Not really very hard to get under Trump's thin skin

President Biden should call Trump a loser over and over again until Trump says his usual angry, ugly bovine excrement. Then he should call Trump a sore loser. Then he should say that Trump's stolen everything his whole life, that he's a cheat and a crook, and that he's totally a sore loser.

A litany would be good. Stole his daddy's fortune when he had Alzheimer's. Cheated on his taxes for decades. Bankrupted casinos - can you imagine being so incompetent you could lose money with casinos! Cheated dozens of vendors in Atlantic City and dared them to sue him. Defrauded banks and cheated on his taxes some more. I pay mine; he cheats on his. Loves dictators so much he wants to be one. Legally prohibited from operating a charity in NY, because his was a fraud. Had a fraudulent real estate course that he lied to call a university. Buried his ex-wife on his golf course to get a tax advantage. Cheats at golf - and drives his cart onto the green. Pays for sex when his third wife has just delivered his fifth (known) child by three different women; oh, ok, paid a big chunk but later. Found liable for sexual abuse, with many more claims, not to mention his own bragging about it. Close friend of Jeffrey Epstein, who died on Trump's watch. Frequent thief and loose-lipped revealer of classified information. Friend of Putin who invited Putin's help in 2016 and then took it, plus he obstructed investigation of that. Incredibly corrupt, for sale to anyone with the cash to stay in one of his tacky hotels.

I could go on. I wouldn't trust this crook with my wallet and certainly not with my daughter. Even less so with my country, since my daughter would thump Trump.

Government of laws?

All the talking heads seem to agree that the President is actually immune from prosecution if his acts are "within the outer perimeter of his duties." All of them, even on MSNBC.

This consensus is massively wrongheaded.

The President is legally responsible for following the laws, especially within the limits of his duties.

Otherwise, we're electing a king who only lives with the separation of powers to the degree he wants to.

And you know Trump never agrees to anyone's authority over him. It's no accident that he clearly wants to be dictator.

Is it a Constitution if the President won't obey it?

Written on November 11, 2018!

It's not just taxes that the wealthy reserve for the little people. Why would they stop there?

It's the rule of law. Rich people don't have to obey. The rest of us do.

Sure, we white guys can catch a break, as ever. We can gun down a black security guard who's a good guy with a gun. Oops! Sorry.

Not sorry enough to do anything to end the systematic killing of innocents that's so proportional to darkness of skin. Just sorry enough to say that blue lives matter. Not sorry.

Don't even start on the extrajudicial killing of slightly non-innocents for misdemeanors, for the pettiest of petty crimes that never carried the death penalty in any legal regime less oppressive than the slavering slavers of the Confederacy.

Black lives don't matter, which is exactly why we need an aspirational hashtag, #BlackLivesMatter. This is obvious to everyone who doesn't have his white head up his cinnamon-colored asshole.

Wait! I came here to talk about the rule of law and big and little people, which I guess I have, but Trump is my target, not his base.

Trump personally is many things, all of them bad. He's completely amoral. He never met a rule - of law, of etiquette, of common decency, of any social norm - that he would obey without being forced to. Tax returns, I'm sure, have been a lifelong game for him, which is one of the reasons we haven't seen them. We've seen enough, though, to know that he's a punk with a pen, stealing anything that's not nailed down. See the New York Times report on his persistent, law-flouting tax frauds. (How did that get forgotten so fast?)

The founders of the United States built a framework of liberty through law. Every previous President has pushed the bounds of what's legal. Those bounds can be a bit fuzzy, true, but they've all tried stuff that no one had ever gotten away with.

Trump's different. He doesn't accept any limits. The only power he knows how to wield is personal and absolute. He doesn't grasp enough details to negotiate a mutually acceptable deal. He only forces.

That's why there's been a Constitutional crisis since the day he took the Oath of Office. Of course, for him, it was only a Suggestion of Office that he promptly forgot as soon as his hand lifted off the Bible - unburned, so he must be the chosen one of God. Of course, he can't remember a single passage from the Bible, not even the usual bits of the Pentateuch whose vengefulness so thrills self-labeled, so-called winger Christians.

So, it's not a question whether Trump will openly break with the Constitution and all the law it undergirds. It's only a question of when.

My money's on January 3, 2019, or whatever day the Democrat-led House of Representatives starts its oversight. Trump will gleefully refuse, and we'll be off to the federal courts, now thoroughly stacked with toadies who will cave.

It's bad. It's going to get worse. Because the House doesn't have the authority to call out the military against a coup from within the Executive.

Republican Supremes will do what Republican Senators failed to do, today's fantasy

When, on January 6, 2021, a stalwart band of Capitol Police punched way above its weight and delayed just long enough Donald Trump's mob of insurrectionists, Trump tried and failed to join their attempt to steal the election rightfully won by Joe Biden. After his failure, Trump sulked in the White House, knowing that he'd put roadblocks in the way of any police reinforcements other than the District Police. I know of no other way to interpret his determined inaction than as intentional delay to give his coup d'etat the chance to keep him in power illegally, undemocratically, and treasonously.

Even prominent Republicans saw the whole putsch this way in real time, before their venality and fear of Trump kicked in and they started rationalizing. Liz Cheney (R-reality) said to Jim Jordan (R-oh-oh-oh), one of Trump's fifth column on the Hill, "You f***ing did this."

Then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) definitely saw all of this. She moved Democrats quickly to impeach Trump for the most impeachable acts ever indicted by the House.

Would the Senate have followed the conviction they failed to do with disqualification of Trump to ever hold office again? It's moot, of course, but presumably that would have been the sole practical reason to convict Trump.

There's no doubt whatsoever that the Senate would have had the power to disqualify Trump. The final paragraph of Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution is:

Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.

This would have rid the Republican Party, not of fascism per se, nor their base's impulse toward fascism, but of this troublesome high priest in the church of only himself.

Ah, but there were the 50 members of Republican caucus of the newly (and barely) Democratic Senate to get through, and the House Democrats' case needed two thirds of all Senators, which would have to include at least seventeen Republicans. Only seven brave Republican Senators voted to impeach Trump.

Perhaps other Republican Senators thought that Trump's loss in the 2020 election and his abject failure to steal it back from us voters would rid them of his kind of trouble. But, no, Trump has always doubled down, and he did again.

Now, the Colorado Supreme Court has disqualified Trump from the ballot, and the U.S. Supreme Court must rule whether the 14th Amendment indeed applies to Trump and disqualifies him from the 2024 ballot. The language of Section 3 is strong:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

No officer of the United States or of any state remains eligible to serve in an office that requires the same oath he's already violated once. We know your oath is worth nothing, so we don't want to hear it!

Why didn't the Reconstruction Era Radical Republicans specifically name the President and Vice President as officers of the United States. They didn't have to! Article II of the Constitution starts:

The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows[...]

But the Republican Supreme Court is going to abuse this language to reach the outcome it wants, just as it abused the language in Section 1 of the 14th Amendment to rule for Bush under the ridiculous rationale that equal protection of law ("... nor shall any State ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws") required that some ballots in Florida in 2000 should NOT be recounted.

So, that's my prediction: the Supreme Court will gut Section 3 without looking back, and Trump will be on the ballot, even in Colorado. Because the Supreme Court is the third political branch of our government when the chips are down, and it has to rule on political power.

Tied to the whippin' poll

Ever notice that the press covers polls when Joe Biden is behind but yawn and ignore them when he's ahead, as in the end of November?

One serious omission in the reporting on the remaining Koch brother's endorsement of Nikki Haley against Donald Trump is this: Koch picked Haley because he thinks Trump's a loser against Biden (again!), and he has (unreleased) polling to prove it.

Bully for them

MAGAts like Trump, no, they love him, because they want a bully. They want someone who attacks his rivals, and they don't care about any principles of consistency or morality, much less about knowing anything.

Bullying is the thread that binds them. It's why they drive big-ass trucks even if they're going to an office job. It's their ego that needs the truck, often not their job.

Second Amendment fetishism is about bullying. What sort of pantywaist would need to go to the supermarket strapped? Someone who wants to bully everyone else.

Why do MAGAts hate knowledge? Remember middle school? Nerds got bullied; they didn't bully.

It's not that all MAGAts are men. Remember those girls who got weak in the knees over the bad boys in high school? Yeah, many of them (not all!) eventually took their place inside bully culture. Too bad they failed to figure out how much better life is when you're a partner, not just a cook and baby-maker.

America is in bad shape as a democracy because so many people never grew out of middle and high school.

The word for our age

 Accuracy in media requires calling bullshit bullshit.

How politics is done, 2018

Much as the royal houses of Europe once made common cause against the people, whom they used to make war on each other, today's global elite engage in politics that won't stand the light of day. Won't? Shouldn't.

Erik Prince, a mercenary who made hundreds of millions off of the misbegotten Iraq War via Blackwater, now works in China. His patriotism is not for the nation of America. It's for his moneyed social class, including his incompetent sister Betsy DeVos.

Israeli intelligence operatives have been digging dirt on officials who worked the Iran nuclear arms deal. And their wives!

As Laura Rozen, a foreign policy journalist, reported, the woman who emailed Kahl’s wife claimed to work for Reuben Capital Partners. That’s the same fake firm that a female operative for the Israeli intelligence firm Black Cube used as a cover when she spied on the actress Rose McGowan for Harvey Weinstein.

It's not partisan. It's about the real deep state, the power elite. It's about people who never bear any lasting consequences of their crimes, as limned in Frank Rich's story of the New York establishment that has given us Donald Fucking Trump.

Cambridge Analytica, now closing only surely to be reopened in another city under another name, drove data into the Trump campaign that helped it squeak over the line. Financed by Robert and Rebekah Mercer, deep in the klepto-capitalist internationale...

And, of course, Trump's admiration of and simpering to Vladimir Putin, despite Putin's being in charge only of a declining neo-tsarist empire whose oil and gas are less valuable and whose people are drinking themselves to death. But Putin has leverage and juice, and he's rich and powerful.

The world is being stolen out from under us, just when it appeared that the consent of the governed might matter everywhere.

But this dirty, devious game of lies and deceit in service of the global elite of wealth is how politics is done now. We liberals had better get with the program, or we'll look ever more like the Washington Generals against the Harlem Globetrotters.

Too thick to be shamed

President Obama hugged Nina Pham. In the Oval Office!!!

All the wingnut chicken littles who've been fanning fear of ebola are probably too out of their minds with cowardice to notice that Obama's message to them is:

I'm not only smarter, calmer, and better informed, I'm much braver than you crybabies.

Right-wing media's purpose is to keep its consumers outraged and afraid so that they don't notice the con and keep swilling the bullshit and voting for its purveyors.

We used to say, "The stupid, it burns." Evidently not. I wish it did, but it wishes and buts were candy and nuts, we'd all be Fox "News" personalities.

Business failures

Businesses and business people frequently think of themselves as rationally self-interested. They used to add the word enlightened, but they don't much any more. That's so retro, an anachronism of a time before shareholder value became everything, before greed was good, before Ayn Rand told them they were virtuous to be bastards.

But, are they even rationally self-interested?

I see a local gas station with a sign supporting the end of automatic indexing of the gas tax to inflation. Is that really in their interest? I remember 1991, the previous time the gas tax went up 3 cents. All - and I mean all - gasoline retailers raised their prices 6 cents. Indexing gives them the chance to gouge every year, not just every 20 something years.

Democrats manage the economy better for growth, jobs, GDP, and the stock market. The Koch brothers have made their vast fortunes tremendously vaster with Barack Obama as President, yet they hate him and all Democrats to the tune of a billion dollars. It's not rational, just their ideology.

The stock market has done tremendously during the Obama administration, yet investment businesses want more. More, more, always more. It's clear the banks won't be satisfied unless every fraudulent, high risk, socialized risk/privatized profit "innovative product" that steals from honest people is permitted. Yet they're making huge profits, just not enough to feed the tapeworm of Randian bullshit economic feudalism.

Export businesses should look at their international competitors and come out for single-payer health care. They need that huge drain off their books and on someone else's. Nope, after supporting Obamacare when it was still Heritagecare, they're looking to dump what coverage they offer - despite Obamacare's early successes at slowing the growth of health insurance costs.

Businesses and business owners prefer weak government because that's their ideology, not because it's better for their businesses. Weird.

Radical Christian extremist ISIS

Phil Robertson is the moral equivalent of ISIS tyrant Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Robertson quotes Proverbs, "All who hate me love death."



His choice for Muslims is the same choice that ISIS has posed to Yazidis (and doesn't even offer to Shias): Convert  (to my extremist religion) or die.

In fact, Robertson thinks it's too late even for conversion. "That time has come and gone," he says.

For Robertson, there's no place in the world for moral reasoning, only for winning the war over which god is the bigger murderous asshole. And he thinks Satan is the problem!

Of course, Sean Hannity, handmaiden to genocide, is just fine with all this.

Killing the golden goose

Democrats have gotten pretty good at raising small dollar contributions via email. This will not last because they are drowning their supporters in spam.

Especially at the end of every reporting period, I get scores of emails from people I'd like to contribute to - and a few from Democrats I won't contribute to, such as John Tierney, unless he found himself in the unlikely position of being vote 218 for Nancy Pelosi as Speaker. Then, I suppose I could hold my nose. Till it bled.

Tierney's emailing me daily, as if I were an ardent supporter whose absence from his list of contributors must be an oversight - or I'm a slacker who needs a reminder to change my underwear. When did it become permissible to spread email addresses to everyone?

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee was emailing me on multiple addresses, demanding to know why I haven't renewed my "membership." The day I got five separate emails on each address, I started unsubscribing, and I let them know in no uncertain terms why:

I'm tired of the insulting and manipulative spam. You're destroying a potent Democratic advantage by promiscuously sharing my addresses. Stop it! I get 50 emails per day, and the ones that cast me as a deadbeat piss me the hell off.

The DCCC took me mostly off their list. But I suddenly found myself subscribed to the Democratic Majority PAC's list. It's not as frequent, but I'm not mollified.

Because of this abuse, more and more contributors who can't give to everyone (e.g. me), are going to opt out.

Maybe they're trying to cull their lists. As if.

Really, I think their email contractors are abusing the lists because that's where their incentives lie. If so, Democrats need to learn to write better contracts - or pull their operations back in house.

The alternative: Republicans will still have the Koch brothers and a long line of oligarchs. What will the Dems still have?

Heroes without guns

We Americans privilege our warriors with the label hero. Maybe this follows the long course of Western civilization from the ancient Greeks to Rome's dominating (yes, and pacifying) violence, through the English (never mind the costume dramas of Masterpiece Theatre and the BBC) and the Celts. Maybe it's just ours, born of prison colonies and the scapegrace sorts who needed a fresh start, rather than the devout Pilgrims and their dream of a the city on the hill. But they executed Quakers.

America is a martial, violent culture. In our nation's history, we've gone to war over and over again, so often that it seems to be a cultural necessity. Instead of one night a year for unpunished mayhem, as in The Purge, we think we need a war every few years as catharsis against the savage violence that lives inside us all - or all men, anyway.

Digression: A Greek connection I hadn't known, crypteia, precedent it seems for the killing of Michael Brown. Is my liberal problem that I'm searching for Athens in Sparta? At least, I live in the Athens of America.

Back to heroism...

Heroes speak to me. To be valiant, to be stalwart, to be known as a stand-up guy, these are all in the myths I want to live.

This doesn't require a gun. The New York Times today reports on heroes in the so far losing fight against ebola in West Africa. 

Ms. Sellu, the deputy nurse matron, is a rare survivor who never stopped toiling at the government hospital here, Sierra Leone’s biggest death trap for the virus during the dark months of June and July. Hers is a select club, consisting of perhaps three women on the original Ebola nursing staff who did not become infected, who watched their colleagues die, and who are still carrying on.

“There is a need for me to be around,” said Ms. Sellu, 42, who oversees the Ebola nurses. “I am a senior. All the junior nurses look up to me.” If she left, she said, “the whole thing would collapse.”

These health workers have little to no effective support from their own communities, from their governments, or from the world at large. There are a few western aid agencies, some religious, some secular.

Here at home in America, we celebrate the survival of our fellow Americans. But there's no groundswell of support to save the thousands of Africans who are infected or will be. Why is it that we can't see them as just as human as we are?

Why, too, does a Facebook friend of mine post support for Darren Wilson, who killed Michael Brown? What lack of human sympathy leaves behind only tribal sympathy?

More stupid shit

Apparently, I provide tag lines to the White House.

Apparently, Hillary Clinton believes in magic, at least for electoral purposes.

This is what Clinton said about Obama’s slogan: “Great nations need organizing principles, and ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle.”

No, it's not an organizing principle.  It's a minimum standard.  One we've been regularly fucking up for the better part of three and a half decades.

The real Massholes

They're going to fight for their right to make you sick.

“Who does the EPA think they are to tell us what we can and can’t do with our vehicles?” Wedge said.

The vast majority listen to Rush, I'd guess.

Next up, shitting in the public water supply.

Lame response to Elizabeth Warren on banksters

The criminal conviction of Credit Suisse is long overdue. But it's a lame sop to Elizabeth Warren, not a significant ramp-up in enforcement.

For Credit Suisse, other than the fines and the reputational stain of being a felon, the implications are likely to be limited. The bank may lose some clients but is otherwise expected to survive largely unscathed. [Emphasis added]

Modern investment banking is tantamount to organized crime.

• Cream profits off the top by selling fraudulent securities and then betting against their customers in the market. Check. 
• Launder billions for drug cartels. Check. 
• Criminally seize properties without title using forged documentation and perjury. Check. 
• Manipulate the LIBOR to steal from borrowers. Check. 
• Do business with outlaw regimes internationally. Check. 
• Crash the economy and through political influence take no haircut at all. Check.

The banksters are not going to change their racket until they feel the hot breath of the law on their well-groomed necks. Eric Holder only wants us to think he's breathing on them so that we stop breathing on him. He's not trying to change the banking racket.

This "industry" probably shouldn't be burned to the ground and started over. The consequences of killing available credit for conscientious citizens and their value-creating enterprises would be too dire.

But investment banking as a whole should be seized, its management imprisoned, and each institution's continued existence made contingent upon its ability to operate without criminality.

Does this sound radical? It should. We have got to cut this cancer of criminal greed out of our economy before it kills us.