Tag Archives: Trump

The Worst of Times

National, Uncategorized,

We’re in it now.  As of this afternoon, Vermont has 95 cases of COVID-19 and five deaths; but those figures represent only a moment in rapidly moving time.

When I take my little dog out for our daily walk through the empty streets of St. Albans,  I am largely impressed by my neighbors’ self-discipline.  We pass only the very occasional individual or couple, also out for a walk;  we wave from a careful distance and wish each other health.

If only this sort of distancing was being observed everywhere.

Social distancing is the single most important thing we can do in this crisis, but the President of the United States is dangerously using his “bully pulpit” to undermine that message and the urgency of the situation. 

Rather than focussing on supporting the needs of the poor, the sick and the unemployed, Donald Trump has turned his attention on the fantasy casino that is the U.S. stock exchange.

As it gyrates wildly in a largely downward trajectory,  he’s throwing good money after bad to prop it up, yet another time.

His daily press appearances get longer and longer, further and further distanced from reality: orgies of self-congratulatory nonsense.  He doesn’t want to listen to anyone who isn’t singing his praises, yet he assumes that the American people have an endless appetite for his repetitious blather.

This isn’t news.  We’re all stuck indoors, at the mercy of the ever worsening news cycle; and a side helping of Trump talk goes with every serving.   I promise myself daily that I won’t get sucked-in, but it’s damned hard not to peek every so often to find out what he’s been up to.

The answer is always the same: no good.

So I go back to knitting, reading, writing and planning our storeroom dinner, with the occasional reach out via Skype or FaceTime to family and friends.

It feels, for all the world, like the end of one of those “Twilight Zone” episodes, where an ordinary family awaits the apocalypse, all the while maintaining the routines of an irrelevant past.

“Bolt the hatch and pass the potatoes, Ma.”

Trump keeps us in his crazy ‘Village’

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I had a couple conversations recently with random people who volunteered in passing that they were feeling kind of smothered and oppressed by the way Trump dominates the news . Whether it is the recent thing about wanting to purchase Greenland from Denmark or retweeting a claim that he is seen by some as the King of Israel or almost any one of the endless lies he spews forth — he is, after two years, omnipresent. And like some digital media version of the white balloon Rover from the 1960’s TV show The Prisoner Trump’s behavior keeps us in his own crazy news village-potentially disheartened and distracted from other issues.

Rover is a fictional entity from the 1967 British television program The Prisoner, and was an integral part of the way ‘prisoners’ were kept within the Village. It was depicted as a floating white balloon that could coerce, and, if necessary, disable inhabitants of the Village […] in one incident, it even killed a person, but it is not clear whether the ability to kill was a normal feature of Rover or if this incident was a malfunction. Several aspects of the Rover device were not explained, presumably left to the imagination of the viewer.

President of the United States: Baby-Snatcher-in-Chief

local/regional, National, Uncategorized,

Nothing Donald Trump does comes as a complete surprise anymore.  The more odious the things he said on the campaign trail, the more likely it has become that he will, sooner or later, hand down policy edicts as President that make those outrageous statements pale by comparison.  I am convinced that his early quip about shooting someone on Fifth Avenue and getting away with it was not merely a throw-away line.

So, no surprise there…

What still totally takes my breath away are the polls describing a malevolent turn to the Republican party as a whole, and the complicity of its surviving elite.  I call them “surviving elite” because a number of that elite have seen the writing on the border wall, folded their tents and stolen silently into the night.  Some, like John McCain, have not been so silent.

The defections only seem to strengthen Trump’s cult-like hold over the so-called “Grand Old Party.”

Last night, Kate Larose, candidate for the Vermont House from St. Albans held a campaign launch in the Bliss Ballroom of the Franklin County Museum.  Everyone was welcome, including the kids for whom there was a mountain of empty cardboard boxes and an invitation to build their own town.  Pizza, salad and ice cream sundaes were served up on a side-table.

Even though I know that Kate is running as a Democrat/Progressive, there was no specific reference to political party and the theme of the evening was our community: what we like about it and how we hope that it will improve.

I’m sure that this was a deliberate effort to counter the poisonous vapor of national politics wafting our way from the south, and refocus voters on local/regional concerns.

I commend Kate and the other gathered optimists who can see a future of harmony worth fighting for.  I am grateful for their positive fervor.

I once felt exactly as they do and wish I did still.

This year, I will volunteer to man the phones for Democratic/Progressive candidates and contribute what I can to each campaign, as I always have.  Not to do so would be inexcusable, I know.  

But I will do so without much hope for the future of our fragile greater democracy.

I like to think that local Republicans, my neighbors, could not possibly support the Fascistic inclinations and pure mean-spiritedness of Donald Trump, but those polls have forced me to look at them in a troubling new light.  While we always differed on matters of policy, I never doubted that they were good people with whom I shared most overarching values.  

That certain knowledge always made participating in the political process a pleasure.  Win or lose, It felt good to be part of something greater than myself, and I always came away with confidence in the overarching better nature of the “system.”

Not anymore.

Donald Trump has violated nearly every civil and moral norm of American society; has never accepted responsibility for any of the evil he has unleashed on that civil society; lies uncontrollably;  indulges his personal vanity in the most grotesque manner; enriches himself and his family, whenever possible, at everyone else’s expense; and has cynically undertaken a personal assault on the constitution, the like of which we’ve never seen before.

Anyone who excuses or enables this devil is not my neighbor, nor my countryman.  This is what constitutional crisis looks like.

If we survive this period of infamy, somehow reclaiming our democracy from the brink of oblivion,  we must be prepared to eliminate private funding from elections, reign-in influence by lobbyists, clearly define legal parameters to limit the ultimate power of the presidency, and seriously question the legitimacy of the two party system.   We will also have a heap of fence-mending to do with our traditional international allies: “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa…”

Failing rigorous commitment to reform, we will justly assume our place on the dustheap of fallen empires throughout the ages.

Energy Sec. Perry warms to coal and old nukes for Trump; thumb on the scale for carbon emissions & toxic waste

National, Uncategorized, , , ,

 

While the drama between Donald Trump and his Secretary of State play out in the headlines, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry is hard at work on what is being called an unprecedented proposal to prop up the coal industry and nuclear power plants that are at risk of closing.Trumpnperry

Following Trump’s goal to shore up aging coal and nuclear power plant operations, Sec. Perry is rapidly trying to make significant changes to the rules the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) follows to regulate power markets.

Specifically thehill.com reports:  Perry wants to increase the payments to troubled coal and nuclear plants by requiring that certain regional electric grid operations pay power plants their actual costs of operating plus a “fair rate of return.”

It would be a significant shift from the bidding process now allowed and would almost certainly raise electricity costs for consumers, critics say of the plan.

But Perry’s idea has garnered significant praise from coal and nuclear industry leaders, who say it could revive plants they say deserve to be paid more. 

They argue that because these plants build up larger fuel supplies than competitors producing electricity from wind and solar power, they should be paid more. 

Energy Secretary Perry is not only attempting to rush the rule change through a process that could normally take year to write and even longer to enact.*  Perry’s proposed changes may also violate FERC’s legal authority which by law [… ] centers on the responsibility to ensure that wholesale power rates are “just and reasonable.” 

Any new regulation would have to demonstrate that without the higher payments for coal and nuclear, rates are unjust or unreasonable. If it fails to do so, a federal court could overturn the new regulation. 

“FERC does not have the authority to just decide that a particular source of generation gets paid differently now because Rick Perry requested it,” said Justin Gundlach, a climate change law fellow at Columbia University Law School.

[*It should be noted that the Obama era Clean Power Plan rules took year to write and don’t enforce emission reduction until 2022.]

When nominated to lead the Dept of Energy, former Texas governor and presidential candidate Perry seemed to have little idea of the massive scope of the agency’s responsibilities. Vanity Fair wrote in an article this summer: Since Perry was confirmed, his role has been ceremonial and bizarre. He pops up in distant lands and tweets in praise of this or that D.O.E. program while his masters inside the White House create budgets to eliminate those very programs. His sporadic public communications have had in them something of the shell-shocked grandmother […]

He seems to have warmed to one task — putting his thumb on the scale for carbon emissions and toxic waste while carrying out climate change denier- in- chief Donald Trump’s orders.

VTGOP committee member: “people […] confused as to what the march is all about.”

local/regional, National, , ,

twofacesGOP3When The Atlantic Magazine reached out to GOP state and national committee members for a reaction to Trump’s handling of the violent events at Charlottesville, Vermont Republican National committeeman Jay Shepard offered this contention about the white supremist riot: “In all mob scenes there are people who just happen to be there, who aren’t leaders of organizations and are just confused as to what the march is all about.”

Yes, who among us hasn’t been confused “as to what the march [a Nazi riot]   is all about?”Although, you know, for many people seeing marchers wearing white hoods and flying swastika flags might have been the obvious tell.

[…]The Atlantic reached out to 146 Republican state party chairs and national committee members for reaction to Trump’s handling of the events. We asked each official two questions: Are you satisfied with the president’s response? And do you approve of his comment that there were “some very fine people” who marched alongside the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis?  

The vast majority refused to comment on the record, or simply met the questions with silence. Of the 146 GOP officials contacted, just 22 offered full responses—and only seven expressed any kind of criticism or disagreement with Trump’s handling of the episode. (Those seven GOP leaders represent New Mexico, Texas, Virginia, North Dakota, Alaska, Massachusetts, and North Carolina.) The rest came to the president’s defense, either with statements of support or attempts at justification

Almost a year ago I compared the VTGOP’s mixed enthusiasm for then-candidate Trump to a “mullet” hair style. That is the 1970’s and 80’s haircut style (infamous by the 1990’s) showed the public one “thing” (face) in the front view, yet show a different style or “thing” (another face) in the back: “all business in the front and all party in the back.” In the case of the VTGOP’s emerging mullet, all good ol’ imaginary GOP moderation in the front and just totally Trumpism in the back.

Now the VTGOP is still styling the political equivalent of a “mullet,” i.e., a two-faced approach with Phil Scott sporting some neatly trimmed criticism of President Trump’s “very fine people” remark up front, and Committeeman Jay Shepard showing the rough side in the back. It must be the look they prefer while strutting around under the circus tent.

Beyond the margin with Trump

International, National, ,

Donald Trump started the week by continuing a prolonged twitter attack on his Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Later he tweeted a ban on transgender people serving in the armed forces then made a widely criticized politically divisive speech to a national gathering of Boy Scouts. Soon came an on-the-record obscene and insane rant by his new communications chief Anthony Scaramucci. Quickly following the Mooch’s rant, Trump fired  his Chief of Staff, Reince Priebus, and replaced him with the DHS Secretary, former General John Kelly. Woven into all that  chaos was the dramatic GOP loss in the Senate on a series of ACA repeal bills Trump supported.margincenter2

In reaction to all this chaos, The Donald turned on his own party and tweeted that the GOP “looked like fools” and threatened not to follow the Obamacare (ACA) law and to stop mandated payments to insurance companies. He left Washington, traveled to an event on Long Island and suggested to a gathering of police officers that they “…don’t be too nice” to alleged immigrant criminals — a comment widely perceived as a presidential call encouraging police violence. Here’s a link to a rundown of most of the events from the Financial Times

Watching this numbingly frightful week unfold, I remembered what — when the shock of Trump’s victory was still new — seemed a worst case prediction of what was to come .

On November 29, 2016, only a few short weeks after the election, Rick Perlstein was interviewed by Sky News. Perlstein was a biographer of Nixon and a longtime observer of the American conservative movement, but his interview was cut short by the Murdoch-owned news channel. Although he never got the chance to make his comments on-air, Perlstein published his observations in the Washington Spectator.

None of these things [Trump’s unrealistic campaign promises], however, are possible.

So what happens next? His worshipful admirers cannot blame Trump for the stymying of this agenda: Trump is a god. It must be the people he told them to blame who are actually responsible. The lying media. The quisling Democrats. The sellout Republican establishment. Mexicans, of course. The more Trumpism fails, the more, and more violently, scapegoats will be blamed. And only some kind of stalwart resistance will stand between America and fascism.[emphasis added]

Remember, Perlstein planned to say these things in his on-air interview a mere 3 weeks after the election.

Here’s how he closed his piece: Maybe they [Sky News] didn’t like the direction I was heading; Sky News, after all, is owned by Rupert Murdoch, same as Fox. Or maybe I’m just being conspiratorial: Trump may soon be doing that to all of us. The margin has become the center. Paranoia strikes deep.

Looking back at this prediction from today’s perspective, six months further on in the Trump presidency, we have to say:  without a doubt, Perlstein called it. Except that we might say it’s the fringe, not the margin that is the center for now. If Trump was a flat-earther, we’d all be in danger of falling off the edge.

H.R. McMaster shreds the Honor Code

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You are undoubtedly familiar with the Honor Code H.R. McMaster was required to adhere to when he was a cadet at West Point. Everyone knows “A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.” A seemingly simple rule that anyone can comprehend and follow, but you may not know the rest of it. In this case it is clear beyond clear that McMaster violated the Code by quibbling.

LYING: Cadets violate the Honor Code by lying if they deliberately deceive another by stating an untruth or by any direct form of communication to include the telling of a partial truth and the vague or ambiguous use of information or language with the intent to deceive or mislead. The term for this kind of evasive, misleading statement is “quibbling”, and it is considered a violation of the Code.

In the administration’s effort to discredit the report of the president revealing sensitive classified intelligence to Russian officials in the White House, they had McMaster make this statement:

The story that came out tonight, as reported, is false. … At no time, at no time, were intelligence sources or methods discussed. The president did not disclose any military operations that were not already publicly known. … I was in the room. It didn’t happen.

This was a clear attempt to lead the listener to conclude that the press story was false, but it did so in what has been termed a classic non-denial denial. He categorically denied certain actions, discussing intelligence sources or methods and disclosing military operations that were not already publicly known. By listening to his statement we are expected to conclude that the story reported by the Post and others was false and shouldn’t be relied upon. If you look more closely, though, you see that the stories in question never claimed that he discussed sources and methods or military operations.

In other words, in order to give the false impression that the Post story was wrong McMaster denied facts that were never alleged. That is, he told a partial truth and used vague or ambiguous language with the intent to mislead.

I don’t know if a military officer remains bound to the Honor Code when he is no longer a cadet, but at a minimum he violated the most basic principles that those seeking a commission in the armed forces are expected to follow.

Can you possibly argue that this can be tolerated?

Thank you, Donald Trump!

National, , , , ,

Someone once observed that a faux pas is when someone accidentally blurts out the truth.

The short-fingered vulgarian did that today, and it caused such a reaction that he had to say he didn’t mean it.

It was a discussion of abortion, and particularly whether the extreme right could trust Trump’s commitment to the anti-abortion cause. After all, he is on record years ago being pro-choice, right? So he was being interviewed by Chris Matthews, and Matthews kept pushing the anti-abortion to the logical conclusion: if abortion is illegal, should women who get abortions be punished for it?

It makes total sense. Anti-choicers claim to believe that aborting a fetus is exactly the same as killing a living human being. If it is, then anyone who does it should be prosecuted for murder, right?

And what’s more, even if you don’t pull the trigger but you hire someone to do it you also get prosecuted for murder.

And Trump went along with the whole thing. For someone who is ” very smart, really very, very smart, believe me,” he apparently wasn’t smart enough to see where this was leading, or the likely consequences of this argument (kind of a habit with him, no?), so he plunged on ahead.

“The answer is there has to be some form of punishment,” Trump said.

“For the woman?” Matthews said.

Trump said, “Yes,” and nodded. Matthews pressed further: 10 days or 10 years? Trump said he didn’t know, and that it’s “complicated.”

“It will have to be determined,” Trump said.

Of course, by the end of the day he was walking back his statements because the anti-choicers had called him to heel. They say that they never supported punishment for the woman who obtains an abortion, and I suspect that this is true for several reasons.

First, it’s bad PR. I continue to believe that the anti-choice movement is composed primarily of people who think they don’t know anyone who has had an abortion.  Still, they realize they’re out there, and they know they would seem heartless if they were calling for women who get abortions to go to prison, so they have decided not to pursue that remedy.

Second, and this is one area in which they are actually telling the truth, they consider the women who obtain abortions to be victims. Patronizing doesn’t even cover it. What they are really saying is that women do not have moral agency, so they are not responsible for their actions. Therefore, why prosecute them?

Finally, and they will never tell you this, deep down they really don’t consider fetuses full human beings the way they claim. They say they do, but they recognize that even when it’s a painful choice it’s not the same as murder. If they did, to be morally consistent they would have to push to prosecute the women for murder, just as they would like to prosecute the doctors.

So at the end of the day we owe Trump something. It won’t happen often, but on Wednesday he blurted out the truth and exposed the malevolent core of the anti-choice movement.

So thanks, Donald. You probably won’t hear it from me again.

A Pox on Both Their Houses

National, , ,

Now that Donald Trump‘s suit of alligator armor has suffered a rent in Iowa, I feel it is safe to say that on one thing we agree: Ted Cruz’s campaign is guilty of fraud.

No matter how you parse the story, Ted Cruz’s tightly run campaign dispersed a false story to Iowa Caucus goers, that Ben Carson was stepping down and his supporters should switch their vote to Cruz. The record of communications clearly demonstrates that this was an attempt to move voters over to Cruz by deliberate deception.

The Cruz campaign attempted to hand-off the blame to CNN. Fortunately, in this era of wall-to-wall records, it’s perfectly clear that the Cruz campaign took the legitimate story carried on CNN that Cruz was not flying to New Hampshire that night but rather to Florida “for a change of clothes,” and transformed it into a boldface lie.

That goes well beyond ‘dirty tricks,’ of which Donald Trump has no doubt played plenty.

Cruz has apologized to Ben Carson, and it is questionable how much of an effect the ruse had on the outcome; but defrauding voters is ‘voter fraud’…something which Republicans are always allegedly combatting in their efforts to suppress votes by minorities.

How is this kind of voter fraud consistent with Ted Cruz’s supercilious holier-than-thou Christian values?

Cruz’s surrogates are dismissing Donald Trump’s call for redress as the predictable whining of a sore loser. ‘True enough; but it’s not as simple as that.

What happened to that great Christian value of accepting responsibility for your actions? Apparently, if you have the credentials of a certified pious zealot, you are entitled to a ‘get-outta-hell’ card every now and again. Just say ‘sorry’ and you’re good to go.

I hope Trump does sue Cruz’s campaign. By all rights, he might just win that one…and he does love to win.