Tag Archives: donald trump

Donald Trump says he’s a friend of “LB and LBGT…bigly”

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As much as Donald Trump may insist that he is “smart,” the English language sometimes seems to elude him entirely.

Characteristically capitalizing on tragedy in a New Hampshire press appearance, following the horrific  mass shooting at an Orlando gay club, Trump doubled down on the self-congratulation that had been his instinctual first reaction; then ruptured his syntax trying to claim that he is a “friend” to the LGBT community. So unfamiliar are the best interests of that minority to Mr.Trump that he couldn’t even master the identifying acronym and melted down to complete incoherence at the end of the ‘money’ sentence:’

I could hardly believe my ears so I located the video replay online to capture the moment. There’s a long wait until Trump begins his speech, but at 41:10 into the recording my patience was rewarded. After attempting to posit the question of who is the better friend of the LGBT community, he or Hillary Clinton, but failing twice to nail the acronym, this is what he actually said:

“…I will tell you who the better friend is, and someday that will be proven out, BIGLY: Donald Trump.”

I kid you not. He actually invented the word, “bigly.” I don’t even know how to spell it!

Not that very much of the speech was better articulated than were those words, since Trump has the vocabulary of a slow middle schooler, and roughly the same sense of self; but the complete abandonment of the English language at that moment was astonishing. He didn’t hesitate for a minute but just went right on with his schtick, like a carnival barker on speed.

No wonder that yesterday, when it occured, I couldn’t find any reference to the blunder in the blogosphere, which usually seizes upon such word-salad from a public figure like a dog on a dropped hamburger. There’s just too much to keep up with when Trump is on the podium telling outlandish whoppers and calling people names. They’ve just given up on him, and he knows that. In fact, that is what he counts on.

If he talks really fast and doesn’t allow anyone to get a word in edgewise, he can simply ignore inconvenient questions and challenges to his veracity and steamroll on. He creates a wall of whines and snarls that simply exhausts the will to probe it. As a bonus, the angry ignorant go absolutely wild for such caveman antics.

That’s how he managed to crawl over sixteen bodies to grab the brass ring. If you look at any establishment Republican trying to field a question about Donald Trump, they look and act kind of like they are in a daze. They don’t really understand how they find themselves in this situation, even thought it’s their own damned fault.

His complete misunderstanding and mischaracterization of the takeaway from Orlando is mind-boggling. Not only did he run with the idea that the shooter was a recent immigrant from “Afghan,” (not even close); he all but accused the sitting President of being complicit in the crime and in league with terrorists.

Ignoring the obvious takeaway that this was a hate crime, no doubt  inspired by endless inflammatory rhetoric not entirely dissimilar to his own, he has even suggested that what happened in the nightclub could have been prevented if every one there was also packing heat.

Let’s see how that might go down. A darkened nightclub, multiple shots ring out and everybody in the place pulls out a gun and begins firing at whomever they think might have started it. Is there one nefarious shooter or two, or twelve? Nobody knows for sure and everyone is operating in panic mode.  What could possibly go further wrong ?

But suddenly he sees himself as the best friend of “the  gays.”  Hillary Clinton, he insists, wants to take away your Second Amendment rights; again, a total lie, but he’s said it so many times, and so many Republicans want to believe it, that it has become an urban myth.

Nobody gets particularly exercised about his lies anymore. They are an integral part of who he is and if you accept all the other baggage he carries, you have already entered an alternative universe.

His pattern of lying and conning are so familiar now that it is almost discounted from consideration, and everyone goes on with the discussion as if he hasn’t already completely disqualified himself from any elected office, let alone the highest office in the land.

Move over Sara Palin, there’s a new champion of incoherent double-talk in town.

Oh God…Not Rolling Thunder!

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I have an issue with “Rolling Thunder;” not with the official annual event in DC, but with the Vermont version that rolls by close to our home every Memorial Day weekend, frightening dogs and small children with deafening decibels, and fouling the air with exhaust fumes.

I would probably have no issue with it if it weren’t for the aggressive noise level to which it isn’t politically correct even to voice an objection.

The low rumble of thousands of bikes rolling through town, the ‘thunder,’ I can accept; but not the painful punctuation provided by squealed wheels, excessive revving and mechanical caterwauling I cannot begin to identify!(??)

I hate that; and truth be told, I would guess most non-motorcyclists do as well. It seems like the whole point is to be as audibly aggressive as possible under the unassailable banner of ‘patriotism.’

And now for the curmudgeon phase of this discourse:

I remember Memorial Day in the 1950’s. Back then, we were still vividly remembering the fallen of WWII.  WWI, “The War to End All Wars,” hadn’t lived up to that promise; and Vietnam was still in the future.

Virtually the entire nation was unified in conviction that WWII, at least, was a just war; even a noble war.

With our recent veteran parents, the whole family would pile into a hulking old Plymouth for a slow drive to the cemetery where we were joined by our cousins, and everyone knelt in silent prayer by the family plot. Then we’d all drive back to Aunt Nellie’s for ham, potato salad and cold refreshments.

It was a quiet contemplative day in which we kids were mostly an audience of antsy listeners as our parents revisited the past. For all the private troubles each family might have, they shared the absolute certainty that our ‘America’ was, indeed, ‘the land of the free and the home of the brave.’

There was no call for honking horns and menacing motor antics when we remembered the fallen from WWII, so I wonder why  it’s such a ‘thing’ now?

WWII is probably the last war in which nearly all ‘Americans’ were united in their support.

After that, the conflicts and their competing interests got murkier and murkier. Korea, as we all learned from ‘Mash,’ was a ‘Police Action.’ Vietnam was a strategic quagmire.

The endless string of wars and terrorist insurgencies in the Middle East all began with the first Iraq War of George the Elder, a wrong-headed intervention in defense of someone’s oil interests (not mine) that allowed Islamist extremists to harness hostility to the West (and the U.S. in particular) into a vehicle for political recruitment.

You’ve got to wonder. Is the need for noise on Memorial Day a passive-aggressive outlet for American supremacists whose fighting force cannot claim a real victory in living memory?
I keep hearing claims that veterans are disrespected in America, but apart from Donald Trump’s unbelievable remark about John McCain, I don’t recall anyone saying a bad word about veterans since the sixties…and today, even Donald Trump is painting himself red-white-and-blue in support of ‘our troops.’

Il Dukey couldn’t resist the opportunity to use DC’s ‘Rolling Thunder’ event as the backdrop for his own empty saber-rattling photo op; he who equates his military prep-school experience to military service, and his personal struggle with venereal disease to the hell of war. But this is what happens when a singular gesture of protest becomes an annual ‘tradition.’ The political hacks move in and the result is pure travesty.

We have a strictly voluntary military today, as opposed to in the Viet Nam era. It self-selects from the overall population, primarily based on two factors, income and beliefs. Enlisted troops tend to overrepresent poorer populations who have less alternative options. Those who rise in the ranks tend to represent more conservative political and religious persuasions.

Military service in the volunteer age represents a largely likeminded community with more influence over the political establishment than at any time in the past. Despite Donald Trump bleating that Obama has destroyed our military, it is, in fact, exponentially larger and better equipped than all competing militaries in the twenty-first century.

It is almost impossible for Congress to touch the Penatgon’s budget. It just goes up every year even as the social safely net and all kinds of human services are under constant attack from Republicans.

The original “Rolling Thunder” ride to the Vietnam War Memorial was intended to bring attention to those who were Missing in Action from that conflict.

I rather doubt that that is still the overarching purpose. When the Obama administration negotiated for the release of Bowe Bergdahl, the President reiterated our national commitment to not leave a soldier behind; and he got no end of grief for the effort.

Volunteer or not, soldier or civilian; every wartime death deserves remembrance. Every human being who labors in the service of their community or country has earned recognition for their service.

Can we please tender that tribute in a less confrontational manner?

The DNC as Chicken Little

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“The sky is falling! the sky is falling!” “Donald Trump is gaining on Hillary!”

It’s Chicken Little time at the DNC.

Following the dust-up at the Nevada Convention all artifice of civility has been suspended.

No, I’m not talking about the handful of Bernie supporters in Nevada, but the hyperbolic response from the DNC as it closes ranks with what it thinks is the best argument for shutting Bernie down.

This is what it’s come to.

Bernie has been saying since he entered the race that he is in it until the Convention, but apparently the Party elders didn’t believe him.

You don’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs and you don’t mount a revolution spouting nothing but platitudes and  pleasantries from a place of no-contest.

Suddenly, Bernie Sanders is evil incarnate and has to throw in the towel so as not to ‘damage’ Hillary.

Newsflash: she’s already damaged; she was damaged coming into the race.

As intelligent and experienced as she is, she persistently transmits inauthenticity and entitlement in an election year that despises both. Even if there were no Bernie Sanders, these traits would not win the day.

And dragging out her equally damaged husband as her standard bearer in the crisis only makes matters worse. It plays to the worst stereotypes about women; the ones we had hoped the first female presidential candidate would kick to the curb.

This is a teaching moment for the DNC: never assume.

Why was Martin O’Malley the only card-carrying Democrat to challenge Hillary for the nomination? There certainly is plenty of talent out there, from Elizabeth Warren to the Castro Brothers and Joe Biden; but no, this one was for Hillary. It had been earmarked by the Hillary camp since 2008.

O’Malley’s only hope was to conduct himself so well in the campaign that he would become the Vice-Presidential nominee. No one was looking at poor O’Malley; quite a decent guy, at that.

Bernie was supposed to be a blip of comic relief; here today and gone tomorrow. No one would really support a democratic-socialist for president! Maybe if Hillary was not so damaged from the start, Bernie’s revolution wouldn’t have taken hold; but she was, and it did.

Just like the Republicans, who refused to believe that Jeb Bush wasn’t inevitable, the DNC made the same mistake about Hillary; only the RNC got ‘lucky’ and a bona fide arsonist named Trump dispatched Jeb and set the revolutionary tone for his own party long before Hillary even took notice of Bernie. Oh, the humanity!!

Now, the RNC is way ahead of the DNC at restoring itself to at least functional unity.

The DNC is still in denial of its diagnosis while the RNC is already at the acceptance phase in the process. They may not like Donald Trump but it it won’t be the first time they’ve gotten lucky with a feckless idiot, and they know that. Think George W. Bush and the miraculously (and posthumously) rehabilitated Ronald Reagan.

Instead of watching and drawing a valuable lesson from Bernie’s ability to engage a whole new and untapped electorate, easily matching those enlisted by DT on the other side, the Hillary Camp (and the entire Party hierarchy) plucked superficially from the message to garnish Hillary’s presentation, like parsley on potatoes.

Only the parsley proved to be much more appetizing than the potatoes and Bernie began to actually win votes no matter how much the convoluted rules worked against that end.

Even burying the debates in impossible time slots did not protect the presumed nominee from damage.

Bernie was apparently not expected to lay a glove on Hillary, and when he actually raised salient questions about her ties to Wall Street, her judgment on matters of war, and the sacred memory of her husband’s global economic policies, the Party twitched visibly but still plastered a strained smile on its lips.

Bernie, they said, would ‘toughen’ Hillary for her ultimate clash with Trump, and that was ‘a good thing.’ Behind the scenes, the Party of Hillary tightened the screws on the inevitability machine even more. Unfortunately, their collective slip was showing, and some Sanders supporters, new to the rigging process, began to cry ‘foul.

The Nevada DNC’s biased chairing of ‘their’ caucus proved to be the last straw for a a few attendees who became loud and abusive in their language, but not violent.

Despite breathless news reports to the contrary, there is no evidence that a chair was thrown. Video shows one man picking up a chair, then putting it down again. There were nasty phone calls and social media outbursts, but these have not by any means been confined to Sanders supporters.

The Sanders campaign condemned the bad behavior, but also condemned the biased conduct that had prompted it. Apparently Bernie was expected to dress in sackcloth and cover himself with ashes, never mentioning the pattern of bias that has permeated the primaries under Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. He did not, and the floodgates of Democratic establishment figures aching to tell him to F.O. was suddenly opened.

One state, one caucus, a handful of Sanders supporters behaving badly, and everyone is insisting that Sanders should do the ‘decent’ thing and drop out before the convention.

Meanwhile, finally under some impulse control by the RNC, Trump has risen in the polls and Hillary has fallen. Much as the DNC would like us to believe that this has something to do with Bernie’s continued resistance to her inevitability, that is not the case.

Trump is proving to be an armor-clad wrecking ball of nastiness. He needs no help from anyone. It’s what he does.

With her extremely long and checkered political history, Hillary is the softest target imaginable.  Whether or not she can successfully prevail in the general is looking more and more like an open question.

Further alienating that energized Bernie base by going all Head Prefect on their chosen candidate will not help.

Suggestion? Stop insisting that it’s up to Bernie to unify the party ‘because that’s what Hillary did in 2008.’ This isn’t 2008 and Bernie’s revolution won’t be politically disciplined by a promise of support for 2016.

If the Hillary camp values the support of Bernie’s base, they will have to convincingly demonstrate a willingness to include at least some of that base’s priorities in the party platform, not just pay temporary lip-service and claim to be a ‘progressive.’

Dollars to donuts she won’t call herself a ‘progressive’ in the general, and that’s okay because its only a word; but if she continues to beat a path to the right as she has already begun to do with that remark about having Bill balance the country’s checkbook, she will only reinforce Bernie supporters’ conviction that she doesn’t represent our interests.

There’s only so much that Donald Trump (or Hillary) threats can do to blackmail a disenchanted electorate into turning out to hold their noses at the ballot box.

Time to reassess the fairness and efficacy of a two party system.

The First Presidential Psychopath?

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My buddy, Perry Cooper, sent me the following in response to my most recent musings on the prospects of Trump (“Donald as the Princess and the Pea”). It was so apt that I thought I’d share it with GMD readers as a stand alone blogpost:

The June issue of Discover Magazine, discover.com, has an article titled “The Psychopath & The Hare.” The hare is Robert Hare, a Vancouver forensic psychologist who created a ‘Psychopathy Check List,’ PCL, and a revised PCL-R.

“It’s now the top violence risk assessment tool used by forensic psychologists in North America, the significant majority in post-sentencing and parole hearings of the most dangerous, high-risk prisoners.

The checklist’s 20 items include:

            glibness/superficial charm,
            grandiose sense of self-worth,
            need for stimulation/proneness to boredom,
            pathological lying,
            conning/manipulation,
            lack of remorse/guilt,
            shallow affect,
            callousness/lack of empathy,
            parasitic lifestyle,
            promiscuous sexual behavior,
            early behavior problems,
            lack of realistic, long-term goals,
            impulsivity,
            failure to accept responsibility,
            many short-term marital relationships,
            juvenile delinquency
            and criminal versatility.”
 
“The clinician scores each item with 0 (no presence), 1 (uncertain) or 2 (definitely present). Psychopaths score 30 to 40 points. The general population typically scores less than 5, while the average score for prisoners is 23.”

Using the seventeen items in the list from the article, I scale Trump at 32. The three missing items could only increase the score. Trump is a psychopath.

Read the article at http://discovermagazine.com/2016/june/12-psychopath-and-the-hare.

Perry Cooper

Donald as the Princess and the Pea

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As Donald Trump and Paul Ryan, on behalf of the entire RNC, engage in the dance of mutual castration, Democrats have reason for cautious optimism.

By the time the Democratic Convention crowns its nominee, Mr. Trump may be showing a little wear even for his most devoted accolades. That’s because the Republican nominee is as sensitive as the ‘Princess and the Pea.’

Behold a few of the metaphoric mattresses atop which his presidential hopes fitfully sleep:
1)    Cooperating with anybody, let alone ‘establishment’ Republicans is not a good look for the Donald; yet, he now needs them as much as they need him because he isn’t prepared to self-fund his campaign in the general.

2)    He can no longer claim to be self-funded and not beholden to anyone. We already
know by his own words that he understands the quid-pro-quo game all too well and
accepts as fair that there will be no “quid” without the requisite “quo.”

3)    His almost uncontrollable inclination to contradict himself, sometimes going back and forth in a dizzying display of indecision, has finally caught the attention of the media. Decisive he can’t claim to be.

4)    His unlimited need for attention has provided a life-time of stupid and offensive remarks ripe for the picking. If the Republicans didn’t have the balls to do it, Democrats will not hesitate to dispatch them in volleys.

5)    Unlike his Republican rivals, the Democratic nominee can and will resist the temptation to get down in the mud with him because there are plenty of capable surrogates like Elizabeth Warren (not Bill Clinton, please!) to do the job for her or him. Elizabeth Warren ties knots in Donald Trump without breaking a sweat…and both Hillary and Bernie are cool heads under pressure. The Bloviator-in-Chief  is decidedly not.

If, as seems increasingly inevitable, Hillary walks away with the nomination, she just has to leave Bill at home watering the plants, and she’ll be fine.  She’ll owe Bernie BIG time for mobilizing his minions to support her, but I think they can work out that deal so long as he keeps the faith with his supporters all the way to the Convention. It’s the policies that matter most to Bernie and its the White House that matters most to Hillary.

6)    Just because none of Donald Trump’s “unforgivable” insults have proven to be the ‘silver bullet’ necessary to disqualify him for Republican primary voters doesn’t mean
he’s out of the woods. The power high of winning the nomination will only curb his appetite for sensation temporarily. Dollars to donuts, he’s just one or two soundbites away from the next big goof. He’s programmed to offend. He can’t help himself.  And he’ll find that general election voters, reflective of the true diversity of the country, are not nearly so forgiving.

7)    No one even pretends anymore that he might know what he’s talking about. Ignorance ispretty much baked into his identity at this point. His supporters don’t care, but anyone not already in that delusional state is not likely at this point to be persuaded that he is the ‘smart’ candidate, no matter how much money he has…or says he has.

8)    Which brings us to his taxes. The longer he resists releasing them, the more everyone will be convinced they contain a bombshell. Why is the guy whose brand is supposed to be
spontaneity and transparency suddenly so secretive?

9)    Donald Trump has no sense of humor. We’ve all known people like that. They love to
ham it up and make jokes at other people’s expense, so long as they themselves aren’t the
butt of the joke.  In fact, they are particularly thin-skinned; apt to flush in anger and behave unwisely when teased.   I think we can guess what lies ahead in that department.  We’ve all seen the tape of his angry face at the Correspondent’s Dinner when the President poked fun at him.

10)   Donald Trump himself is not at all sure he wants or can even do the job for which he is
competing.  I swear I read somewhere that Trump once said that if he ever ran for President, he’d do it as a Republican because they’ll believe anything. Maybe I dreamt it, but it just seems so like him.

11)   DT says he “does great” among women; but what he really means is Republican women, which is, of and by itself something akin to an oxymoron.  He maintains the same fiction about his popularity with minorities. It was difficult to adequately test those assertions in the Republican Primary, since relatively few minority voters were involved, and there is a certain expectation of dysfunction from  women who identify with the party that would consistently act against their best interests.

The general election is a whole different animal. As unmotivated as minorities were to
vote in the Republican Primary, they will be doubly so motivated to vote Democratic in
the general election; firstly, out of a sense of outrage; and secondly, in preservation of
their own best interests that have been so conspicuously under attack from Donald Trump.

More than half of all women self-identify as leaning Democratic. Roughly 36% self identify
as Republicans. It can safely be assumed that most of these are women who also
self-identify as ‘conservative’ and many generally support conservative principles and
regional Republican candidates, but see Donald Trump as neither conservative
nor invested in their regional Republican concerns.

According to Newsweek (March 15 2016) female voters in the Michigan Republican Primary dividedtheir vote more or less equally between Trump and Cruz and Katich. That’s not a very impressive validation even from the relatively narrow pool of Republican women. As late as March of this year, 47% of Republican women “could not imagine themselves voting for Trump.”

This weekend, the New York Times  announced open season on Donald’s ‘female troubles’ with a scathing retrospective on his playboy years.

A theory that’s been going around is that Trump never really wanted to be president. This whole campaign was just an opportunity to burnish his brand and get a whole lot of face-time.

Now, it’s “Be careful what you wish for” time.

He clearly never prepared to win the nomination. Assured as he thought he was that the GOP would never let him have the nomination, I think he honestly believed he could play the aggrieved losing candidate to a sea of adoring Twitter followers for years to come, ensuring a new reality TV show and all the sycophants he could exploit for the remainder of his vapid life.

He’s not stupid (although he plays a stupid person on TV). He knows that if, God forbid, he ever did land in the White House, he would quickly become the most unpopular president of all time. His negatives would dwarf those of his campaign, and provide absolutely no amusement for him, because he would be stuck in the narrative that he himself recklessly created.

If Obama has had to endure eight years of abuse, can you imagine what thin-skinned Trump would experience in the same office?

I think he can.

Instead of being able to fling his feces at both the President and Congress,
from the safe distance of an ivory Trump Tower, he would himself be the target, day-after-day-after- endless day of blunders, indecision and head-on collisions with reality.

He’s already uncomfortable answering demands for his taxes and questions about his butler.  Even attempts to deflect to Hillary Clinton are failing to engage as the news media belatedly tries to drill-down on his pathological lies.

In what may have signaled the beginning of cognitive breakdown under pressure, Trump now appears to have double-punked the press, first by leaking an old tape of himself pretending to be a press agent boasting about Trump’s romantic conquests, then lying about the lie.  The permutations of his deceits are positively dizzying.

And I expect it isn’t fun anymore.

 

Phil Scott and Donald the “misguided missile”

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You might think every savvy GOP politician would have been paying attention six months ago when Republican strategist Ward Baker spelled out strategies to deal with Trump the “misguided missile.” The widely leaked National Republican Senatorial Committee memo warned Republicans to prepare and guard against collateral damage should Trump prevail and win the GOP presidential nomination.

Scott supporter Kurt Wright (R-Burlington) isn’t worried about Trump at the top of their party’s ticket harming the VTGOP. Wright is counting on what he believes is the provincial nature of Vermont voters.

Wright said. “They [voters] don’t care about the national politics. Vermonters are great at separating out what Vermonters do … as opposed to what’s going on in Washington.”

But Wright’s response kind of ignores that much of Trump’s appeal is that he claims not to be a Washington creature.

I guess putting distance between yourself and your own party’s presumptive “misguided missile” candidate is a tough task.scottwhome

At a press event Thursday Scott tried hard to keep the topic orbiting around the state budget. However only a couple days after Trump crushed all opponents in the Indiana primary, he was pressed to respond to the obvious question: Do you now or will you ever support Donald Trump for President?

Scott deserves credit for declaring he will not vote for Trump. Unlike Bruce Lisman who unbelievably says he intends to “[…] carefully evaluate Donald Trump’s candidacy and listen to what he has to say.” That leaves me more than a little curious over what on earth Trump might say to win over Lisman.

But with six months’ lead time to prepare a winning strategy for coping with Trump’s run at the White House, couldn’t Scott have done better than this?

Scott, who declared he would not vote for Trump, revealed later Thursday he has decided to write in former Republican Gov. Jim Douglas as his presidential choice in the November election.

“He’d make a great president,” Scott said about the four-term governor.

Aww, isn’t that just precious VTGOP fandom! I’m sure Jim thinks you could be a dandy Governor too, Phil! You could be the Governor Dubie Jim Douglas never had.

But it is still pretty early in the game for Scott to put down his Jim Douglas trump card — we’re not even through the primary yet! I’ll bet he’ll need to play that one a few more times before November.

Trump struts upon stage and the GOP frets

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The Republicans are still digesting the news of Donald J. Trump’s latest primary wins. And for now they seem to be in disarray — and it’s ugly. How ugly is it? Well, former Speaker of the House John Boehner (R, Orangeland) must be smelling sulphur, as he thinks fellow Republican  candidate Senator Ted Cruz  is the devil in red or “Lucifer in the flesh”  as he claims.

On a less metaphysical level, a recent Roll Call’s Capitol Insiders Survey shows rising Republican pessimism about election prospects:

A majority of the GOP staffers who responded to the April survey now expect either Donald Trump or Texas Sen. Ted Cruz to win the party’s nomination and nearly half of them —  a solid plurality —  think the Republican nominee will lose.trumpdigest

And with Trump likely the one at the top of the ticket, fears that the GOP will suffer losses in Senate races and that their majority in the House may shrink are growing rapidly.

GOP fretting about the Senate majority has grown throughout the year. When CQ Roll Call asked aides in January, only 28 percent of Republican respondents were worried. That rose to 45 percent in March, and now it’s nearly half. By contrast, this month only 37 percent of the Republicans said they expected their side to maintain control.

Any hopes that incumbent Congressional Republicans have for passing major legislation to aid their coming campaigns before the election are apparently slim.

They [congressional staff] gave the best shot to pending legislation that would revamp criminal sentencing rules. And even on that they are not hopeful. Only a quarter of the aides said they expected Congress to act. That compares to nearly 4 in 10 when CQ Roll Call asked about the issue in December.

Now, as Trump struts on stage and the GOP frets, it could it spell tragedy not comedy on a dramatic scale. You know, err… with the GOP lead by a poor player, an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.

A movement, not just a campaign.

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Not surprisingly, Bernie Sanders intends to remain fully engaged in the primary process right to the end. He has promised to focus on the issues, which suggests he may feel he’s devoted as much energy as he is prepared to invest in Hillary Clinton’s record.

If Democratic voters haven’t followed the bouncing ball of her reluctance to disclose the content of paid Wall Street speeches to its obvious conclusion yet, there’s little hope in this election cycle that they will. Likewise the implications of her judgement on Iraq, Libya, “Free” trade agreements, criminal justice etc. etc.

Faced with the seemingly insurmountable challenge of winning at the delegate game, Bernie needs to use his bully pulpit in the remaining primaries to advocate strictly on policy issues. The relatively few months that were available to him to introduce himself to the entire U.S. voter population and bring media attention to the issues about which he cares most deeply, were never going to be enough to realize a complete revolution in the Democratic Party, and now they are drawing to a close.

Bernie himself acknowledged that to the people who flocked to his rallies, from the very first one which we were privileged to witness in Burlington. A single election cycle would never be sufficient to change the politics that have condemned the U.S. to growing income inequities,declining opportunities, social injustice and the quashing influence of big money on any possibility of meaningful reform.

His candidacy is the vanguard of a new political movement that is still evolving on the left in the footprints left by Occupy Wall Street. It’s adherents are mostly younger, with much of their voting life ahead of them. If the Democratic party fails once again to live up to the progressive expectations of this base, like the Republicans before them, they can look forward to declining influence as young voters demand effective third and fourth party options within the primary process.

I look forward to the day when someone challenges the constitutionality of closed primaries in a voting system already dominated by two monopolies.

In the meantime, we are left with what can only be thought of as a caricature of democratic choice as reflected in the two likely nominees.

On the one hand, we have Donald Trump, a narcissistic billionaire, whom we can safely say will be the most unqualified nominee for President in the history of the office.

On the other hand, we have Hillary Clinton, a career politician and multi-millionaire, who, based solely on experience, must be one of the most qualified candidates in recent memory. Unfortunately, that experience is blotted both by her meathead of a husband’s own famously poor judgement, and costly mistakes that she herself has made in an official capacity.

Though jubilant at their almost certain victories in the nomination process, both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton share the distinction of being the most unpopular candidates in either party… practically, ever!

Each is also campaigning under a false flag of ideology: Donald Trump insists he is a Conservative, but his positions are rarely conservative in any sense of the word. They range from neo-facist, through cracker-conservative, all the way to conventionally ‘liberal.’

Hillary Clinton’s own politics have mirrored those of her husband and surrogate Bill, who was more right of center than left when he held the reigns of power. She now styles herself a “progressive” with Bernie’s personal comb. Since her days in the White House, she’s remained pretty much dead center with a dash of social liberalism, hawkishly veering right on many foreign policy issues. One gets the impression that the very word “progressive” was anathema to her until Bernie rolled into town and started getting all the attention.

The distrust for Hillary that is felt by some of Bernie’s supporters stems from her inconsistency over the years and her reluctance to ‘fess up to glaring errors in judgement.

In fairness, if Donald Trump were running for ‘President of American Enterprise,’ the only higher office for which he might arguably be qualified, he would be dogged by his own equally glaring failures of judgement over the years.

The fact remains that, all things being equal, come election day, American voters will be limited in their choice to a highly competent but ethically challenged Hillary Clinton or that wholly incompetent, wholly unpredictable, self-serving loose-canon, Donald Trump.

She might say one thing now and then do something else once in the Oval Office.

…But with Trump as Commander in Chief? There is a real possibility that he might wake up one morning feeling petulant over a sleight  by some other bellicose demagogue, and exercise his command of the nuclear codes.

I’ll hold my nose and vote for the competent, sane choice every time.

Donald Trump Gives Us a Jingle

National, ,

We had the unexpected pleasure of speaking with Donald Trump himself this morning, when he telephoned our Wake-Up Hour host, W.S. Gilbert to give us a few thoughts. The live recording has inexplicably disappeared, but we can provide this transcript:

WSG: Thank you for calling-in, Mr. Trump…

DT: Don’t Mention it. I owe it to the little people who adore me to make myself available.
You know I’m all about the little people. I LOVE the little people…and the blacks…and the gays…they love me too.

…And women! The women…you know, the women love me best of all. That’s because I understand what they want. Men are always saying, you know, “I don’t get women…” Well, I get women. I cherish the women. Just ask Melania…I cherish Melania, I cherish Ivanka. They’re my precious jewels. They just sparkle! I get that sparkle; and they deserve to sparkle. I love to make them sparkle…

WSG:  Yes, yes, Mr. Trump…Now there are a few policy questions I know my listeners would like me to ask.

DT:   I’m all ears…no, not really. Ted Cruz, now there’s someone who’s “all ears!” Have you seen the cartoons of him with the big nose and the weird eyebrows? Mean…very mean, but ya gotta say, there is a striking resemblance there. Not the most attractive guy. Ya gotta wonder what’s goin’ on down there, if you know what I mean. Could you believe that Enquirer story?!! I said to Melania, “Melania honey, can you see it?” She couldn’t; she couldn’t see it. Five women??! Even one woman…!

WSG:  Mr. Trump, Mr. Trump about policy…?

DT:  Yeah, yeah…policy. My policies are HUGE. You’ve never seen such huge policies…and GREAT. I mean, I’ll give you policies that are so great you won’t believe your ears. Ha, ha…even Ted Cruz won’t believe his ears…ha, ha…but really. You know what I’m all about?

I’m all about making America great again. That’s right. We haven’t been great since…well, we haven’t been great in a long, LONG time. Let me tell you. I’ll change all that. We’re going to be winning again. We haven’t been winning, you know…and when you aren’t winning, what are you? You’re a loser, right? Am I right?

WSG:  Yes, well…can I ask you about your recent remarks on women and abortion…

DT:  Ya know, that’s not what people care about…they want to hear more about the wall I’m
going to build. Did you know I’m going to build a great big wall (it’ll be HUGE) along the border and it’s going to have a beautiful little door in it so we can let in the little people (I love the little people)…and you know who’s going to pay for it don’t you? Mexico…

WSG: …But, Mr. Trump my listeners want to know if you really mean to punish women who have abor…

DT:   Gilly, Gilly… you don’t mind if I call you Gilly, do you? Gilly, you know I love the women, but when they’re bad, they’ve got to be punished. Right? You know my lovely daughter Ivanka?
Isn’t she lovely. You know, I cherish Ivanka; but when she is bad she has to be punished. Right? So I punish her…out of love. That’s what a parent does…out of love.

So those girls who get knoc… uh, those girls who have the ‘misfortune’ to get caught, they just have to make the daddies marry them. It’s all about the family. I have eight grandchildren, you know. You wouldn’t believe it to look at me, would you. That says plenty about what’s going on down there! Ha, ha…Have you seen how I’m killing in the polls this morning? It’s a complete blow-out…

WSG:   Mr. Trump…Mr. Trump let’s move on. Now, I believe you said the other day that you would consider using nuclear weapons? Isn’t that a pretty extreme position to take…

DT:   Look, I’m a businessman, right? My business is a HUGE success. Ask anyone. The steaks, the water, the magazine, the university…all of it. Huge success!

That’s because I know how to manage my assets. I don’t just leave ‘em lying around doing nothing. Right? And I don’t believe in being politically correct. That’s for sissy’s.

Look, we’ve got nuclear weapons; they’re our assets. Right? Sooner or later we’re gonna use them. Right? What’s the point in having them if we say we’ll never use them? Right?

I’m not gonna say when I’ll use them. That would be telling, and we don’t want to give away the game…but, we’ve got ‘em and we can use ‘em…any time.

Look, there are a lot of real bad guys out there. Right? They hate America. If they had the nukes, you can bet your ass they’d use them against us! But we’ve got ‘em so it’s game over; but only if we use them real soon…before they get ‘em.

It’s all asset management.

WSG:   I see…but what about the worldwide nuclear devastation that would unleash?

DT:  “Worldwide nuclear devastation.” Listen to yourself! That’s a lot of whiny liberal BS.

Look, I keep reading about how there’s a population explosion and that’s the cause of all our problems. Well, I’ve got another ‘explosion” that could fix all that. Am I right?? Am I right??

Ha-ha-ha-ha…look, if we’re quick, we’ll be the ones holding all the cards. We can blow the competition away!

Hey… how big do you think that bunker is under 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? Let’s see: me, Melania, Ivanka, that husband of hers, the boys, the grandkids, the nanny, the cook, my hairdresser, my masseuse, my tailor, my press agent, my girl…that’s nineteen right there…

WSG:  I’m sorry Mr. Trump but we’re all out of time.

Q-Burking* Mountain

local/regional, , , ,

In 2014, right out of the gate, reports were that Bill Stenger and Ariel Qurios’ Burke Mountain project got off on the wrong foot when a name change clashed with local sensibilities.Burkenbottle

 It’s off to a rocky start. When Quiros bought the ski area, many locals and loyal skiers bristled that he changed its name to Q Burke Mountain — a move they perceived as arrogant.

It wasn’t purely arrogance; it was just that sending a message — the winners are now in charge — to potential EB-5 investors was deemed infinitely more important than the opinion of the locals:

 Quiros says the name change is a message to investors. […] But Burke Mountain’s international reputation for chronic failure was worthless to him. He needed to change the name to associate “Burke” with his and Stenger’s success at Jay Peak, which businesspeople know is owned by Q. Resorts.fb-logo

Fast forward to this past week, where at Q-Burke Mountain hotel and conference center events are taking an interesting turn. The new hotel opening was delayed due to a multi-million-dollar dispute with the general contractor. An announcement of 180 layoffs of local employees followed quickly.

Partners Bill Stenger and Ariel Quiros wasted no time laying off the blame elsewhere:

In a swipe at the state, resort officials said in the news release announcing the layoffs that “Q-Burke Mountain Resort has worked diligently to create jobs and to retain personnel even through rough times, however, job creation, job retention, and economic development do not seem to be as important to the state as previously believed.”

It may not be easy to pass that one off with a straight face. After all, Vermont has been promoting (some might say pimping) the Q-Burke and the Jay Peak developments to potential EB-5 foreign investors. Motivated by the prospect of NEK jobs, Vermont has been marketing them around the globe as a sound investment almost from the start. In fact, it took multiple loud complaints from disgruntled Jay Peak investors and an SEC investigation before the state tightened up its accounting enforcement.

Why growl and snap at the hand that enables your EB-5 money habit? Same reason they added “Q” to Burke, a message to investors, which in this case is: it’s not our fault and keep investing. Because one season of bad weather, reports of unpaid bills and the specter of a hulking empty hotel could slow their foreign investment to a trickle-when they need gallons per hour.

And, in closing let’s return to Burke 2014 and “Q” arrogance:

Quiros understands the community doesn’t like the new name, he says. But he believes they’ll come to appreciate the value it brings, once he proves the long-term value of his plan. He thought about public perception “300 percent,” and stands by his decision.

“If I make a mistake here, I lose everything! I lose everything,” Quiros says. “Because in the world market, I don’t get the money from a bank. I get from word of mouth.”

Exactly “300 percent” right: no money from banks. It comes through the State and Federal EB-5 Immigrant Investment Program. Chances are Vermont will get over the criticism (because of the promises of local jobs). But maybe it’s a risky strategy to dump on the state after they have helped provide a steady stream of investors. T rump

And there are plenty of other EB-5’s in other states begging for foreign investors. Donald J. Trump’s got one, a huge, beautiful, luxury Jersey City Hotel and conference center for example … just a coupla minutes from Manhattan and it’s huge , HUGE!

*“Burking” : originally meaning to smother,  but which later passed into general use as a word for any suppression or cover-up.