Worst Americans: Melania Trump

Posted on July 6, 2017 by The Regular Jane

BULLYING HAS EXISTED since David faced off against Goliath in ancient times, and it continues to happen in schools, workplaces, and through social media every day in 2017. Readers might wonder what has been done to eradicate bullying in schools, and the answer is that substantial anti-bullying programs have been implemented in every school district in this country. The instances of bullying have decreased within this realm, but where can the bullies go when they need to scratch their sociopathic itch? To the internet, of course.

The online atmosphere that so many of us have flocked to in droves to let our voices be heard, to communicate behind the shield and protection of anonymity with others about anything and everything, has also seen a substantial uptick bullying, and why not? The internet provides a whole new realm from which to bully and terrorize the lives of anyone bullies may choose. As within our schools, there are protections put in place to prevent online bullying, personal attacks, threatening behavior, etc., in arenas such as Twitter, et. al. But is enough being done to eradicate online bullying? In a word, no.

Way back on November 3, 2016, which seems like eons ago, Melania Trump, the wife of then Republican candidate Donald J. Trump, gave a speech, one of less than a handful of speeches the notoriously private Mrs. Trump delivered since her husband won the nomination of his party. The topic of Melania’s speech, and her primary focus should she become First Lady, was online bullying. Her aim was going to be to end the online bullying of children, and she stated that she wanted to end attacks that she believed had become “too mean” and included insults that attacked an individual’s “looks and intelligence.” She went on to say, “And it is absolutely unacceptable when it [bullying] is done by someone with no name hiding on the internet.”

Immediately, the press, along with Regular Joe Americans everywhere, started wondering how this focus of the potential First Lady’s was going to work considering how bombastic, polarizing, and, for lack of a better word, bullying her husband’s online behavior had become. Once Americans voted and Trump won the Oval, we all waited to see what Melania would do to further her anti-bullying platform.

It is now July 6, 2017 and Trump’s been in office for nearly six months, remains incredibly polarizing if not more so, and his online bullying has only increased. This past week he lashed out at the co-hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”, referring to Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski’s intelligence and looks, in such derogatory terms as “Psycho Joe” and “Low IQ Crazy Mika.” While many on Capitol Hill condemned the tweets, Melania remained silent.

Unfortunately, when her husband lashes out at anyone who voices an opinion that differs from his in his now-expected, viscerally-repugnant manner, Melania continues to remain silent, or she opts to further increase the damage by refuting the bullied parties’ claims, thereby propping up Trump’s inflammatory nonsense. She does nothing to rein in her caustic husband, she doesn’t speak out against him or to offer support to those he decimates. Complacency is no excuse to ignore despicable behavior, even when that behavior comes from one’s spouse. Not only is she a liar, she just stands by and watches it happen. She is a very poor role model for her young son, Barron, as well as for little girls across America and the world who look at her and see a beautiful lady they want to be like, and this is why Melania Trump is the worst person in America.

 

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Worst Americans: Jared Kushner

Posted on July 5, 2017 by Sean Beaudoin

Q: What do you get when you mix Christopher Robin, Patrick Bateman, and a historic nepotism scandal into a martini shaker with six olives?

A: The Worst Billy Joel song ever: “Just the Way You Are, Unelected And With Zero Political Legitimacy.”

Currently under investigation, or at least lawyered up (with no legal restrictions and continued full access to classified briefings), Jared Kushner may be the least interesting Person of Interest in the annals of governmental corruption. How does it come to pass in a modern democracy that a man whose presence tends to evoke words like novice, fey, neophyte, and tyro can acquire enormous power by marrying into the most successful grifter family in human history, and while totally unqualified and with zero vetting, is allowed to make policy recommendations that affect the lives of millions of Americans? Just as under the yoke of the late Reagan years, when Ron was sinking into an Alzheimic state and Nancy was making most of the decisions with the help of her astrologer Jeanne Smart, the free world is at this very moment being shaped by an inexperienced pischer for whom not a single vote was cast.

Q: What is Kompromat?

A: Jared Kushner’s new cut-rate dry cleaning chain.

Kushner failed to disclose meetings and phone calls with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak on his SF-86 form. “Knowingly falsifying or concealing information” on the SF-86, the standard security clearance form signed by senior White House personnel, carries a felony charge. Also, during the presidential transition, Kushner met with the head of a Russian bank under U.S. sanctions, which he also failed to disclose on his form. His explanation for the purpose of the meetings, as well as topics discussed, conflict with what both Russia and the White House say. But even if it were a matter of “doing business” as he claims, despite the fact that Donald Trump has repeatedly said his has “No business deals. None” with Russia, it would still be illegal to make deals with a bank currently under U.S. sanctions.

If Steve Bannon is Rasputin, a man fully capable of surviving being poisoned, lit on fire, and then thrown into the frozen Volga, Kushner is Alex Keaton from Family Ties, except without the intellect, stature, or acting chops. In fact, Kushner’s one verifiable talent may be to remain a cipher within the most chaotic, dysfunctional administration in history. He’s a man with 48k Twitter followers, but hasn’t posted a single time. And why should he, when his father-in-law drives 62% of all traffic with one ludicrous and demonstrably false statement after another? Not since Lewis “Scooter” Libby has one man combined so much power with so little persona, and also a voice that registers high enough in the soprano range that it must be muted while outdoors to keep every dog within a six mile radius from howling in pain.

Q: If Wes Anderson wrote a quirky, off-beat movie about what it’s like having even less gravitas than Wes Anderson, would Jared Kushner be a lock for the role?

A: Some have speculated that Kushner’s much-publicized Afghanistan “fact-finding mission” was actually an excuse to do advance location scouting for The Life Aquatic With Mullah Omar.

In a December meeting with Kislyak, Kushner reportedly discussed the possibility of setting up a secret and secure communications channel between Trump’s transition team and the Kremlin, using Russian diplomatic facilities in an apparent move to shield their discussions from monitoring. Kushner has claimed these actions were a matter of “naivete”, although ex-DIA head Michael Flynn was present. If Christopher Robin thought that using Russian spy equipment to create a secret back-channel to Russian bankers, or even Putin, while subverting American Intelligence agencies was fine because Mike Flynn said so (or at least failed to object to in fluent Russian) he’s even more of terrifyingly credulous than his own estimation of himself.

Q: I heard Jared Kushner has a new rom-com political thriller on F/X.

A: Yup, it’s called I Was A Teenaged Russian Mole Married To A Woman Named Ivanka And No One Noticed!

There is a cool, airless world in which Kushner’s idea of Kushner exists, where poor people drown in Randian dictums and really hard-working prep sch0ol boyz pull themselves up by their Ivanka bootstraps in order to prove their superior DNA by making real estate moves that are forward-thinking and even audacious. With someone else’s money.

If George Bush was born on third and thought he hit a triple, and Donald Trump was born on W. 53rd and thought he groped a stripper, Kushner married his way onto third base and started evicting people from distressed properties bought for pennies on the Kruggerand. In Kushner’s spare time he’s been tasked with solving the Israel/Palestine crisis, the opioid epidemic, and handling relations with both China and Mexico. While this would seem an unrealistic diplomatic and policy caseload for every fictional “senior advisor” in movie and television history combined, it’s apparently not too hubristic for The Kush to strap on a flak jacket and dig into. Hell, it’s only been half a year and he’s already managed treason, perjury, and a full FBI investigation, so why not be ambitious?

Q: Say String Theory is true. In an alternate universe where this country wasn’t such a divided mess, and our political system hopelessly fractured, what would Jared Kushner be doing?

A: Ten years hard labor as a cabana boy at the Fiji Sandals. Either that, or everyone’s favorite tier puppy in Leavenworth.

 

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Worst Americans: Paul Ryan is a Pre-existing Condition

Posted on July 4, 2017 by Litsa Dremousis

AS I WRITE THIS, Donald Trump has occupied the Oval Office for 134 days, each of which has resembled Watergate on meth, tequila, and Pop Rocks. And said days feel longer than that funeral you attended for the neighbor you didn’t really like in the first place. Trump’s venality is such it shatters the space time continuum and, six and a half months after the election, his entire presidency is a lucid fucking nightmare.

So, each pencil-chewing halfwit who insisted, “You’ve got to give him a chance!”, how’s that working out for you?

I hope you breathe smoke and shit fire for eternity.

But just as Trump insists on two scoops of ice cream for dessert, I reserve an additional scoop of contempt for Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, Wisconsin’s sentient red Solo cup who knowingly and willfully helped usher in this madness. That he slathers his hair in what looks like Astroglide is, for our purposes today, beside the point.

In recent months, myriad psychologists and psychiatrists have broken the so-called “Goldwater Rule” that prohibits members of their professions from diagnosing a public figure they don’t treat. The reason they violate this portion of the American Psychiatric Association’s Code of Ethics and risk legal repercussions? The “duty to warn” clause, which legally binds them to call the authorities if they reasonably assess a person is an imminent danger to themselves or others. They’ve put forth different hypotheses regarding Trump’s mental health, but they agree it’s dangerously impaired. Everywhere from the New York Times to the Washington Post to Vox, they’re stating unambiguously: he’s completely fucking nuts. Which doesn’t lessen or excuse his venality, of course, but seems to augment it.

But here’s the thing: they don’t say it about Paul Ryan. Why? Because Ryan is sane. Ryan knows right from wrong. Ryan isn’t a paranoid, thrice-divorced sexual assailant who “jokes” about banging his daughter and compares the intelligence community’s treatment of him to the Nazi’s slaughter of Jews.

Which, in a roundabout way, MAKES PAUL RYAN SO MUCH WORSE.

I firmly believe that Ryan knows Trump is a monster. He just doesn’t care, because he wanted to be Speaker of the House with a Republican POTUS. So, when Trump impugned the professionalism of a Mexican-American judge during the campaign? Ryan called it “a textbook racist statement,” but didn’t withdraw his support. When the now infamous “pussy-grabbing” tape broke? Ryan blathered on about being appalled or some shit, but continued to endorse Trump. As the bearer of a beav, I can attest this isn’t something a man does when he actually values the health and safety of women. And when Trump became the first major party candidate in our nation’s history to mock the disabled? Ryan pitifully whimpered, “Quit it!” and sat there with his thumbs up his ass.

During the interminably long Election 2016, Ryan had SO many opportunities to publicly state, “Donald Trump is morally and ethically reprehensible and violates laws with the thought most people give to choosing a sandwich meat. This is wrong, I know it’s wrong, I’m a functioning adult with a moral compass and I’d rather lose my seat than further the rise of this misogynist, racist, homophobic, xenophobic, ableist, rabid miscreant who has never held prior elected office nor given a damn about anyone or anything but himself, his eldest daughter’s rack, and Vladimir Putin’s ego.”

Would it have cost him his job as House Speaker? Probably. But it also would have given ground cover to other Republicans who might want to show spine along  with the dicks they’re so fond of waving. If enough of them had spoken out, perhaps more voters would have understood the enormity of the crisis at stake. And Ryan would have made a fortune on the lecture circuit with his newfound status as moral leader of a bolder, re-branded Republican party. He had absolutely nothing to lose except his selfish grip on power for the sake of power.

As it stands, Trump has pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accord and literally imperiled the life of the planet.

Tomorrow, my friends and I are attending Seattle’s March for Truth, one of dozens of marches nationwide demanding a special prosecutor and a thorough investigation of the Trump’s campaign’s collusion with Russian emissaries.

All of it is as tragic as it was preventable.

As is clear, I loathe Paul Ryan with the force of a meteor shower. I mistakenly thought it’d be cathartic to kick the crap out of him in print.

But it turns out it’s tug-at-your-soul, tear-at-your-heart saddening.

Because with all the words at my disposal, I can never loathe him as much as he’s shown himself to loathe you and me.

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Worst Americans: Cruel DeVos

Posted on July 3, 2017 by Sean Murphy

i.

TRUE STORY. MY WIFE teaches grade school. In addition to the stories I can tell, and the ones my many friends who teach or are married to teachers can tell, during the school year, I hear a new one practically every day.

Here’s one: several teachers noticed that three siblings (third grade and younger) were digging through the garbage at school. Turns out they were looking for food to take home for the weekend since there would not otherwise be enough.

Here’s another: one of my wife’s fifth grade students broke down in class one day, and explained she was having trouble studying for the standardized test—a whole other topic—because she hadn’t eaten and was hungry. A few teachers pitched in to get her fed, and take some snacks home. Turns out her family was homeless and living in a motel.

My wife, a veteran with more than a decade’s experience in public schools, is not easily upset: it’s been her practice for years to keep extra non-perishables in her desk for the kids who can’t concentrate on empty stomachs.

This is not Appalachia, or even the most desperate inner city; it’s a county less than thirty minutes from the nation’s capital (the state of which is itself a never-ending metaphor for all we need know when it comes to equality, opportunity and our collective genius at hurting the most innocent and vulnerable amongst us).

Another story. Several years ago, she noticed one her students hoarding ketchup packets from the cafeteria. He was bringing them home in case there was nothing to eat.

(The Swiftian irony of this last anecdote is one that surely would have Reagan smirking in his grave.)

The worst one? For me, it’s the story of the student who claimed he wasn’t hungry at lunch time. Because he was embarrassed. He didn’t want to admit he had no money. My wife could literally hear his stomach rumbling as he pretended he wasn’t famished the same way Republicans pretend they care about people.

ii.

Never mind Trump. One need look no further than Betsy DeVos to understand the true depravity of the contemporary state of all-things GOP.

(Yes, Trump is the oozing pus from the Id of America’s underbelly, but if there’s any silver lining, it’s that light does expose the rot. Our Toddler-in-Chief has emboldened an element of our society we thought had either fizzled out or at least was content to spew its spleen safely—and anonymously—online. The smart money says this is not a fad or a trend; it’s a virus that’s required centuries to fester and one megalomaniacal half-fascist to bring to a feverish boil. It will, nevertheless, be flushed out and retired to the sewers of our lower frequencies, hopefully forever and sooner than later. Or, even more optimistically, Trump continues to do damage to the “brand” we figured George W. Bush had so indelibly done, and our next contender can do what Obama never had the heart or stomach to bother with: making a compelling case for Democratic politics with a heavy side dish of populism. As we know, first the Tea Party, and then The Donald wormed into the post-2008 vacuum and stole all the oxygen, which halfway explains why we’re where we are, today.)

But to fully understand the next-level sociopathy of our present administration, we must look at DeVos. Unqualified? Duh. Ignorant? Yes. Not only wealthy, but married to the King of Pyramid schemes that prey upon the poor and gullible? Even Dickens at his most heavy-handed would throw this away as clichéd opportunism. But there it is; only in America can we have and know so much and insist on making it worse for everyone but the .01%

iii.

Did you catch any footage of DeVos’s hearing? If you have a strong stomach, you should, especially if you think the criticism of her has been over the top.

How about the footage of her speed-walking away from a group of protestors?

These fanatics have been insulated by their money and blissful ignorance so long they’re flummoxed (and genuinely frightened) by the slightest resistance. And all of them (look at ongoing embarrassment of Republicans scurrying away from their own town halls, or The King of the Cowardly Cretins, Mitch McConnell, doing everything possible to avoid any public scrutiny of his healthcare bill) have no means to debate or defend themselves when challenged. Classic bullies.

Take DeVos’s brief confrontation with some citizens who dared oppose her, on principle. What an opportunity: she was on camera and could have totally owned the moment, engaged these people in conversation and made them look unreasonable if they shouted her down. Instead, she retreated like the rat she is. (By the way, this isn’t just normal political resistance from one party to another; that Trump even appointed her—and she accepted the gig—is an act of aggression, a calculated outrage to dismantle the very department she’s long had her sights on, and intended to demoralize opponents.)

iv.

How is any of this different from the way Republicans have rolled since the day Reagan declared government our enemy? It’s pretty much the same, only more so. And that’s where things have crossed all lines of normalcy and decency. Circa 2017, it’s no longer sufficient to merely reinforce the wealthiest and most powerful; the GOP, with virtually no internal dissension, is on the public record (with votes, statements and, importantly, no comments to the contrary) advocating policy that literally takes away the (drastically underfunded) funds from those with the least, and disguise it as “choice”. Indeed, in another moment that Dickens, Orwell and Kafka, tag-teaming with three typewriters and ten bottles of tequila, couldn’t muster the imagination to invent, DeVos invoked segregated schools as a testament to the empowering benefits of “choice”. (No, seriously.)

Extolling the alleged virtues of the free market, no matter what contrary evidence accrued, mostly worked wonders for the Republican party these last few decades. We now are at a point where they’re acting, in concert, to raid the already paltry provisions of the disenfranchised. And to what end? Funding infrastructure or some national emergency? Of course not. Exactly what they’re after is simple, and truly staggering: to ensure that those born with every advantage will have still more opportunity and money. Revolting in the extreme.

But therein lies an opportunity. Audacity of this level is so breathtaking it’s negligent to become cynical; unacceptable to be indifferent. We’re at a threshold moment, where otherwise apathetic spectators must determine if they are, at long last, disgusted with the direction we’re headed. Doing nothing, at this point, is abetting evil. (And this includes not just going toe-to-toe with the True Believers across the aisle—many of whom, of course, stand to be most drastically impacted by all these reverse Robin Hood policies—but the pampered and recalcitrant nitwits who still insist Hillary Clinton was, at best, the lesser of two evils, or remain third party or bust when we see, daily, the disparity between what Democrats and Republicans do, when in power.) Advice: frame an argument, for once, that puts liberals on the right side of Scripture (what a concept!) and put the stakes in stark relief: it’s no longer a shell game, no more talk of trickle down; this is straight-up thievery, taking from those with the least. I think Jesus said a thing or two about this.

Finally, it’s tempting, even irresistible, to catalog the myriad flaws, hypocrisies, moral failures and rank opportunism that has virtually defined DeVos’s existence. But it’s more effective to look at her as the caricature she is. She represents the faceless figure epitomizing the worst Republican impulses, all untethered by our incurious, incompetent Tweeter-in-Chief. Never mind him, or her, and remember it’s not who she is, but what she represents. DeVos, and her merry band of nihilists, are the boot in the face Orwell warned us about. That is what must be resisted, mocked, defeated.

A final story. One of my wife’s friends, who teaches high school, had a student who was arrested for shoplifting. It turns out he had been doing this from a young age. He was stealing food. To eat.

Think of this kid, and all the other ones, especially the ones with increasingly fewer advocates who can defend or assist them.

Rage against this Machine.

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Germs, Guns & Trumpcare: With Cruel Health Bill, GOP is Playing with Fire

Posted on June 23, 2017 by Greg Olear

IF THE “HEALTHCARE” BILL PASSES—I refer to the $800,000,000,000 tax cut for the rich concocted by a clutch of decrepit white men in the Senate basement with all the transparency of the Manhattan Project—the Republicans will have let a particularly noxious genie out of the bottle. It’s one thing to cut services that GOP core voters hate anyway to save some coin for the wealthy and corporations; quite another to, in effect, condemn millions of people to bankruptcy and death to achieve the same result. I don’t think Mitch McConnell and his minions realize how ugly this could get.

In the time between writing the first and second drafts of this piece, a disgruntled man translated his political grievances into actual violence, gunning down a member of Congress. The shooter, as the conservative press is so keen to point out, is a member of the “alt-left.” The Congressman he attempted to kill, Steve Scalise, is a hard-right Republican—a Second Amendment purist who once described himself as “David Duke without the baggage.” I can’t pretend to know what went on in the head of James Hodgkinson, who is certainly no hero, but the Congressman’s racist, homophobic policy positions likely made Scalise a target.

Republicans appeared shocked that this tragedy happened—Paul Ryan actually demonstrated empathy, an emotion I did not think him capable of feeling—but really, if you sow hate, you should not be shocked when hate is reaped. The GOP is terrified of dissent. Its president vets who attends his rallies. Its members of Congress refuse to hold town halls. Its Senate majority leader instructed Capitol police to remove peaceful protesters in wheelchairs. When the usual avenues for protest are closed off, then what? Do they really think the people will give up and go home?

To the contrary: if the Senate passes this egregious tax break for the wealthy/corporations masquerading as a healthcare bill—and it’s increasingly, alarmingly likely that it will—James Hodgkinson may well become, unfortunately, not a deranged lone wolf but a template for a desperate form of last-resort resistance: the John Brown of the 21st century.

This man wants you to die.

Let’s say you live in Kentucky. You’re a hard-line Republican and an avid Trump supporter. You are an NRA member and you own a lot of firearms; you have posted to various Facebook pages your insistence that the Second Amendment is there to protect your right to take up arms against a tyrannical government, as the Founders intended. You also have a medical condition that requires expensive medicine that will no longer be adequately covered by the new Trumpcare system, even though Trump and his supporters assured you over and over that this would NOT be the case. So you’re basically on death row, and who signed the writ of execution? Your own Senator! A guy you reflexively voted for every six years! If you’re this person, is it in your nature to lie down and die without a fight? If you’re this person, why would you not go after Mitch McConnell? The passage of this legislative abomination, I fear, will create thousands of desperate would-be vigilantes. And the Republicans seem not to realize this, or not to care.

To state the obvious and the obligatory: I do not condone violence. I don’t want anyone to get hurt. I’m not calling for an armed insurgency against the GOP agents of destruction. But Republicans have been in a pathological state of delusion for a long time now. They can convince themselves that Donald Trump is competent, that his cabinet members are exemplary, that Russian collusion and global warming are hoaxes, that Obama is a Kenyan Muslim, that every questionable move made by any GOP member can be explained away by something untoward Bill Clinton once did. But this can only go on for so long. The alternative facts will stop working when the unpaid medical bills, house liens, wage garnishments, and bankruptcy filings tell a different, grimmer tale.

If this bill passes—and brainwashed GOP voters come to understand exactly what was taken away from them, and for what deplorable reason—Republican lawmakers shouldn’t be surprised when their wake-up call takes the lamentably violent form of a hundred James Hodgkinsons, locked and loaded…when the targets on their backs become something other than figurative.

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Beyond Belief: Trump, Treason & the Failure of Imagination

Posted on June 15, 2017 by Greg Olear

~1~

IT WAS NEVER ABOUT winning. It was always about laundering dirty Russian rubles, taking advantage of the opaque, byzantine, and big-money nature of the corrupt American campaign finance system, while also lining the coffers of Donald J. Trump—a partnership of enormous mutual benefit.

Sure, the benefits of a Trump Administration to Vladimir Putin are gargantuan, everything from the erosion of Western democracy to his grinning jackals gaining access to the Oval Office. But Make America Great Again was a Mafia money-laundering operation, simple and plain. That Moscow’s man is now in the Oval Office is just icing on the Kremlin’s kekc.

This sage statement sums it up: “A lot of Trump’s actions are easier to understand if you assume he’s guilty rather than stupid.”

Why is all of this so hard for us to imagine?

 

~2~

Trump exists to enrich himself. He knows no other way. He’s a billionaire who squeezed his own son’s children’s cancer charity for a few extra kopecks, even though he doesn’t need the money. Why would a piece of shit like that not lift a few measly sanctions for a far loftier sum?

A vast segment of the population has no difficulty believing that Hillary Clinton was a key figure in a ring of pedophiles headquartered in the basement of a DC pizzeria that doesn’t have a basement, and yet cannot grasp the well-documented fact that the Trumps are a family of grifters.

 

~3~

Manafort, Flynn, Kushner, Trump: what the Big Four have in common is greed. Years from now, when the convictions are in, when David Fahrenthold is on the All the Kremlin’s Men book tour, it will be fascinating to total up all the money that changed hands in Putin-a-lago, to see just how big, or rather how little, the price tag was on the sale of American democracy.

 

~4~

This is a failure of imagination.

A failure by the politicians, especially the ones running against Trump in the primaries, and the ones who now bow to him in Congress, to see him for who he really is.

A failure by the media, who continue to breathlessly cover Ivanka and Melania as if their beauty inures them from the family venality, while ignoring the bigger picture.

A failure by all of us, who could not conceive of an act of treason so egregious as the one perpetrated by Trump and his cronies.

Dirty Russian money.

~5~

The “golden shower” tape won’t bring him down. Neither will a video of Trump engaging in sexual activity with underaged Russian prostitutes. His supporters condoned his history of sexual assault. The Mike Cernovichs of the world will be all, “Look at how hot those girls are!” and their respect for Trump will only increase.

Trump cares about the sex tapes not because of the perverse activities on display, but rather because they will confirm what Graydon Carter long ago implied: that short fingers are indicative of other below-average-sized anatomical appendages.

Hitler had a tiny penis, too.

 

~6~

What will bring him down is the scope of his actual crimes. His conflicts of interest enriching him while the rest of us suffer under his ruthless policies. His disgraceful quid pro quo with Putin, and his ham-fisted attempts to conceal it.

He sold out the office for money. He dismantled the social safety net, or is trying to, for cash. There’s no larger purpose here, just pure unadulterated greed.

The Big Four, along with his three deplorable children, profit with him. The other collaborators got involved at some point, maybe for patriotic reasons initially, and now find themselves caught in a trap, they can’t get out, because they’re all colludin’ baby.

 

~7~

A fringe bigot from Alabama latches himself onto the Trump Train, because why not, maybe the guy will let him be attorney general and give him free reign to complete his life’s work of shitting on POC, and the next thing he knows, he’s hobnobbing with Russian spies, he’s having conversations about sanctions being lifted, he’s begging off questions from uppity Kamala Harris because they make him clutch-my-pearls nervous.

Putin has kompromat on all of them to varying degrees. Devin Nunes? Check. Paul Ryan? Check. Mitch McConnell? Check. When the dust settles and the smoke clears from Hurricane Mueller, all that will remain of the Trump administration will be Mad Dog Mattis and a box of remaindered copies of The Art of the Deal.

Campaign finance is dull as dirt, but that’s where the true crimes were committed.

 

~8~

This is a failure of imagination.

A failure by the “alt-left,” epitomized by purity-insisters like Susan Sarandon, who decreed that Trump was preferable to Hillary Clinton, and the self-righteous Bernie Bros.

A failure by anyone who voted for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson, or anyone who stayed home on November 8 because they didn’t like either candidate.

A failure by those who voted for Trump, who believed, despite all evidence to the contrary, that he was a great businessman, a smart leader, a drainer of swamps, a killer of DC corruption, all of the noise, none of it true, none of it squaring with everything we knew about the guy going in, but hey, he looks like an alpha male on TV and he’s kind of funny and Hillary is a c-word, so…

 

~9~

We still don’t see the swastikas on the wall, even as the Masha Gessens and Sarah Kendziors and Garry Kasparovs shout AUTOCRACY from the rooftops like so many Cassandras.

We are this close from devolving into a Fascist dictatorship. How close? Trump-firing-Mueller-and-the-GOP-allowing-it close.

~10~

This is a failure of imagination.

A failure by Obama, who sat on his hands for a year and did nothing while Putin and the GOP laid waste to the American experiment.

He chilled and let McConnell block Merrick Garland, and we’re stuck with the Draconian Gorsuch for the next 40 years. He did this because he thought Hillary would prevail.

He did not speak out against the Russian attacks on the election. He did not alert us to the severity of the problem. He was afraid that doing so would be interpreted as a political move. He didn’t want to appear partisan. He held his tongue because he thought Hillary would prevail.

He did not speak out against Trump forcefully enough. He did not fight fire with fire. They went low, and Obama went high…so high, people stopped paying attention. He held his tongue because he thought Hillary would prevail.

He did not investigate the election, even though the results were clearly contaminated by Russian interference. He wanted to ensure a good election. He failed.

He did not establish a special counsel in July, or November, or in January, on his way out the door, ffs. This last can’t even be blamed on thinking Hillary would win, because Hillary had already lost. She lost the same way the US basketball team lost the gold medal in the 1972 Olympics, because the Russians cheated, but she still lost.

He has been achingly silent since. It is unseemly to criticize, after all. Unbecoming a former president (note: Vicente Fox did not get this memo). He bows to this quaint convention, as if Trump is Reagan to his Carter, Obama to his Bush. As if this were normal.

This is not normal.

Obama wanted to last eight years without scandal. And so he did. But so what? The worst threat to our republic since 1860 is orders of magnitude worse than if, say, we’d caught him in bed with Scar-Jo.

 

~11~

Fake news is a thing because we allow it to be. We seek out narratives we want to believe, because they confirm our own half-baked biases.

This happens on the left as well as the right.

Bernie Sanders sells snake oil, same as Trump. We just like his brand of snake oil better.

We need to turn off the TV and read. Hard news and op-eds, on all sides, which respectable outfits do their best to present. It’s not that difficult, if one has an internet connection, to know which way the wind blows.

 

~12~

We would rather tear it all down than allow the accomplishments of a black man to stand.

We would rather tear it all down than let a brilliant, overqualified woman run the country.

 

~13~

This will keep happening until the voting system is repaired. The Electoral College abolished. Congressional districts un-gerrymandered. Senate seats based on population to some extent. Paper ballots everywhere, for reliable recounts.

It’s not hard. It’s also not sexy. And none of the politicians want to make the changes necessary. When Trump goes down, if we can forestall our descent into autocracy, this must be the #1 agenda item.

 

~14~

If there were only paper ballots and printed newspapers, and the KGB [1. Yeah, I know it’s called the FSB now, but KGB has more impact here]secretly broke into the polling places and newsrooms and physically altered ballots, physically changed layouts to promote wrong counts and fake news, if it were physical and not virtual, would we not take it more seriously?

What happened is no different.

If someone hacks into your online bank and transfers money to a fishy Cypriot bank, your money is gone, sure as if the KGB broke into your house and stole bricks of cash from under your mattress.

Failure of the imagination.

 

~15~

This is a failure of the imagination.

We cannot process the fact that the President of the United States is a criminal, a lesser Russian mob boss.

The sooner we can all collectively do so, the sooner this national nightmare will be over.

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Verse Comes to Worst: 9 Very Short Poems About Trump/Russia Collaborators

Posted on June 5, 2017 by Billy The Poet

1. AMBASSADOR KISLYAK
The Russian with a thousand chins
Turns the Manaforts and Flynns.
Trump deflects, and Spicer spins,
And we all lose, and Putin wins.

2. ATTORNEY GENERAL
Sessions: Nazi Keebler elf,
A nobler man would kill himself.
Bigotry is one big reason.
An even bigger one is treason.

3. CAMPAIGN CHAIRMAN
Manafort, O Manafort,
O vile dictators’ chum,
You are as foul as Voldemort,
Your daughters think you’re scum.

4. SON-IN-LAW
Jared, Jared, scumlord prince,
Your mere existence makes me wince,
Perhaps Trump set you up to fail,
But you will join your dad in jail.

5. PERSONAL ATTORNEY
Michael Cohen, where you goin’?
……………………Prague?
Michael Cohen, you be knowin’,
The tail wags the dog.

6. DISGRACED NATSEC ADVISER
Mike Flynn! Mike Flynn! You sold us out
To the Russians and the Turks!
Mike Flynn! Mike Flynn! You sold us out
To the autocratic jerks.
Is treason what Trump meant by “winning?”
Let’s call life in prison “Flynning.”

7. SALTY OLD ATTACK DOG
Roger Stone, who fucks the rats,
And sports the ugly Nixon tats,
From thou collusion basely stems,
Through Guccifer 2.0 DMs.

8. CHAMPAGNE POPSICLE SUCKER
Ivanka cares about the earth.
That’s what Ivanka said.
Ivanka had one job to do.
Ivanka crapped the bed.
Ivanka seems like she’s so nice,
Ivanka teems with poise,
Ivanka’s just as odious
As The Donald’s boys.

9. PRESS SECRETARY
Sean Spicer:
Be nicer!

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