Dr. Strangetrump

The Doctor is IN!!!

Talk about soul surgery. This is soul-sucking surgery, with the good Dr. Donald J. Trump attending as chief surgeon. He's going to make you feel so good, so healthy, so wealthy, you'll be tired of living so much. And good thing, too, because once he's successfully completed his sabotage of our health care system, tax code...plus environmental regulations, worker safety rules, democratic norms, the Constitution, relationships with our closest allies, our national defense, social safety net, and..(wait, what have I forgotten anything) you'll want to pinch yourself...and then put a bullet in your head.

Anyway, we'll all finally be the winners he promised us we'd all be. And life will be AWE-some, so very awesome, like we've never seen such AWE-someness before...

[We pause for a moment while the blogger/cartoonist rushes to the nearest sink to lose his breakfast.]

Meanwhile, the vast majority of Republicans are all holding their breath that Trump manages to actually pull off all of this national self-destruction, which has been the Republican Party policy agenda for the past 30 years running, before he finally pisses off Kim Jong-Un (or some other nuclear-armed crackpot) so much that country actually does get obliterated. Good those elephant men (and they are mostly men) have the country's best interest at heart.

And, no, Democrat jackasses don't get off the hook so easy. They're too busy twiddling their thumbs, trying to figure out how to lure back the love of their political lives: the  working class white man. Never mind that it's not the economy, stupid; it's all about race, racism and white entitlement. Always was, always has been, and most likely always will be until the Democrats stop talking out of both sides of their mealy mouths. They should all be required to sit down and read Ta Nehisi Coates' recent piece in the Atlantic. Maybe then they can get serious about offering policies that are genuinely inclusive and just for all people of all colors, creed, ethnicity and gender.

Meanwhile, I guess we can just hold our breath and pray that we can make it through the day.

"I did not and will not exhale..."

Priceless

There are several very good articles out there that provide some basic inventories of the Trump administration's corruption. David Leonhardt had a good one in the NY Times. But today's editorial included a much more comprehensive one. Both are disheartening; both remind you of just how much Trump and his cronies have turned a reptile-infested swamp into an even more sordid bordello, also infested by reptiles and various verminous beasts.

Here's my own admittedly incomplete illustrated list of corrupt practises that Trump & Co. have engaged in, all with a healthy, heaping helping of white entitlement, arrogance and presumed impunity. At least Price was shown the door, but he's only the tip of the stinkin', reekin' heap of horse pucky that passes for "governance" under the current regime. That's why I'm grudgingly willing to give outgoing Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) some props for calling out the potential risks to the world if we let Trump & Co. continue with her their dumpster fire o' chaos and destruction. I'll even show a little love to John "Pinky" McCain (R-AZ), although for the life of me I don't know why they needed to wait for so bloody long. I'm hoping this is the beginning of the end of Republican conspiracy of dunces. Hope you're enjoying your Indigenous People's Day.

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.

Say it Ain't So, Joe - A First-Ever Imperial Wardrobe Two Fer

I want to first extend my sympathies to all of the folks in Southeast Texas who are currently enduring the most epic shock in recent or recorded history. I'll come back to that topic in another blog, because this isn't/wasn't just a "natural disaster," but no is not the time for that discussion.

It is the time, however, to try to unpack the President's sucker punch to the Constitution and the institution of the administration of justice. Of course, I could be talking about any number of raging dumpster fires set by the Donald and his minions, but in this case I'm talking about his pardon for ("Sheriff") Joe Arpaio. This is the self-styled Heinrich Himmler of the Southwest who terrorized anyone who might have resembled being Hispanic by ordering his deputies to aggressively round up possible illegal immigrant and then place them in detention centers, which Arpaio himself proudly referred to as "concentration camps." These detention centers were in the middle of the desert, and detainees were forced to live under the 145 degree sun with only a tent to protect them from the elements. And then there's their loss of dignity from having their liberty stolen by some jack-booted fascist thugs, who gleefully beat them while they were cut off from their loved ones and their livelihoods.

He would have certainly made "die Fuhrer" proud with his flagrantly ethnocentric-based abuses of human rights.

Of course, with pedigree like that, it's hardly a surprise that our Putin-worshiping, Nazi-lover of a President would extend a presidential pardon to Arpaio, whose terrorist tactics provide a concrete example of putting Trump's fear-based, hate-driven white nationalism into practice. Barring a miraculous growth spurt in spinal tissue among the Republican Party, this is what we have to look forward to for the next 3+ years. G-d help us all.