Trump Fitness for Presidency – Page 10

Trump’s “Great and Unmatched Wisdom”

The Daily Escape:

Bear Lake, from the Superior trail, MN – October 2019 photo by lifesazoo

Maybe you saw this announcement from the White House on Sunday night saying the US was pulling back from where it was patrolling in northeast Syria, allowing the Turks to move deeper into Syrian territory:

Then, the AP reported on Monday that US troops had already begun pulling out of positions in northern Syria. Here’s what the situation on the ground looks like:

In agreeing with Turkey’s desire to further intervene in Syria, Trump overrode the objections of the Pentagon and State Department, which wanted to maintain a small American troop presence in northeastern Syria. Our presence provides a buffer between the Kurds and Turkey, which considers the Kurds to be terrorists.

Trump’s decision came after a telephone call with Turkey’s President Erdogan. The Kurdish forces in the area have been the most reliable American ally against ISIS for years, but Turkey has continually lobbied the US to stop supporting them.

Trump wanted to leave Syria in 2017, at the beginning of his term, but was talked out of it. Had he carried through on that, the Kurds would have had an incentive to make peace with Syria. It would have left Russia, Iran and Syria in a better position to fight the remaining jihadis, while holding the Turks at bay.

The Kurds should have seen this coming. America has not been the Kurds best friend, despite their assisting us since before the Iraq war. Remember that we had no response when Saddam used chemical weapons against them in the 1980s.

Trump plans on keeping the troops in Syria, just out of the reach of the coming Turkish invasion. It’s the worst of all worlds for everyone, except Erdogan.

The move didn’t go over well with Republicans. Many have castigated Trump, and some are promising to try to sanction Turkey if it follows through with its plans. In a kind of retreat, Trump backed down a little with this tweet:

Any non-Republican reading this tweet will have the same thought as Wrongo, that Trump’s account was hijacked, or that this was satire. No, it was really Trump, and he wasn’t joking. His “great and unmatched wisdom” stands between us and “obliterating” a NATO partner.

And he says he’s done it before. Does he mean the Iranian economy? China’s?

Wrongo hears echoes of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Unlike in “The Wizard of Oz”, the booming, threatening voice of grandiose delusion now comes from a Twitter account. And this story won’t end with Dorothy waking from a dream.

So far, the GOP in DC has not reacted to the tweet, they’re still focused on what they think is a bad decision: walking away from the Kurds. They think Trump is rewarding another dictator in Erdogan. He has defied the US by purchasing Russia’s S-400 air-defense system and by ignoring US sanctions against Iran.

But Trump seems ok with all that, so long as Erdogan takes 2,500 foreign fighters off our hands.

So far, the Republicans are pissed about Trump doing something that is within his right to do as president. But, when he broke the law by asking foreign countries to interfere in our election, they have stayed silent.

So, Trump jeopardizing their Defense Industry PAC contributions is a grave national concern, but law-breaking is OK by them.

Who sets their priorities?

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – September 29, 2019

Demo Memo reports that the average worker works 4.77 days a week. But 19% of workers usually work on Saturday, while just 12% work on Sunday, according to the BLS American Time Use Survey. The vast majority, 68% of workers, work Monday through Friday.

Workers without a high school diploma are most likely to work weekends: 31% usually work Saturdays and 17% on Sundays. Those in service occupations are much more likely to work weekends: 39% usually work Saturdays and 28% Sundays.

And here’s Wrongo doing a little service work on the weekend! This week, the cartoonists were understandably focused on impeachment.

Dems really, really want to believe they’ve got him this time:

The GOP will say they’ve found absolute proof even if there’s nothing:

Fall, when the Congressperson’s thoughts turn to impeachment:

Some see only what they are told to see:

Don’t be surprised if it comes down to this:

Maybe we could advance the climate discussion if the message was clearer:

Saturday Soother – September 28, 2019

The Daily Escape:

Salt Marsh, East Galveston Bay, Texas – 2019 photo by patrickbyrd

We can’t let the week end without talking about the Trump/Ukraine phone calls. Wrongo’s hot take is that it seems that Trump may have stepped on a rake, and he’s hoping that the bruise on his face won’t leave a permanent mark.

It is also possible that instead, it’s the Democrats who found a new rake to step on. Democrats are lazy. They want Trump out of the White House, but they don’t want to do the hard work of beating him in 2020.

And just when it was clear that the Mueller investigation couldn’t deliver for them, we have the Ukraine “favor to ask” story to move the impeachment ball toward the goal. Is it possible that Trump has baited the Dems into this? He’s been amazingly forthcoming.

Despite all the smoke, the investigation must answer three questions:

Did the President do something that rises to the “high crimes and misdemeanors” standard?
Was there also a cover up?
Who managed the cover up?

It remains to be seen what the answers are. Let’s hope the truth comes out. That is extremely important, regardless of the final outcome for Trump, or the Democrats.

This week was also the 50^th anniversary of the Beatles “Abbey Road”. Were you around to hear it in 1969? Wrongo sure was. He remembers hearing their “Meet The Beatles” in 1964. The debates about which is their best album endures, but Wrongo lists “Abbey Road” and “Rubber Soul” as his faves.

Opinions may differ, but “Rubber Soul” (1965), “Revolver” (1966), and “Sergeant Pepper” (1967) was one heck of a three-album streak. Later, like all streaks, the Beatles lost their mojo, and broke up in 1970.

To many, the Beatles albums are music for Boomers. And some think the generation got stuck there. They believe any music that played after they turned 30 isn’t worth listening to. This says a lot about them. Just look closely at our current politics and politicians if you require an example.

But it’s a combined problem: Around 1980, rock radio stations stopped playing new music and put Boomer classics into a heavy rotation. Even Springsteen didn’t get much airtime until “Born in the USA” in 1984. If you weren’t listening to alternative radio you thought that nothing had changed.

Truthfully, many in each generation appear to be convinced that the world’s best music was recorded sometime between their 13^th and 25^th birthdays. Most people kind of turn into their parents along the way, criticizing whatever flavor of new music comes along. Meanwhile, after watching PBS’s Ken Burns’ “Country Music”, Wrongo is more convinced than ever that American pop music is a mostly unbroken chain of evolving and branching genres.

Fall has begun in earnest on the fields of Wrong. Tomatoes are done, the only thing still growing in our little garden is parsley. Today, around 7:00 am, we had a large, healthy coyote trot through the back 40. We’ve been hearing them howling nearby at night for years, but see them infrequently.

Sadly, we have to start our fall cleanup in earnest this weekend. But before we do, it’s time to begin our Saturday soothing ritual. Start by going online and buying a few pounds of Panama Elida Estate Catuai Natural ASD coffee ($32/16 oz.) from Branford, CT’s own Willoughby’s Coffee & Tea. The roaster says it has flavors of guava, red grape, pineapple, lychee, mango, ripe berries and red wine.

Since there can be no way to stop thinking about what’s going on in DC this weekend, let’s gear up for it by listening to something that isn’t on your Spotify or Pandora play lists, or on any of the middle-of-the-road stations you listen to, its Gary Clark Jr.’s song “This Land”.

From the LA Times:

“Protest and social justice haven’t previously been the central focus of Clark’s songs, with a few notable exceptions on his first two studio releases for Warner Records. He’s been celebrated mainly as a next-generation master of molten blues guitar and a new hope for old ways in the digital era, but his latest album, “This Land,” begins with a title song of genuine anger and deep, raging funk.”

The song is about being angrily profiled in his own home in rural California by a white neighbor, in front of his son and daughter. The neighbor asked Clark to take him to meet the real owner, or he’d call the police.

The song is about what was said to him, how he was treated, and how he felt after being treated that way. Clark didn’t join a hate group. He didn’t say death to all white people. He wrote a protest song about his experience:

The video is a must watch, and the music is a blend of blues rock, reggae, and hip-hop all in one. Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

Monday Wake Up Call – July 29, 2019

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Llyn Padarn, North Wales – photo by risquer

Wrongo wants to take a look back at a revealing moment in the White House last week. Trump hosted survivors of religious persecution, including Nadia Murad, a 26-year-old Iraqi-born human rights activist and 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner. Sadly, the event revealed Trump at his worst.

Roger Cohen, writing about the meeting in the NYT:

…”I cannot forget Trump’s recent treatment of Nadia Murad, a Yazidi woman who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for her campaign to end mass rape in war. The Islamic State, or ISIS, forced Murad into sexual slavery when it overran Yazidi villages in northern Iraq in 2014. Murad lost her mother and six brothers, slaughtered by ISIS.”

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – July 21, 2019

We’ve just celebrated a monumental American achievement that happened half a century ago. The courage, commitment and science that landing on the moon required hasn’t been helpful here on earth in order to cleanse the darkness in human hearts.

Our president has no interest in addressing that problem. He doesn’t see it as a problem, but as a tool to be exploited. That’s reminiscent of what movie president Andrew Shepherd (“The American President”) said about his reelection opponent, Bob Rumson:

“We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you that Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things, and two things only: making you afraid of it, and telling you who is to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections. You gather a group of middle age, middle class, middle income voters who remember with longing an easier time…”

(hat tip: Tom Sullivan)

Why can’t our real president think and speak like that?

Mix that thought with what The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer said about the “send her back” chants at Trump’s rally:

“If multiracial democracy cannot be defended in America…it will not be defended elsewhere. What Americans do now, in the face of this, will define us forever.”

Time’s up America. On to cartoons.

Would we get to the moon if we were starting today?

2020 will tell if this is our future:

Trump’s strategy:

Hear the big lie often enough, and you may just believe it:

Who’s legit?

Take Away Trump’s Legitimacy

The Daily Escape:

Wildflowers at St. Marys Lake, Glacier NP – July 2019 photo by zjpurdy

Wrongo arises from his sick bed to discuss Trump’s war on the four Democratic Congresswomen. Saying “America, love it or leave it”, or, “Go back where you came from” are almost as old as the country itself.

“Love it or leave it” was a popular bumper sticker during the late 1960s. It was aimed at the anti-Vietnam War protesters who claimed that America was wrong to be fighting in Vietnam. The slogan possessed an internal logic. If you really hate where you are, why don’t you go someplace else?

The reality is that wanting policy change isn’t the equivalent of hating your country. Nixon and his supporters said that the (largely) student protesters believed that America itself was evil. That justified the slogan for the right, and we saw it everywhere.

Fighting for policy change today is perfectly acceptable. It says nothing about your love of country. Despite Trump’s shouting, dissent in no way equals hate of country.

By using “Go back where you came from”, Trump is tapping into one of the old reliable political tools, the fear and vilification of immigrants and their descendants. He’s using deeply entrenched roots in American history: Why don’t you just go back where you came from?

Or, as Trump’s North Carolina crowd said, “Send her back”. Send her back doesn’t just apply to Rep. Ilhan Omar. It means your black neighbors, the Guatemalan family at church, and the Hmong kids your son plays soccer with. It means your Indian co-workers; it means the Chinese couple in the park.

But it doesn’t include any of the roughly 580,000 illegal migrants from Europe.

From the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798 to “No Irish Need Apply” signs in the 1830s, to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, America has loved to hate immigrants. They were not only seen as competing for jobs, but as threatening the social, cultural and political order. Even in the 1830s people thought that they were taking jobs that should belong to Americans, and that they clung to their native language and refused to assimilate.

Sound familiar?

And once we stopped allowing Chinese immigrants, some of the jobs denied to the Chinese were subsequently filled by Mexicans. They were also viewed as different, clannish and hard to assimilate.

It’s good to remember that the US government has rules against saying to its workers “go back where you came from”. Here’s a quote from the Equal Opportunity Commission’s regulations:

“Examples of potentially unlawful conduct include insults, taunting, or ethnic epithets, such as making fun of a person’s foreign accent or comments like, ‘Go back to where you came from,’ whether made by supervisors or by co-workers…”

Isn’t Trump a government supervisor? Sure, but these rules don’t apply in Republican administrations. Robert Kagan in the WaPo:

“Trump has given us a binary choice: Either stand with American principles, which in this case means standing in defense of the Squad, or equivocate, which means standing with Trump and white nationalism. It doesn’t matter how you feel about Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.). The truth is, they have done nothing and said nothing about the United States or about an ally (in this case, Israel) that has not been done or said thousands of times.”

Now, he’s going up against the entire Democratic Party. They’re quoting him directly. And the pit bulls at Fox News are saying that calling him out is grossly unfair.

It’s time for Democrats to stop debating Trump about whether he’s a racist. They simply need to keep saying it. Every day. Until November 2020. Along the way, which ever Democrat is nominated should say they have no intention of debating the liar and racist Trump. He doesn’t deserve the dignity and respect that the debate forum implies.

Instead, the Democratic nominee should buy time on all networks including Fox, and on all social media outlets in 5, to not-longer-than 10 minute pieces. In each, they can point out what Trump said he would do, and what actually happened.

Think how it might work for domestic policy: Trump gutted Obamacare with no plan for helping the people who lost insurance. His tax cuts helped corporations and the 1%, while doing nearly nothing for the rest of us. His tax cuts also blew a hole in our budget. He’s weakened our education department, and our environmental regulations.

The candidate would then present the solutions. Clearly, without the need for any ninety second rebuttals by the liar and racist Trump. The GOP will say we’re not following the rules, but Trump never follows “rules” of presidential behavior, why should Democrats?

He’s already proven that he will say anything (and possibly do anything) to get elected.

Stop legitimizing him.

Saturday Soother – May 25, 2019

The Daily Escape:

Man of War Bay, Dorset, UK – 2019 photo by bluecalxx

Yesterday at lunch with long-time friend and blog reader Fred, he asked about what we have lost in the time of Trump. I answered that America has lost experiencing the difference between following the spirit, and the letter of the law.

We always have had politicians who cut corners, but they understood their obligations as servants to the community at large. They were people who understood that they had an obligation to represent the best of our ideals to the rest of us.

Politicians now stick (barely) to the letter of the law: “If it doesn’t say I can’t do it, I’ll just do what I want.”

But this age didn’t begin with Trump’s 2016 win. In 1973, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. wrote “The Imperial Presidency” in which he argued that the power of the presidency had exceeded the limits set by our Constitutional checks and balances.

Schlesinger was focused on the Nixon presidency. Yet, for all his flaws, Nixon was unwilling to tear down our government to save himself. Trump has shown us that when a president is absolutely willing to cross the line of what we formerly called the spirit of the law, nothing holds him back.This is a deep flaw in our Constitution.

And now, 35 years after Nixon, our government might just get torn down by Trump and his sycophants.

On Thursday, Trump gave AG William Barr authority to conduct a review into how the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia were investigated. The intention is to portray Trump as the real victim of the Russia investigation. Trump also granted Barr the power to unilaterally declassify documents of the CIA, FBI and other intelligence agencies. More from the NYT: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“The move — which occurred just hours after the president again declared that those who led the investigation committed treason — gave Mr. Barr immense leverage over the intelligence community and enormous power over what the public learns about the roots of the Russia investigation.”

The declassification process will be selective, in service of a predetermined narrative. Barr now has the ability to again control the narrative, much like his “summary” of the Mueller Report that mischaracterized the Report’s content.

And there won’t be any way to distinguish between selective declassification and flat-out lies. This is the equivalent of a judge who announces at the start of the trial that he’s going to allow every objection by the prosecution, while ruling against every defense motion. It will be a show trial.

David Frum at the Atlantic says:

“The mission he has assigned them: Fight to suppress documents properly subpoenaed by Congress to answer important public questions, then pick and choose US national secrets to defame career professionals who sought to protect the integrity of the nation’s elections against foreign adversaries who manipulated those elections in Trump’s favor.”

Worse, we the people will have to rely on the media to tell facts from spin without seeing all of the classified information. Information that caused the intelligence agencies to worry about the Trump campaign’s Russia connections in the first place. That evidence led them to request warrants. A federal court reviewed that evidence, and authorized and subsequently, reauthorized the warrants. Frum asks:

“Will that evidence be declassified?”

If you’re an FBI agent, and you’ve been chasing down what Deutsche Bank knew about Trump’s dealings with overseas oligarchs, and you hear that your ultimate boss, Barr, is about to investigate the investigators, you’re probably not sleeping well tonight. Particularly after Trump says that the investigators committed treason.

And that’s the point.

Time to downshift into our long Memorial Day weekend, beginning with that ritual we call the Saturday Soother. There is no need for coffee this weekend, we’re already overly amp’ed up by the news.

So, let’s move on to music to soothe the savage within. Find a comfy chair and your wireless headphones, and listen to a Mexican waltz, “Sobre las Olas” or “Over the Waves” by Juventino Rosas. It was first published in Mexico in 1888. You have certainly already heard the piece if you’ve been on a carnival ride. In 1950, the music was adapted for the movie The Great Caruso as the song, “The Loveliest Night of the Year”. Later, Mario Lanza recorded it, and it reached Number 3 in the 1951 US Billboard Charts:

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

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – April 28, 2019

In an interesting column in the Cook Political Report, Amy Walter notes: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“…one way to look at the 2020 Democratic primary contest was to think of it as a battle between those candidates who wanted a ‘revolution’ versus those who want to see more of a ‘restoration.’ The leaders of the ‘revolution’ wing, Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, aren’t running to simply replace President Trump, but to bring serious, structural change to the country. This week, the leader of the ‘restoration’ wing — Vice President Joe Biden— announced his candidacy. To Biden, it’s not the system that’s broken as much as it is the person in charge of the system who is broken.”

She goes on to quote Biden’s first campaign video:

“I believe history will look back on four years of this president and all he embraces as an aberrant moment in time,”

Biden says he’s only running because of Trump. The revolutionaries would be running even if another Republican was in the White House. Walter points out that makes Biden like many of the Democratic candidates who ran for Congress in the 2018 mid-terms. They weren’t politically seasoned like Biden, but they were similarly moved to run by Trump’s presidency. More from Walter: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“And, like Biden, most of those Democratic congressional candidates emphasized not a radical change but a check; a check on Trump’s presidency and his policies. But, most of those candidates were also running in suburban, swing districts where a message of moderation was a winning strategy. Biden is running to win in a much more diverse and ideologically fragmented primary contest.”

She says that most of the 20 candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination are closer to the ‘restoration’ wing than the ‘revolutionary’ wing of the Party. And she closes with:

“To me, the big question for these next few months is if Biden will take the fight directly to the revolutionaries in a way the other candidates have not…..Now, he has a chance to pivot to the offense. And, to reset the rules and terrain of the game that have, until this point, been set by Bernie Sanders. Let’s see if — and how — he does it.

Interesting viewpoint as we sail on toward the first Democratic primary debates on June 26-27. BTW, 16 candidates have qualified for inclusion, showing that the bar was set far too low. On to cartoons.

Biden’s also running against himself:

Mueller called Trump “Individual 1”. Here’s to 10-20 in 2020:

Warren’s policies cause concern among the 1%:

Dems face a quandary. Trump will be happy with whichever they choose:

Trump will stonewall responding to subpoenas all the way to 2020:

Trump also has a yuuge grey wall:

Saturday Soother – March 23, 2019

The Daily Escape:

Milford Sound, New Zealand – photo via The Travel Guys

You know leadership when you see it. In the US, we are chronically short of inspiring leaders. But there is a great model of leadership on view in New Zealand, their Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Now 38, she was the world’s youngest female head of government, when she took office at age 37.

We’ve seen her response to the Mosque killings. In lieu of texting thoughts and prayers, she donned a black head scarf and led a group of politicians to visit victims’ families. She went to a high school that had lost two students in the attack, and told the children they need to fight prejudice:

“Let New Zealand be a place where there is no tolerance for racism….That’s something we can all do.”

She announced a ban on military-style assault rifles and ammunition on Thursday. She has hammered social media companies for allowing and amplifying extremism. Ardern has called capitalism a “blatant failure” due to the extent of homelessness in New Zealand.

She has spent her political capital to unite her country, not to divide it.

None of those things could have been accomplished by Trump. And none will ever be accomplished by him. He’s too politically and ideologically conflicted to give a full-throated denouncement of extremism from the right.

He doesn’t have the empathy to sit with relatives of the dead and comfort them. He’s not capable of leading us through a teachable moment. He can’t move our government to action, except to pass unnecessary tax cuts and hire right-wing Supreme Court Justices. He can’t be a role model for any positive behaviors, and is a terrible communicator to the general public.

So, look clearly at America’s politicians, and find someone who has the ability to lead like Ms. Ardern. Wrongo doubts that you will find many. Ms. Ardern is a politician not a saint, but her actions prove that politicians exist who can be effective thought and cultural leaders.

Remember that she’s just 38 years old!

Does this imply we shouldn’t be thinking that America necessarily needs an older politician driving the bus of state?

By the time you’re reading this, you’ll already know that the Mueller Report has been submitted to the Attorney General. Where we go from here depends to a great extent on the leadership of the Attorney General, the House and Senate, and the president.

Sadly, there’s no Jacinda Ardern in sight.

Time to unplug and get as soothed as we can under the current circumstances. Start by brewing up some Eaagads Estate Kenyan small batch coffee ($19/12oz.) from Austin Texas’s Greater Goods Coffee. The roaster says it pairs well with blackberry scones and citrus fruit.

Now, get to your favorite chair, put on your headphones and listen to Roxane Elfasci play “Clair de Lune” by Claude Debussy, on guitar. This 2016 live performance was in Paris. “Clair de Lune” is the third movement of “Suite Bergamasque” by Claude Debussy, from a poem by Paul Verlaine. It was written for piano, and here it is arranged for guitar by James Edwards. This is a wonderful performance of a well-known piece which is incredibly difficult to play on solo guitar:

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

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – December 16, 2018

A seven-year-old Guatemalan girl died on December 6^th in the custody of the US Border Patrol. She and her father were apprehended with a group of 163 migrants near Antelope Wells, NM.

Reportedly, she hadn’t eaten, or consumed water for several days. She began vomiting on a bus that was taking her to a holding facility at Lordsburg NM, a 90-mile trip. She was not breathing when she arrived at Lordsburg, and was resuscitated there by the Border Patrol. She was then helicoptered to a hospital in El Paso, Texas. At the hospital, the girl was revived after going into cardiac arrest, but died less than 24 hours later.

Asked if food and water were given to the child, DHS blamed the father for taking his daughter on the dangerous journey to the US. But, she didn’t die on the 3,000-mile journey. She died in the US and in Border Patrol custody. She died while she was the BP’s responsibility.

The government is responsible for the health and safety of migrants they detain. They have to do better: