A prediction (A hope?)

 For left-leaning people or centrists who think defeating Trump will heal the country, I have bad news: a single election isn't going to do it. The Democrats have to be committed to creating landslides from here on out.

Biden is far from my first choice for president, but he's the best one to run for this election. The Left might think Trump's disastrous term affords a grand opportunity to guide the country Left, but no, it isn't that. It's just a chance to stop the hemorrhaging.

(BTW, I laugh off suggestions that Biden has dementia. Maybe he's short of sleep some days, but dementia is nonsense. I also laugh it off the same suggestions about Trump. People think it's easy to diagnose a syndrome that's only positively identified by autopsy, and when diagnoses are most difficult tasks physicians have.)  

The GOP must be defeated, and it must be in a landslide. They had a chance to remove Trump and they cynically refused. If I were religious, I would see God's judgment in how right on the heels of Trump's acquittal, both COVID and an economic recession both hit us. (Yes, the recession started in February, independent of COVID.)

For their support of Trump, their failure to remove him, GOP's in Congress and everywhere deserve ignominy. For the corruption of our government, for backing Trump in his incompetent response to COVID, I hope they continue to lose subsequent elections to the point where they become a regional party at best.

If that happens, I expect the Democratic Party will split between the liberals and the centrists. The GOP's ideological and electoral competition are the only forces keeping the two factions together. The unity isn't viable in the long run.

I see Biden as transitional. Since guys his age are known to frequently die, Biden is probably transient as well. Yes, he's a centrist. He (and/or Harris) will have to make the choice whether he's going to screw the wealthy by taxing them, or screw his base by embracing business interests. It might seem he's already made the choice, but I don't presume that, despite indications of leaning toward the wealthy. The wealthy are used to getting their way, so they're easy to pwn. He knows it's not viable to maintain Clinton/Obama triangulation. So, either his voting or his financial constituency is going to get screwed. 

However, he won't have that choice if the GOP remains competitive.

I give a disclaimer to all my predictions: we live in an intrinsically unpredictable universe. Guesses about the future that aren't scientifically tested are almost always wrong.

Also, if Trump stays in power, nothing I've predicted here even applies.  My predictions on that contingency are all uniformly dire.  

Eugenics: the pseudoscience behind racism and genocide

Eugenics:

noun (used with a singular verb)

1. the study of or belief in the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population, especially by such means as discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesirable traits (negative eugenics) or encouraging reproduction by persons presumed to have inheritable desirable traits (positive eugenics).

 

Evidence

I bring up eugenics because President Donald Trump is a eugenicist. He's never come out and said that, but he has declared he had "good genes," in several pre-presidential interviews.

The better evidence is from who Trump the Younger lets into his inner circle, such as Steve Bannon. Bannon's eugenic and racist credentials are impeccable. Trump has praised neo-Nazis as "good people." He's come out in favor of racist Confederate statuary. Then you look at the rest of the people who he appoints: white as cotton. Also, consider the difference in the way he treated Texas and Puerto Rico after they were struck by hurricanes. Puerto Rico is still struggling.

Of course, there's also the elephant in the room, Trump's morally reprobate and impractical immigration policies. (Can you tell I don't like Trump?) Even if Trump doesn't say the word eugenics, and probably doesn't know a word that big, neo-nazis and white supremacists definitely hear the message. He encourages their belief.

An argument against Trump has to attack eugenics. Not only is it immoral, but it's also fatally flawed.

A Short History of Eugenics

At one time almost every educated white person in North America or Europe was a eugenicist. There've been vague forms of eugenics throughout history. However, modern style was an unfortunate interpretation of Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory. This was posited by Darwin's half-cousin, Francis Galton. Darwin disagreed with his half-cousin's interpretation. Unfazed, Galton coined a new word: "eugenics" and gave birth to a movement.

From there the idea spread like a meme through other Western countries, having harmful effects wherever it caught hold. Galton's gift provided scientific legitimacy to colonialization that Western Europeans needed to continue their ventures. In the US, states passed sterilization laws aimed at "inferior" people. Of course, it also reinforced the crudest racism, letting New Englanders agree that the Jim Crow might be useful after all. Racism had always been a potent force in US politics, now it was scientifically sound.

One effect that we're struggling with as I write is immigration policy. The first federal immigration law, The Page Act, was passed in 1875 before; eight years before Galton's initiatives. It was targeted only at Chinese. While that might be a counter-example, it also means our country didn't limit immigration for the first 86 years. Not just that: the Constitution doesn't mention immigration. That's what priority the issue had. The document does allow Congress to set rules for granting citizenship. Without anything in the founding documents, the ninth and tenth amendments would seem to suggest it's up to the states to regulate it. The states, however, wanted more population wanted more population in the early days. As far as know, the Constitutionality of immigration laws has never been tested in court.

Emergency Quota Act of 1921 the Immigration Act of 1924 were both passed, and both were very eugenic. For the first time, immigration was constrained by quotas. People from Northern Europe had much higher quotas than people of Southern or Eastern Europe (or from anywhere else). They also singled out Jews, Italians, and Slavs as especially unfavorable. The 1924 Act bolstered the prohibitions on Asian migration. The effects of eugenics were evident in these laws. We were trying to invent the superior race. Sterilization was done in every state of the union. Across Europe was mostly the same.

Until the cataclysm of the Second World War when the Concentration and Death Camps were liberated. The Nazis pushed eugenics to an extreme and chose the Jews as the most inferior race. The sight of dead bodies carpeting the ground to the horizon gave people a glance at the evil they were practicing to lesser extremes. Eugenics fell from favor.

But it was never scientifically refuted. That was a colossal oversight. That should have been the Epilogue of the Nuremberg Trials. The fact that eugenics was never formally disproved is coming back on us now, in the form of neo-nazis who think their racism has a basis in science but a conspiracy has suppressed it. But most importantly in Donald Trump who thinks he's keeping America safe for white people.

Refutation

First, I'm not a scientist. I've done a lot of scientific reading, but mainly I'm just a guy doing his best.

Some have pointed out that the superior people inevitably happen to coincide with the group that's in power at the time. That makes a short point for me: decisions about who's superior must be made politically, not by objective scientific standards.

For politics, words like "superior, perfect and truth" only have a meaning in specific, limited contexts. Such as we say, "Mike Trout is a superior baseball player." Or, "Sandy Koufax pitched a perfect game," or "The truth is, he pitched a perfect game." Those qualities can only be determined in a narrow context, such as within the rules and events of a baseball game. The statistics and videos are there to doublecheck the factuality of the claim.

Outside narrow contexts those words are seductive. They can trick a person into believing they can be boundless, even eternal, qualities.

Keeping that in mind, let's talk about a superior race. It is a myth that evolution makes species superior when the environment is harsh. Remember that evolution doesn't go one way. In nature, we were never evolving into a "superior" species. Also, evolution isn't stopped because life is so easy. No, you can't stop evolution any more than you can stop gravity. If we harshen up our environment, what might happen is that human brains shrink, because our brains require a lot of resources expending 20 percent of our energy intake. No other animal comes close. If the harsh environment were short of food, our extra intelligence could be the first thing overboard.

Evolution over generations makes a species more successful in its environment, this success us measured by how many of an organism's genes are later found within the species. This is why our superior minds can't get rid of cockroaches, mosquitos, and rats. Those animals aren't superior, they're entrenched in their niches. If the environment changes radically, all can go extinct.

Outside the narrow scope I described, "superiority" is an entirely human judgment wholly disconnected from environmental favor.  While not necessarily arbitrary, the traits human beings regard as superior might be far from what evolution will award. I don't think we can be successful at eugenics, but if we are, there's a good chance we'll kick ourselves into extinction.

To change the direction of evolution toward what we think is superior, humans would have to completely control the environment; breed the people with favorable traits, and eliminate the people with inferior attributes. That requires a lot of brutality and attrition. I don't Hitler think would have gotten very far with this, but it wouldn't have been implemented. Practically speaking, he couldn't have. I'm not sure he would've recoiled from those imposing these requirements on Germans, but he might have.

We've been creating dog breeds since Darwin. We haven't, however, created a "superior dog," that is one that beats us in chess while reciting Cervantes. Instead, by controlling their environment and interbreeding them, people have created a lot of specialized breeds.

My last point is evolution is a slow process working by the geological clock. The nation-states that are around now will all be gone by the time any effect whatsoever is apparent. How are we supposed to set up a regime that stands and continues to implement eugenics after all else we create fails?

 Right now  

The way Trump is treating immigrants shocks us. Be ready for when his grade of brutality grows. I expect this after he meets with Putin and gets advice. Trump had rather imprison ten thousand innocent Hispanics than arrest the only the thirty criminals among them. For deterrence, he'd separate children from their families. This has required more facilities. For somebody purported to be fiscally responsible, he's ticking up a lot of needless costs. That's nothing compared to the atrocity he's committing. He could build his wall on the funds he saves from arresting the guilty and letting the innocent in and allowing them to keep their children. But that's beside the point: doing unrealistic things to hurt people is called evil.

Forty-five percent of people think he's doing a good job. He has to appeal to that deplorable class, so be prepared to see worse.

Like a good Fascist

I will say one thing about Trump, he has kept his campaign promises. But that's only a virtue if the pledge you make isn't wicked.

Nothing that's happening with the separation of children from parents surprises me in the least. During the campaign, Trump was adamant on detaining immigrants at the border, with expelling illegals and refusing "frivolous" asylum requests.

I heard him say he would do it humanely. Nobody asked him how his policy could be performed benevolently. A reporter taking him seriously might have asked if he planned to put more money into building more detention centers, more vehicles, more supplies and hiring (qualified) guards? Or was he going to wait until Walmart closes a few stores? (Trump really should go easier on Amazon.) All of this might cost more than his wall. He should have been pressed on this during the election campaign.

Instead, as we're seeing, Trump would rather eat corn nuts for every meal every day of his remaining life than send one more buck toward making detention and processing somehow humane. He despises Hispanics so much that details aren't worth his effort, and definitely aren't worth any money, as hurricane Maria showed.

So, Trump will alter his plans under pressure. The government might allow parents to stay with their children, and that would be somewhat more humane at the beginning.

But it won't stay so that humane. What Trump will be refugee camps and ghettos, depending on whether it's an urban or rural environment. My bet is on the camps. How badly will they deteriorate? It could become a major atrocity because he has shown an uninterest in details that require it. He approaches his work as an authoritarian, and he presumes anything he trusts to be there will there.

He stepped up arrests at the border, for that he needs more police, then more trucks to transport immigrants, then detentionaries to keep them warehoused. These will require guards, then energy for heat in the winter. (I'm supposing AC would be a luxury.) Then food and water. Update: Since he has already separated 20,000 children from families, it has multiplied the number of facilities by at least two. Children are going to require care, somebody's going to have to change the diapers. Trump doesn't even think about all this, but to perform the stepped-up seizure and imprisonment without committing an atrocity, he needs far more resources than he started out with. He needs infrastructure he doesn't have.

Instead of assuming all Hispanic immigrants to be potential criminals, it would be far easier to arrest only the ones that ARE criminals. It would certainly be easier to house and feed only those that break real laws, the way the Founders meant it.

I say "real" laws because there is nothing in the Constitution that allows the federal government to regulate immigration. Though, to be clear, it does put the fed in charge of naturalizing immigrants. However, not until a hundred years after Independence were the first immigration laws passed. The only way the laws have stood up since is that immigration courts are not real courts. They're like hearing rooms of the executive branch. The "judges" are really civil servants working for the president, not judges appointed for life. So, if an immigrant wanted to challenge immigration laws, it would be in immigration court. The case would not be a judicial; the appeal would go to the AG, not to a real judge. If a non-immigrant wanted to challenge them, then the "real" court would say they have no standing to make the challenge. They're not a party with interest in the outcome. So, the immigration system has stood balanced on loopholes.

I expect my government to arrest criminals. I don't expect it to make America whiter. Purification of the American pedigree is not its cause. Such a thing has never existed. For Trump supporters, lashing out at other races is not only foolish and futile, but it makes everybody more miserable, including the Trumpers. They aim for a purer race, and the only thing they'll learn is it will solve nothing and make life a lot worse as it fails.

Unfortunately, I expect conditions for the growing number of detained immigrants to continue to worsen. As heinous as it is, the breaking of families is not what underlies this problem. If Trump stops breaking families, we'll get refugee camps and ghettos, and conditions in them will deteriorate because Trump and his henchmen in Congress will never provide funds to make the places inhabitable.

No, Trump's immigration policy is the real problem, and racism is the wickedness at its root. The camps and the detention centers are symptoms, the growing sores on the land.

Collusion not illegal? Try Subversion

While I agree that legal definitions must be precise. Public opinion doesn't turn on legal arguments.

Take the word collusion. Republicans are fond of pointing out, "That ain't no crime."

Neither is copying unless it's plagiarism or counterfeiting.

Neither is fibbing, except when it's defamation.

Neither is a traffic accident, except when it's a hit-and-run.
 
Neither is sex unless it's rape. 

Collusion is a general term for actions that might have been illegal. The press likes the word because they don't have to say "alleged."

However, the actions being discussed are not that innocuous. I can suggest a much better word than collusion to describe what happened between the Trump administration, the Russians, our election system, and our government:

SUBVERSION.

Now, when I put it like that, it sounds illegal and threating. Maybe it's because the Cold War wore it out that it hasn't been used. However, since "collusion" is being scoffed at, we might now have a good reason to dust off the word "subversion." Also, ask them what might happened in the Cold War if Russia did to us then what it did in 2016 and whether the Conservatives would be so obdurate about whether it was a crime.

Ironic Republicans, so guarded against subversion for generations, are now welcoming it in the person of Smugly the Clown and the Smugly family.

I suggest that "subversion" is the only term we ought to use to describe the crimes against our country.

About that election

I stayed off social media since Black Tuesday. Trump's election really hit me hard. I had to rethink things.

Trump: Government raider

I've never had a good impression of Trump, not from the first time I read about the guy, sometime in Eighties. I'm stunned that enough people voted for him to put him into the White House. Even considering his opponent was Clinton. I won't say he really lost because he trails in the popular vote. To cite an analogy, she got more hits, but he got more runs.

How do the votes really break down between Red and Blue? Have a look. 

Blue Islands in the Red Sea

You can see on the election map that there's a serious divide in this country between the cities and the countryside. Cities everywhere, including the South vote Blue. Meanwhile, the countrysides have been neglected by Democrats, and they've been hit hardest by all the changes in the last forty years: outsourcing, downsizing. Often there was only one manufacturer in town, and Walmart came in and wiped out Mom 'n' Pop retail. Most rural areas and small towns are impoverished. They've been hit worst by trade agreements and outsourcing. Almost all government services go to the cities, which do have 5/6th of the population, but the surrounding areas might have worse problems. There's a huge level of poverty, aggravated by drug addiction.

I remember taking a vacation and going to a lodge in rural Missouri. It was a place Dad took me to 45 years ago. The river lodge was wonderful. But the town around it was just horrendously squalid. I went to the same gas station I saw as a boy, and it survived. Yet, to my amazement, the gas pumps were same ones from the early '70s. I could tell because they were mechanical, with the "slot machine" read out. They weren't kept like antiques, either. These things were almost rusted out. The surrounding town looked just as bad. Many boarded up businesses.

So, I could understand the desperation. There's nothing that racism or sexism would do to cure that. Building the border wall is not going to enhance anybody's economy. Unless it's infrastructure like a road, or a building, like the St. Louis Arsenal (built by the WPA), it doesn't get used, it gets maintained only. There's nothing deporting Hispanics will do to bring us jobs. When the median age of the White population (who voted for Trump) is forty-two-years old, it's not like a lot of those heavy manual labor jobs are going to be given to Caucasians. If you follow Trump's proposal and give rural farm jobs to urban Blacks, who might or might not want them, it sounds something like slavery. Registering Muslims and maintaining those records is going to be expensive, but since that's all computerized now, it's not going to create more than a few temporary jobs.

Trump's foreign policy is a different matter, and I need to do more research before I comment on it. Except for a few parts of it, such as Trump's denial of Global Warming. If he goes ahead and gets rid of the EPA, cancels the Paris Accord, and unleashes fossil fuel industry on the World, it probably means human extinction. My belief about that is that we have neither the time nor the statistical space on the charts to goof around with somebody like Trump.

Yes, I know I was wrong about the election and I could be wrong about all this. Rationally, I know the universe is intrinsically unpredictable. It's possible I can be right about the information available, right about my reasoning, and still be utterly wrong about what really happens. Still I can't help feeling a continuous sinking feeling about Trump. He's, at the very least, a very risky decision.

Then there's Trump's vindictiveness, already legendary, and his casual attitude toward nuclear weapons, which I find scary. Unless he does something to show any redeeming quality, I'm going to be living in fear for four years, at least. The majority of Americans certainly do have a different idea of what constitutes a leader than I do. It seems to be something closer to a bully with no ability to solve problems.

For myself, I'm going to try to be much more information-oriented with this blog. I'll write about information that I find, not just my so-witty commentary. However, I'm at the point with my work where I can't blog as much as I want. My entries are going to be scarce until my main project is finished.

(Not much of) An insurrection coming

I've always found Trump to be a revolting human being. So, despite the fact that we have a majority Republican Congress and most states now have both a GOP governor and legislature, if Trump loses the election is fixed. So, Trump calls on his Trumpies to rebel if Clinton wins. Not if cheating is demonstrated, but if Clinton wins, even if she's ahead in the polls. 

If Clinton is elected, it would be a miracle if Trumpies staged anything but the meekest armed rebellion. and the main reason why is actually sad.

Read interviews at any Trump rally. The ages you'll see are 36, 50, 62 and 65. As I pointed out in a prior post, the median age of the white, non-Hispanic population is 42, and white non-Hispanics are somewhere around 99.7% of Trump followers. They have a dearth of young, fit people. Same problem American businesses have, coincidentally. They can’t find enough native citizens to do heavy labor. Maybe Trumpies will have to recruit Hispanics (median age, 26) to rebel for them. That would be ironic.

There are secondary reasons: logistical problems due to Trump supporters live mostly scattered in vast rural areas. Organizing that into an effective insurrection is going to be nearly impossible. Then again, they can make a lot of trouble in the countryside. Not to the point of toppling the government or even forcing it to negotiate, only to the point of being bigger assholes. 

 Now, say they create an insurrection despite those hurdles. They’ll try to rebel without damaging any private property. Remember how the Oregon Boys at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge pointed out that they weren’t damaging or burning anybody’s property, unlike those black protesters? Remember how the Oath Keepers showed up, armed and uninvited to Ferguson, MO, to help protect private property from an insurrection? More than private property, Trumpies think they’re better than “those people.” Rioting and burning would be a step down on status. For that same reason, they won’t block highways either.

They could march or drive down those highways and take over their state capitals, (without destroying property) but states’ rights are also sacrosanct to them, and they don't see their states as part of the problem, except about eminent domain. Besides, those legislatures are largely Republican already.

Then they all have jobs, farms or ranches. They pride themselves on hard work. Remember they used to tell BLM protesters to “get a job.” For an rebellion, they'd have to abandon their jobs, take a risk of being fired or miss a year's harvest.

So, even if they find enough people, their values place terrible limit their options. They could march on Washington, but everybody’s going to know they’re coming. Once they get there, un-supplied, they’ll face a professional army.

The only other things they can do is occupy Federal land in a strategically negligible location and wait until the feds come and take them out. I’ll call that the Bundy Plan. Or, they can go the tantrum/terrorist route. “I want it my way or some random immigrants are going to die.”

Guess what they’ll likely do? That’s right. I'd call it tantrum terrorism, except people will actually die. Yes, it is what right wing reactionaries have already been doing.

That and harass people at the voting booths. It looks like they'll do just that. They can spot an illegal immigrant on sight, and they can tell how many times an African-American has voted, I guess by the numbers stamped on their foreheads.
 

Not just immoral, but ineffective.

Trump's website detailed his policy proposal for immigrants. Like any racist plan, it's not just wrong, but it's a failure at addressing the problem it's purported to solve.

It would seem so direct: if we don't have higher paying jobs in our economy, all we have to do is get rid of all the immigrants who are taking them. Trump's website adds a fascist twist: after "humane" ethnic cleansing of Hispanics, relocate all the black youth in the inner to do their agricultural work. One thing I immediately find wrong with that is has Trump asked any Blacks about this? How would they like to be shipped out of their homes to do farm work, probably for very low wages? Farm work is some of the heaviest, most dangerous work in our economy.

However, this brutal plan could still succeed if not for a different issue, one which is the real reason why Hispanics are flooding in to the US to begin with. Have a look at this chart of US demographics by ethnic group.

 That chart above shows: with a median age in the forties, the white population of the US is not very fit to do heavy, physical labor. People in that group are also not as inclined to look for such work, thinking that they've basically outgrown it. The Black population is better, with a median age in the low thirties. But really, the best one is the US born Hispanic population, with a median age of 19.

When employers say that they can't fill their positions without hiring Hispanics (citizens or immigrants) they are being factual. The White non-Hispanic population is not only declining in terms of numbers relative to the rest of the US population, but it's older, and is getting older.

I believe that an economy only grows from the vitality and energy of its people, as long as the infrastructure is present. If I'm right, the US needs immigrants, of any status, for the economy to grow.

Therefore, shutting off the borders, or trying to, is simply going to leave many jobs unfilled. Most of the White population isn't fit for heavy manual labor. The Black population is somewhat better, but probably not good enough, and not so willing to leave urban centers to do agricultural work.

Donald Trump, and his followers, do not understand the demographic issue. The problem is not immigrants taking jobs, the problem is not enough native-born people to fill them.

Debate beatdown and my sigh of relief

With the most important election for a century coming soon, I know I've been silent about it in this blog. I don't have a good excuse for it, other than I haven't had a lot to say that hasn't been said. To me there's no hard decision. Clinton is the only candidate, and if you've decided to vote for Trump, there's not anything I can say to sway you.

I approach an election by imagining I'm going to hire the candidate to do a job. What does any employer read first before an interview? The resume. I don't listen so much to what candidates say, I look at what they've done. Consider the campaign to be one long job interview, a hiring process where the applicants have a right to one-up and back-stab each other.

For a series of cutthroat job interviews, where undercutting the other applicants is completely fair, I need to use judgment. Hillary Clinton is someone who has been falsely smeared for close to twenty-five years. Remember Vince Foster and his suicide, or am I that old?  Republicans started out accusing her of murder, and then got nasty.

If the attacks on President Obama have been severe, it's because the Republican lie machine practiced up on Bill, then Hillary Clinton. Bill was caught philandering, (after Republicans investigated him on Whitewater for years, finding nothing.) The remarkable thing about Hillary is none of the attacks have proved out. Her "scandals" have been investigated multiple times. She hasn't escaped them because she's a criminal mastermind, she's escaped them because she's innocent. FBI Chief ______ told Congressmen this 349872 times, and they still brought him into another hearing to tell them that 934072 more times.

As the always found nothing, they then laid on a big layer of conspiracy theories to confuse things and inflamed suspicions. It really surprised and discouraged me when Sanders supporters promulgated them. BTW, I did vote for Sanders in the primary, but now I'm totally behind Hillary Clinton.

I've never been so relieved about anything political than I was on Monday night when President-Elect Clinton trounced the flim-flam pretender, wanna-be Generalissimo Donald Trump through the mat. Afterward, neither Trump nor his supporters seem to understand that she dismembered their leader like a werewolf shredding a deer. Neither did The Young Turks who seemed to think she lost the first half-hour.

No Cenk. She shut him out. She put him in a headlock, ruined his comb-over and smeared his orange greasepaint. The only reason why you think he won the first half-hour is because you didn't begin to notice how one-sided it had been until the second.

How did TYT's miss Trump's Nixon-esque scowl as the debate began? If he looked tense, paranoid, and mean, she looked composed, rational, and humane. I had a feeling right then that she would win big.


Since then, Trump is now a gaffe a day, a scandal a week, a lie-every-three-minutes candidate. I'm so relieved that he's heading toward prison and the ash-heap of history. I look forward to the long-awaited Hillary Clinton presidency. If the Democrats can also get the Senate, that would really help.

However, important as all this now seems, it's all a dream, and none of it is going to matter in ten years. That's when the country will be fighting for its life as Global Warming takes hold. I'm off subject there, but I'd rather go through the worst crisis in history with Clinton as president rather than Trump, or anybody the Republicans will line up for the job.

And really, the party of climate change deniers deserves to die along with Trump's presidential aspirations. Their names should be read in anger for the remainder of human history.

Political ramble: Trump, a Batman Villain?

Admit it: doesn't Trump look, sound and act like an old-time Batman arch-villain? I mean, he has Joker-like makeup, but orange-face rather than green with whites around the eyes showing like a school-girl's slip. He wears that . . . solar panel thing on his head which apparently is supposed to boost his intelligence but fails spectacularly. He surrounds himself with beautiful women and his spoiled, long-neglected, grown-up kids, probably have nothing better to do but scheme to assassinate Dad and take over the family empire.

I'll just say I'm relieved that Trump is going down in fireball that could take the GOP with him.  Maybe I was foolish to ever think he was competitive, but in a world where the Repubs nominate Trump, anything is possible. That's still true. At the time that he was the de facto nominee, of course I was thinking how bad this could get?

There was this woman, this activist, who was a Bernie supporter. Then she came out and said she was voting for Trump and tried to explain this in a column. I just said, “No excuse,” and unsubscribed (that was on Twitter).

It's funny how none of the allegations against Hillary Clinton are sticking. Either she is greatest super-criminal mastermind ever, or she's always been innocent of anything Conservatives have accused her of. 


Failing at the newest email dump, the strategy now is to attack her health. (They shouldn't go there when their candidate resembles a radiation mutant.) The Boston Globe has run a story about how Hillary Clinton sometimes blanks out for hours. Guys, she's only been campaigning around the country for fourteen months. She's got to blank out some time. Remember when Obama babbled that there were 57 states?

What caused that? Exhaustion. Obama hides it so well, you could only tell it by the nonsense line.
I hope she'll catch up on sleep some time before the inauguration. 

8/28/16: Edited for syntax and clarity (end of first paragraph)

Trump is an Il Duce-bag

   Only three weeks have passed from the day Republicans chose Donald Trump as their nominee. Like a suicidal man who repudiates his choice one second before hitting the pavement, Repubs have been regretting nominating Trump ever since. Unfortunately, they can't pick up their brains from the sidewalk and put them back in. They will even more ashamed on November 8th, and long afterward.

    Trump is a fascist. The real McCoy, not some Godwin analogy in an argument over Final Fantasy. If you don't believe me, see his policy papers. Unlike Benito Mussolini, who had fascism defined and mapped out, Trump didn't become fascist by thought or design. (In Il Duce Mussolini's era, Fascism was cutting-edge evil.) No, Trump arrived at fascism due to beliefs his father passed on to him, beliefs that Trump has always been too narcissistic and stupid to re-examine. Those quaint World War II totalitarianisms (fascism, Nazism and Bolshevism) are especially attractive to sociopaths, including narcissist sociopaths like Trump.  

     So far, besides selling himself as a Messiah come to save our country from doom, Trump has made vindictiveness the theme of his campaign. He couldn't let it go with Khizr and Ghazala Khan, insulting them and the memory of their son. He had to sink himself and his party further and further with it. I can't wait to see how this guy will use nuclear weapons. No, actually, I can wait forever. And he has to tell Hilary Clinton that he'll get revenge if he loses. His followers might go 2A on her ass.

    Then there was the baby. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEeY8ENxPDwIf you watch the video, Trump's tone when he said “get that baby outta here” was practically a snarl, and he makes fun of the woman for believing him momentarily.

   Aren't politicians supposed to kiss babies? A cliche I know. Not that Trump could have done it (I mean even infants have their standards and would recoil from Trump's orange sleaze.) Yet, he should have, at least, taken his cues from that very old politicians trope: you don't have to kiss your supporters' babies, but dote over them. Make your constituents admire your forbearance toward their kids. (What? You think they'd believe you'd like a crying baby? No, they just want to know the candidate is willing suffer with them. It's a bonding experience.)

    The GOP leaders didn't have much of a choice accepting Trump after their base fell in love with him. Still, it's impossible to feel sorry for the leadership. They did it to themselves from years of propaganda, much of it from Roger Ailes at Fox News, who fortunately has now been dismissed. They scared their base for years over terrorism, Islam, race, immigration, the Clintons, Obama, our foreign policy, our economy, our debt, taxes, and our military, and so on. How could they be so thunderstruck when their voters acted like scared rats and forced the nomination of Trump?

    Frightened people want a want protection, a “strong” leader. A muscle-head. A bully, but on their side. We have a word for this: a strongman. A guy who makes grandiose plans to displace whole human populations never realizing nor caring about the suffering that would entail. A leader who can't be bothered with pesky details like how many people his deportation plan might kill. An iron-fisted blockhead who will build a wall, and by God, force Mexico to pay through warfare, dirty tricks . . . or nukes. A man who revels in the use of force: the more extreme the better.  That's Trump: a man who asks about nuking countries three times in a one hour national security briefing, like nukes are his new toy, and he can't wait to try it out.

  
  (Of course, Trump denies this now, because “deny and lie” is his “shock and awe.” Politifact gives him a truth rating of about 15%. Fifteen percent of what he claims is true, or mostly true.)
  
    People who are voting for Trump should just ask themselves how they would like working for Trump. How would they like working for a boss who only tells the truth less than fifteen percent of the time?

    Ailes and the rest of the GOP lie machine were so good at scaring people, the GOP base is acting like scared Germans in the 1920s-30s. Germany's situation was far more dire than anything we're going through, and the threats it was facing were far worse than immigration and terrorism. Devastated by war, isolated by the world, having faced starvation and economic chaos three times. The Germans had good reason to be terrified that the Soviet Union was about to roll in from the East. Stalinist operatives, not liberals or progressives, were within their country wouldn't let the German people forget the threat.

    What do we have stacked up against us? At least Islamic terrorists have no armies of real consequence, and couldn't move them here even if they had them. To the other side of their country, the Germans had the intransigent French, Belgians, and the worldwide British Empire. Post-war, the French (with Belgium) invaded Germany in 1923, creating the German hyperinflation that wrecked the economy and starved the people over two years. This is only a few after the starvation caused by the allied blockade. To sum up, their everyday situation was more dire than ours.

    Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones and company have made the US people feel as desperate as the post-WWI Germans, an astounding accomplishment. They way they've lost control of that frightened, angry base might be an object lesson to why propaganda is no substitute for news. This election has to represent the biggest long-term political-strategy failure in US history. It's enough to make Patrick Buchanan pull out his pubic hair, or Rush Limbaugh swallow one his cigars.
   
    A week ago came a rumor that Trump might drop out. That would be the best outcome for everyone involved. I'm certain he must have talked about it. He has a terribly thin skin. However, the story disappeared and has the hallmarks of being just a rumor. If so, it's hard to see how the GOP will ever recover from Trump. Whether they do or not, already the Republicans can write off the 2016 election. Anybody else they put up against Clinton now is bound to lose by twenty points. They can't get on the ballot this late in most states. I'm expecting most of the Trump supporters to stay home if their strongman quits. 

    By running for the presidency (which we're led to believe is an entry level position) Trump is taking a tremendous risk. He's not going to deal with a loss well. Moreover, Trump University looks like it ruin him financially, and even put him in prison. That's why he's using goon threats and saying if he loses the election must be rigged.


 
For as long as I've been alive, people have been hoping for third party. At the rate things are going, the GOP is going to be the third party in 2020. If not the fourth. And Trump will have his Trump Party then. If he's out on parole.

    Last Note: As I was writing this blog, I saw that Wikileaks has released 23,000 more of Clinton's Secretary of State emails. They're marked with a “C” for classified. There's some dispute about whether she knew it meant classified. When I was in the military, we stamped things “Classified,” no acronyms or abbreviations about it. I know I would have seen the letter and presumed it probably meant “copyright.” I know if it were drawn to my attention, a few seconds of thought would  have told me it didn't mean copyright, but the point is, I wouldn't have assumed it meant classified. Because it seems stupid to me that anything like that should be marked with single letter.

   Today it came out that Judicial Watch, a conservative operation, found indications of Clinton cronyism in an email just released. But Clinton didn't send the email, and what's described there is someone seeking a job and being recommended by a few people at the Clinton Foundation. Somehow, this didn't compete well with Trumps threatening innuendos to Clinton.  

    About Wikileaks: does Julian Assange want Trump to win? I realize he has every reason to despise Hilary Clinton, (and probably more than I know about) but surely he wouldn't endanger the world by putting Trump in office, . My question is why isn't Wikileaks or Anonymous getting dirt on Trump? It would be damaging to Wikileaks integrity if it's now being used as Assange's instrument of revenge.

    And we should also ask: has Trump made a deal with Assange? He certainly seems to have an understanding with Putin.

If you're writing in Bernie Sanders

As a Bernie Sanders supporter from the very first, I'm disappointed that he's not going to get the nomination unless there's a violent coup in the Democratic Party. Violent coups are not recommended, nor expected. However, now that question of nominee is basically settled, I've voting for Hillary Clinton.

I've heard a lot of complaining from the left, people who say that they'll write in Bernie's name, or just won't vote, or (saving throw) are voting for Donald Trump just to prove their wishes can't be ignored any longer.

If you're in that camp, I dare you to try this: wake up every day from now until the election, and say aloud, "President Trump." Then when you walk into the voting booth, say to yourself, "President Trump, for four years." Then think of some of the things he's promised: deportations, the Mexican wall, and reneging on US debt, etc.

If you can still write in Bernie Sanders, who you know can't win, when you also know you're asking for your consolation prize to be Donald Trump instead, then you will have proved you're a person of conviction, and you're not just thoughtlessly making the world much worse.

No, you're making it much worse with a purpose. And that purpose is [fill in the blank].

If you can fill in that blank with anything that makes sense to you, then ought to vote for Donald Trump.

I dare you to try it.