Goin' Retro and Partying Like It's 1969

I guess that it's only befitting that thanks to a little belated karmic justice Trump should get tripped up by a little tactic used so famously by his idol and role model: Richard "Tricky Dick" Nixon. It turned out that his self-styled consiglieri/fixer/sleazeball attorney, Michael Cohen, was taping their conversations unbeknownst to the Donald. And then, surprise!, it turns out that Trump really was lying about his affair with Karen McDougal, his knowledge of it, and whether or not he actually paid her off. Thanks to good chum, tabloid mogul David Pecker(wood), the owner and publisher of the National Inquirer, the story of his one-year affair with McDougal, tastefully carried out after the birth of his child, was squashed.

To paraphrase MLK, Jr., the boomerang of the universe is long, but it will eventually come back to knock you upside your combed-over head. I hope this is the beginning of many, many boomerangs of universal justice. Heck, I hope Trump faces a whole swarm of them. And, truth to be told, I'm getting a little tired of raising the hypocrisy issue when it comes to the sanctimonious right-wing's enabling of his reprehensible behavior, but I'll just summon a little energy to remind all of you one more time. The Republican Party and all of its right wing conservative supporters, donors and pundits have happily hid their shameful heads in the sand while Trump has gone about systematically shredding their so-called values and platform. As long as he can further institutionalize their guiding principles of white supremacy and social Darwinism, it's all good.

And with another Herculean effort, I'll repeat one more time that I cannot say that I'm much more pleased with the Democrats. Their establishment seems to be doing nothing more than wringing their hands about any number of ongoing Trump efforts to roll back civil and voting rights, environmental law and regulations, and worker's and women's. I won't even mention immigration, because the only major differences between Barack Obama, aka, "The Deporter in Chief," and Trump is that he barbarously imprisoned the entire families rather than barbarously separate the parents from the children. That's what is supposed to make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside about the Dems? Sheesh.

Oh wait, was that thing on? Can I pay you for not publishing that? Really? Great! Do you take cash, check or plastic?

PDS

Much has been said about what the Donald did whilst on his most excellent European Vacation - trashing our allies, bullying female prime ministers, whining about how unfair it is that our NATO allies make us pay a disproportionate amount for our collective defense, blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, yada. And then he went to Helsinki to meet his bromance BFF, Pooty, to give his Boyar boyo some love, respect, and who knows what else during their 2-hour private confab.

Treason? I dunno. Probably not. Just more examples of how Trump is physically incapable of ever, EVER saying so much as one bad word about Russia or its leader. That's not what caught my attention this week. It was the reaction of the Republican party. Again, no surprises here, given their primal fear of saying "boo" against anything Trump says or does. I get it - the polls show that all of the knuckle-dragging, tea-bagging, mouth-breathing masses, aka the GOP base, love everything Trump does by wide margins. Still, one has to wonder why the GOP has really lost its gusto for promising its base the world and then screwing it over in favor of lavishing more love on the super-wealthy (for future explanation, see Frank, Thomas. What's the Matter with Kansas? 2005).

Then we read about the red-headed Russian "unregistered agent," Maria Butina, who spent the past 5 years rubbing shoulders with the leadership of the GOP base's main political platforms, including the National Rifle Association among others. Now I get it. I begin to understand the GOP's reticence. It's not that Trump has sold his soul to Putin & Co. He has. It's that the entire GOP has been doing exactly the same thing. No, it's not all about the money. The Russians have yet to become the GOP's biggest sugar daddy - not by a long shot. Rather, it's the optics of one of America's two major parties, sullying itself by sidling up to the Bolshoi Gangsta to cement their white supremacist minority rule through political PsyOps, the very same the U.S. Government used on multiple countries during the Cold War - Iran, Guatemala, Greece, El Salvador, Chile, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, etc., etc.

Talk about karmic justice. I guess the chickens have finally come home to roost in...in Trump's Mar-el-Lago Florida Dacha.

Send in the Clowns...Wait They're Already Here...

What up, London? The same folks who gave us Spike Jones, Monty Python, Spitting Image and the like, have now given us the Baby Trump Blimp. And big shout out to Sadiq Khan for showing the integrity and the intestinal fortitude to remind the world that political satire is a form of free speech, which he refused to compromise by way of accommodating our thin-skinned, fat-headed, Nazi-loving, knuckle-dragging, mouth-breather, crotch-grabber of a president, aka, the Donald.

Trump did his best to trash the transatlantic alliance by, among other things, leveling misogynistic attacks against Angela Merkel, and then going after Theresa May by embracing his mop-headed upper class twit brother from another mother, Boris "the Spy-der" Johnson. Now, after a few rounds at his "failing" golf resort in Scotland, Trump is off to stoke up the fires of his bromance with his true love, the love...of...his...life. No, not Wendy, Jack. It's, of course, Vladimir Putin. I'm sure the sparks will fly, and the Orange Menace will swoon before the manly, bare-chested horse-riding charms of Czar Vlad the Comb-over.

Can't wait to see what he'll give up in return for...being blackmailed to do more of the same...

Oh, and to all of my hardcore leftist brothers and sisters who argue ironically (or not, just like Trump) that "who are we talk?" given our own shameful history of imperialism and violence, I would just say this: you are correct. We do have a shameful history of imperialism, and the only real difference between Russia and the U.S. is that Russia doesn't make a big production out of wrapping itself in some sanctimonious, self-serving BS about liberal democratic values. But that still doesn't mean we should give Pooty or anyone else a free pass. What it does mean is that we have to work even harder to end this reckless, exploitative behavior both here in the U.S. as well as anywhere else it's being used to rob people of their dignity (and, often, their lives). Enough with the false binaries.

Alright, time to get off my soapbox. Here's the toon. That's what you came here for:

All the World's A Gangsta...And All the Diplomats Are Merely Playuhs

Mikey "the Friendly Ghost" Pompeo just got his "culetto" handed to him by the North Koreans so that he could hand deliver it to the Donald. So much for sleeping well tonight or any night. It turns out that the North Koreans are either (a) doing exactly what they've always done during negotiations with the U.S. and/or (b) really ramping up their nukes program with even greater vigor just to show Trump what a clueless sucker he's been during this entire process.

After the mandatory verbal smack down - North Korea called the U.S. "gangster-like" - which was just another way of the North Koreans telling Pompeo not to let the door hit him on his way out of the negotiations - Mikey came up with a comeback that was right up there with Trump's very own, "No. You're the puppet." He told the North Koreans that "the world is a gangster." Not sure what that's supposed to mean. Charitably, he might have been saying that all diplomats have a little gangster in them as they defend their respective countries' national interest with the sangfroid of a gangster.

Or, maybe Pompeo was just giving props to his boss and sputtering some incoherent nonsense. You be the judge. Meanwhile, enjoy the toon!

The Supreme Grab

It appears that Christmas came early for the Donald. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy has decided to retire in enough time to allow him to ram some right-wing knuckle dragger through the Senate for approval and eventual confirmation prior to the midterm elections. That will make two Supreme Court justices nominated, approved and confirmed, all within the first half of Trump's first term in office.

Talk about supremely lucky...

Chances are good that the nomination will sail through the Senate, since the Democrats have no leverage to stop it. There's a slim chance that (a) they'll stick together and all vote no and even slimmer chance that one or two weak-kneed, so-called "moderate" Republicans will join them in opposing the nomination. Ain't gonna happen, mostly because the Democratic senators from states that Trump won in the last general election are already getting all wobbly and will likely support the nomination to save their political hides.

So much for taking one for the team, as in the common good of this country.

I'm mostly resigned to this likely outcome, but I sure wish that the Democrats could muster some intestinal fortitude to put up something of a fight when they question whichever narrow-minded mouth breather Trump manages to parade before them. Meanwhile, the Democratic "establishment" continues to wring its hands over twisted notions of "civility," poo-pooing progressive activists when they use forms of direct action to make their voices heard. All this, of course, while Trump continues to run circles around the Dems, carpet F-bombing them (and all of us) back into the 19th century.

Depressing, indeed.