Dickitude – Page 22 – The Wrongologist

Trumped!

(This post is for Pat M, a long-time blog reader, who called, expressing outrage at the Pant Load)

From the mouth of Trump comes the ultimate “shorter” GOP:

“And when you’re a star they let you do it,” Trump says. “You can do anything.”

This is Donald Trump admitting to sexually assaulting a woman.

This is why the GOP said yesterday, and will say today and tomorrow whatever they think they need to say to get by the latest insight into the true character of Donald Trump.

You see, racism, bigotry, misogyny were a part of the Republican Party long before Trump. The ugly truth is that the real problem has long been “moderate Republicans” who looked the other way and allowed that hatred to take root in order to garner political power, particularly in the last eight years.

Republicans voted for him in the primaries, the Party’s elite endorsed him. The Republican base still plans to vote for him for president, and NOW, the Party will look the other way as their elderly, frat boy pig of a candidate does it again.

And the best part is that Republicans now wish that Mike Pence was at the top of the ticket. Remember Mike Pence? The vile, bigoted, misogynist who signed a law making LGBTQ folks second-class citizens? The Republican governor who forced women to pay for funeral services for their aborted fetuses?

So Trump’s statement that “You can do anything” resonates with the core supporters of the Republican Party:

If you’re a Big Bank, you can do anything, and ordinary mortals be damned. (Remember the GOPs opposition to the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and to Dodd-Frank)
If you’re Big Pharma, you can do anything, and ordinary mortals be damned. (Remember the GOPs opposition to allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices)
If you’re the NRA, you can do anything, and ordinary mortals be damned. (See the GOPs opposition to even collecting data on gun deaths)

It’s the Leona Helmsley Principle: Rules are for the little people. Trump took her tax idea and made it better, showing us that he was smart, while the rest of us are chumps.

Remember Chris Christie shutting down the GW bridge, or Rick Snyder and the poisoning of Flint’s water.

“When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”

The Republicans won’t take Donald Trump off the ticket, he is one of their kind.

He is the logical conclusion of what it means to be a Republican in 2016.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – October 2, 2016

The nation’s cartoonists had many easy targets this week, what with the presidential debate aftermath, but most offerings were repetitive: Trump’s hair on fire, Hillary wrestling Trump, blah, blah.

Millennials are thinking about voting for Gary Johnson. Maybe they should examine the consequences of that decision:

cow-millenials-vote

There is no IPhone app for instant positive change. The challenge is to vote for representatives and referendums that forward the ideals we cherish (and do nothing that will retard change) – no matter how long it takes.

It is puzzling why so many young voters think Hillary is dishonest. The Clintons have released their tax returns for decades. They have released the tax returns of their foundation. Congress has spent years and millions investigating her and has not found anything illegal. Of course, the media has been furiously digging into both candidates, but most of what they have produced is about Trump’s malfeasance: They have found dozens of documented reports of dishonesty, pay for play, ugly comments about women and minorities. His two divorce degrees require confidentiality by the ex-wives to keep the support money coming.

He could be arrested for what he did in Cuba, if the statute of limitations had not run out, but a large segment of our younger voters dislikes Hillary enough to vote for Gary Johnson.

The debate lasted 90 minutes. Trump’s debate worked for about 30 minutes:

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As expected, he brought up “Stop and Frisk”:

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Maybe this is a good time to remind The Pant Load about the Fourth Amendment, which says that this action is most likely illegal:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The VP debate on Tuesday probably won’t be must-see TV:

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Apparently, the Saudis couldn’t spend enough in DC to avoid the override of Obama’s veto:

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Debate Night – Monday Wake Up Edition

The Presidential debate is tonight. Trump was reported to have invited former Bill Clinton paramour Gennifer Flowers to the debate, but now we hear from Mike Pence that it’s not so. This looks like is a case of “mind games forever”.

Millions of words have been written in advance of the debates, so no need to add to the hot steaming pile of punditry here, except to say that Hillary cannot win any news cycle. Even the one in which the NYT endorsed Hillary. Here is Tristero at Hullabaloo: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

The NYT endorsed Clinton, but actually they’re heavily promoting Trump for president. How heavily? Literally by a 2:1 margin. Put another way, the Times [in their editorial] believes that what Trump says and does is twice as important as what his closest rival says and does…If you go…to the NY Times Web site and do a word search, you will come up with:

Trump: 16 mentions
Clinton: 8 mentions

2 Pictures of Trump
1 picture of Clinton

If you can’t win in THE PAPER THAT IS NOMINATING YOU, it’s hard to win overall.

Libertarian Presidential candidate Gary Johnson won’t be at the debate. Sadly, he seems to be the choice of quite a few Millennials over both Clinton and Trump. Kevin Drum noticed that polling shows there are a fairly significant number of Sanders voters saying they prefer Gary Johnson over Clinton.

It is easy to understand if you fail to look closely at Johnson’s policies: He favors legalization of marijuana. He’s good on civil liberties and wants to cut back on overseas military interventions. He’s moderate on immigration. He’s pro-choice and supports gay rights.

But he’s nothing more than a warmed-over Republican. Here is a Johnson quote from earlier this week:

fireshot-screen-capture-130-gary-johnson-page-001

Yes, he really did say that since the sun will burn up the planet someday, why should we care about climate change? BTW, it’s not likely to occur within the next 5 billion years, so this is an example of Libertarian long-range planning.

So, let’s just focus on making lots of money now. #Feel The Johnson

You still think there is lots to like about Gary Johnson? Perhaps you should review Drum’s listing of some of Johnson’s policy positions:

He supports TPP
He supports fracking
He opposes any federal policies to reduce student debt
He supports Citizens United
He wants to privatize Social Security
He opposes any kind of national health care and wants to repeal Obamacare
He opposes practically all forms of gun control
He wants to cut the corporate tax rate to zero
He wants to eliminate the income tax, the payroll tax, and the estate tax. He would replace it with a 28 percent flat tax

His position on choice is that it’s up to the states. So a woman’s “personal freedom” would be subject to whatever yahoos in the state capitol decide it is.

So it’s time for Millennials to both wake up and study up on the Libertarians. In honor of Gary Johnson, here is Little Feat with “Don’t Bogart that Joint”:

Little Feat made the song famous, but the song was written by the Fraternity of Man, an American blues rock group. The song was featured in the movie Easy Rider in 1969.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – September 25, 2016

So many stories competing for our attention this week. The bomber, the “driving while black” shootings, the upcoming debate.

Let’s start with Tulsa and Charlotte:

cow-aaa-b4-cops

And how many news reports do we hear about a stranded white motorist being shot, or a social worker lying on the ground with his hands in the air getting shot? The smart phone camera is the only disinfectant that may end this.

The Presidential candidates’ response to NYC and NJ bomber taught us quite a bit:

Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times Free Press

This shows the difference in the way Democrats and Republicans view the world. Democrats are trying to figure out why people are getting radicalized, who they are, and how to stop them. Republicans want to carpet bomb the place until the sands glow and let (their) god sort them out.

The Wells Fargo hearings gave us a rare moment of bi-partisan solidarity:

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Wrongo does not endorse killing anyone at Wells Fargo or any other bank or Wall Street firm. But is putting a few behind bars too much to ask?

The debate is tomorrow, but what on earth will they talk about?

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Words Have Meaning

This captures where we are:

COW Hill's Threats

People are debating whether Donald Trump suggested violence against Hillary with his comment about how “the Second Amendment People” might be the only group capable of stopping Hillary Clinton from appointing liberal judges if she is elected president.

The Trump comment was in the context of what happens after Hillary is elected, and that there was nothing anyone could do about Hillary appointing Justices, except for…Second Amendment people.

He said, “If [Hillary Clinton] gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks.” There’s “nothing you can do” in this situation because Trump is talking about a time after the 2016 election is over, and Clinton is president.

If he wasn’t talking about after the election, why would he say there was “nothing you can do?” During the election, there’s something pretty obvious you can do: Get out the vote and prevent her from becoming president in the first place.

Then Trump immediately follows it up by saying, “But I tell you what, that’ll be a horrible day.” Again, this suggests the time frame he’s talking about is when she’s already in the White House. Otherwise, both the “horrible day” comment and the “nothing you can do” comment that bookend his Second Amendment remark are total non-sequiturs.

So no, this isn’t about the NRA organizing their members to get out the vote. His comments were about doing something AFTER the election. Why would it be a “horrible day” if all he was talking about was getting out the vote, his vote? It is totally illogical.

There is no ambiguity here.

This seemed to Wrongo to be another effort at a joke by the Pant Load. The WaPo reported that Paul Ryan said:

It sounds like just a joke gone bad. I hope he clears it up very quickly. You should never joke about something like that.

It’s highly unusual for the Wrongologist to agree with Paul Ryan, but that’s probably the best defense for Trump’s words. But when faced with an outcry after his controversial comments, Trump never admits error and never backs down — no matter how strained the defense.

Why should this time be any different?

Trump knew exactly what he was doing, and he did so in the same manner he has been using throughout the campaign. A suggestion, an inference, a little birdie told him, it is what people are saying. The dog whistle, the wink, the nod. Some ambiguity to the comment, delivered in a veil of coyness.

Maybe we should remember the very bright line that Sarah Palin crossed a few years ago when she took out an ad that deliberately placed Gabby Giffords in crosshairs, just before Giffords was shot and critically wounded by a gunman. This is different, but really, how different is it?

On ABC’s Good Morning America, Rudy Giuliani gave Trump’s words the real test: How did they play with Trump’s audience? Getting Hillary couldn’t be what Trump meant, Rudy observed, because if Trump had actually called for Hillary to be killed, the crowd would have gone wild.

Imagine being Giuliani: So invested in Trump’s campaign that you’re contorting yourself into a pretzel to translate the candidate’s Wingbat-ese into English.

And once again, defending the indefensible.

Words matter, especially when delivered by someone who aspires to be POTUS.

WTF Is It With Cellphone Cameras?

The NYT had an article last Thursday about a suicide rescue on the George Washington Bridge by a bicyclist. Julio De Leon, 61, was biking home from work across the GW Bridge when he saw someone about the jump off the bridge and into the Hudson River. From the NYT:

Then he saw it: a dog in the pathway, tethered to a rail. “This is something unusual, and I looked to my left, and I saw the guy,” Mr. De Leon said.

Why is AARP Funding ALEC?

Yes, you heard that correctly, AARP, the insurance company that styles itself as a champion for senior citizens has become a corporate sponsor of ALEC.

Let’s remember what ALEC is: The name stands for the American Legislative Exchange Council. It operates by offering model legislation to its members, who typically are big corporations and conservative Republican state legislators. It was initially funded by the Koch Brothers.

Its legislative ideas cover practically every area of state government, from education and health to energy, environment and tax policy. State legislators introduce the ALEC-drafted bills in their home states, allowing ALEC’s legislative concepts to metastasize in almost identical laws in statehouses across the country.

ALEC has pushed for:

The repeal of the Affordable Care Act, which has saved Medicare enrollees millions of dollars by closing the Medicare drug benefit “doughnut hole.”
It opposed Medicaid expansion under Obamacare.
It has targeted public pensions, pushing to cap benefits and shift workers toward defined contribution plans, which shifts market risk onto the shoulders of individual workers.
It advocates for privatizing at least a portion of your Social Security taxes.

Governing, a publication for state and local policymakers, says that roughly 1,000 bills based on ALEC language are introduced in an average year, with about 20% getting enacted.

Since 2011, ALEC suffered a backlash, as a number of its corporate sponsors, (more than 100 corporations), pulled their support including Ford, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft, among many others. Eric Schmidt of Google told NPR after deciding to leave ALEC:

I think the consensus within the company was that that was some sort of mistake and so we’re trying to not do that in the future.

So why would AARP sign on as a corporate sponsor of ALEC? From the LA Times: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Among the policies that have been promoted by ALEC are several that arguably undermine the interests of seniors and retirees, AARP’s core constituency.

Despite that, the Center for Media and Democracy has learned that AARP joined ALEC, and that it is a named sponsor of the ALEC annual meeting that took place in Indianapolis, Indiana from July 27-29, 2016.

AARP didn’t hide its new financial relationship with ALEC, at least to ALEC legislators. The AARP logo appears in the conference brochure and attendees at the conference were each provided with an AARP branded portable USB power pack as they registered for the event.

Here is AARP’s corporate response when challenged about their new ALEC relationship: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

In 2016, AARP paid a fee to ALEC, which gave us an opportunity to engage with state legislators and advance our members’ priorities from a position of strength at ALEC’s annual meeting.

AARP’s engagement with ALEC is NOT an endorsement of the organization’s policies either past or present. As is the case with other groups AARP engages with, there are many issues and areas where we strongly disagree with ALEC’s position or approach.

So, who in AARP’s marketing department convinced the top brass that they need to “pay” to meet with state legislators? And wouldn’t AARP members be very interested in what AARP’s management asked of state legislators?

From the LA Times:

Yet in arguing that a relationship with ALEC is necessary to “engage” with the legislators affiliated with the group, AARP is taking a different approach from the dozens of corporations that have abandoned ALEC.

Trump Channels George Costanza

The underlying personality trait of George Costanza is that he’s a liar. He doesn’t try to hide it, he wears it as a badge of honor, and he takes great pride in his dishonesty. Here, in George’s own words:

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

The Donald is the second coming of George Costanza. With all his lying, Prima Donald didn’t have a great Monday. From the Daily Beast:

Monday was an incredible day of falsehoods for the GOP nominee.

The DB goes on to list and rebut a series of lies that Trumpy put out at a few campaign stops and on a pre-recorded piece for Sean Hannity of Fox News. Read the whole list here. In addition, Prima Donald:

Continued to attack against Khizr Khan.
For the second time in two days, Trump attacked a fire marshal at a press conference for having the temerity to not allow him to violate maximum occupancy regulations.
Reacted to the NYT’s investigation of his draft-dodging.
Preemptively declared that the presidential election is rigged.
Announced unimpressive funds raising numbers. (He’s raised $35 million, which he said is “unheard of for Republicans, $35.8 million”. Actually, Mitt raised $101 million in July 2012.)
Declared that if women, even his daughter, were victims of sexual harassment, they should just quit (perhaps overlooking that not every woman can just get another job within their father’s empire)
Praised Paul Ryan’s primary challenger, while Paul Ryan is (1) basically the leader of his party and (2) standing by his endorsement of Trump.

These are just a few of his recent whoppers. Why is he like this? He’s a man whose mentality is completely focused on closing deals. He, like many senior business leaders, sees everything as a transaction.

Wrongo has a lifetime of big business experience with dozens of people like Trump, people who identify with the deal. The deal validates who they are. They wine, dine, flatter, intimidate, abuse psychologically; the closer does whatever it takes to get the signature on the bottom line.

Then the closer walks away, and is on to the next deal, repeating the process. If shit happens after the close, there are designated handlers who are tasked with fixing it, it’s not the closer’s job. Whatever was said or done to close the last deal is irrelevant to the next one. The closer is walled off from the last deal, and the sole focus is validating his/her worth by closing the next one. There is no feeling of remorse for prior actions, no blow-back penetrates the wall.

For Trump, the idea that people would hold his bullying and insults against him must be surprising. That is why he fights back so angrily when caught up short.

Turning his personality to the political arena, Trump above all thrives on winning. He needs to be able to point to victories and yell: I WON! I WON! I WON!

Between the end of the Conventions and Election Day, it’s beginning to look like there aren’t going to be a lot of well-defined victory moments for Prima Donald.

Three months is a long time for a thin-skinned addict to go without his fix.

This is his temperament. It should disqualify him.

“Read the Constitution” – A Trump Wake Up Call

By now, most have seen the short speech that packed a wallop by Khizr Khan at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. The speech by Mr. Khan was one of the most difficult/beautiful/gut wrenching 15 minutes of this long campaign season.

When Khan pulled his copy of the Constitution out of his pocket and waved it at Donald Trump, it was only a matter of time before the Pant Load responded. You can count on the Donald. Trump said:

If you look at his wife, she was standing there…She had nothing to say. She probably, maybe, she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say. You tell me.

Khan shot back on CNN’s”State of the Union” :

For this candidate for presidency to not be aware of the respect of a Gold Star mother standing there, and he had to take that shot at her, this is height of ignorance…

Trump then went on to say that he had made a lot of sacrifices by, ya know, hiring people and stuff. That led to a twitter storm carried on the hashtag: #TrumpSacrifices. While there are many funny tweets, Paul Begala, CNN commentator and advisor to a pro-Clinton Super PAC, wrote:

Once survived an entire weekend at Mar-a-Lago with just one can of hairspray.

Or this, Wrongo’s favorite:

Rob Woodyard tweet

OMG, THAT’s what Trump wants to get out of this: He wants to be Kevin Spacey with a comb-over!

Thank you, Khizr Khan for reminding our country that we are founded on what should be a sacred document that lays out how we should live in a society based on justice. And thanks for the sacrifice of your son Humayun, lost while taking part in an ill-advised war:

Humayun Khan

Donald Trump needs a wake-up call for his shocking lack of knowledge of the US Constitution. Let’s start with a list from the WaPo that shows Trump doesn’t know the Constitution:

He wants to “loosen” libel laws, so he could more easily sue news organizations who write “nasty” articles about him. There are centuries of First Amendment jurisprudence that would restrict his ability to do this.
He’s said he would push military commanders to go further than water boarding, even though it has been banned by federal law.
Many scholars believe Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims would be struck down as unconstitutional (due process, equal protection, religious freedom, etc.).
He insisted on “Meet the Press” earlier this year that the 14th Amendment does not guarantee birthright citizenship.
His attacks on Judge Gonzalo Curiel over his Mexican heritage show his lack of respect for an independent judiciary.
Trump has at times suggested that he might somehow be able to initiate the prosecution of Hillary Clinton over her emails if he’s elected. In March, asked about the kind of Justice he’d name to the Supreme Court, he said he’d:

Probably appoint people that would look very seriously at [Clinton’s] email disaster because it’s criminal activity.

A signal he doesn’t understand the role of each branch.

To help wake up the Donald, here is a hip hop tune about the Constitution by Smart Songs, an organization that provides kids and teachers with positive, educational hip hop, to help make learning fun. We chose this because Trump needs to start with an elementary education about the US Constitution, and work up from there:

For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can view the video here.

About Trump and Russia

From Emptywheel:

There has been a lot written about Russia intelligence agencies allegedly hacking the DNC server and — by leaking it — attempting to influence the election. Some observers have, based on that assumption, called the hack an act of war.

The good news was that the leak of emails defenestrated the detestable Debbie Downer Shultz, head of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). It also exposed the DNC’s tipping of the playing field in favor of Clinton during the Democratic primaries, after much speculation that they were doing exactly that.

There are many claims being made, all serving a narrative that Putin is playing a role in our presidential election, and that he (Putin) prefers to see Trump in the White House. More from Emptywheel: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

I’m not saying the Russians didn’t do this hack, nor am I dismissing the idea that they’d prefer Trump to Hillary. By far the most interesting piece of this is the way those with the documents — both the hackers and Wikileaks — held documents until a really awkward time for some awkward disclosures

It is doubtful that the Russians care in the slightest about Debbie Wasserman Schultz, or the DNC. Perhaps there is another shoe to drop on the Clinton campaign. It is interesting that the Main Stream Media is focused on the hacking, and not the content of the hacked emails and the DNCs lax IT security. Is it possible that we will see a series of ever more damaging releases as the campaign goes on?

A piece of underreported news was that Trump and the Russians have had a cozy business relationship since the 1980s. Josh Marshall at TPM took an in-depth look at the business connections between Donald Trump and Russia. Marshall reports that Trump appears to have a deep financial dependence on Russian money, some of it from persons close to Putin. Here are a few facts:

Trump’s debt load has grown dramatically over the last year, from $350 million to $630 million, according to estimates by Bloomberg. This happened in a year when his liquid assets have also decreased.
There is evidence that some big US banks don’t want to work with him, but Deutsche Bank has lent him $300 million since 2012.
Post-bankruptcy, Trump has been highly reliant on money from Russia. WaPo has a good overview which includes this:

Since the 1980s, Trump and his family members have made numerous trips to Moscow in search of business opportunities, and they have relied on Russian investors to buy their properties around the world.

One example of this is the Trump SoHo development in Manhattan. The project was hit with a series of lawsuits, and emerging out of that litigation was news about secret financing for the project from Russia and Kazakhstan. As the NYT said: (brackets by the Wronologist)

Mr. Lauria [an FBI informant who worked for Bayrock Group, developer of the Trump SoHo project] brokered a $50 million investment in Trump SoHo and three other Bayrock projects by an Icelandic firm preferred by wealthy Russians “in favor with” President Vladimir V. Putin, according to a lawsuit against Bayrock by one of its former executives. The Icelandic company, FL Group, was identified in a Bayrock investor presentation as a strategic partner…

While not all in the Josh Marshall article checks out, there is something to the reasoning that Trump has a “special relationship” with Russia, which bears examination, even if Russia didn’t hack the DNC. The relationship is based on circumstantial, but non-trivial evidence for a financial relationship between Trump and Russia.

Even if you see no adverse news, Trump’s financial empire is highly leveraged and has a questionable reliance on capital infusions from foreign banks and oligarchs.

Even if you yell, “but, the Clinton Foundation has the same issue”, Trump’s dependence is simply not something that should be ignored. As Mustang Bobby said:

I’m old enough to remember when even a whisper of a connection between a political candidate and a foreign power — to say nothing of the country that makes up what’s left of the former Soviet Union — would be instant political death.

The question, is: Will this gain any traction in the American media, or will Mr. Trump be hailed as a deal-maker who can work with our adversaries?

Will Trump’s neo-conservative supporters who hate Russia think, “Commie sympathizer”?

Don’t hold your breath.

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Dickitude