Opinion – Page 4

Trump Isn’t Running Against Biden … He’s Running Against Himself

June 25, 2020 By John DeProspo 2 Comments

Donald Trump’s reelection chances are looking flimsier by the day.

The latest nationwide New York Times/Siena College poll has Biden ahead by 14 points. What’s even worse, the same polling has Trump losing to Biden in many of the crucial swing states … 47%-36% in Michigan, 49%-38% in Wisconsin, 50%-40% in Pennsylvania, 47%-41% in Florida, 48%-41% in Arizona and 49%-40% in North Carolina.

So, Joe Biden is a great candidate, a great campaigner, right?

No, not really. He is pretty much keeping a low profile these days, allowing Trump’s self-destructiveness to keep propelling him forward. And, most likely, Biden will stick to that strategy for a while longer. What’s the saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?”

As Janet Hook and Evan Halper recently wrote in the LA Times, “Voters are not so much upbeat about him [Biden] as they are upset with Trump.”

Though Trump has tried to make the race about Biden and his faults, he has failed miserably. His campaign has already spent tens of millions on attack ads that have fizzled – tying Biden to that Trumpian concoction, “Obamagate” and, of course, to Ukraine funny business.

Finding that the right’s culture war playbook is proving less convincing against a white male target, Fox News is stepping into the breach.

As Matt Gertz writes in the National Memo, “They have started claiming that this fall’s election isn’t really about the relative merits of Trump and Biden. Instead, they have turned Biden — the septuagenarian center-left liberal who capped four decades in public service as Barack Obama’s vice president and speaks movingly about loss, grief, and the need for reconciliation on the campaign trail — into a stand-in for dark forces poised to shatter civilization.”

Here is what Fox’s Tucker Carlson said recently in one of his monologues:

“We should stop pretending that this is an election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. There is no Joe Biden; the Joe Biden you remember no longer exists. The candidate has no independent thoughts of his own. He has no core beliefs. He is empty. He’s a perfect Trojan horse.”

With his chances for November continuing to slide, like on that “slippery” West Point ramp, look for Trump to shake up his reelection team any day now. Of course, this won’t make any difference or change the dynamics of the race. Trump’s problem is Trump.

As William Galston, a Brookings Institute scholar, succinctly put it, “Right now the election is Trump versus Trump, and Trump is losing badly.”

Photo | cnn.com

Sorry Susan, But You Couldn’t Have Been More Wrong

June 2, 2020 By John DeProspo 4 Comments

Explaining why she voted to acquit Trump in his Senate impeachment trial, Maine Senator, Susan Collins, claimed on national TV, with a straight face, it was because the ordeal Trump had been put through made him see the error of his ways.

Speaking to Norah O’Donnell of CBS News, Collins said, “I believe that the president learned from this case. The president has been impeached. That’s a pretty big lesson.” She went on to add, with what anyone with just one functioning brain cell would have told you could never happen, “I believe that he will be more cautious in the future.”

There is no doubt Trump learned a big lesson from his impeachment trial. But not the one Collins had in mind. Donald Trump learned that he can pretty much get away anything, the rule of law and Constitution be damned. He also learned that he had Collins and the rest of the sycophantic Republicans in his back pocket… and they would stay there.

The fact that we, as a country, are in the sorry state we’re in is a direct result of Collins and the other Republican doormats failing to do their Constitutional duty of removing a corrupt and incompetent president from office. At a time when it was necessary to put country over party, Collins and her crew (except for Romney) failed miserably.

So, Susan, the state of chaos we find ourselves in is all on you and your absurd rationale for letting Trump off the hook. It’s also on the heads of every Senate Republican who also voted to acquit.

As our country spirals out of control, with one crisis after another, we find ourselves with the worst, most incompetent, president imaginable; a leader incapable of preforming even basic presidential duties. We are stuck with a man who could care less about doing the right thing because he doesn’t know, nor has he ever known, what the right thing is… except for how it personally affected his interests. We have a president who has abdicated his oath of office. As country, we are flying solo.

Adam Schiff tried to warn you, Susan, and your fellow Republicans.

“We must say enough — enough! He has betrayed our national security, and he will do so again,” Schiff, told the Senate. “He has compromised our elections, and he will do so again. You will not change him. You cannot constrain him. He is who he is. Truth matters little to him. What’s right matters even less, and decency matters not at all.”

If there is any justice left in this world, you, Susan, and your fellow toadies will all be driven from office. Joe Biden will be our new president.

But, of course, only you and 22 of your colleagues are up for reelection in November.

I am sure the majority of Americans, not part of the Trump cult, would be happy with just enough Republican losses in November to give Democrats a majority in the Senate and relegate Moscow Mitch to nothing better than Minority Leader.

But in Trumpian time, five months seems like an eternity. Who knows what new horrors Trump will inflict on our great nation by then? Who knows what our country will even look like?

Photo |REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/pinetreewatch.org

Memorial Day – Opening Up The Shallow End Of The Gene Pool

May 24, 2020 By John DeProspo 2 Comments

Americans have finally gotten back their God-given freedom! After months of being ordered to stay at home and to social distance, it’s time to partay!

Crowds all over the country are packing pools, parks and beaches for the big Memorial Day weekend. No masks, no distancing, no problem! The coronavirus has been defeated, right? And, anyway, wasn’t it all a hoax?

Ignoring public safety guidelines or just misinterpreting the loosening of coronavirus restrictions, we are seeing videos and photos of people eating, drinking and swimming in close proximity. One photo shared by station KSDK in Missouri shows dozens of people crammed on an outdoor patio underneath a sign reading, “Please practice social distancing.”

Unfortunately for those who believe the war against covid-19 has been won (I wonder where they could have gotten such an idea?), some will contract the virus and a few may die. Unfortunately, some will unwittingly spread it to others who will get sick and die.

Many people witnessing this Memorial Day “reopening of America” are angrily shaking their heads in disgust. “Don’t they care about their fellow human beings?” they might be wondering.

The simple answer is “no.” We are perhaps as selfish an America as we’ve ever been. Thanks to the sociopath in the White House and his Republican enablers, we are a deeply divided country.

As Umair Haque writes in Eudaimonia and Co.:

When I look around the world today, it strikes me that we’re living in the age of the sociopath. I don’t just mean that in the technical psychological sense of the word — a certain head of state and his goons come to mind — but first, in a deeper, truer, broader sense. Sociopathic: hostile to the idea, the notion, the purpose of society. You don’t have to look much further than America — the world’s reigning champion of sociopathy — to see all this in action.

What’s truly alarming is that in many of the states where restrictions have been lifted, and people are partying like it’s 1999, the number of coronavirus infections and deaths are still on the rise.

You do not have to be an epidemiologist to know these “congregating masses” will only help spread the virus and push back the day when we can actually get back to some semblance of normal.

You don’t have to be a scientist to know that there is no cure for human stupidity. Yet, for the good of mankind, at least the dim-witted have always had a knack of selecting themselves out of the gene pool. Maybe good old Charlie was on to something?

Photo | lasvegasnightclubs.com

Imagine … If You Can

May 20, 2020 By John DeProspo 2 Comments

Call me crazy, but I detect a renewed sense of optimism in the air. While it’s way too early to break out the champagne, Donald Trump’s days in the White House seem to be numbered. Not only do most national polls have Biden ahead of Trump, but many polls have Biden beating Trump in important battleground states.

It certainly is a good time to at least start imagining what the country might look like on January 20, 2021.

We’ve had such presidents before. We can have one again.

Imagine the end of Trumpism, I wonder if you can, No need for greed or hunger, A brotherhood of man.

Yes, you may call me a dreamer, but I’m surely not the only one.

Photo | kutv.com

And The Barr Just Keeps Getting Lower

May 8, 2020 By John DeProspo 2 Comments

Yesterday Americans got one more example (if they needed one) of how the rule of law no longer exists in the United States. Well, at least for those associated with the Trump crime syndicate.

William Barr has given the admittedly guilty criminal, Michael Flynn, a “get out of jail free card.”

William Barr, who many have labeled Trump’s personal Roy Cohn, has turned the Department of Justice into the Department of Just-us.

We should not be surprised.

We all knew Barr was lying through his teeth when he said, at his confirmation hearing, he would never cave to political pressure from Trump or anyone else, insisting his age and experience freed him to act independently.

And yet some Democrats are stunned. Jerry Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, condemned Barr in a written statement: “The decision to drop the charges against General Flynn is outrageous. The evidence against General Flynn is overwhelming.”

“He pleaded guilty to lying to investigators,” continued Nadler. “And now a politicized and thoroughly corrupt Department of Justice is going to let the President’s crony simply walk away. Americans are right to be furious and worried about the continued erosion of our rule of law.” Nadler predictably called for a new inspector general’s investigation. Good luck with that!

Remember this is the same William Barr who lied to the American people about the contents of the Mueller Report; the same henchman who reversed prosecutors’ sentencing recommendations for convicted Trump confidant Roger Stone; the same toady who refused to investigate Trump’s extortion of Ukraine for political gain; and the same Attorney General who wants us to believe he was “appalled” by the “apparent suicide” of Jeffrey Epstein.

It is probably too late for Barr to be impeached for his unprecedented assaults on the rule of law.

At the very least, Barr needs to be disbarred for transforming the role of our nation’s top law enforcement officer into that of a corrupt consigliere for Trump’s personal interests.

Adam Schiff has been quoted as saying Barr has “weaponized” the Justice Department to go after Trump’s enemies. He could have added, “and to go light on Trump’s criminal associates.”

Let’s not let the coronavirus pandemic distract us from what Barr is doing to undermine the bedrock of American democracy … the rule of law. The man needs to be held accountable in whatever way possible.

Democrats, Republicans, and anyone who believes in the primacy of American justice, should be calling for Barr’s resignation … immediately.

Photo | businessinsider.com

In A Sane World, Trump’s Reelection Would Be Considered Unthinkable

April 28, 2020 By John DeProspo 4 Comments

After one of the biggest governmental screw-ups in the American history, the president overseeing such a fiasco would be run out of office on a rail. He certainly would have no chance at reelection … right?

But of course, we do not live in a sane world, do we?

That Trump could so mishandle the national response to the coronavirus pandemic and set the stage for an economic downturn possibly not seen since the Great Depression, and still win reelection, is mind-boggling.

Then again, in a sane world a pathological liar would never be elected to the most powerful office on Earth in the first place. In a functioning American democracy, a corrupt, incompetent leader would be removed from office as the Constitution prescribes.

Yet here we are, seven months away from the next presidential election and Donald Trump is only marginally trailing Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, in some battleground states. Marginally … as within the margin of error.

Yes, the latest USA Today/Suffolk national poll has Biden with a commanding lead over Trump (50-40 percent) but national polling strength does not necessarily equate to Electoral College strength, as we so well know.

With an unemployment rate increasing by the day; with so many families unable to pay their bills; with so many of our fellow citizens needlessly stricken by the coronavirus, how could a good chunk of Americans still want four more years of Trump at the helm?

As Chauncey DeVega writes in Salon:

A culture of distraction and spectacle has rendered many Americans incapable of being responsible engaged citizens. Our public educational system does not teach critical thinking skills.

Add to that a right-wing propaganda network, Fox News, ranked the most-watched cable news network 18 years in a row; throw in the Republican Party’s efforts to limit access to voting among predominantly Democratic folk and you have Trump with a good chance of stealing another election, pandemic or no pandemic… depression or no depression.

In politics, seven months is a lifetime. But for current polling to still have Trump with anywhere near a shot at reelection while we are in the middle of one of the worst health and economic crises in the nation’s history should scare the daylights out of us.

Photo | cnn.com

Don’t Blame Trump For Being Trump … Blame Senate Republicans for Keeping Him In Office

April 24, 2020 By John DeProspo 3 Comments

Our country is facing a health and economic crisis like never before. Nearly 900,000 Americans have been infected by the coronavirus, with over 50,000 deaths. The U.S. economy has now wiped out all the job gains since the Great Recession. In the last month and a half, over 26 million workers have applied for unemployment insurance. Congress has approved a massive $2 trillion coronavirus relief package … with more money to go out the door.

It didn’t have to be this way. The situation didn’t have to be this bad.

The fact that Donald Trump is a total incompetent who is mishandling the pandemic response, which is on pace to be the deadliest since the 1918 Spanish flu, comes as no surprise. Could we have expected anything else?

The man has demonstrated his ineptitude … and complete lack of respect for science, facts, expert opinion … from the moment he stepped into the White House.

Remember when candidate Trump boasted he knew more than the generals? Now he stands in front of the White House press corps claiming to know more than the scientists and doctors.

That we find ourselves in this mess is a direct result of Republican senators failing to do their Constitutional duty by removing Trump from office when they had the opportunity.

So, lest we forget, and in order to highlight their shame, here is a list of the 53 Senate Republicans who voted to acquit Trump on Impeachment Article 2, Obstruction of Congress (52 Republicans voted to acquit Trump on Impeachment Article 1, Abuse of Power, with only Mitt Romney voting guilty):

Alexander (R-TN)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Blackburn (R-TN)
Blunt (R-MO)
Boozman (R-AR)
Braun (R-IN)
Burr (R-NC)
Capito (R-WV)
Cassidy (R-LA)
Collins (R-ME)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Cotton (R-AR)
Cramer (R-ND)
Crapo (R-ID)
Cruz (R-TX)
Daines (R-MT)
Enzi (R-WY)
Ernst (R-IA)
Fischer (R-NE)
Gardner (R-CO)
Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Hawley (R-MO)
Hoeven (R-ND)
Hyde-Smith (R-MS)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Johnson (R-WI)
Kennedy (R-LA)
Lankford (R-OK)
Lee (R-UT)
Loeffler (R-GA)
McConnell (R-KY)
McSally (R-AZ)
Moran (R-KS)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Paul (R-KY)
Perdue (R-GA)
Portman (R-OH)
Risch (R-ID)
Roberts (R-KS)

Romney (R-UT)

Rounds (R-SD)
Rubio (R-FL)
Sasse (R-NE)
Scott (R-FL)
Scott (R-SC)
Shelby (R-AL)
Sullivan (R-AK)
Thune (R-SD)
Tillis (R-NC)
Toomey (R-PA)
Wicker (R-MS)
Young (R-IN)

No, we did not have to been stuck with the worst possible leader at the worst possible time.

It’s not Trump’s fault. Blame those 53 Senate Republicans who voted to keep the most incompetent president in American history in charge of the federal response to one of the most serious crises the country has ever faced.

Photo | alternet.org

Come Nov. 3, We Are Either Going To Have A New President … Or Our First King

April 17, 2020 By John DeProspo 7 Comments

The Founding Fathers knew enough about the evils of monarchy to not want one for the new American republic. Prior to Washington’s election, they seriously debated what to call the new chief executive of the United States of America.

As Lorraine Boissoneault writes in Smithsonianmag.com:

Some delegates to the Constitutional Convention suggested “His Exalted Highness,” with others chiming in with the more democratic “His Elective Highness.” Other suggestions included the formal “Chief Magistrate” and the lengthy “His Highness the President of the United States of America, and Protector of Their Liberties.” The debate went on for multiple weeks, according to historian Kathleen Bartoloni-Tuazon, because the House of Representatives worried that too grand a title might puff Washington up with power, while the Senate feared Washington would be derided by foreign powers if saddled with something as feeble as “president” (the title originally meant, simply, one who presides over a body of people‑‑similar to “foreman”).

Of course, “president” won out.

Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution states that “No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States.” Alexander Hamilton called the clause a “cornerstone of republican government,” saying that without titles of nobility, “there can never be serious danger that the government will be anything other than that of the people.”

And now it seems we’ve come full circle. We have a president who wants nothing more than to be a monarch … if not in name, then in deed.

During a press briefing earlier this week, Trump declared, “When somebody’s the president of the United States, the authority is total, and that’s the way it’s got to be.” On Wednesday, Trump threatened to adjourn both houses of Congress.

By now it should be clear that Donald J. Trump does not understand (or respect) the meaning of constitutional democracy. He does not see himself so much as the head of one branch of government, the executive, but as the supreme authority in the land.

And if he is reelected in November, you can be sure his thirst for autocratic power will only increase.

What’s there to stop Trump from issuing an executive order naming himself “El Exigente” (Wait, maybe not. Too Mexican)? The Constitution? Yeah right!

With the other two “co-equal” branches of government asleep at the wheel, failing in their constitutional duty to check a wannabe dictator like Trump, four more years of the corrupt Trump regime would effectively end that great experiment in constitutional self-governance envisioned by the Founding Fathers. And it would bring about what they feared most for the new nation … that it would collapse into tyranny.

You’ve heard it all too often … the next presidential election is the most important of our lifetimes. It’s become an election year cliché.

But here’s the thing … the upcoming presidential election will not just be the most important of our lifetimes. It will also be the most consequential election in the 243-year-old lifespan of our nation. You think that’s hyperbole?

On November 3, 2020, we are either going to elect a new president or have our first king (though some might argue, and happily I might add, that Trump has already secured that distinction).

Photo | businessinsider.com

Wuhan Virus? Chinese Virus? How About “The Trump Virus?”

April 13, 2020 By John DeProspo 4 Comments

Donald Trump and his toadies love calling the coronavirus the “Wuhan Virus” or the “Chinese Virus.” The sad fact remains that foreign ministers of the G7 countries failed to agree on a joint statement on the pandemic, in part, because the Trump administration insisted on calling it the “Wuhan virus.”

I suggest it’s about time we start calling the coronavirus, or COVID-19, “The Trump Virus.”

Am I being unfair? Too harsh? Is it too early to go there? Should we just leave all this to the history books?

Let’s get one thing straight … Donald Trump is not responsible for the coronavirus. He did not cause it to become a global pandemic.

But Trump’s actions, or inactions, did make the situation in the United States much worse than it needed to be. A Boston Globe editorial even went so far as to say, “Much of the suffering and death coming was predictable. The president has blood on his hands,”

David Frum recently wrote in The Atlantic:

That the pandemic occurred is not Trump’s fault. The utter unpreparedness of the United States for a pandemic is Trump’s fault. The loss of stockpiled respirators to breakage because the federal government let maintenance contracts lapse in 2018 is Trump’s fault. The failure to store sufficient protective medical gear in the national arsenal is Trump’s fault. That states are bidding against other states for equipment, paying many multiples of the pre-crisis price for ventilators, is Trump’s fault. Air travelers summoned home and forced to stand for hours in dense airport crowds alongside infected people? That was Trump’s fault too. Ten weeks of insisting that the coronavirus is a harmless flu that would miraculously go away on its own? Trump’s fault again. The refusal of red-state governors to act promptly, the failure to close Florida and Gulf Coast beaches until late March? That fault is more widely shared, but again, responsibility rests with Trump: He could have stopped it, and he did not.

Frum did not stop there:

The lying about the coronavirus by hosts on Fox News and conservative talk radio is Trump’s fault: They did it to protect him. The false hope of instant cures and nonexistent vaccines is Trump’s fault, because he told those lies to cover up his failure to act in time. The severity of the economic crisis is Trump’s fault; things would have been less bad if he had acted faster instead of sending out his chief economic adviser and his son Eric to assure Americans that the first stock-market dips were buying opportunities. The firing of a Navy captain for speaking truthfully about the virus’s threat to his crew? Trump’s fault. The fact that so many key government jobs were either empty or filled by mediocrities? Trump’s fault. The insertion of Trump’s arrogant and incompetent son-in-law as commander in chief of the national medical supply chain? Trump’s fault.

Trump needs to forever be linked to what he has wrought … “The Trump Virus.”

In his “fight” against the coronavirus, Trump has likened himself to a “wartime president.” Unfortunately for the United States, and the world, we have been saddled with the worst possible leader at the worst possible time.

To paraphrase an old Donald Rumsfeld quote, “You go to war with the president you have, not the president you might want.” God help us.

November 3, 2020 can’t come soon enough.

Photo | politico.com

Is America’s Love Affair With Stupidity Waning?

April 3, 2020 By John DeProspo 4 Comments

Americans, particularly Republicans, have a long, rich history of electing dimwits as their leaders.

Of course, there is the former representative from Minnesota, Michele Bachmann, who once said, “But we also know that the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States. … I think it is high time that we recognize the contribution of our forbearers who worked tirelessly — men like John Quincy Adams, who would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country.”

You have the senior senator from Oklahoma, James Inhofe, who brought a snowball to the Senate floor in order to disprove global warming.

Then there’s the former vice president, Dan Quayle, who could not correctly spell potato.

And how can one forget the former Governor of Alaska, and self-proclaimed Mama Grizzly, Sarah Palin, who once said, “Mr. President, the only thing that stops a bad guy with a nuke is a good guy with a nuke.”

Just yesterday you had the governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, claiming he only recently learned the coronavirus could be spread by asymptomatic carriers. “But we didn’t know that until the last 24 hours and as Dr. Toomey told me, she goes, ‘this is a game-changer for us.'”

But here’s the thing, some of the comments on Foxnews.com, that reported the Kemp story, were downright un-Foxlike!

Here’s a sampling:

I’m a Repub, but this guy is an idiot.

Stacey Abrams had a degree in Public Policy which would have prepared her for this. And then got her law degree from Yale. Kemp majored in Agriculture and was basically a farmer before he became governor Good choice Georgians

Really??? Did I just read that insanity correctly??? If so, this guy and his entire staff are absolute failures.

This clown seriously can’t be that much of an IDIOT? How fast can he be recalled?

Wow, not the kind of comments you’d expect from Fox News consumers!

Writing for the Washington Post, conservative columnist, Jennifer Rubin wrote:

At a more fundamental level, the coronavirus pandemic should stanch the urge to elect political leaders who disparage expertise, deny widely accepted scientific findings and do not read. The right’s anti-intellectual bent and its hostility toward independent sources of information (e.g., media, universities, scientific associations) is dangerous and, indeed, life-threatening.

Maybe, just, maybe, Republicans have had it with electing incompetent numbskulls to high office?

Photo | ecowatch.com