Grand Gestures

Steve Bannon is right about one essential point:  Nobody on the left can figure out why Hillary lost and Donald Trump won.

Some news organizations are trying to figure this out by going to those counties in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan which "flipped" to Trump and asking questions of voters who flipped.


The problem with a country as large as ours is there is rarely just one thing to explain the vote. Usually the winner will claim to know why he won and he'll try to use that to say, "You have to repeal and replace"  because that's what the voters said.  They also said "build a wall" and "ban Muslims" because that's what I said and they voted for me. Of course he also said, "I will give you back your jobs" and "I will make America Great Again." 


So what the voters were responding to remains unclear.

When Donald Trump met with the head of the steam fitters union and the head of some other union in the early days after he moved into the White House and he asked them to send in some guys in hard hats and Carhart jeans, really working men, so he could shake their hands at the White House. And the guys showed up with their union heads and everyone was just so pleased.


How pathetic was that?  Donald wants to show he's the friend of the working man and so he invites them over to the White House. Such a friend. Of course, there are working men and women who are working three jobs, none of which provide health insurance and he is going to cut them off from Obamacare and give them Trumpcare or Ryancare or Swampcare or Rinocare (Republican In Name Only care) or whatever his Repbublican buddies are willing to give them, which is to say, nothing much.


But the mystery remains: How do you undo the pathetic mistake of a President Trump and all his men, including Bannon?

So far the only viable answer has been: We can only sit back and watch Trump fail, and do whatever we can to help him fail, but until the flippers can see they actually made a mistake, there is nothing much to be done about it.

Kris Kobach: Protector of the Realm, Star of PBS News Hour

If the PBS News Hour were around in 1933 during the Third Reich, they would have hosted Goebbels, Goering, Hess and Himmler as regular guests.  These men would have been consensually validated as normal human beings who might hold some extreme opinions, but you could consider inviting them to your next dinner party to spice up the conversation.

Immigrants, poor people, Blacks, laborers don't belong here

So it is with Kris Kobach, who is the New Hour's go to guy whenever President Trump signs a Muslim ban or whenever Steve Bannon suggests we should register all the Muslims in this country, just in case.


Kris Kobach, who is the secretary of state for Kansas, was on the News Hour defending Trump's latest attempt at a Muslim ban, saying that there have been 56 terrorists attacks perpetrated by Muslims from the seven countries targeted in Trump's order so it only makes sense to keep every citizen from any of these countries out of the United States, because, after all this all about protecting the American people.


Mr. Kobach has also gone on record favoring a Muslim registry. 


Illegal immigrants are something of an obsession for Mr. Kobach; in this he makes that blonde Hitler youth esque Dutch guy, Geert Wilders look like the Welcome Wagon lady.

Wilders:  doesn't like immigrants. Says they are troublemakers

But Mr. Kobach also believes in denying the vote to potential Democratic voters, like the poor, the Black and the labor union men. Mr. Kobach likes beating up on the have nots, the undesirables.

The thing about those 56 terrorist attacks is...they never actually happened. Professor Google and his trusty side kick, fact checkers says, actually, no, never happened. There are all sorts of ways to look at crimes committed by various groups, but the only people whose origins derive from the magnificent seven who have ever been convicted of any sort of terrorist related stuff were found guilty of sending money abroad, not stirring up trouble in the United States. The Muslims who have opened fire in the USA were born here and got alienated by guys like Mr. Kobach beating on them. Well, there was the wife of the American citizen who came from abroad, but she's the exception that proves the rule. 


Basically, Mr. Kobach uses that number, 56, like a bludgeon and sounds all intimidating in his conviction, but if you listen to him on youtube, and think, "Bull" he sounds a lot less intimidating and a lot more what he really is--a cheap thug with a tie.

Their spirit lives on in Mr. Kobach: Beat on the little guys

It is true those places (Somolia, Libya, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan) must harbor some pretty scary radical Islamic dirtballs, but nobody has shown simply denying entry to people trying to get on an airplane from those countries has actually thwarted attempts by bad guys from flying here and harming us.  It does make sense to think, well that's where the wild things are, why not simply stop flights from those places?

The argument is:
1. The wild things are just as likely to fly out of Berlin as out of Somolia--attracts less attention.
2. By the same reasoning, you would have denied entry to all those Jews trying to escape Mr. Himmler and his gang of merry murderers.  After all, all those fleeing women and children and their fathers were coming from a very scary, dark place.  The rule, in fact, used by the American Secretary of State, Cordell Hull was that every refugee needed a letter from the local police to attest to the refugee's good character. The Gestapo, which was the local police for many of these Jews, was not inclined to vouch for these people, especially when they were intent on feeding their ovens.


Oh, well. We live and learn.

Stewart Abercrombie Baker

You would think they would have trouble digging up people to front for Donald Trump, especially when it's Donald tweeting about Barack Obama having wire tapped his Trump Tower--President Obama is just so BAD or maybe SICK.

But no, this is Washington, so they can always find somebody by dangling the bauble of 15 minutes of fame, and who rose to take that bait? Some gnome called Stewart Abercrombie Baker.

So here's how this Washington lawyer from the Steptoe and Johnson firm tried to talk past the latest Donald debacle:

"We know from multiple reports, including The New York Times, that there were intercepts and there were FISA orders in connection with Russian efforts to influence the campaign. And we know from Mike Flynn’s resignation that those intercepts covered conversations that members of the campaign had.

And I think it’s perfectly reasonable to say, let’s investigate that. What we have heard from former Obama administration officials are very limited non-denial denials. That is to say, the president says, I didn’t order anything. Well, of course, he doesn’t.

But the Justice Department and the FISA court could have. We have Jim Clapper saying, we didn’t target the campaign or Mr. Trump.

There’s a lot of other people that could have been targeted that would look pretty political if it was done in bad faith. I think it’s fair to ask the question, what are the facts?

And that’s what your committee is for."

--Stewart Abercrombie Baker, Lawyer

Now, all this has the patina of respectability, until you realize, actually, Mr. Baker is obfuscating by changing the subject.  The subject was whether President Obama sent in the spooks to wire Trump Tower and listen in to whatever conversations might occur between, say, Ivkana and her lingerie designer. The subject is not whether the Feds were sent to listen to Russian agents and found themselves listening to Trump.
And what, pray tell, is "bad faith?" And how does anything in Washington not look "pretty political?"

 And to say we have "non denial denials" is simply inaccurate. Mr. Obama's men are saying, "We didn't do it. If anyone did do it, wasn't us." A non denial denial? No, simply a denial. What Mr. Baker wants is for Mr. Obama to claim omniscience.

Mr. Baker is picking up the only non lunatic spin you can make on the latest Trump tweet--if the CIA or some intelligence agency were listening to the Russians, as they ought to be, then if someone in Trump tower was talking to the Russians, well then Trump may be correct, someone was listening to Trump Tower for more than tweets.

Of course, as the saying goes, just because you are paranoid doesn't mean there's nobody out there trying to kill you. 

What everyone is arguing about is whether Mr. Trump has any justification for believing people are out to get him. So here we have a Washington lawyer claiming the proprietor of a house of ill repute should be taken seriously for complaining about men peeking through the windows and that is bad behavior on the part of the peepers.  Well then, we have to ask about the proprietor.

Looking this toady up on the internet, I was surprised to discover Mr. Stewart Abercrombie Baker  was in my class in college. We graduated the same year.
Looking him up in my yearbook, I surprised to find he didn't look the same then. The larger surprise is he was president of the parachute club. I didn't even know there was a parachute club.  Life is full of surprises. 

 So he went on to law school at UCLA, where he did not become a lawyer to the stars, but he did  become a lawyer to the third tier wannabes, i.e. the Washington, D.C. politicos, and an appointed toady in  various Republican administrative posts having to do with national security and the violation of civil rights in the name of keeping America safe again.

I, on the other hand, settled into happy obscurity, and have never been asked to appear on the PBS News Hour, where this toad was trying to hop into the limelight last night.  Listening to this guy pimp for Trump and the forces of darkness, I had to think, maybe it's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.
,

Instrumentalities

Never heard of this guy Mark Levin, but he says President Obama used all the instrumentalities of the government to place wire taps on Trump Tower, and the evidence is overwhelming.

Mark Levin, Master of Instrumentalities

We just don't have the evidence but you know it's overwhelming. Or it will be, when we find it. 

Personally, I have to believe anybody who comes up with the word, "instrumentalities."  Microscoft Word underlines that one in red as soon as you type it, so you know it's a great word.

And I thought President Trump had all the best words. Well, apparently one got by him:  instrumentalities. Fantastic. Just incredible. 

Those instrumentalities done tapped the Donald's phones in Trump Tower, which must not be easy, given how high Trump Tower is and how tight the security. You'd need some real serious instrumentalities to get by all that and tap the phones.

"Overwhelming" evidence, as a word, not so much. I like "irrefutable," better. When it comes to adjectives, you want one as specific to the noun as you can get.

Of course, the key thing is whatever the evidence is, nobody's seen it, which makes it really irrefutable. And overwhelming, I suppose.

Justifiably upset by instrumentalities

There was some Washington lawyer on the News Hour tonight who looked like Yoda in glasses, saying that it was perfectly reasonable to think President Obama would have tapped the Donald's phones because we all know President Obama takes politics "very personally." This Republican lawyer was saying, based on that very personal thing, the Senate committee investigating the Russians should investigate President Obama as well. 

One thing I don't quite get: When Wikileaks tapped the phones at the DNC, or hacked their emails or whatever, Donald said, "Oh, you got to love Wikileaks." He was all for listening in then. I thought he sort of liked eavesdropping. Well, maybe he's evolved on that one.

But the guy on the News Hour said the committee should investigate, which only sounds fair. We should utilize the government instrumentalities to investigate President Obama and his wire tapping mania.

A  user of instrumentalities

While we are at it, we ought to re open that Benghazi investigation, and wouldn't you like to know if vaccines really do cause autism? 

Space Aliens Confess All To President Trump!

What I want to know is what President Obama's wire tap on Trump Tower has to do with McCarthyism.

I get the Watergate comparison--you know, the President goes outside the FBI, CIA and NSA to hire some G. Gordon Liddy types to wire tap Trump Tower, but McCarthyism?  
McCarthy was all about witch hunts for Communist spies in the Federal government who sold out the United States, when in fact there were no communists in the United States government and certainly none who could have sold out the USA if they had wanted to.

Did Arnold Schwarzenegger have anything to do with the wiretap?

Wait, is this all about connecting dots?  Like maybe Arnold was working for Obama, and sneaked into Trump Tower and planted the bugs, and then Jeff Sessions got told about it and had to recuse himself from the investigation, but Comey wasn't told about it and didn't know about it because he was just closing in on tracking down Obama's REAL birth certificate which shows, very clearly, he is a Muslim born on Mars, and that's why nobody every knew him in school. 

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton has got herself in trouble with one of the space aliens who was hanging about the State Department around the time of Benghazi, which was why she was so cagey about who she spent the night with after she went home from the office that night. It wasn't General Petraeus. It was that space alien.

Obama is just so bad, or sick, or both. Very sick. Incredibly sick, actually.
It is just so incredible. President Trump has all the best words, like "incredible."  Ever think about that?  He says something and then he says "it's just incredible." So he's telling you, actually, he does not think whatever he said is credible. 
So what are we getting so upset about?

I am going to set my alarm for 5 AM every morning so I can get my coffee, turn on my computer and read President Trump's morning tweet.  He is going to put Fox News and the National Enquirer out of business. Who needs them when you've got the Presidential tweet?  First there was FDR and the fireside chats. Not we've got those incredible tweets. So Presidential. Really. I can hardly wait.

Trumptopia

Really liked the tie. President Trump has the best ties. He generally wears that dark blue suit and he favors white shirts but it's the ties where he really lets his personality shine through  and the dark blue tie  with the narrow white diagonal stripes looked very sharp last night. Downright Presidential.

And he started so well--telling his neo Nazi, white supremacist, off the grid fans that it was not good to topple the gravestones in Jewish cemeteries. I may have sounded like Adolph during the campaign, but ixnay on the Jew baiting. This is American fascism, not European.

The Europeans are such losers--we don't need that anti Semitic stuff to stoke fear here. We got those rapist Mexicans for that.

Trump is a consummate showman. I really liked all the stuff he promised:  More weapons systems for cheap, great hardware for the military, big wall to keep out all the illegal alien gang members, who will never figure out a way over, around or under that Great Wall of Trumptopia.

And a trillion dollars of infrastructure, the biggest thing since the interstate highway system, only financed by private corporations. So how's that going to work? They lend the money to build the road and how do they make money on the road? All I can think is: tolls. Just when I got used to driving down Route 95 without tolls, they go back to tolls, but I got that Easypass, so what the heck?  Private roads and private schools for inner city kids, because, you know, government can't do anything right.

And Obamacare, didn't work in Kentucky he says.  Rates went up and all the insurance companies fled the state. The former governor of Kentucky who implemented the program begged to differ. He said all they had to do to make people love Obamacare in Kentucky was to rename it Kynect.  But, hey, why quibble?

And oh, all those awful immigrant murderers.  Mr. Trump pointed to the father whose son was slain by an immigrant gang nogoodnik who had been deported twice before he murdered the man's son.  Does that not say something about the impotence of deportation? But, oh, wait. We'll have a wall.

And Ryan's widow up there sitting next to Ivanka. Did you notice Ivanka had that off the shoulder red dress? She looked stunning, but what was with that black bra strap?
As Mr. Trump pointed out, they kept the camera on Ryan's widow for so long, it was a new indoor record for people as stage props for a joint session speech. She was under a lot of pressure as an animate prop--first she raised her chin bravely; then she cried; then she clasped her hands together and looked Heavenward in prayer. I think she was talking to dead Ryan, and President Trump certainly said Ryan was looking down happily from Heaven at his happy widow. It was just like one of those TV shows, like the Jim Baaker show, or Pat Robertson or Billy Graham. Just ecstatic joy in the hall. Donald is such a showman. The best ever President. So fantastic. Incredible, in every sense of the word. Really.

He's got Ford and all those American companies bringing jobs back to the USA, tax cuts for corporations and the rich, healthcare way better than Obamacare for all, jobs, jobs, jobs especially for the coal miners who will dig clean coal--love that clean coal.

Hey, I'd like to wake up 20 years younger, 20 pounds lighter and with a full head of hair. Do you think he can do that for me?

Pelosi and Schumer: Cringeworthy

Chuck Schumer scored a perfect 1600 on his college board SAT exam. This is surprising because among the Democratic Senators your see on TV he shows every evidence of being a truly inarticulate, clueless, tone deaf mediocrity. He spoke yesterday at the National Press Club in Washington and stumbled through the speech he tried to read. It was full of clichés, uninspiring metaphors which sounded as if he had pulled them out of the recycle bin after the Democratic National Convention.

Nancy Pelosi, now 76 and looking every bit of it, was almost as bad, losing her place on the page of the remarks she read.


Both were better during the question and answer sessions, revealing their intimate knowledge of the history of various pieces of legislation.


At one point Schumer answered a question by saying, "It is a well known fact Israel has nuclear weapons, although exactly how many or what kind they've not said."


The fact is, it may be a widely held assumption, or suspicion, or it may be a secret in name only, but we have acted and planned  in the American government as if this is received truth, and all the countries in the region have too.  But a fact it is not.


This may seem like a small point, but it is just one easy example of how sloppy Schumer is in speech, how inelegant and how uninspiring. He could have done so much more with that issue.
"Israel has never acknowledged that nuclear weapons are part of its arsenal, but I have it on good authority that Iran, Syria and all its neighbors assume Israel does have such weapons and that is good enough for me. The fear of nuclear weapons, as we all know, is probably as important of the actual possession."


Or all that like.


The fact is the Donald has an unerring instinct for the jugular. He described Marco Rubio as small and Jeb Bush has low energy and now Schumer as a light weight. Coming from a guy who has no street cred for brains, describing a guy who went to Harvard, this may seem odd, but that's what Schumer looks like on TV, a lightweight.

Nancy Pelosi is 76 and Schumer is not a young 66. They are both too feeble to oppose Trump, who, if he is nothing else, has the frenzy of a balloon propelled by escaping air.  He has the energy of a Berlusconi or a Mussolini and the brains to match.


Schumer got all weepy over the thought of immigrant families being torn asunder. He should not have got weepy, he should have got angry.


"Mr. Trump makes war on the helpless and the harmless while he allows the predatory billionaires of Wall Street to escape taxation, just as he himself has. Is this what you wanted in the small towns of Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio? Well, if so, you've got it now. Congratulations. You've beaten up on the little people and you've had President Heel Spur do it for you."


And all like that.