Archives for January 2017

After only one week in office, the United States is on the brink of a Constitutional crisis. Trump’s string of executive orders have been so poorly thought out, so poorly drafted and so poorly vetted that many fly in the face of existing law and the Constitution.

But in a great democracy, people have the ultimate political power. Demonstrations against Trump and his band of alt-right cohorts are now a daily occurrence. Even some Trump voters who urged he be given a chance to govern are marching.

The new President has shown his hand and it is a loser. Trump has broken the record for the amount of time it has taken for the majority of Americans to disapprove of their president.

According to a Gallup poll, it has taken just eight days for Trump to gain a majority disapproval rating, with 51 per cent of Americans saying they disapproved of the President on 28 January 2016.

Democrats, and even some Republicans, are seeing the current occupant of the Oval Office, and his “amateur hour” way of wielding power, as a national security, and global, threat.

Conservative apologist, David Brooks, writes in today’s New York Times how many Republican members of Congress have made a Faustian bargain with Donald Trump.

“They don’t particularly admire him as a man,” writes Brooks. “They don’t trust him as an administrator, they don’t agree with him on major issues, but they respect the grip he has on their voters, they hope he’ll sign their legislation and they certainly don’t want to be seen siding with the inflamed progressives or the hyperventilating media.”

Brooks goes on to excoriate Republicans for putting party ahead of country… as if this is something new!

“The deal they’ve struck with the devil comes at too high a price. It really will cost them their soul,” Brooks goes on to say.

The coward Brooks doesn’t actually come out and say this but he implies that Trump in the White House is an “existential” threat and that, for the sake of the country and the world, Trump must go.

As Republicans control all levers of power in Washington D. C., it will take a brave Republican or two to denounce what is now being called “Trumpism” … a doctrine of hate promoting extreme nationalism, anti-globalization, xenophobia, and Islamophobia.

History, no doubt,  would look favorably upon any patriotic Republican with the backbone to forcefully come out against Trump by uttering the “I” word … impeachment.

Any takers?

Photo | politico.com

Donald Trump may go down in history as the “Burger King President.” There just isn’t any whopper he will not serve.

Most recently, Trump has claimed the media misrepresented the size of the crowd at his inauguration. He even had his press secretary, Sean Spicer, make a fool of himself by saying, with a straight face, “This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period — both in person and around the globe.”

Trump is now also questioning the fact that he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 million. According to our “Burger King President,” his shortfall was due to voter fraud, more precisely, be believes between three million and five million unauthorized immigrants voted for Clinton.

But not all Trump whoppers are out-and-out lies. Some are just childish, vainful boasts.

During the presidential campaign, Trump claimed he knew more about ISIS than the generals. He stroked his ego by saying all of the women on The Apprentice flirted with him. He bragged about his high IQ. He claimed his fingers are long and beautiful. He blew his own horn by repeating he is very, very, very rich … to the tune of $10 billion.

But perhaps his greatest boast, made at the start of his presidential campaign, was that he “could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue, shoot somebody,” and he wouldn’t lose any voters.

Everyone in the media laughed and ripped apart the 70-year-old man-child for saying something so completely nuts and outrageous.

In retrospect, Trump was partially correct about his seemingly inane bravado.

There is a certain segment of Americans (perhaps 25%) who will believe, as gospel, whatever comes out of Trump’s mouth. They will follow their leader to wherever he takes them. They will not believe their own eyes and ears. They will brand anyone who tries to disparage their beloved… “the enemy.”

Trump, to this group of loyalists, is less a president than a cult leader. And as with any such leader, Jim Jones of the Peoples Temple comes to mind, his followers will drink the Kool-Aid knowing full well it is laced with cyanide.

Logic, reason or even common sense will not get through to Trump’s cult followers. Unfortunately, for everyone else, their demented supreme commander is also the leader of the free world.

Photo | youtube.com

Make no mistake about it. The Trump administration just fired the first official salvo of a new American war. No, it’s not some sappy metaphorical war like the one on poverty, drugs or crime. This is a real war … on reality.

Of course, the signs that Trump would wage such a battle once in the White House were evident throughout his campaign. He denied being in favor of the Iraq War even though clear evidence showed otherwise. He denied mocking a disabled journalist even though there is actual video of him doing so.

Now we have Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer, in his first press briefing, disseminating what can only be described as an easily provable, eminently verifiable, out-and-out lie.

“This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe,” claimed the new White House press secretary yesterday.

It doesn’t matter that evidence exists to prove his statement false. Visual proof shows Trump’s crowd was about one-third the size of the group that gathered for Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration.

Defending Spicer on NBC’s Meet The Press today, Kellyanne Conway snapped at host Chuck Todd for having the nerve to call Spicer’s statement a “falsehood.” She preferred calling his words a presentation of “alternative facts.”

To Todd’s credit, he hammered Conway with “alternative facts are not facts. They are falsehoods.”

If we Americans are to defeat Trump and his dangerous, nazi-like war on reality, we need more Chuck Todd’s in the world.

But unlike Todd’s characterization of Spicer’s statement as a “falsehood,” we need to use a more basic, effective and simpler word.

When Trump or his surrogates do not offer up the truth, our press cannot pussyfoot by using words like misstatement, distortion, fabrication, untruth or prevarication. They need to call a spade a spade. In this case, they need to tell us what we just heard or read was a shameless, bald-faced LIE.

Photo | ALEX BRANDON/AP