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.

The ominous trend hidden in mass shootings

I don't need to remind everyone of the Orlando shooting. Everyone is shocked over the sheer number of casualties, and surprised about the targeting of the LGBT community by an undoubted Islamic terrorist. Those two things will make this atrocity linger in the public mind. The tragedy is taking us through another tour of the well-worn debate over the availability of military-grade guns under the Second Amendment. Never mind these are weapons that could kill fifty people in five minutes, argument always ends the same way. The gun lobbying and PR kills any action. Yet, both the shock of the massacre and the familiarity the aftermath ritual obscure a disturbing trend in mass shootings, one that should be getting more attention.

(Continued after the break.)

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.

Vote. Please Vote

The Republican Party has shown by their obstructionism in Congress and their outrageous laws in the States that it shouldn't be a political party. Never mind that the base is now taking it apart. I have to admit the 2010 and 2014 elections were two of the most shocking I've ever seen. How can a party that's as irrational, anti-science, anti-education, obstructionist, who actually closed down the government, win majorities?

Their latest insult to rights, morality and intelligence is the defunding of Planned Parenthood for no reason whatsoever. The Center for Medical Progress's videos have been refuted, the people who made them are up on charges, and they'll probably have to stand charges of defamation as well.

This is the very same tactic Republicans pulled on ACORN, which also turned to be nothing.

It's apparent that among their other foibles, Republicans believe in government as a bully. It's odd the party of small government and no regulation would harass Planned Parenthood with arbitrary regulations. But they absolutely believe in that as a role for government.

A second state, Ohio has now defunded Planned Parenthood. Governor Kasich, that moderate, has signed the bill.

I'm beginning to get that same feeling helpless distressed feeling I had under George W. Bush. If you're a Liberal, Progressive or Socialist, please remember to vote.  

Things will continue to deteriorate until we fire these people:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fw41BDhI_K8

The truth is . . .

This has little to do with the article. I'm just plugging Colbert.

There's a lot I could write about with the primary process underway, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton locking horns, and the Republican field being culled. (I like how Stephen Colbert has called the process the "Hunger for Power Games.") For the record, I would be very disappointed if Bernie Sanders didn't get the Democratic nomination. I think we're about equally Left. However, I don't feel that there's much for me to discuss about the candidates that isn't covered quite well elsewhere, sans the real issues.

I prefer to look at the underpinning issues that determine how somebody will vote. I friend of mine has said that you could predict whether someone is conservative or liberal by their answer to one question: how complicated is life?  If they say it's simple, they're conservative. If they say it's complicated, they're liberal. However, I haven't been able to find any research confirming that.

That's true of philosophical matters, like the truth, not just something you say that's true, or logically true, but the Higher Truth. I got into a discussion on Facebook that where a woman argued that the Higher Truth isn't relative. Higher Truth, like complete perfection, a myth, but those are two categories that believers, especially of the conservative stripe, think their religion answers. Simplistic? You betcha.

This was my answer:

Really? First, the term when applied to the entirety of existence is over-broad, like the number 42, if you get the reference. Second, the universe works by probabilistic laws at the quantum level. So, chance and luck are intrinsic to existence. Third, from the smallest scale to the largest, the universe is a chaotic system. Our minds function to find order, or truth, but outside of that niche, they are very poor. (Hit the enter button early. I hate that.) Fourth, even if there is something called "the truth" our senses and our minds are too limited to perceive it, in fact. We are adapted to survive, regardless of the truth. So, what you're saying is mostly false.

A caveat: "the truth" should not be conflated or confused with the word "true," which is always provisional. The former should not be given the inarguable, mathematically sound status of the latter.

And her rebuttal was she didn't believe anything of what I said. Do you think she votes conservative, that she insists that her higher truth includes "knowing" a fetus is an unborn baby, and just sacrifice her and other women's reproductive rights without having to prove anything? You betcha. People who "know" there's a higher truth usually feel very entitled due to their knowledge. Even if that entitlement makes their life worse.

It isn't so much that some people believe that there's a higher truth. It's the entitlement it gives them, and the fact that this belief looks very much like plain ignorance compounded with error. That people even cast a argument as higher truth vs. relativism shows that they don't know what they're talking about. Evolutionists have run into this problem with Creationists: how do you argue against something when the premises buried beneath touch on reality only in the most distorted way? I suppose closing your eyes and groping is a simpler process than actually opening your eyes and looking. Aw, but I'm too parallel.  

Mass shootings are for white Christians only

Looks like the old American tradition of racism is finally going beginning to crack the gun regime. It's taken a couple of brown Muslims doing mass murder for conservatives to see it jus' ain't right that anybody can buy a gun, almost no questions asked. Since racism created the NRA to begin with, that's what Abraham Lincoln would call fitting and proper.

Personally, I was surprised that a couple of Muslims were able to put together such an arsenal and not draw more attention, if not from law enforcement, just from neighbors. It goes to show me that the Right to Keep and Bear (if not open carry) is a lot more colorblind than I thought. It's apparent that the two San Bernadino terrorists thought they get away with it. The Right to Keep and Bear Arms means that Middle East terrorists don't necessarily have to commit suicide nor fool with huge amounts of explosives. Much safer to just buy assault rifles.

I'm still waiting for one of these shootings to be thwarted. The problem with that is a matter of response time. It will take ten seconds for the would be hero to come out shock and begin to respond. By the time he pulls his gun, there's maybe fifteen to twenty seconds. A guy with a semi-automatic can empty his clip and be reloaded before then. By that time, five people are down, and he's aiming at our hero.

You could see from this that it's far better the killer doesn't have such a capable weapon in the first place.