Another week of Trump


Yesterday, our Republican led Congress lowered the cost of health insurance by lowering benefits and by allowing insurers to make insurance obscenely unaffordable to anyone who isn't young and healthy. This is expected to leave 24-million people without any insurance due to age and pre-existing conditions. After passing this law writ in blood, Republican Congressmen took a bus ride to the White House to drink beer with the president, their happiness undiminished by having caused the suffering and death of millions with act that was vigorously opposed by every single healthcare related professional group. America can always find trillions of dollars to kill people in war, but it regards every cent that is spent on such basic needs as education and healthcare as another cent closer to bankruptcy.

Trump expressed anger that he lacks the dictatorial power of Russia's Putin and Turkey's Erdogan. He praised the Phillipines' Duerte as a strong leader based, it would appear (due to the lack of other possibilities) upon Duerte's contempt for Obama (whom he called "the son of a whore") and his use of lynching to resolve his county's drug problem. Finally, he called North Korea's  Kim Jong Un "a pretty smart cookie," and said that he (Trump) would be "honored" to meet him. On the homefront, he continues to blame Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for all of America's problems.

Trump became so outraged by lawmakers who dare to oppose him that he said, "Our country needs a good government shutdown," implying that will refuse to approve a new budget in October.

Trump vowed to "Make School Lunches Great Again" by replacing former president Obama's healthy food initiative with all the white bread and sugar that America's overweight kids and can stuff down their diabetic gullets. He also overturned Michelle Obama's initiative to provide academic encouragement and validation to girls.

Trump signed yet another executive order (he's ahead of Obama by nearly two to one, although he called Obama a "weak president" for relying on executive orders). Today's executive order will allow tax exempt churches to give both verbal and monetary support to political candidates. There was no word as to whether the the fact that most Christians voted for Trump (he won 81% of the evangelical vote*) was a factor in his decision, and no explanation for why he even bothered to eliminate a requirement that the government ignores anyway. Christians are now asking Trump to sign to sign an executive order allowing them to violate the civil rights of gays, atheists, women who use birth control, and transgender people, all in the name of Jesus.

The Republican Congress repealed internet privacy protections so that big business can make more big money.

Trump started eliminating banking laws that were implemented to prevent big banks from the kinds of reckless behavior that led the country to the brink of financial collapse in 2008.

Trump announced plans to deregister more than 24 national monuments. In my view, no president during my lifetime deserves high praise for protecting the natural environment, however, Trump exceeds the others in his callousness for the environment because while doing nothing to preserve it, he has gone to pains to hasten its destruction in the name of greed.

Finally... More than 53,000 people have signed a petition that was targeted at mental health professionals, stating Trump should be removed from office because he is insane. Yale psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton warned against creeping what he calls "malignant normality" meaning that under a malignantly narcissistic leader like Trump, "alternate facts," conspiracy theories, racism, science denial and delegitimization of the press become the new normal." I consider the truth of this to be obvious. When our president demonstrates persistent and far reaching suspicion regarding his own investigational agencies, has no consistent set of values, praises murderous dictators as examples of effective leadership, never admits a mistake, and clings tenaciously to easily disprovable lies, he has a serious problem that I would to grow ever more serious under the demands of the presidency.



I have tried to keep an open heart to Republicans, and I have tried to believe that there is surely some limit to how far Trump can go without losing their support, but I have found it impossible to do either. It is my sad conclusion that the Republican Party is dominated by two kinds of people. The first are devoid of  environmental concerns, couldn't care less about civil rights, and don't give a fig how many lives they wreck--or even destroy--as long as it puts money in their pockets. If a Congressman doesn't kowtow to them, they'll use their riches to defame and replace him or her, and thanks to a ruling by the Supreme Court, no one outside of Congress will even know where the money came from. 

The second kind of Republican is a conman's wet dream. As long as a candidate says he loves guns and Jesus, detests the least hint of liberalism, and shares their abhorrence of abortion, gay rights, and even birth control, then that person will have their vote. These people are SO stupid that they accept the lie that the best way to help themselves out of poverty is to make rich people richer so that  some of the wealth will "trickle down" to them. The majority of these Republicans live in the most ignorant, religious, and impoverished parts of the country (the parts known as the "Bible Belt") which happen to be the very parts of the country that are the most dependent upon government welfare programs. Some of these states are SO dependent upon the federal government that they get more money back from the government than they pay into it, and this makes them every so much as like a dog that bites the hand that feeds it, the conclusion being that they're only stupid, they're malevolent. I know much of this due to having spent 37-years in Mississippi, a state is near or at the bottom in regard to every measurable standard of living unless you count religion in itself as a standard of measurement, in which Mississippi is at the top. Of the ten states that have the lowest standard of living, all but one are in the Bible Belt.*** 

Just as the gun lobby cite deaths from gun violence as proof that the country needs more guns; the citizens of the state with the lowest standard of living and the highest incidence of church attendance, argue that what will correct the former is more of the latter. While these citizens parrot their leaders in extolling private enterprise--while deprecating government--they overlook the fact that, even if those leaders force the government into default, they will continue to enjoy a singular benefit among government employees, namely that they will to draw their own government paychecks even while the rest of us go into the hole They also forget that when those leaders insist that government health insurance sucks, and that the private sector will do an infinitely better job in providing us with health insurance, is is never their own government financed health insurance they're talking about because like that very much indeed.

* http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/how-the-faithful-voted-a-preliminary-2016-analysis/ 

** https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/05/04/trump-malignant-narcissistic-disorder-psychiatry-column/101243584/ 

***http://politicsthatwork.com/graphs/standard-of-living

36 comments:

Elephant's Child said...

Sigh. Watching in horror.
Yesterday your President apparently told our Prime Minister how much he likes our univsersal health care system saying it was better than yours. The White House back-tracked on that very quickly. 'The US leader raised eyebrows when he told Mr Turnbull shortly after the bill passed that Australia had "better health care than we do".

But the White House has since clarified those comments, saying the US President was simply saying nice things to an ally and did not think his country should adopt a similar approach.' And seems to have no problem is admitting that he will lie if it suits his purpose.

stephen Hayes said...

I feel sick to my stomach every morning when I wake and realize it wasn't a nightmare and that Trump is actually our president. I'm against everything he stands for. There is no Republican Party anymore, just Trump syncophants.

rhymeswithplague said...

So to summarize what you wrote, Snow, into as few words as possible, Republicans are deplorable and irredeemable. Tell me again why you didn't vote for Hillary Clinton.

Snowbrush said...

“Tell me again why you didn't vote for Hillary Clinton.”

What! Is your memory failing? This is 7 times you’ve asked that same question, and, by last count, I had written 21 pages answering it, but I aim to please, so here goes.

If Sanders had gotten the nomination (you’ll recall that people in his own party conspired to prevent it), I would have raced to my mailbox (Oregon has mail-in in balloting only) to send my ballot a whole quarter of a mile from my front door via air mail.

(3) Trump didn’t have a prayer (ha) in Oregon, so I used the election as an opportunity to make a statement (not that anyone noticed) by voting for Jill Stein (the Green Party candidate) because next to Mr. Feel-the-Bern, she best represented my values. I also wanted to express my distaste for the two party system.

(3) I dislike and mistrust Hillary Clinton. In fact, I don’t care either of the Clintons or their dog (I suppose they’re up to Buddy the 9th by now, and I certainly hope they’re doing a better job keeping their dogs from chasing cars), and I also thought their Cat, Socks (I always suspected that it was Socks who opened the Lewinsky scandal by wearing a small camera in the Oval Office).But back to Buddy, you probably recall that Bill had a name-the-dog contest for Buddy, so you can imagine how surprised many of were when he chose such an unimaginative suggestion. choice. Well, as it turns out, he only pretended to choose from among the thousands of entries, and that the dog was actually name after one of Bill’s great uncles. Really, if a man would lie about a dog naming contes, what WOUDN’T he lie about? Okay, enough of that… I also don’t like the Clintons’ barber, their upstairs maid, their downstairs maid, their front porch maid, or their crawlspace maid, nor do I care for their daughter, Chelsea, who has made her living by trading on her parents’ fame and connections. I don’t know if it shows, but I REALLY dislike the Clintons, but worse so, I don’t trust them. In fact, I very much doubt that they even outrank Trump in the area of ethics, although I will at least give them credit for not being obviously insane.


I thought of you (as I often do) while writing this post because while I have no thought that you voted for Trump, you’re nonetheless surrounded by people who did, and I don’t know how you can stand it because it would bother me A LOT, not because I’m known for my up-with-people outlook anyway, or because I think highly of liberals (which I don’t). It’s just that voting for someone like Reagan, Ford, Bush the First (who can’t for the life of him find time to schedule dying into his busy schedule no matter how many times he ends in the Houston hospital) or even that imbecile Bush the Second, is one thing, but voting for Trump!!! He’s a really, really scary fellow, and the only good thing I can say about him is that he has gone105 days, 8 hours, 3 minutes and 59 seconds without starting World War III (I can tell you think I’m joking about how long we have been accursed by Trump, but I’m not: http://howlonghasdonaldtrumpbeenpresident.com/), which I really thought he might do, although he seems more interesting in brown-nosing dictators than in shooting them. He would be “honored” to meet the Kim Jong Un, he says! Does he really not know how degrading that statement was, or how much it said about his values?

angela said...

Some people not only want to stay ignorant, they don't learn anything new because they already know everything
A vicious cycle that up until now only hurt themselves. But now these people have bred a lot and in their masses have condemned us all

Kranhu said...

The Senate will make mincemeat of this House bill.-Kris ( not sure if it will be good news or bad news)

Emma Springfield said...

Too many are begging to drink the Kool-Aid. He says one thing then says the opposite and screams Fake News when someone calls him on it. He is lining the pockets of himself and his family members. The new health care plan is a disaster. He can't keep nominees for the government positions. He even appointed a woman who does not believe in birth control to oversee family planning. All I hope for is that the impeachment proceedings begin sooner rather than later.

kylie said...

Everything about the man is abhorrent and it was that way long before he was elected. I really don't understand how people didn't and still don't see it.

I have often called him "mad" crazy or insane but I read a good opinion piece on why we shouldn't use this language about him. Of course, if we stop calling him insane, the only remaining description is evil.

Here's the opinion piece
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/16/donald-trump-us-president

Sue in Italia/In the Land Of Cancer said...

In Michigan, The Evil One won by a sliver so votes did count here. He and his cronies make me sick.

E. Rosewater said...

say what you want about trump but he's made late night tv great again. i finally watched the controversial colbert monologue and it was great. the daily show was excellent when bush was president but became boring when obama got elected.

but i'm not going to watch kimmel cry like a big baby.

Heidrun Khokhar, KleinsteMotte said...

It is so sad that a nation that great intellectuals cannot figure out a way to get into the heads off some of their stupid neighbours and flush them out figuratively speaking, It is 2017 yet it feels like the middle ages are back. The poor are getting messed over as usual and now middle class is being made into more poor class. As the nation that consumes the most prescribed drugs in the world one might speculate if there is a cause in this? Is the nation beyond affordable health care? Can any intervention to get back on track?
Seems US political system no longer works in the age of drug, media and loose internet controls. If you worry about WWlll also consider a possibility of local drones appearing and causing safety issues as local people become more revolutionary due to frustration and no ability to get any relief in a Trump mess. It's only been 110+ days and anger is boiling over all over the place, Here in Canada our PM is showing Trump many of his ways are not cool and will have trade consequences. Allies are not fools.
But are there other factors playing in the background?
France votes today and the nation has been hit by hackers.
Will England be next?

Snowbrush said...

“Watching in horror.”

It’s so bad that it has a deadening effect because when a man does something that’s either stupid or dishonest every hour of every day, who’s going to remember what he did yesterday? In other words, what America has in its president has become the new normal, and, as such, it leaves a person feeling overwhelmed. As I understand the situation, there is really a lot of talk behind the scenes of what to do if Trump’s mental state continues to deteriorate, as it seems likely to do. The hardest thing of all for me, so far, about Trump isn’t Trump himself because I never did feel anything but utter horror (which, until the very day of the election, was tempered by disbelief that he could win). Now that he has won, I think of those hundreds of millions of people who voted for him and I wonder how in the hell half of the people in my country could be THAT stupid and/or depraved because if the other half of the people in America could see it coming, why couldn’t they, and, now that it’s here, why do they continue to support him? Is it because they’re as callous, crazy, and ignorant as he is? Is it because they’re religious? Does religion have even more of deadening effect on integrity and intelligence than I had imagined? I don’t know. I just know that it was Christians who put him over the top (I think you would be hard pressed to find a secularist who voted for him because, in studies, secularists come away looking quite liberal), yet I never heard him espouse the first supposedly Christian value.

“the US President was simply saying nice things to an ally”

Trump’s staff spends their days doing damage control, and they obviously bit into a hickory stick trying to put an acceptable spin on this statement. Last night, they were saying that what Trump meant to say was that every country in the world has better health care than the one country that he's the ruler of, and since Australia is a country in the world, it too has better insurance. What a compliment, eh, sort of like saying, No woman in the world is more homely as my sister, and since you're a woman in the world, you're not more homely than my sister.

It’s a funny that a man can speak in short sentences with a fourth grade vocabulary and an eighth grader’s superlatives, yet his apologists are forever trying to explain that he meant something very different from what he said, that is if he said anything that even might have had meaningful content (Everything is going to be totally wonderful, and you’re going to absolutely amazed,” doesn’t quite cut it, do you think?)

Elephant's Child said...

At least a part of the horror is that he is living up to my expectations. And encouraging far too many people on this side of the world.

Winifred said...

Oh well Mr/Mrs/Ms Anonymous you don't even have the decency/guts to admit who you are. It's no wonder because your post is pathetic whilst Snow's is brilliant. Thanks Snow it's a great read.

Have to admit I didn't think Trump would last that long. Just hope he goes before he starts WW3. He's already creating mayhem in the USA so pity help the rest of us.

One thing really puzzles me about him is that with all that money why didn't he change his name? I certainly would have. Doesn't it mean the same thing in the US as the UK?

Snowbrush said...

“Calling conservatives stupid, and liberals assholes ... where does that get us?”

Not far, Tom, but try to put yourself into my head for a bit. I have been deeply wounded that so many people could have voted for a man whom I regard as OBVIOUSLY shallow, vicious, mercenary, callous, bigoted, appallingly ignorant, dim-witted, poorly educated, and suffering from aggressive narcissism, so what you have me feel toward those people, or would you simply suggest that I keep my mouth shut regarding how big a deal this is for me based upon my inability to understand how good people could have voted for such an appallingly evil man. Because of Trump, I (and at least two of his daughters) feel to some extent, horrified if not estranged because my father-in-law voted for Trump. Earl is his name, but after 44 years of marriage to his daughter, I finally started calling him Dad last summer, and I will continue to do so because I neither showed him that honor lightly, nor do I anticipate ever withdrawing it. do. After the November election, I felt a distance from him, and I can’t even talk to him about it. In fact, he and I (as well as he and Peggy) agreed to NOT talk about Trump because it is such a dangerous topic that we can’t imagine anything but hurt coming from it.

I will grant you in a heartbeat that there are surely millions of Tump voters who are much nicer people than millions of their liberal opponents in terms of honesty, compassion, intelligence, education, and other important ways, but this makes me no less appalled because I see in them such a disconnect that I’m reminded of having grown-up among church people who believed in and infinitely loving God who would cast disbelievers (and even believers who didn’t belong to our church) into an infinitely agonizing hell where they would, for all eternity, suffer such pain that it could only be likened to sulfurous flames.

Tell me, Tom, no matter how good some of these people were (and I deeply loved many of them), how can I not be appalled to the core of my being by their ability to hold completely irreconcilable beliefs regarding the nature of God? I’m doing the best I can with my thoughts about people who voted for Trump, and while it’s obvious that Im thus far failing miserably, I don’t know how to do better. You’re completely right in holding that, by speaking as I do about them (and you’re one of them, I think), all I can expect to come from what I write about Trump supporters is that such people will turn against me. I have no expectation that they will see my viewpoint any better, and they’re certainly not going to respect me for it, so why even bring it up? I don’t have a good answer. I’ve always written whatever seemed important to me to write, so here I am writing about current politics. I went for a month or two, I think it was, without even posting, and I even said at one point that if I try to post about Trump, I’ll probably give up blogging, but last week was such an appalling week that I wrote this post and put it up within an hour or two precisely because it pained me so much to write it that I didn’t want to spend a moment longer than necessary working on it.

cont.

Snowbrush said...

I'm going to re-comment that last because of errors that make it hard to follow:

Within hours, two non-Trump topics popped into my head, and I very much look forward to writing about them. But for now, what do I do? Delete this post for the reason you gave? I’m too overwhelmed to get things right here. My emotional condition has so deteriorated that I feel that I have to watch myself around other people because not only has depression been an ever worsening problem, the various drugs I take make it impossible for me to find solid ground to stand upon. I’m on sleeping pills, nerve pain pills, narcotics, and a new and very strong anti-depressant, but I’m at least staying away from rum. I feel as if I’m on a 24-hour a day trip. All this plus almost constant pain have really left me so strung out, that I don’t know whether my feelings regarding those who voted for Trump are a door out into the fresh air or a door into complete darkness. Yet I don’t regard my thoughts as substanceless, anymore than all those decades of thought that I put into trying to comprehend the disconnect between the people I grew up among, respected, and loved, and their belief that God was, in my mind, a far more malignant demon than Satan were substanceless (I told God as much one day and then spent the rest of my growing up years living in fear that I had committed the unpardonable sin, and that God would never forgive me, or even listen to me, and that I would end up in that fiery hell). To me, the idea that Trump is a solution to our nation’s problems can best be likened to a man I knew who drank Drano as a solution to his problems (it took him days to die), because I view Trump as just that bad, and I don’t know how others mange to feel as did a commenter to this blog who wrote that she trusted Trump because she could see the goodness in his eyes. All I see in his eyes is Satan, and not only in his eyes but in the eyes of all those other extreme right wing Republicans. I have begun to wonder if a lot of Trump supporters don’t continue their support for no better reason than that the prospect of admitting their mistake is simply too frightening. Maybe they’re like a local man who, yesterday, realized that he had backed over and crushed a toddler to death. Some things that people do are just too hard to live with when they realize how wrong they were.


All Consuming said...

Anonymous trolls tend to remain in the shadows. No change here then.

"If Sanders had gotten the nomination (you’ll recall that people in his own party conspired to prevent it), I would have raced to my mailbox" - And that's the crying shame of it. I agree with all you have written, people always seem to answer criticism of Trump with talk of Hilary, rather than discussing the actual topics you're trying to discuss.

Strayer said...

The spinning of truth was going on full force this morning while incredulous journalists listened mouths agape. Apparently trimming almost 1 trillion dollars from medicaid means more poor people will have access to medicaid and it will be a million times better care. Now how does that work, Mr. Conman? Are we to simply turn off our brains and smile and nod, or should we take our soma before we watch such unbelievable gibberish?

rhymeswithplague said...

Far be it from me to point out that sometimes you have the teensiest tendency to exaggerate, but I cannot ignore errors of actual fact. "Hundreds of millions" of people did not vote for Donald Trump. Nearly sixty-six million people (rounded to the nearest million) voted for Donald Trump and nearly sixty-three million people (rounded to the nearest million) voted for Hillary Clinton. Her huge pluralities in the two states of California and New York could not give her the overall victory because of the way the electoral college works. I hasten to add that it is the numbers, not the people, who were being rounded.

Practical Parsimony said...

Great post. Hey, whoever you are, Kimmel was crying about his baby born with a severe birth defect. Give him a break.

Snowbrush said...

“Some people not only want to stay ignorant, they don't learn anything new because they already know everything…”

I often wonder how much that people like yourself who live in other countries really know about what’s going on here. It’s Trump’s line that he and some of the people at Fox News are the sole sources of truth, and that every other news media is “fake news” it appears that his “base” are happy to believe him. However, the “fake news media” could never in a million years condemn Trump more than Trump condemns himself by what he does and what he says. He’s a joke, a buffoon, a man who says he’s better than the rest of us because he’s president and we’re not. I will agree with him on one thing though. The major TV networks are pathetic in that they dwell on human interest stories, celebrity news, and even using their actual news broadcasts (as opposed to commercials) to advertise their own sensational murder-oriented programs (in which pretty young white women get a disproportionate amount of attention). Their anchors are nothing but mouthpieces in the corporations desire to make money.

I had forgotten about the following, so added it in: “Trump announced plans to deregister more than 24 national monuments. In my view, no president during my lifetime deserves high praise for protecting the natural environment, however, Trump exceeds the others in his callousness for the environment because while doing nothing to preserve it, he has gone to pains to hasten its destruction in the name of greed.”

“The Senate will make mincemeat of this House bill.-Kris”

Hi, Kris. Yes, the House was counting on it because they knew that their bill, as passed would cost them heavily at election time. They just wanted to at least appear to fulfill their campaign promise to abolish Obama Care. The Senate is promising to start from scratch, and they concede that it could take months, yet it took Obama three years, so I don’t know how they come up with “months.”

“He even appointed a woman who does not believe in birth control to oversee family planning.”

And a person who has made a career out of suing the Environmental Protection Agency to head the EPA and a woman who hates public education to head the Department of Education. I regard these as egregious instances of acting in bad faith, but what do I know? After all, 23andMe says that I’m 4% Neanderthal, and you know how Neanderthals look on the Geico commercials: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8o_YqzMBoo

Snowbrush said...

“He even appointed a woman who does not believe in birth control to oversee family planning.”

“Far be it from me to point out that sometimes you have the teensiest tendency to exaggerate”

I never knowingly mislead, but I do sometimes get things wrong, and I do sometimes knowingly leave out details in the interest of brevity.

“.I cannot ignore errors of actual fact. “

This is to my good fortune.

“"Hundreds of millions’ of people did not vote for Donald Trump.””

You’re right, and I was way off. The total number of voters was 139,000.

“Kimmel was crying about his baby born with a severe birth defect.”

His point was that he can afford to care for a child with a birth defect but most people can not.

PhilipH said...

https://www.yahoo.com/news/stephen-fry-reportedly-faces-blasphemy-151637389.html

Your concerns about your new President are shared by millions of others throughout the planet, I'm pretty sure about that.

Religion in the USA is similar to that in Ireland, especially with Catholics. The above link is just as barmy as some of the claims and promises of The Donald. Who the fuck gives a shit about blasphemy?

OK, cranky Catholics and other religious people think that it's not proper to slag off a mythical 'being' but how can anybody prove there is such a being. They cannot, of course.

Stephen Fry's opinions on 'God' are applauded by thousands in the UK alone. Only a crank would try to take him to court for speaking his mind. Oh! Maybe "The Donald" would - as soon as he's built the wall.

Snowbrush said...


“Religion in the USA is similar to that in Ireland, especially with Catholics.”

I was amazed to learn recently that Ireland was the first nation to legalize gay marriage by popular vote, and this led me to conclude that Ireland is way more concerned with justice and human rights than I had imagined. As for the link you so kindly provided, I strongly suspect that the purpose of filing the complaint was so that it could be challenged and repealed, so, as I see the situation, the fact that Fry was charged portrays Ireland in a good light rather than as a land of religion inspired bigotry. I believe you sent me this very interview at one time, and I thank you for it.

Every now and then I see some report about how many silly laws are still on the books here, not because anyone wants them, but because they haven’t been taken off the books. The following link mostly concerns such laws in the US: (http://www.skrause.org/humor/stupidlaws.shtml). Some of these laws are laughable, but there was the case of Kingsport Tennessee hanging an elephant for murder in 1916. I had understood that it was a legal execution, but the following account reports it as a lynching: (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2559840/The-town-hanged-elephant-A-chilling-photo-macabre-story-murder-revenge.html).

As for blasphemy laws in particular, the following states still have them: Massachusetts, Michigan, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Wyoming (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_law_in_the_United_States. I think it extremely improbable that any of these laws would be enforced, but if they were, the arrest or citation wouldn’t hold up on appeal because to do so would violate the offender’s Constitutional right to freedom of speech. However, if Republicans have their way, I consider it at least conceivable that the day might come when they bring back such laws through a Constitutional amendment. I don’t think this is likely, but then I didn’t think it likely that Trump would win the presidency either.

PhilipH said...

No charges are to be brought against Stephen Fry, as per Twitter item a few minutes ago. Apparently, the authorities couldn't find enough people who were offended!

Pity really. This could have been a great court case in that we could all have had a good laugh at the prosecution's case.

rhymeswithplague said...

I have seen various vote totals of 137, 138 and 139 but it's million, Snow, not thousand. Your fingers apparently can'tkeep up with your brain when you are on a roll.

Snowbrush said...

"...it's million, Snow, not thousand."

I wouldn't share this with just anyone, but I'm being tried for embezzlement, and I'm doing my darnedest to convince the jury that I'm not a cook (or a crook for that matter). Then again, maybe I just inherited Lucille McGillicuddy's endearing incapacity for useful occupation, particularly in regard to numbers. Seriously, though, I figure that if I can provide the first three zeros, then how much trouble can it be for you to fill the other seven--or is it five? Then again, maybe the reason I dislike Trump so much is that I see so much of myself in him, some of it bad enough to choke a buzzard.

"your fingers apparently can'tkeep up with your brain when you are on a roll."

Thank you. Fortunately, you're not an ordinary man because ordinary men (and a few women) usually imagine that everything is easy for the super intelligent, but I often liken it to being seven feet tall and being assigned to an airliner's economy class.

Charles Gramlich said...

Live the nightmare

PhilipH said...

Is The Donald a forceful duck? Or is he ducking and diving like a scared duck?

Sacking the FBI chief is extremely surprising. I seem to recall a saying attributed to Joe Stalin: "Get rid of the problem ... get rid of the man." Hmm...

Snowbrush said...

When Nixon was being investigated, he fired the attorney general and the deputy attorney general when they refused Nixon's command to fire the Nixon appointed "special prosecutor" (Archibald Cox) who was investigating the break-in of the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate Hotel. When Cox broadened his investigation to other Nixon misdoings and thus got too close to Nixon himself, Nixon wanted him out, and on his third try to find someone to fire him, he succeeded with Robert Bork, the man who became the acting head of the Justice Department after Nixon fired the attorney general and the deputy attorney general. Bork later admitted that Nixon had promised him a Supreme Court seat when one became available. Nixon had been unable to fulfill this promise became of his resignation. Nixon was a man who was willing to do anything he could get away with, first to solidify his power and later to simply avoid impeachment, and while Trump can't do any worse in that regard, at least Nixon was a loose cannon who was a public embarrassment from day one.

fiftyodd said...

If you just substituted the name "Jacob Zuma" for "Donald Trump" you would have a pretty accurate picture of what is going on in South Africa.
Your posts are amazing.

Snowbrush said...

“There is no Republican Party anymore, just Trump syncophants.”

I know. Seeing Paul Ryan smiling behind Donald Trump after abolishing Obamacare was a sickening experience. I suppose that, like lawyers (which many of them are), politicians are hated everywhere and in every era for their self-aggrandizing insincerity. This makes them like pigs who will go to wherever the slop is, so if enough of the publics turns against Trump, then those Republican Congresscritters will too, and then make a big deal about how, for conscience sake, they had to stand up for what is right. Interesting how, like Trump himself, many of these people only won political office by claiming that they’re not politicians, but if you’re not a politician when you’re running for political office, surely you are one the moment you take the oath of office.

“If you just substituted the name "Jacob Zuma" for "Donald Trump" you would have a pretty accurate picture of what is going on in South Africa.”

Fascism is certainly growing in popularity, but who would have ever thought that some of these fascists would have won Russian support and enthusiasm? Trump said in an interview yesterday how angry he would be if Russia really did interfere in the American election (something that has been long since proven by America’s intelligence agencies), or if anyone in his campaign colluded with Russia in doing so, yet (although it falls short of actual collusion) he himself asked Russia to find and release Clinton’s emails when he was running for office. I think that a great many of those who support Trump continue to do so simply because they can’t hold very many thoughts in their minds at the same time, and this makes it hard for them to recognize inconsistencies. Sad to say that the older I get and the more pills I take, the more I find myself in this boat.

“Your posts are amazing.”

I very much appreciate you saying that because it’s important to me that I write posts that are worth reading. It's hard to believe that my mind isn't operating as well as it once did, but given that my body is going downhill, there's certainly no reason to think my mind should be exempt, my brain being, after all, a part of my body.

For an astounding interview with a man who is way older than I’m likely to become, PLEASE watch this recent interview with 97 year old Ben Ferencz, the only surviving prosecutor from the Nuremberg Trials. I am in awe of this man. I don’t know much intelligence he has lost over the years, but what he still has is amazing.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-the-last-nuremberg-prosecutor-alive-wants-the-world-to-know/.

Joe Todd said...

The kindest thing I can say about Trump is:::"He is an Ass Hole" in my opinion

julie said...

Hey Snow....glad to see you're still telling it as you see it. The thing that trips me up is that we Americans aren't talking about all the craziness of the Trump presidency everywhere we go. It's so quiet out here in the neighborhood. I sometimes wonder if I've just a few of us have dropped down the rabbit hole?

Anonymous said...

Shocking to learn an elephant was also hung in Kingsport, TN. Surely not! Hearsay and a book I have places this hanging in Erwin, TN. So I DuckDuckGo.com it after reading your post. Yes, there are several links for the hanging in both towns. I truly don't believe this happened twice in different towns (so close to each other in miles). So somebody has the wrong information about the 'elephant hanging' and still continuing today, mind you. Goes to show you can't rely on getting the real truth of matters, whether about politics, elephant hangings (stupid killers!), HOLLYWOOD bullshit, or even public-land-sit-ins. Personlly, I trust nothing/no one to know and give a full truth about anything. The majority of humankind are living 'down the rabbit hole'. The minority top few DO control us billions. We can only self-deny this fact or we might all go bat-sh!t crazy. In fact, my belief is 'crazy' has effected us all and life has become a huge freeforall fight. Everything is orchestrated to happen as it happens. I'm anonymous #2 yet maybe as misinformed as much as #1. I certainly admire your qualities though for thoughtful thinking and writing. Best blogger Award from me to you.

Anonymous said...

Uh Oh, I didn't read far enough to find the connection between the two towns. Stupid me Anonymous #2.