Month: July 2020

Trump Reveals New Campaign Slogan: The Greatest Election Disaster in History

Posted by on July 31, 2020 at 1:25 pm. 1 Comments :

When someone is suffering from severe mental infirmities, they are prone to making remarks that inadvertently expose the depths of their derangement. Donald Trump is a prime example of this. And he just provided another instance to add to the cornucopia of commentaries that serve to prove how socially distant he is from reality.

Donald Trump Rally Trash

On Friday morning Trump addressed a gaggle of reporters in his ongoing effort to claw his way out of the political abyss he has dug for himself. Among the questions he replied to was one about mail-in voting. He began by falsely asserting that “mail-in ballots are a disaster,” and that the upcoming election will be “rigged.” He then went off on an extended tirade that was chock full of baseless allegations drawn mostly from his asinine imagination. The rant (video below) concluded with Trump claiming that…

“This is going to be the greatest election disaster in history.”

Don’t be confused. That is not a warning. It’s a promise. It’s what Trump and his Republican confederates intend to insure happens by whatever means necessary. He’s not issuing an alarm. He’s proclaiming with pride the core strategy of his 2020 reelection campaign. He should print it on his hats.

This isn’t a new tactic by the GOP. They have made the failure of government the primary theme of their party philosophy for decades. They fear monger about how terrible government is, and then, when they gain power, they set about to prove it by purposefully orchestrating the failure they predicted. Then they ask you to vote for them again.

Trump’s persistent condemnation of mail-in voting will continue to be a key component of his reelection effort. He knows that his prospects for victory are dismal, so he’s focusing on delegitimizing the election. He even went so far as to propose to delay the election, which he has no legal authority to do. Although, if the the election date were to change, most Americans would probably prefer to make it sooner, along with Inauguration Day.

In a bizarre twist of political theater, Trump’s press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, was asked about the news that Hong Kong would be delaying their elections. She responded without a hint of irony that…

“We condemn the Hong Kong government’s decision to postpone for one year its legislative counsel elections and to disqualify opposition candidates. This action undermines the democratic processes and freedoms that have underpinned Hong Kong’s prosperity.”

Exactly! So McEnany is affirming that Trump’s intentions are to “undermine the democratic processes and freedoms” of the United States. Not that any further affirmation was needed. It was apparent in Trump’s deployment of federal storm troopers to assault and suppress citizens exercising their constitutional rights to demonstrate. It’s apparent in his toleration of Russia placing bounties on American soldiers. It’s apparent in his favoritism of corporations and the wealthy in his economic and taxation agenda. And it’s tragically apparent in his fatally negligent mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Remember that when you hear Trump say that “This is going to be the greatest election disaster in history.” He’s right, but not for the reason he thinks. Like everything else that Trump brags about, this will be “the greatest…in history.” That’s how you know that it’s something he’s taking pride in. And It’s why the American people cannot afford to be complacent about it. It will take the determined vigilance of every patriotic citizen to prevent Trump from achieving the disaster he intends to provoke.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Trump is Right About Changing Election Day – Make It Sooner

Posted by on July 30, 2020 at 12:53 pm. 3 Comments :

On the day that civil rights hero John Lewis is being laid to rest, Donald Trump is ranting incoherently on Twitter. But then why should today be any different for him? He didn’t even send a representative to pay respects at the service. The depths to which Trump’s desperation is sinking is profoundly disturbing and predictive of his dangerously devolving psychoses. And the worst is yet to come.

Donald Trump Circling the Drain

The reference to John Lewis is not tangential. He was an iconic fighter for voting rights for all Americans. But on Thursday morning Trump posted another round of tweets attacking the legitimacy of mail-in voting. Never mind that it has been done safely and securely for decades. Or that it is used by Trump and many in his family and administration, and the military. Or that his own commission on the matter found no evidence of fraud. Or that Trump’s Attorney General, Bill Barr, just testified this week that he has no evidence supporting assertions that voting by mail is susceptible to foreign interference.

Despite all of that, Trump still sought to sow doubt about the election. It’s a position he’s taking due to his well-founded fear that he is going to lose bigly. And he’s working hard at it. Trump has tweeted his opposition to mail-in voting at least 22 times so far this year. And he is simultaneously trying to sabotage the Post Office in order to disrupt the election. So he tweeted that…

First of all, there is absolutely no difference between “mail-in voting” and “absentee voting.” That’s just a pitifully illogical dodge that Trump invokes in order to excuse the fact that he frequently votes by mail.

More importantly, Trump’s suggestion that the election be delayed is another brazen example of his tyrannical aspirations. The president has no authority to delay an election. However, Trump’s Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, a graduate of West Point and Harvard Law, was asked by Sen. Tim Kaine about Trump’s tweet. Pompeo refused to acknowledge that Article II, Section I of the Constitution states explicitly that only “The Congress may determine the time of choosing the electors, and the day on which they shall give their votes; which day shall be the same throughout the United States.” Pompeo’s pathetic evasion perfectly exemplifies the Trump regime’s aversion to constitutional law.

It is unarguable that the power to set election dates resides exclusively with the Congress. What’s more, the date that the president’s term ends is set by the Constitution as January 20, and is immovable. In fact, if a new president is not sworn in by January 20, then the Speaker of the House (currently Nancy Pelosi) becomes president. Even Chris Stirewalt, politics editor at Fox News, refuted Trump’s ludicrous proposal as “a flagrant expression of his current weakness.”

However, if we were to humor Trump in his dictatorial ignorance, there is a case to be made for changing the election day. Not to delay it, but to advance it. The harm that Trump is doing to America is escalating with each passing day. His negligence and incompetence with the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic is producing more illness and death that would otherwise be preventable. He continues to suck-up to Vladimir Putin, and refuses to hold him accountable for putting bounties on the heads of American soldiers. He is cozying up to our enemies and alienating our allies. Domestically, he is deploying his StormTrumpers in cities around the country to assault people exercising their rights to protest. He is issuing executive orders that cut regulations intended to protect America’s air, water, and workplaces.

Every day that Trump remains in office is another day that he makes the nation weaker. And the prospect of removing him sooner by scheduling an earlier election would be an enormous benefit to all citizens, and to the world. Unfortunately, we will have to wait until November 3rd to vote Trump out, and then another two and half months to inaugurate his successor, Joe Biden. Until then, we must remain vigilant and determined to suppress Trump’s worst tendencies. That isn’t going to be easy, but it is necessary and an obligation for all patriots.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

WTF? Fox News Judge Says Trump is Totalitarian – And He Retweets It?

Posted by on July 29, 2020 at 1:35 pm. 4 Comments :

There have been far too many episodes of Donald Trump exposing himself as mentally unfit to enumerate here. After all, there are books dedicated to the subject (like “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.”). Let’s just take the voters (as polled by Fox News) as proof that the nation has had enough of being governed by a sociopathic narcissist. Trump’s claim that he “aced” a cognition test notwithstanding, he is unarguably psychologically distancing from reality.

Donald Trump Tyrant Dictator

On Wednesday morning Trump mounted his customary Twitter defense with more than three dozen tweets before noon. But one in particular illustrated perfectly how badly his cognitive skills have deteriorated. Presumably he was responding to the criticism of his fascist deployment of faux federal law enforcers in Portland.Oregon, and other localities. But what he tweeted was an article in the “Moonie” Washington Times, written by Fox News senior legal analyst, Andrew Napolitano. The headline reads “How totalitarianism begins in the U.S.”

It’s fair to say that Napolitano does not regard Trump’s hyper-aggressive tactics as an appropriate use of government authority. In fact, he castigated Trump’s phony “law and order” rhetoric saying that “there is nothing lawful or orderly about what these agents did. Their activities in Portland are unlawful, unconstitutional and harmful.” Some other choice excerpts are even more damning…

“Last weekend, with no notice or local consent, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security sent teams of agents — untrained in crowd control and wearing military fatigues — onto Portland’s streets. Their uniforms bore no governmental, administrative or personal names, just the word “Police” on masking tape. They descended upon the city in unmarked SUVs and began grabbing people indiscriminately off the streets, without regard to the person’s lawful presence or personal behavior.

“It was a kidnapping, not an arrest. An arrest is a lawful restraint by a legitimate government authority pursuant to a warrant issued by a judge specifically naming the person to be arrested, or pursuant to probable cause of crime personally observed by the arresting officers. Neither of these was the case in Portland.”

“The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires the government to protect speech, not assault those who exercise it. If these indiscriminate beatings and kidnappings are intended to deter folks from publicly dissenting, it is profoundly unconstitutional, counterproductive and will be costly to the federal government.”

You have to wonder why Trump retweeted this article. Did he just see the Washington Times logo and a photo of civil unrest and assume that it advanced his fear mongering campaign theme? Was he going only by the byline of a Fox News pundit? Clearly he didn’t bother to read any part of the article. If this isn’t more evidence of his declining mental state, it is at best proof of his lazy and negligent approach to his job.

Trump’s attitude toward Fox News has been a wild ride of contradictions. He frequently whines about not getting 100% adoring coverage from his Ministry of Propaganda. But he also rewards them with nearly every television interview he grants. On Wednesday morning he displayed both his appreciation and his hostility to Fox News. In one tweet, Trump congratulated them on their recent ratings performance. Then, just a couple of hours later, he complained that they are “Not even watchable.”

That is emblematic of the roller coaster psychoses that Trump is exhibiting. And it’s getting harder to find an hint of coherency in his outbursts. On Tuesday he tweeted a witch doctor who claimed that hydroxychloroquine is a cure for the coronavirus. It isn’t! He defended her even after it was revealed that she also believes that dream sex with demons causes illnesses and that space alien DNA is in many vaccines. What’s more, he told his staff that he is concerned about CIVID-19 fatalities now that it is taking the lives of “our people” in red states. And this is the “stable genius” that the Republican Party (and a smattering of cultists) continues to stand behind? They all need a dose of that space alien DNA – ASAP!

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Twitter Lets Trump Get Away with Dangerous Lies About the Coronavirus

Posted by on July 28, 2020 at 2:44 pm. NO Comments :

Last week Donald Trump announced that he would be reviving his Coronavirus Task force Briefings (aka Trump reelection campaign photo-ops). In the few public session he’s held since then he has struggled to stick to the script prepared for him on his Teleprompter. But the effort has earned him some praise from sycophantic, right-wing, media shills as evidence of his “pivoting” to a more “presidential” demeanor.

Donald Trump Virus

Seasoned Trump watchers knew that any such pivot would be incidental and temporary. And that has proven to be the case. In the past week Trump has demonstrated his pitiful lack of self-control or disciple by ranting about everything from wearing face masks to campaigning for suburban “housewives” to maligning peaceful protesters as violent “anarchists” and more.

On Monday Trump fell completely off the fence by posting 13 deranged and dangerous late-night tweets promoting hydroxychloroquine as a coronavirus cure, despite abundant evidence that it is both ineffective and potentially harmful according to his own FDA.

A couple of the videos in those tweets have since been removed by Twitter (and Facebook and YouTube) because they were sharing false information. Don Trump Jr’s Twitter account was temporarily suspended for sharing the same videos. Which begs the question: Why wasn’t Trump’s account suspended? After all, Trump actually shared the same false information at least six times.

For the record, here are the now removed/edited links to those tweets:

All of those tweets have now been either deleted or had the video removed. The degree of the misinformation they disseminated was so severe that the three biggest platforms for social media all agreed that it was too dangerous to share. It was so potentially harmful that Don Jr was punished by Twitter for passing it on to his followers.

Yet somehow, the Disinformer-in-Chief was let off the hook. For some reason Twitter doesn’t see fit to hold Trump accountable, or to protect their users from his irresponsible ravings. Trump’s tweets contained the same scientifically discredited video. Plus, he posted seven other tweets making the same hazardous claims about hydroxychloroquine without the offending video.

Trump is recklessly endangering the lives of his dimwit cult followers who cling blindly to every asinine idiocy that he utters. Twitter ought not to be helping him spread these lies but, ultimately, the fault and the harm lie with Trump.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

The Coronavirus is Killing Trump Supporters, So Now He’s ‘Concerned’

Posted by on July 27, 2020 at 2:07 pm. 2 Comments :

Much is being made by some the more milquetoast members of the media of what they are spinning as a “pivot” by Donald Trump with regard to his position on the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic. They have observed him wearing a face mask for the first time after four months of mocking those who did so, including his opponent, Joe Biden. They have seen him resume the coronavirus briefings (aka Trump reelection campaign photo-ops), and managing to stick to the script prepared for him on his Teleprompter.

Donald Trump, Coronavirus

Trump’s months long dismissal of the pandemic’s severity, and his stubborn negligence and incompetence, has resulted in the preventable deaths of nearly 150,000 Americans. And now it is morphing into an awkward display of robotic and transparently insincere “sympathy.” But the consequences of his inaction and deliberate malfeasance are too tragic to ignore. The reasons for which, Trump has just admitted in private discussions with his staff. According to the Washington Post…

“In the past couple of weeks, senior advisers began presenting Trump with maps and data showing spikes in coronavirus cases among ‘our people’ in Republican states, a senior administration official said. They also shared projections predicting that virus surges could soon hit politically important states in the Midwest — including Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin.”

So Trump’s newfound concern for the suffering citizens of this country was only triggered by his own political self-interest. He wasn’t worried until he learned that his supporters in the red states that he has pandered to exclusively were vulnerable to the viral disease blanketing the nation. Until now, Trump must have thought that only Democrats were susceptible to the coronavirus. And if so, then he couldn’t care less.

However, Trump could not have been more wrong (as usual). Studies support the more probable likelihood that Republicans and Trumpists are actually at greater risk. That’s because they are more attentive to his self-serving and recklessly false platitudes, and his insistence that COVID-19 wasn’t any more dangerous than the common flu. Trump’s cult disciples believed him when he said that it would just disappear as if by magic.

A series of surveys by Axios show that “President Trump’s words and actions have shaped Republicans’ perceptions and behavior on everything from wearing face masks to worrying about economic collapse.” Among their findings is that Republicans report wearing face masks about 41% of the time, less than half of what Democrats reported (81%). Only 38% of Trump’s followers say they are “‘very concerned’ about the COVID-19 outbreak.” That’s compared to 83% of Democrats. The same partisan gaps exist on questions about whether someone has visited relatives (Republicans 61%, Democrats 36%), and concern about the economy collapsing (Republicans 54%, Democrats 60%).

The bottom line is that Trump’s faithful have fallen in line behind his dismissive view of the pandemic. They continue to reject the serious risks and the warnings of health experts. And many are still convinced that simple and proven methods of mitigating the spread (face masks, social distancing, contact tracing, etc.), are actually “Deep State” plots to infringe on their liberty that will eventually lead to America becoming one big communist gulag.

This deranged behavior is directly attributable to the example set by their messiah. And the more they try to emulate him, the more likely they will become victims of the virus. That is not good news for anyone. These careless Trumpoids can just as easily transmit the virus to Democrats as to Republicans. The virus has no partisan affiliations.

But as Trump is discovering, if the virus spreads more rapidly in parts of the country where his voters are more numerous, then the odds are greater that more them will become infected. And if illness – or death – prevents them from casting their votes for him, then he’s finally going to be concerned. It’s nauseating that it would take that sort of egomaniacal selfishness to move Trump to act, but it’s better than him continuing to not act at all.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Trump’s Dementia is on Vivid Display in Sunday Twitter Tantrum

Posted by on July 26, 2020 at 12:41 pm. 4 Comments :

There is nothing that Donald Trump likes better than to childishly insult his critics and political opponents. With regard to Joe Biden, that has included numerous references to mental stability and fitness for office. Unfortunately for Trump, the American people have thoroughly rejected his claims and, even worse, believe that Trump is the one with the cognitive dysfunction. And in a head to head comparison, more voters say that Trump is unfit to serve.

Donald Trump

Trump has been surprisingly helpful in providing abundant evidence of his acute psychoses. And on Sunday morning he added to the voluminous documentation that he is utterly nuts. This naturally came in the form of rage-filled tweets. Even though he has lately been curtailing the quantity of his Twitter output, this has not impacted that “quality” in any way. Such as this…

No matter how many times Trump asserts that President Obama spied on his campaign, it still isn’t true. And Trump’s allegations of corruption by Obama are a laughable demonstration of projection. It’s Trump and his confederates who have actually been charged and convicted of criminal – even treasonous – conduct.

Trump’s swipe at Biden for a trivial gaffe is just another deliberate misrepresentation of reality. The truth is that Trump clipped that comment out of a twelve minute interview of Biden. He was responding specifically to the anchor of a local TV station in the city of Phoenix. After this comment he immediately noted that the connection between him and the station was “breaking up” So it’s likely that when the anchor said he appreciated Biden “taking the time to talk to the people of our state,” Biden wasn’t able to hear it correctly and assumed the anchor said “city.”

However, if Trump really wants to make this an issue for debate, then he has to deal with more than a few verbal mishaps of his own. For instance, Trump said that…

  • Africa is a country
  • Belgium is a city
  • He “met with the president of the Virgin Islands.”
  • Revolutionary war troops took control of airports
  • Kansas City, Missouri is in the state of Kansas
  • He “watched the firemen on 7/11.”
  • Injecting bleach will cure the coronavirus
  • He is building a border wall between Colorado and Mexico

That’s just a small sampling of Trump’s episodes of derangement. He has also been documented as having told more than 20,000 lies in the past three and half years. But he wasn’t through with his Sunday morning rage-tweeting. He also posted this…

Well, if Trump says that enthusiasm for him is greater than for any campaign in history “according to many,” then it must be true. You just have to ask, many what? Because every poll shows that Biden is beating him nationally, as well as in every crucial swing state. What’s more, he can hardly brag about enthusiasm in 2016 when he lost the the popular vote by three million votes.

Trump’s imaginary “silent majority” is a dead give away of his desperation. Because it can’t be a good sign when you’re stealing campaign slogans from Richard Nixon. Also, the majority in America is far from silent. They have taken to the streets by the hundreds of thousands all across the nation. They are virtually screaming that Trump must be thrown out in 2020.

The American people have had enough. They have seen Trump’s negligence and deliberate malfeasance in mismanaging the coronavirus pandemic. That has led to the deaths of more than 146,000 people. Voters are also aware that Trump’s incompetence has resulted in an economic recession that put 50 million people out of work. They have watched as he cozied up to our enemies and alienated our allies. And they have endured his prioritizing the welfare of corporations and the wealthy at the expense of everyone else.

So now Trump is resorting to his infantile tendencies to lash out with petulant tantrums, while avoiding coherent solutions and ignoring the needs of the nation. And he thinks that voters won’t notice how absolutely insane that is. But like everything else, he’s pitifully wrong. And voters will make sure that he knows that in less than 100 days. Meanwhile, enjoy this video that puts Trump’s psychological maladies in perspective:

UPDATE I: Trump returned to Twitter to insure that everyone sees how sick he is. He tweeted that he’s canceling his trip to New York to throw out the first pitch at a Yankee game “Because of my strong focus on the China Virus.” When you’re finished laughing, he also tweeted that “The 2020 Election will be totally rigged if Mail-In Voting is allowed.” And finally he tweeted that citizens exercising their constitutional rights “are actually anarchists who hate our Country.” Each of these tweets are naked expressions of rabid fear. He knows he’s toast, and he can’t handle it.

UPDATE II: On Monday Trump hammered out another 67 tweets of which 61 were retweets, only 6 originals. Thirteen of the retweets promoted hydroxychloroquine as a coronavirus cure despite abundant evidence that it is both ineffective and potentially harmful. A couple of the videos in those tweets were removed by Facebook and YouTube for sharing false information. Trump also retweeted 19 senators thanking them for passage of the NDAA – All Republicans. Thirty-six Democrats also voted for passage (84-14) who Trump didn’t bother to thank. Unmentioned was that Trump promised to veto this bill if it called for renaming military bases named for Confederate traitors – which it does.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Trump is ‘Wow’ed By the Anti-Democratic Profanities of a QAnon Kook

Posted by on July 25, 2020 at 2:02 pm. 2 Comments :

The things that impress Donald Trump are frequently things that most people would find banal at best, nauseating at worst. He is amazed mostly by his own alleged brilliance, self-appraised good looks, and imaginary popularity. His appreciation for things other than himself are few and far between. That’s the life of a malignant narcissist.

Donald Trump

On Saturday morning Trump took to his Twitter Machine and pounded out a few retweets. As usual, they were entirely self-congratulatory tributes to whatever pitiful achievement he thought he had accomplished in the recent past. But apparently, even Trump has had trouble identifying any good deeds for which he could lavish praise on himself. That’s reflected by his sharply reduced Twitter output of late.

Trump’s reliance, therefore, has been on retweets, sometimes of fringe characters with dubious credentials. It’s a risky business that Trump himself acknowledged in an interview Friday saying that “It’s the retweets that get you in trouble.” Of course, his his own tweets are just as troubling as those he swipes from others. But despite that fragile and temporary awareness of reality, Trump went ahead and retweeted this:

The video that Trump was “Wow”ed by was posted by Antoine Tucker (aka Tony Montaga), a former gang member who now claims to be a Christian Republican. He is also a candidate for New York’s 14th district Congressional seat currently held by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. However, his candidacy could be considered a long shot since, as a write-in candidate, he isn’t even on the ballot.

What’s more, Tucker is proud supporter of the QAnon Conspiracy Crackpot Crusade. “Yes I am a Q Supporter,” he tweeted. “And as your Congressman I’ll make sure The Truth will never have to be Questioned in DC again.” Trump has been promoting QAnon freaks for quite a while now. And as if that weren’t enough, the video is jam-packed with the sort of profanities that a professed Christian would sanctimoniously condemn. For instance…

“The Democrats don’t give a f*ck. They don’t give a f*ck about helping Americans. They don’t give a f*ck about what race you are. They don’t care about what LBGT whatever community you belong to. They care about power. All of this sh*t is about power. All of the media hysteria is about power. Control and power.”

Praise Jesus! What a testimony to the holy word of Gawd! And what a dignified oratory for a U.S. president to honor.

Tucker’s utterly substanceless rant eventually got around to the fringes of a subject. He was apparently steamed at Democrats for not passing a one trillion dollar coronavirus relief bill. He was so steamed that he blamed Democrats for the deaths of quarantined Americans, while absolving Trump of any responsibility for more than 143,000 deaths due to his negligence and incompetence in mishandling the pandemic response:

“Every day that an American dies, suffers, or finds themselves hungry, you thank the damn Democrats for it because that’s what the f*ck they’ve been doing. F*cking up public trust. f*cking up the economy. And blaming this sh*t on Trump. Like it’s his fault when it’s f*ckin’ them. Be aware, man.”

At this point it needs to be noted that this video that Trump posted today was originally posted by Tucker on March 25, four months ago. Two days later Congress passed a $2.2 trillion relief bill, twice the amount that Tucker was triggered by. Democrats wanted $3 trillion, but Senate Republicans forced them to compromise for the lower amount. there is a similar debate in Congress now with Democrats proposing significant relief that Republicans are, once again, opposing. So you might think that Tucker would now be angry with the GOP and blame them for Americans dying every day. Be aware, man.

You have to wonder what Trump thought was so amazing about this three month old video, other than that it viciously and unjustly attacked Democrats. But then again, what more would Trump ever want from such a screed, since that’s how he spends the vast majority of his own time. His GOP confederates have even proposed a resolution in congress to ban the Democratic Party.

So while he is promoting the profanity-laced rants of conspiracy kooks and inciting riots by sending stormtroopers into cities with Democratic mayors, Trump is ignoring the real problems that face real citizens. He has no coherent agenda, no campaign strategy, no plan for handling a surging pandemic or an economy in recession. He is just a ratty bundle of rattled nerves radiating hatred toward his perceived enemies. Which these days, in his paranoid stupor, is nearly everyone.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

GOP Fascists Float Resolution to Ban the Democratic Party

Posted by on July 24, 2020 at 1:18 pm. 6 Comments :

The devolution of the Republican Party continues to accelerate headlong toward the rocky cliffs of ultimate oblivion. Its leader, the aspiring tyrant and sociopath Donald Trump, is the key propellant of this political disintegration. The Party’s worshipful devotion to Trump makes every member complicit in his heinous crimes against America and humanity.

Donald Trump

The latest testament to the downward spiral of the GOP (Greedy One Percent) is a resolution introduced by Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert. Gohmert’s resolution instructs the Speaker of the House to “remove any item that names, symbolizes or mentions any political organization or party that has ever held a public position that supported slavery or the Confederacy.” It further directs that any such party “be barred from participation in the House of Representatives.”

This is what Gohmert likely believes is a crafty way of disparaging the Democratic Party which, as the party of the South during the Civil War era, advocated for slavery and secession. He is proposing this resolution in response to Nancy Pelosi’s order to remove statues, and other tributes to Confederate traitors, from the Capitol building. The bill approving the order passed the House this week, 301 to 113.

Gohmert and a couple of his GOP colleagues were unable to constrain their dismay over this initiative to finally put an end to the official honorary treatment of treasonous confederate politicians and generals. “The time has come,” Gohmert ranted, “for Democrats to acknowledge their party’s loathsome and bigoted past.”

Of course, the Democratic Party long ago acknowledged – and renounced – the tangential past association with the doctrine of southern racism. Historians agree that it was just southern Democrats, not the Party, that trafficked in such bigotry. What Gohmert isn’t saying (but surely knows) is that there was a realignment in the mid-20th century wherein Democrats embraced civil rights, resulting in the flight of southern bigots to the Republican Party. And that’s where they remain today with the fervent support of white nationalists and neo-Nazis.

So Gohmert’s snarky resolution is just another thinly disguised shout out to the GOP’s racist base. It calls on a party that for decades has demonstrated its support for civil rights to be banned, while ignoring the fact that Republicans continue to work for suppression of civil rights and equal justice. There is a reason that the Democratic Party today has the support of 92% of African-Americans.

If Gohmert were sincere about his proposal it would call, instead, for the banning of Republicans and acknowledge their “loathsome and bigoted” present. His resolution’s call to ban any political party that has ever supported the Confederacy seems tailor-made for the GOP. That is made all the more clear with the vote on the bill to remove Confederate statues. All 113 votes opposing the bill (including Gohmert), and thus supporting the confederacy, were Republicans. And not to be left out, Donald Trump weighed in on the matter in his typically deranged way. Trump tweeted that…

First of all, this isn’t up to Sen. Inhofe. The bill has now passed both the House and the Senate by veto-proof margins and will shortly be on Trump’s desk. Should he live down to his racist standards and veto it, his veto is unlikely to be sustained. What’s more, Trump’s assertion that he’s “not a believer in ‘Cancel Culture'” is contradicted by all of the times he has personally “canceled” people and businesses that he disapproved of.

What Trump is a believer in is the same thing that Gohmert and the rest of the GOP believes: That they should have unchallenged, dictatorial, single-party rule over America. Unfortunately for them, the American people have a different perspective and will fight for the democracy and liberty that the Constitution guarantees. And the next battle in that fight is November 3rd.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Trump Resorts to Racist Fear Mongering to Draw the Votes of Suburban ‘Housewives’

Posted by on July 23, 2020 at 2:23 pm. 3 Comments :

It never fails. Whenever Donald Trump is cornered by events that expose his disastrous mismanagement of the people’s business, he falls back on the Republican Party’s established, all-purpose defense mechanism: Racism. It’s a tactic that has been employed for decades by the GOP, but never with such knee-jerk consistency as by Trump.

Donald Trump, Woman, Fear

Trump is currently juggling multiple crises, including a raging pandemic that has already taken the lives of more than 143,000 Americans, civil unrest across the nation, economic recession and historic unemployment, and the only problems that Trump actually care about, his disintegrating public image and the approaching presidential election.

So naturally Trump has made a typically tone-deaf, self-serving, executive decision to inflame more racial animus. On Thursday morning he tweeted that…

It’s notable that Trump’s tweet attempts to appeal to an archaic demographic of “Suburban Housewives,” a degrading label that died decades ago along with anachronisms like “the little woman.” But more importantly, Trump is brazenly trying to frighten suburban women and families with thinly veiled inferences to marauding hordes of dark people moving into their exclusive neighborhoods.

This is a purely political desperation ploy that Trump is taking in the wake of polling that shows him getting crushed by Joe Biden nationally, as well as in every crucial swing state. Specifically with regard to the suburbs, polls show Biden handily beating Trump by a 52-43% margin. A recent CNN poll found that Biden was leading Trump 63-34% among suburban women.

This isn’t the first time that Trump has tried to scare suburban women with nightmares of neighborhood diversity. But it may be the first time that he’s explicitly blamed Biden for it. However, Trump’s link to an article in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post is hardly justification for this scare tactic.

The article is headlined “Joe Biden’s disastrous plans for America’s suburbs.” However, it describes a part of the Fair Housing Act that was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson in 1968 – fifty-two years ago. The mangling of facts like that in this article shouldn’t surprise anyone considering that it was written by Betsy McCaughey, the woman who coined the deceitful term “death panels” when she lied about Obamacare a dozen years ago. More recently, she appeared on Fox News to falsely assert that “The number of deaths from the shutdown may exceed the number of deaths from the coronavirus” That was more than 100,000 deaths ago. In her article McCaughey claims that…

“Biden’s plan is to force suburban towns with single-family homes and minimum lot sizes to build high-density affordable housing smack in the middle of their leafy neighborhoods — local preferences and local control be damned.”

There is nothing remotely resembling any of that in the law. The specter of high rises in the suburbs is a fiction formed entirely in McCaughey’s mendacious mind. The truth is that the law seeks to advance the goal of “Diverse, inclusive communities with access to good jobs, schools, health care, [and] transportation.” Oh, the horror of it all.

So contrary to Trump’s alarmist warning about how this will “destroy…your American Dream,” the law actually guarantees it for more Americans. What Trump is hoping is that his fear mongering will reverse the trend of suburban women voting for Biden. But that isn’t going to be easy if he all he has are racist lies about good government and labels that disparage and belittle the very people to whom he’s trying to appeal.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Trump is So Scared He’s Slashed His Twitter Output

Posted by on July 22, 2020 at 2:12 pm. 2 Comments :

The month of July 2020 has seen another torrent of bad news for Donald Trump, mostly created by Donald Trump himself. His approval ratings continue to decline across nearly every demographic group. Joe Biden is beating him nationally,as well as in the crucial swing states. Even Republicans are drifting away from Trump as his behavior becomes ever more bizarre and driven by desperation.

Donald Trump Apocalypse

Perhaps the clearest signal that Trump recognizes the peril he faces politically is his activity on his favorite communications platform, Twitter. Throughout his presidency he has used Twitter to express his anger, frustration, and delusional (i.e. dishonest) take on reality. That has manifested in manic episodes of uncontrolled tweeting, exceeding a hundred posts on some especially bad days. But that volume has fallen off a cliff this month.

For July of 2020 so far (22 days), Trump has tweeted 508 times. That’s down by a whopping 40% from the same number of days in June when he tweeted 875 times. It’s also notable that in June only 2% (19) of his tweets were retweets. But in July that rocketed to 15% (75), or four times as many. Which means he spent significantly less time composing his own twitterature this month. On nine days his original tweets numbered in single digits. What’s more, there was a noticeable drop off in Trump’s tweeting about halfway through the month. From July 1 until July 11, he averaged about 28 tweets per day. From July 12 forward his average was only about 18 tweets per day. And once again, retweets were far more prevalent in his Twitter feed during the second half of the month. His original output was a third of what it was in the first half.

So is there an explanation for this shift in behavior by Trump? Among the more significant events that took place in this period is, first and foremost, the cataclysmic surge by the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic. Many states are reporting record high infections and fatalities. That’s despite Trump’s false assertions that those numbers are declining and that the virus will soon “disappear” by magic. Trump’s ludicrous dismissal of the severity of the crisis isn’t playing well with the American people. An overwhelming majority don’t trust Trump on the matter. Even worse, a majority regard him as mentally unfit to serve.

Which makes his decision to return to starring in the daily coronavirus briefings that were canceled two months ago all the more peculiar. Remember, they were originally ended because he was making an ass himself and driving his already abysmal approval ratings further into the gutter. And here are a few other probable influences on Trump’s Twitter pullback:

  • The news that Russia is putting bounties on American soldiers in Afghanistan
  • Demotion of his campaign manager, Brad Parscale
  • Supreme Court rulings that could result in the release of his tax returns
  • The widely disparaged commutation for Roger Stone
  • Poor attendance and cancellations of his campaign rallies
  • Continuing civil unrest and demonstrations in support of Black Lives Matter
  • The release of a devastating tell-all book by Mary Trump, his niece

That’s enough bad news to tranquilize an elephant, even the Republican kind. And Trump hasn’t had an effective or coherent response to any of it. He tried his usual tactics of insults, lies, and extremist bombast, but none of it has worked. Which leaves him with nothing but his Ministry of Propaganda (aka Fox News) to rely on for emergency support. And even that is getting pitifully useless.

Trump’s enthusiasm for Twitter has been a hallmark of his presidency. He frequently insists that it is the only way he can get his message out without the interference of what he calls the “Lamestream Media.” So it’s noteworthy that he is limiting his own output. In the past, controversy and bad news actually fueled his tweet production. So it’s fair to speculate that now he may be suffering some degree of emotional depression resulting in a self-imposed social media isolation. And if we’re lucky, his condition will deteriorate until he isolates himself entirely, sparing the nation (and the world) any more of the harm and anxiety for which he has been responsible for the past three and a half years.

UPDATE: On Thursday morning Trump pounded out 50 tweets, 44 of which were retweets. So he’s still recycling other people’s posts while producing very little original output.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.