the Trump administration can’t get the story of the Hurricane that Almost Hit Alabama right, either.

The story, unimportant in itself, encapsulates much of what makes Trump unfit to lead this nation, or any other. Nobody will remember this tale in ten years, save for the scientists involved. Alabama was not hit. Alabamians will not look back in a decade and remember the day Trump said they should head for cover because the storm was a killer, headed their way.

But this story is the story of who Trump is. It begins with a harmless mistake. Trump tweets dozens of times about Hurricane Dorian. In one tweet, possibly a simple mix-up, he says Alabama will be hit hard. The Birmingham office of the National Weather Service finds itself swamped with frightened callers inquiring about what to do. A correction is quickly issued. Alabama is NOT under threat.

When news services pick up on Trump’s mistake, he’s too petty to admit an ordinary mistake. First, he tries to lie his way out of a predicament—that should have been predicament at all. That brought us the famous Sharpie Weather Map, which only opened Trump up to merciless mockery.

That caused him to explode. Orders went out to federal agencies. Come to his defense. Make it sound the president was right all along.

If not, heads will roll.

Three sources tell The New York Times that Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, whose department includes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—which includes the National Weather Service—leaped into the fray. Back up the president’s claim, or firings at the National Weather Service would result. An unsigned statement was issued, saying Trump was right all along.

The only problem was that scientists were not amused. Alabama had not been under threat. Peggy E. Gustafson, inspector general for the National Weather Service wrote in a message to staff that the agency “must, maintain standards of scientific integrity.” The circumstances behind the change to back Trump, she wrote, “call into question the NWS’s processes, scientific independence, and ability to communicate accurate and timely weather warnings and data to the nation in times of national emergency.”

Gustafson wasn’t the only scientist to smell a skunk.

As Time magazine noted,

Director Louis Uccellini said forecasters in Birmingham did the right thing Sept. 1 when they tried to combat public panic and rumors that Dorian posed a threat to Alabama. It was only later that they found out the source of the mistaken information, he said. Speaking at a meeting of the National Weather Association, Uccellini said Birmingham forecasters “did what any office would do to protect the public.”

“They did that with one thing in mind: public safety,” said Uccellini, who prompted a standing ovation from hundreds of forecasters by asking members of the Birmingham weather staff to stand. Earlier, the president of the 2,100-member association, Paul Schlatter, said any forecast office “would have done the exact same thing” as the Birmingham forecast office.

Kevin Laws, science and operations officer for the weather service in Birmingham, was asked if he’d like to add further comment. “I think the speech speaks for itself,” he told reporters.

“My understanding is that this intervention to contradict the forecaster was not based on science but on external factors including reputation and appearance, or simply put, political.”

Craig McClean, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Craig McClean, acting chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, also made clear what he thought of a misguided effort to back Trump up. “My understanding,” he wrote in a memo to staff, “is that this intervention to contradict the forecaster was not based on science but on external factors including reputation and appearance, or simply put, political.”

McLean was scathing in his letter. First, he insisted that the Birmingham staff “corrected any public misunderstanding [due to the president’s tweets] in an expert and timely way as they should.”

Second, he noted that the NOAA Scientific Integrity Policy tells all agency employees to “approach all scientific activities with honesty, objectively, and completely, without allegiance to individuals, organizations, or ideology.”

Finally, McClean warned that the NOAA press release backing Trump up, “compromises the ability of NOAA to convey life-saving information” and “violated NOAA’s policies of scientific integrity.” That policy states that individuals higher up the chain of command should not “intimidate or coerce employees, contractors, recipients of financial assistance awards, or others to alter or censor scientific findings.”

So, there you had it: On one side, a petty, dictatorially inclined President Trump, backed by his usual minions.

On the other side you had truth and science—and plenty of witnesses to prove Trump and his side lied.

*

THIS BRINGS US, finally, to a story posted recently by the Business Insider, which clearly relates.

That story highlighted the dangers posed by an increasingly unbalanced, erratic, enraged President Trump. 

“No one knows what to expect from him anymore,” one former White House official [told Business Insider]. “His mood changes from one minute to the next based on some headline or tweet, and the next thing you know his entire schedule gets tossed out the window because he’s losing his s---.

“People are used to the president saying things that aren’t true, but this Alabama stuff is another story. This was the president sending out patently false information about a national-emergency situation as it was unfolding.”

“You’re basically stuck looking after a 4-year-old now.”

The story continues, with sources asking for anonymity, because they feared retribution from Trump.

“He’s deteriorating in plain sight,” one Republican strategist who’s in frequent contact with the White House told Insider on Friday.

Asked why the president was obsessed with Alabama instead of the states that would actually be affected by the storm, the strategist said, “you should ask a psychiatrist about that; I’m not sure I’m qualified to comment.”

Nor was this behavior entirely new.

More than that, one person who was close to Trump’s legal team during the Russia investigation told Insider his public statements were “nothing compared to what he’s like behind closed doors.”

“He’s like a bull seeing red,” this person added. “There’s just no getting through to him, and you can kiss your plans for the day goodbye because you’re basically stuck looking after a 4-year-old now.”

At this point, some White House aide should take away all of Trump’s Sharpies before he pokes himself in the eye.

9/11/19: It is a day for solemn memories—of Twin Towers imploding—of a Pentagon in flames—of heroism on Flight 93—and so much more.

It’s a time for reflection and introspection, unless you are Donald J. Trump. The president is up early on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. By 5:14 a.m. he’s tweeting away. China is “being hit very hard” by tariffs! Trump is winning! He attacks Jay Powell, his choice to lead the Federal Reserve, and calls him naïve. But what really has the president riled up are a series of recent opinion polls. Those polls show that if the election were held today, he and the Republicans would get smoked.

First, the “good news,” as far as Trump is concerned. The Republicans did eke out a narrow win in a special election in the Ninth Congressional District in North Carolina the night before.

This allows the president to boast, because, as he insists, he saved the day himself.

Of course, for those who prefer facts, it pays to check his math. He didn’t save the day, so much as the blood of the bleeding patient clotted. That’s just what blood does. The Ninth has long been a GOP bastion. In 2016, the GOP candidate for Congress won by 16 points, 58 to 42 percent. Trump carried the district by 12 points, himself. In 2018 the Republican congressional candidate won again, but by less than a point. Even that narrow victory was a result of rank ballot fraud perpetrated by the “winner’s” campaign. The results were tossed by the courts.

Oddly enough, while Trump often complains about “rigged” votes, without any evidence votes were rigged, it has never bothered him that the 2018 election in the Ninth was definitely rigged.

So, on Tuesday, Trump wanted everyone to believe he had pulled a little magic out of a red MAGA hat. He rallied hard for Dan Bishop, the new GOP candidate in the race. (The old candidate was facing felony charges. So he dropped out.) And, with the weight of the presidency thrown into the balance, Bishop did defeat his opponent by a whopping two points, 50.7 to 48.7 percent.

Still, the president, could not resist an urge to bitch. It took three tweets to get the hurt off his chest. What he wanted all Americans to know on the anniversary of 9/11, was that he was winning and winning and the polls couldn’t be right.

First angry tweet:

In a hypothetical poll, done by one of the worst pollsters of them all, the Amazon Washington Post/ABC, which predicted I would lose to Crooked Hillary by 15 points (how did that work out?), Sleepy Joe, Pocahontas and virtually all others would beat me in the General Election....

Trump was lying again.

I checked Trump’s math. No poll done by the Washington Post and ABC ever had him down 15 points in 2016. In fact, on the eve of the election, the same poll had him down only 3 points.

Second angry tweet:

....This is a phony suppression poll, meant to build up their Democrat partners. I haven’t even started campaigning yet, and am constantly fighting Fake News like Russia, Russia, Russia. Look at North Carolina last night. Dan Bishop, down big in the Polls, WINS. Easier than 2016!

First, Mr. President, stop attacking the free press. Second, for God’s sake, check your facts! Bishop’s win was in no way “easier” than the Republican win in 2016, as already mentioned. For that matter, polls in North Carolina had never shown Bishop “down big.” Three polls showed the election was likely a dead heat. Bishop was expected to garner 44.67 percent of the vote, Dan McCready, his opponent, 44.33 percent. Another 8 percent of voters were unsure.

Third angry tweet: “If it weren’t for the never ending Fake News about me,” he sobbed (if you can sob in a tweet), “and with all that I have done (more than any other President in the first 2 1/2 years!), I would be leading the ‘Partners’ of the LameStream Media by 20 points. Sorry, but true!”

It was clear, then, that the president was having a very bad day; and trashing John Bolton, his ousted National Security Adviser, during a question and answer session with reporters later, did not assuage the hurt in his heart that Donald J. Trump was feeling.

The polls painted a painful picture for Trump and his party. Even Rasmussen, his favorite poll, showed him with an approval rating of only 47 percent, and a disapproval rating of 53 percent.

And that was the best poll of all.

In an average of all polls, Trump had an approval rating of 43.1 percent, and a disapproval rating of 53.9 percent.

Postscript: To be fair, Trump has time to recover and could look to his nemesis’ success in 2012. On September 11, 2011, President Obama had an approval rating of 43.3 percent, and a disapproval rating of 50.7 percent.

The difference? Obama didn’t believe the polls were rigged and didn’t whine as if they were.

9/12/19: President Trump travels to Baltimore to deliver a policy speech before GOP lawmakers. Protesters decide to float a large balloon outside the venue where he is speaking, a rat with a striking resemblance to Trump. It’s their tribute to a man who called their city “disgusting,” and described Baltimore as a “rodent infested mess.”

He is orange.

During his policy speech, the president dives into energy policy and the topic of climate change. “The lightbulb. People said what’s with the lightbulb?” he asks in rhetorical fashion.

“I said here’s the story,” Trump continued. “And I looked at it, the bulb that we’re being forced to use, number one to me, most importantly, the light’s no good. I always look orange. And so do you. The light is the worst.”

That was pretty much all Trump had to say about one of the critical issues facing humanity today.

He didn’t want to look orange.

(Professional photographers told the Washington Post the bulbs weren’t the problem. The problem was the president is orange.)

9/13/19: We all live in Trumpistan now. In Trumpistan, reporters are the enemy. All migrants want to kill us—at least, if we’re white. All Big Business types can be trusted all the time. All Democrats are “socialists,” and in some bizarre lexicon, all socialists are “communists.” Nazis—just look at the name of their party—are also “socialists,” not right-wing fascists. According to Tucker Carlson even a leading neo-con like John Bolton, the now canned, third National Security Adviser to President Trump, “was fundamentally a man of the left.”

That claim earns Carlson a coveted “Pants on Fire” rating from Politifact. A quick check of Bolton’s career shows he volunteered in 1964, to work for the campaign of that famous “lefty” Barry Goldwater, author of Conscience of a Conservative. Next he interned for Vice President Spiro Agnew, a politician who liked to talk about the “criminal left,” and the “whimpering isolationism” of “ultraliberalism.” Bolton spent the 80s working in the Reagan administration. He went on to work for George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush (Bolton thumped the drum for the invasion of Iraq in 2003). He endorsed Mitt Romney for president in 2012. He worked for the American Enterprise Institute and finally washed up on the shores of Fox News. In the employ of Fox, he was paid more than $500,000 in 2017, for spouting pro-Trump opinions.

*

PUTTING BOLTON aside, let’s hear it for Big Business, the folks we can always trust with our pensions, prescription drugs and perfectly safe consumer products. We know, for instance, that Juul produces excellent flavored vaping devices and never tries to lure teens to use them, which might lead to damaged lungs and death. We know MyPayrollHR and its CEO Michael Mann would never steal $35 million from employees. The socialists probably did it, not him.

Finally, the Sackler family, owners of Purdue Pharma would never, ever hide a billion dollars in profits, shifting money through secret Swiss bank accounts, knowing their company may soon declare bankruptcy. All because a few people swallowed a few too many OxyContin pills and ended up dead.

I, for one, can hardly wait for Big Oil to start drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, because I know they will never spill oil all over the place. Oil spills are the work of “lefties,” I’m pretty sure.

I believe Mr. Carlson would like viewers to understand that Donald J. Trump and Big Oil want the world to look like this: 

*

FOR SOME ODD REASON—probably vestiges of human decency—Sen. Mitt Romney says he will not be endorsing anyone for president in 2020.

As a good Republican, he can’t bring himself to support a Democrat. As a man of integrity, he can’t stomach Trump.

9/14/19: In news you may have missed, the Trump administration is working hard to keep us safe from killer immigrants who want to slit our throats while we sleep, but in the meantime also work construction. You know…people who tunnel underground to…run storm water systems and subways.

New rules mean that 400,000 people from six nations, who were granted temporary protected status when their countries were hit by war, natural disasters and waves of crime, may be asked to leave the U.S.

Many have been living in the United States for twenty years. Most have deep roots in this country. Combined, they have nearly 200,000 children born here, all American citizens.

Those 200,000 might have to abandon the only country they have ever known if they want to remain with their parents.

Ever Guardado, 38, is typical. He works in construction, pays taxes, owns a home in Sterling, Virginia, and has three children, all citizens by birth. “I thought I would be secure forever,” he told reporters.

“Now I’m scared every day.”

We can assume his children are equally scared.

So, “good job,” President Trump.

9/15/19: President Fire and Fury is hoping some punk will make his day, like Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry, only with Stealth bombers.

Someone has attacked Saudi Arabia’s oil refineries. That someone could be Iran. Or that someone could be Houthi rebels, fighting Saudi forces in Yemen. The Houthis are backed by Iran.

Dirty Don decides to address possible military action in a tweet:

Saudi Arabia oil supply was attacked. There is reason to believe that we know the culprit, are locked and loaded depending on verification, but are waiting to hear from the Kingdom as to who they believe was the cause of this attack, and under what terms we would proceed!

Did Dirty Don just say he was going to attack Iran once the Saudis laid out the terms for that attack? The Saudis? The guys who hacked up a journalist with bone saws and couldn’t tell us how that happened or why? The purveyors of Wahhabism, the most militant brand of Islam in the world?

And weren’t the Saudis going to buy hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. war-fighting tools and technology?

Why can’t they do the fighting themselves—or at least pay us handsomely to get our young men and women (but no Trumps) killed—as once suggested by a brilliant tactician named Donald J. Trump:

Citizen Trump, in 2014 and 2015 was clear when faulting Mr. Obama’s strategy in the Middle East. He’d be willing to send troops into harm’s way, but NO FREEBIES. The Saudis could sit back and watch us do their fighting—as Trumps always sit back during wartime, themselves.

But it would cost them, as Trump made clear in a number of tweets:

Have you been watching how Saudi Arabia has been taunting our VERY dumb political leaders to protect them from ISIS. Why aren’t they paying?

I just want to know how much is Saudi Arabia and others who we are helping willing to pay for our saving from total extinction. Pay up now!

Tell Saudi Arabia and others that we want (demand!) free oil for the next ten years or we will not protect their private Boeing 747s. Pay up! 

If Saudi Arabia, which has been making one billion dollars a day from oil, wants our help and protection, they must pay dearly! NO FREEBIES.

We are getting ready to protect Saudi Arabia against Iran & others-sending ships. How much are they going to pay us toward this protection.

Saudi Arabia should be paying the United States many billions of dollars for our defense of them. Without us, gone!

Oh, and Trump wants it to be clear. He’s no fool. He never said he’d meet with the leader of Iran, “without conditions.”

Once again, he tries performing delicate diplomacy via a tweet: “The Fake News is saying that I am willing to meet with Iran, “No Conditions.” That is an incorrect statement (as usual!).”

This is probably confusing to:

1.     Iranians

2.     Saudis

3.     U.S. allies

4.     U.S. military

5.     Houthi rebels

6.     Secretary of State Pompeo

7.     Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, and,

8.     “Fake News” reporters.

That confusion probably relates to the fact that Mnuchin told “Fake News” reporters last Tuesday, “Now the president has made clear, he is happy to take a meeting [with Iran] with no preconditions, but we are maintaining the maximum pressure campaign.”

Then Secretary Pompeo added to the dilemma by saying, “The president has made clear he is happy to take a meeting with no preconditions.”

In fact, this “Fake Blogger” was so confused by all the “Fake News,” apparently a result of relying on “Fake Eardrums,” that he decided to check some non-fake news sources, such as The Times of Israel.

Yeah, Mnuchin and Pompeo said that.

Indeed, as USA Today and many other news outlets report, Trump said that, too, and said it “repeatedly.”

9/16/19: Once again, we learn that we have nothing to fear, but fear itself, and homegrown nuts with guns.

Alexis Wilson, an 18-year-old Oklahoma waitress, is arrested and charged with making terroristic threats. Ms. Wilson allegedly showed a co-worker videos of herself with a new AK-47, and said “that she was going to shoot 400 people for fun and that there were so many people at her old school that she would like to do it to,” according to an arrest report. Police said the threats were aimed at McAlester High School in Pittsburg County, where the young woman had attended school.

After being tipped off, sheriff’s deputies went to the home where Wilson lived. There they confiscated an AK-47, a 12-guage shotgun, and ammo.

A school resource officer for the McAlester Public Schools confirmed that there had been previous incidents involving Wilson. Those incidents include bringing a knife to school and having swastika symbols on personal belongings while in class.

9/17/19: Former Trump 2016 campaign manager Corey Lewandowski reluctantly appears before Congress.

Forced to testify under a subpoena, issued by the House Judiciary Committee, Lewandowski proves combative in the extreme. He’s almost impossible to pin down on facts, and appears dumbfounded that anyone would think Trump ever asked him to obstruct justice, although all signs point to the fact he did.

We can pretty much ignore almost everything Republican lawmakers on the panel said. Boiled down to simple phrases, their argument would be this: “Democrats are mean to President Trump.” “The Mueller Report found no collusion.” (It’s a stone cold fact: Mueller made it clear that “collusion” wasn’t a legal term and so he ignored the issue outright.) And: “Trump was totally exonerated. Democrats should move on.” (Mueller specifically stated that his report did not exonerate President Trump.)

Your humble blogger is a well-known liberal and convinced Donald J. Trump is a liar from weird coif to toe. So, let’s be as factual as we can. Lewandowski did not deny any of the following points. In June 2017, the President of the United States requested that he, a private citizen, deliver a message to Attorney General Jeff Sessions. That message would be: Un-recuse yourself.

Take charge of the Russia investigation—which began that May—again.

Lewandowski reluctantly admitted under questioning that he was indeed asked to deliver such a message.

(At best, this would be an oddity. President Trump could have sent any White House lawyer over to see AG Sessions. For some reason he did not.)

Questioned in detail about the matter, Lewandowski was by turns contemptuous in his responses or unwilling to answer. Lewandowski insisted he was acting on White House orders, to limit his responses to what he had already said in the Mueller Report.

Again, if we stick to basic facts, we know that by the time Trump spoke to Lewandowski about meeting with Sessions, he had already asked White House counsel Donald McGahn II to fire Special Counsel Mueller. We know McGahn—almost surely sniffing out an attempt to obstruct justice—refused.

Two days later, Trump called in Lewandowski for help. He wanted Corey to go to Sessions and ask him to give a speech. Trump even dictated ideas for what he wanted Sessions to say. First, the Attorney General should un-recuse himself. Second, he should explain that he was taking control of the Mueller probe again. Third, he should proclaim that Donald J. Trump had done nothing wrong. Finally, Sessions was to announce that Mueller would be limited to investigating “election meddling for future elections.”

If Sessions would do that, everything would be cool.

 (Author’s note, 12/24/19: Trump, of course, would later ask the Ukrainians to meddle in the next election.)

He should tell the Attorney General he was fired.

For some reason—probably because Lewandowski knew he was tiptoeing the line where obstruction of justice begins—he failed to act. Trump made this first request on June 19. Lewandowski did ask the Attorney General to meet. Sessions refused. A month passed before Lewandowski saw Trump again. On July 19, Trump and his former campaign manager met at the White House again. The president wanted Lewandowski to meet with Sessions in person. If Sessions refused to meet again, he should tell the Attorney General he was fired.

Again: the line where obstruction of justice begins was at Lewandowski’s feet. He appears to have known it, too.

He passed off the message to White House deputy chief of staff Rick Dearborn, a former aide to Jeff Sessions, and left it to him to do what Trump desired. According to the Mueller Report, Dearborn said he never delivered the message.

The next question was obvious: Why didn’t Lewandowski or Dearborn act on a request from the President of the United States? Did Lewandowski know the was being asked to step over the line?

Corey sneered in response when a Democratic lawmaker asked. He wasn’t worried about that. He didn’t carry out the president’s request, he explained, because he had to take his kids on vacation.

He took them to the beach.

(Use sunscreen, sir, by all means.)

Lewandowski did clarify a number of points under pressure, rather than risk a finding of contempt in the end. Okay, he admitted, vacation lasted only two weeks. He also said he had hoped to meet with Sessions away from the Department of Justice, because he and Jeff were friends.

He wanted to talk to the AG in a “relaxed setting.”

The Russians wanted to talk.

The Mueller Report lays out a far different scenario. “Lewandowski wanted to pass the message to Sessions in person rather than over the phone,” investigators say. “He did not want to meet at the Department of Justice because he did not want a public log of his visit and did not want Sessions to have an advantage over him by meeting on what Lewandowski described as Sessions’s turf.”

Despite some Democratic bumbling in regard to questioning, Lewandowski eventually had to admit that he had received messages from campaign staff in 2016, indicating the Russians wanted to talk.

“Shouldn’t you have contacted the F.B.I. with this news? “ a Democratic lawmaker asked. Lewandowski admitted somebody should have done so—it just wasn’t him. At another point, Republicans tried to make it sound like the F.B.I. failed to alert the Trump campaign to what the Russians were up to—and that what they were up to was up to no good. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) suggested that the F.B.I. was “trying to trap the president.” That didn’t even make sense.

To Lewandowski, however, it did.

Someone from the F.B.I., he agreed, should have told him the Russians were up to no good. In fact, he was fired from the campaign on June 20, 2016. The following month the F.B.I. specifically warned the campaign that Russians were trying to make inroads in various ways.

Rep. Jordan didn’t want to bring that up.

Nor did Jordan or Lewandowski dare mention one incontrovertible and highly damaging fact. Eleven days earlier, three individuals at the pinnacle of the campaign, namely Paul Manafort, Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner, had enthusiastically agreed to take a secret meeting with Russians. Those Russians had promised to bring damaging info on Hillary Clinton.

“If what you say is true,” Don Jr. had famously replied, “I love it.”

Yet, none of these three people told Lewandowski that something that sounds nefarious, was afoot?

In the end, Trump’s old campaign manager stonewalled lawmakers to good effect (assuming “good” to you means avoiding getting pinned down by the truth). He refused to answer most questions point blank. His conversations with the president were covered under the blanket of executive privilege, he and his lawyer both said. This, despite the fact Lewandowski was a private citizen at the time, and—it would seem likely—was being asked to commit a crime. Testimony related to criminal activity is never shielded by “executive privilege,” if you don’t know.

Finally, a lawyer for the Democrats, Barry Berke, had 30 minutes to wrap up the hearings for the day. Mr. Berke showed a series of news clips, during which Mr. Lewandowski told reporters he had never been asked by President Trump to talk to AG Sessions about un-recusing himself.

“Was that a lie?” Berke asked.

Lewandowski was evasive at first. Finally, he replied that he was under “no obligation” to tell reporters (and by extension, the American people) the truth.

At the end of the day, pundits seemed to agree that Democrats had failed to gain much traction in an effort to build a case for the impeachment of President Donald J. Trump.

But if you watched Corey Lewandowski perform, you knew, if he avoided stepping over the line where obstruction of justice begins and actions become crimes, he teetered on the very edge of the legal cliff.

Did Trump want Lewandowski to obstruct justice? An open-minded observer would conclude that he did.

9/18/19: At this point it should be clear to all Americans: President Trump has no more empathy than a potato.

This week, we have fresh evidence of Trump’s lack of compassion. During a flight on Air Force One, reporters ask him to comment on the death of Cokie Roberts, renowned ABC reporter. Roberts died this week, at age 75, from complications from breast surgery.

This was, of course, the perfect time for Trump to mention Trump. “I never met her,” he said. Then, he couldn’t help himself.

“She never treated me nicely,” he added. Yes, Ms. Roberts was dead; but the real tragedy was how much Trump’s ego was hurt.

Today, the president had another chance to get simple human emotions right. He blew it again. Trump was traveling in California, and had supposedly taken an interest in the state’s growing problem with homelessness.

Would he, then, suggest ways the federal government could help? Would he focus on mental illness and other primary reasons most homeless people end up living on America’s streets? Surely, a president who touts his love for “my military” on an almost daily basis, would address the need to help homeless veterans. They make up a large percentage of those who sleep in doorways, shelter under bridges, and live in tattered tents, where they recline on the seats of busted up cars.

Then again, this is Trump. Here’s how he’s quoted in Fox News (although Fox News is not inclined to parse his words):        

We have people living in our…best highways, our best streets, our best entrances to buildings...where people in those buildings pay tremendous taxes, where they went to those locations because of the prestige.

In many cases, they came from other countries and they moved to Los Angeles or they moved to San Francisco because of the prestige of the city, and all of a sudden they have tents. Hundreds and hundreds of tents and people living at the entrance to their office building. And they want to leave. And the people of San Francisco are fed up, and the people of Los Angeles are fed up.

Oh, god, those poor rich people—even those poor rich people who immigrated to the United States—they came for the prestige. And they have suffered horribly, what with less prestige than hoped. Also, tripping over those human wrecks on the sidewalks in front of their high-rent homes.

And, oh, those ugly tents, where people with mental illnesses live, and where veterans with PTSD hunker down and don’t shower for a month. Oh, the smell. How the suffering folks who pay high taxes stand it, walking right by, god only knows! Right there, too! Right on our “best streets.”

If only the homeless would go live in some crummy neighborhood, with the rest of the poor! Out of sight.’

Out of mind.

Empathy? Trump?

None.

Postscript: Once again we learn that the “enemies of the people” are spreading more “Fake News!”

President Twitter Thumbs posts a link on his account showing Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Muslim-American woman, a woman Trump loves to hate, dancing and celebrating on the eighteen anniversary of 9/11.

“The new face of the Democratic Party,” he warns.

All across the land, you can almost hear his 64 million Twitter fans yelping, “Damn unpatriotic Muslim bitch. Time to polish up my gun. We gonna have to take that traitor out.”

Alas, the “Fake News” is being put out there by Twitter Thumbs himself.

It has now been conclusively shown that the clip Trump linked to on his account shows Omar dancing at a celebration on September 13. Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, hosted a celebration for Omar and other Democratic lawmakers that evening, and posted the clip of the dancing that night. Ah, but Trump didn’t bother to check. When some Twitter idiot posted a doctored clip to make Omar look bad, the president passed it along.

Now he has had to take the tweet down.

No apology has been issued by the White House; and again, we learn, Trump has no empathy at all.

Rep. Omar was not dancing on the anniversary of 9/11.
President Trump was lying, however.

9/19/19: It’s monsoon season in Texas. Just as scientists warned, climate change increases both the rate of water evaporation and the amount of water the atmosphere can hold. The science is simple. This will cause more frequent “extreme weather events.”

This week, Tropical Storm Imelda dumped almost four feet of rain along the Texas coast. Catastrophic flooding resulted. Five people died, gas stations, homes, businesses and towns were submerged. Flights into and out of Houston (a city which also drowned in 2017) were canceled. Runaway barges striking the I-10 bridge over the San Jacinto River forced closure of the highway. Thousands of people, pets and even livestock had to be rescued. Gov. Greg Abbott, a dedicated climate change-denier, was forced to declare a state of disaster for 13 counties.

Meanwhile, Imelda had dumped the seventh highest amount of rain ever recorded in U.S. history. Hurricane Harvey, which dumped 60 inches on Texas in 2017, set the all-time mark.

In Trumpistan, of course, all efforts to protect the environment are viewed as job-killing, commie plots. According to President Trump windmills cause cancer and we’re all going to die if we don’t burn all the coal we can mine. 

The birds and the bees are dying.

A new study, just released by commie scientists and published in Science magazine, warns that the commie bird population in Canada and the United States has fallen by 2.9 billion since 1970. That’s a decline of 29%.

The commie scientists warn that the decline is evidence of a “widespread ecological crisis.” They also warn that climate change has made the situation worse. Overuse of pesticides is a major factor.

Well, screw it! Who needs birds?

By the way, bee populations are also in dramatic decline across the United States; and commie beekeepers have faulted the Trump administration for approving use of chemicals they blame for the precipitous fall.

Well, who needs bees!

As President Trump likes to say, climate change is a “hoax.”

In fact, protecting his supply of hairspray is more important than protecting the ozone layer, itself.

*

IN OTHER NEWS, Daniel McCarthy, running as a Republican for a U.S. Senate seat in Arizona, has proposed a novel solution for the immigration crisis on our southern border. McCarthy would like to shift the border slightly, by annexing Mexico and turning Mexico into a bunch of new states.

The idea of a bunch of new states—probably sending more Democratic senators to D.C.—would likely cause “Moscow Mitch” McConnell to start shouting about “full-bore socialism” again.

Speaking of “Moscow Mitch,” the Senate Majority Leader did finally allow a vote on legislation yesterday which allocates $250 million to help states improve voting security before the 2020 election.

On the other hand, Republicans in Congress are freaking out because the people of Washington D.C. are talking about becoming a state. For some bizarre reason the 702,000 people who live in the District think they have a right to have one vote in the House of Representatives and two in the Senate.

Republicans oppose the idea because—hey—the Founding Fathers!

Rep. Jim Jordan, nutjob GOP lawmaker from Ohio, made that point clearly during hearings yesterday. “This is not what the Founding Fathers intended,” he pointed out. Then again, the Founding Fathers certainly did not intend that a president could pardon himself. Jordan likes that idea.

Nor did the Founding Fathers, in their infinite wisdom, intend that women should vote.

Or African Americans, either. The Fathers did think, however, that it was a great idea to count every five African Americans the same as three white folks in determining state populations. (I think it is only a matter of time before Rep. Jordan or some other GOP stalwart suggests a return to that system.)

Here’s where debate stands. Republicans already in Congress, representing heavily-populated states like Wyoming (572,000), Alaska (735,000) and North Dakota (761,000), believe that the people of those states should have just as much say in the U.S. Senate as the people of California (40,000,000).

But, as “Moscow Mitch” sees it, it would be “full-bore socialism” to let D.C. residents have a voice.

During congressional hearings yesterday a map was submitted. Advocates of statehood suggested that the federal government retain control over the National Mall, the White House, Capitol Hill and all federal properties. The rest of the District would become the fifty-first state.

Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who represents the 755,000 people of the Fourth Congressional District in his state, homed in on the key issue of the day. Why did the proposed map leave Trump International Hotel under jurisdiction of the new state? Massie, a Republican, was in a position to raise such a stupid objection because he speaks for the people of the Fourth Congressional District in his state.

Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-VA) pinpointed the root cause of Republican opposition to statehood, saying, “When they say it’s not about race and partisanship, you can be sure it’s about race and partisanship.”

A witness for the Republicans at the hearing called on Rep. Connolly to take his words back. Because who would ever think the Republicans would stoop to race-based partisanship!

“Never,” Connolly responded.

9/20/19: Technically, Bruce Bartlett is listed as an “Independent” in politics; but I will quote him on Trump because he worked in both the Reagan White House and the George H. W. Bush administration. A British reporter wanted to know if Bartlett thought Trump lied so much because he was dishonest. Or were his false statements a function of profound ignorance?

The Independent, a British paper sums up his response:

…former Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary for Economic Policy Bruce Bartlett said it would be easier to list the number of subjects Trump understands than the ones he doesn’t understand. “Other than how to pander to right-wingers and get busty women to have sex with him, I can’t think of anything,” [that he actually understands].

Bartlett agreed with the assessment of Harvard economics Professor Jeffrey Williamson, who insisted that Trump couldn’t tell the difference between business debt (hey, let’s declare bankruptcy) and sovereign debt (federal deficit; we’re ballooning the budget again). Both men told reporters they feared,

that Trump’s apparent ignorance was exacerbated by his advisers’ sycophancy. “The real problem isn’t Trump’s ignorance and stupidity—it’s that he is surrounded by people like [Treasury Secretary Steven] Mnuchin who are just as ignorant and stupid, or too cowardly to tell him when he’s wrong.”

*

Bartlett and Williamson are not alone in suspecting that the President of the United States is an uninformed numbskull. Former National Security Adviser John Bolton trashed his former boss behind closed doors earlier this week. He told a gathering of conservatives that Trump’s decision to invite the Taliban to Camp David was “disrespectful” to the victims of the 9/11 attack. He said negotiations with North Korea and Iran were “doomed to fail,” and said Trump’s decision to call off a retaliatory strike on Iran after they shot down a U.S. drone in June convinced Iran they could get away with the recent strike on Saudi Arabia’s oil refining facilities.

Of course, we know Bolton. We know what Bolton is like. He says Iran’s attack on the Saudi facilities is “an act of war.” If it was up to him, the United States would bomb Iran back—if not to the Stone Age—at least to 631 A. D., before Mohammed got the idea of spreading a new religion.

*

IN OTHER NEWS, the National Rifle Association has made it clear it considers a White House proposal on enhanced background checks a “non-starter.” Guns aren’t the problem an NRA spokesman insists. You just think they are, because every time we have a mass murder in this country the murderer uses a gun.

Well, the NRA is not buying that “guns are the issue” crap. The White House proposal ignores “what actually matters: fixing the broken mental health system and the prosecution of violent criminals.” Senate Leader McConnell agrees. Why, there’s nothing he can do! He’s waiting to see what President Trump says he thinks we should do. “The administration is in the process of studying what they’re prepared to support, if anything,” McConnell explains.

Yeah, “if anything.”

9/21/19: The president spends another Saturday at one of his private golf courses, the 299^th day, since taking office, that he has spent completely or in part at one of the properties he owns.

9/22/19: President Trump is busy preparing for meetings in New York City at the United Nations.

He’s plans to insult our allies again and tell the world the United States will now go it totally alone.

Okay. He’s ready. That means he can jump on Air Force One and fly to Texas for a rally with Indian Americans (that is Americans born in India), which will feature the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi.

Then Trump will jump back on Air Force One and fly to Ohio where he will attend the opening of a Pratt Industries facility and talk about all the jobs he’s creating. The new plant will produce 100% recycled packaging.

What?

An environmentally aware President Trump?

9/23/19: Okay. False alarm. We do not have an environmentally aware President Trump. Rather, the only question seems to be, “How dumb is this man?” When it comes to climate change, he proves infallibly ignorant.

Again.

At the U.N. General Assembly today, he sat in for fifteen minutes as world leaders discussed the threat. The topic couldn’t hold his attention for long. As he exited the session, reporters managed to stop him briefly and ask why he bothered to stop in at the Climate Summit at all.

First, the basics. The Climate Summit was discussing global climate and how that climate is changing. Also: what should be done by the nations of the world to address rising global temperatures.

Got it? Climate. We already know that the president is unable to differentiate between weather and climate. It’s as if he can’t tell the difference between a tuna fish sandwich and a delicious Thanksgiving spread.

In fact, a U.N. report released this week notes that the period ending on the last day of 2019 is on pace to be the hottest five-year span in recorded history. Trump and his merry MAGA band will hear the initials “U.N.” and close their minds like bear traps. So we should probably try NASA, instead, which warns that, globally, eighteen of the hottest nineteen years are the last eighteen (2001-2018). And 2019 is on pace to be the nineteenth out of twenty.

So how did the Climate-Denier-in-Chief respond?

The president proves immovably ignorant.

“I’m a big believer,” he told reporters, “in clean air and clean water, and all countries should get together and do that, and they should do it for themselves. That’s very, very important.”

Again, the president proves he is immovably ignorant.

Yes, sir, clean water is nice. Yes, Mr. President, clean air is also nice. The cleanliness of water and air have nothing to do with climate change. You might just as sensibly have said, “I like banging porn stars.”

The response given made no sense.

If the air is hotter, we have a serious problem, no matter how clean it is. And if the air is hotter, water will evaporate more quickly, and it won’t matter if the water is clean. More water will remain suspended in hotter air. Hotter water will give greater power to hurricanes. And when hurricanes do come, the clean water will be dumped out of the clean air in torrents and cities will be drowned. See: Hurricane Imelda (2019), Hurricane Florence (2018) and Hurricane Harvey (2017), all of which dumped record rainfall on the areas they hit.

Finally, President Trump decided to wrap it up by mocking an autistic teenager, Greta Thunberg.

Thunberg is a 16-year-old climate activist and on Monday issued an impassioned call for action at the United Nations. It was the time to fight climate change, she said, past time for hollow words from world leaders—“thoughts and prayers,” as it were, for Planet Earth. Trump could have been a mature 73-year-old leader of a world power and just let it go.

But he had to be an asshole, instead:

Thunberg has a different way of speaking. That’s true. But her message resonates with her generation, which will reap the winds Trump and his geriatric fan base are now happy to sow.

And don’t forget: the President of the United States just wasted his time picking on a Swedish teenager!