West Wing Story: I Like Some Help From America

It's been disheartening to say the least to hear the Twitter battle between Donald Trump and the Mayor San Juan, Carmen Yulín Cruz. One is a fearless leader who is doing her utmost to raise international public awareness around the plight of her citizens so that they get the help they need. The other is a narcissistic, pathological liar and sociopath, who spends all of his waking hours in search of personal gratification and aggrandizement.

Guess which one is letting down the people of Puerto Rico?

This is not a trick question, and it shows just how much we've had to lower the bar to even put the word "President" in front of Donald Trump's name; he is so utterly lacking in any of the qualities we look for and need in an elected official. With every breath he takes and every tweet he unleashes he makes the world a nastier, more brutish place.

Lo siento, disculpan nos, mis hermanos y hermanas puertorriqueño, por las acciones y las palabras de nuestro presidente. El no representa la mayoría del pueblo norteamericano. A pesar de todo que ha dicho estamos en solidaridad con Uds. No olviden que no estén solos. Estaremos siempre conjuntos, mano en mano hasta que salgamos de esta pesadilla.

PUDDIN'!!!

I know it's all about race baitin' distraction and red meat for his racist, hatin' base, but I still couldn't resist call out the Donald on his ludicrously inept attempt to divide professional athletes from the American public. It's beyond ironic that Trump has only galvanized the solidarity among professional athletes across the major professional sports leagues and even gotten the crusty members of the exploitation class, i.e., the team owners, to stand behind their players. Nice going, Donald. Keep up the good work.

And let's not let the fuming fans off the hook - you know, the ones who scream in full roar with foam flecked maws at the heinous treason the athletes are committing by exercising their first amendment rights by taking a knee or locking arms during the singing of the national anthem. These are the same wahoos who mangle the anthem after having thrown back a few watered down overpriced beers. Many of them probably haven't spent so much as a minute doing anything for their fellow human beings yet they sanctimoniously bellow about patriotism and loyalty to country. All I can say is they should just take a minute and realize that for every finger they point at "those people," or as Trump called them "those SOBs," they better realize there are three other fingers pointing right back at themselves. He who lives in a glass trailer should cast no remotes.

The Donald's Sing-a-long in Noo Yawk

I have a bone to pick with the media. In the lead up to Trump's "speech" at the United Nations today, they unquestioningly passed along the highly spun bit of bunk put out by Trump's handlers that "America First" was actually just standard interest-based foreign policy, something any country would and should sign onto. That's an abdication of their responsibility to dig a bit deeper and provide some of the context so that we can appreciate the real meaning of this jingoistic, xenophobic drivel. They can still remain plenty fair and balanced by doing this while holding it up as part of a long well-documented string of vile utterances emanating from that man's...puckered up orifice.

Because, let's face it: U.S. foreign policy - despite the presence of the "grown ups" in the cabinet - continues to plummet into something of a death spiral. Principals at State, DoD and the White House saying completely different things about critical foreign policy issues...and on the same day! Rex Tillerson hollowing out the State Department so that seasoned diplomats are fleeing in droves. And, of course, the Donald throwing out empty threats (G-d, I hope they're empty) that would throw parts of this world onto the edge of a nuclear holocaust.

But I'm sure that by reading from a teleprompter today Trump will explain all of this in a way so that it all sounds "presidential," just like "America First" sounds like an actual policy.

Hey, B'Abbott! Climate Change is REAL!

So...here we are in Hurricane season and only a week or so after Harvey walloped Texas, Irma has begun to hammer Florida. And yet...Governor Tweedledumb of Texas remains one of the biggest Climate Change deniers, but wait, he has company, Governor Tweedledumber of Florida. And they have lots of buddies, too. Members of their respective state delegations in the U.S. Congress voted against the disaster response assistance, "on principle," because the bill was tied to raising the debt ceiling. Seriously? What principle would that be? Some variant of trickle-down, voodoo economics? Something like, "Record (Hurricane-spiked) tides drown all lives?"

Knuckleheads.

Beyond their culpability in rolling back all policies that would have mitigated climate change as well as their Orwellian efforts to stifle even the mention of climate change in all official state communications, they are likely to squander this opportunity to reset and replace such policies with ones that are climate-smart and sustainable. Call it whatever you want - throwing good money after bad - but they are likely to bring back those very same no holds barred, regulation-free policies that promote hyper-development and socioeconomic inequality. These are the same policies that contributed so much to climate change in the first place and to the very conditions that enable it to have such a deadly impact on our communities. I tell you what I prefer to call it: insane, in line with Albert Einstein's definition of insanity: "Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

With more hurricanes already on the way, these knuckleheads, and the nincompoops who voted them into office, will have every opportunity to to test the veracity of that definition. Good luck with that.