5-2-17 The President’s Delicate Condition

It’s interesting that the word ‘senile’ or some variation therewith has finally been broached in the beltway media following the President’s weird and disjointed interview with some AP flunky that ended up with Trump spinning a fantasy that Andrew Jackson could have prevented the civil war.

As many people noted AJ died sometime in the 1840’s which would have greatly limited his political effectiveness in 1861.

It was a bizarre note in a bizarre day where Trump wandered all over the place with ideas about North Korea “I’d be honored to meet him” the murderous leader of the Philippines “he’s got very high approval ratings” and some nattering about breaking up banks and gas taxes.  (like any of this is going to happen)

Some folks were saying that Trump was probably saying with regard to AJ that he, Trump, could have brokered a deal to prevent  the civil war, reflecting his own sense of himself as a great man who could crack heads together and let everybody know what’s what.

Possible yes, however,  his comments were disordered and flew about the room touching on many subjects including his election win that this point, if it was his point, was hard to discern.

As a fallout from all this, Joe Scarbourgh who is suffering some regret for his letting Trump spout  away on his show before the election Morning Joe, al la Dr. Frankenstein suffered  for his role in bringing this monster to life has mentioned the word ‘dementia’ in connection with Trump. He’s the first to do it, but another story quotes several White House staff and other folks saying Trump’s been ‘acting crazy’.

So the magic words are out there – whereas before folks have been tiptoeing about it, the sense that the president is not all there and probably barking mad to boot is being spoken aloud by people who are not scruffy little bloggers like my humble self.

I’m sure there will a push back on this – indeed the AP flack has already tried – and failed – to explain away Trumps verbal meanderings.

But ladies and gentlemen, the ugly truth is that the President is mentally incapable of doing the job, first we are going to have to face that and then deal with it.

 

5/1/17

First happy May day:  “arise ye prisoners of starvation, Arise ye wretched of the earth”  From one of the English versions of the Internationale.

Anyway as we have passed the 100 day Mark, the Professor is beginning to fear that we really to long to go to stay lucky.  At lunch time today Trump gave a scattered and incoherent response to a question about North Korea.

It hurts too much to bury too deeply into the word salad but the essence is that  he’s saying be afraid – right now of North Korea but I think he’d be happier if we were all afraid all the time.

As the days go by,  Trump  more and more reminds me not of the German leader most people think of but the man in charge of Germany before the First World War: Kaiser Wilhelm the Second .

Granted the parallels are not exact, history does not repeat itself exactly (although someone said it often rhymes) however reading about The Kaiser’s actions before the war and his combination of unstable personality  and massive insecurity can’t help but see they are very much alike in their bombast, their reliance on threats, and their waffling when they encounter any real push back.

The problem of course is that the Kaiser’s bombast helped pave the way for the First World War – and my humble terror of the day is that Trump’s bombast is going to get us involved and a massively serious war in Korea with consequences to the world nobody can really foresee other than it will be very very bad.

The concern is that neither NK or Trump can allow themselves to feel or act weak so both sides have been pushing, and  if we are unlucky (I’m not even saying very unlucky just unlucky) we could end up with one or the other side doing something stupid because of this terror of seeming weak.

Frightened people with guns are very very dangerous.

 

The Buck is nowhere to be found.

The Professor is by nature a man of peace and someone who has been and remains uncomfortable with the militarization of such things as baseball games and other sporting events and the deification of all things military. I am glad to see that the New York Mets for example have stopped wearing camouflage jerseys on Monday home games.  And I find the requirement that the start of each season be marked by a flyover of some sort of aircraft mystifying. 

However I don’t question the members of the military love of country and their willingness to prove that by making the ultimate sacrifice if necessary i.e. dying in the service of this country.

Which brings us to today. Some weeks ago a raid was launched into Yemen a country that has various terrorist cells along with many many very very poor people.

The raid by most reports was a massive bust – they never got to where wanted to be, civilian casualties were heavy (30 by some counts) and along with the US wounded a navy seal one Chief William Owens.

Navy Seals are in the tired phrase “the best of the best’ commandos supreme who are used in this sort of raid – and the loss of one is a big hairy deal.

As the story unfolded, the raid had been in the planning stages under Obama who had nixed it as too risky without better information. Then Trump, wanting to prove what a decisive president he was as opposed to the calculating Obama pulled the trigger on the raid which as noted did not turn out so well.

At first the Trump people were claiming it was a wild success but that story once the cost was known was dropped. Yemen was apparently not informed about the raid and has made it quite clear it wants no more raids or drone strikes on their country. Now with the father of the dead seal making ugly talk about how the raid was botched Trump has stepped forward and bravely said ‘it is the general’s fault”

Apparently Mr. Trump is unaware of the saying “the buck stops here”

Or is an utter coward not fit to shine the least serviceman’s shoes.

And as such is trying to weasel out of his responsivity. Sir you are the President of the United States, you are the commander in chief you gave the order, it’s on your shoulders. But because you are nothing but an old spoiled rich man’s man baby son who has never taken responsivity for anything in your life, you’ve opted to the standard CEO response: It’s x’s fault not mine. Seriously when was the last time you hear a businessman accept the blame for anything? Ever?

Sorry it won’t fly – you don’t get to be saluted by the Marines when you get out of your helicopter just because, you have a vast responsibility on your shoulders and god spare us, you are so obviously not up to the task.

Oh yes, on a practical matter you just tossed the Military under the bus. Is there a single group in DC you can’t alienate? You colossal worthless fool.

Go to hell okay?

Taking to the Russians

The news these days remains it mad froth but meantime, like the solid bass line that would ground a Frank Zappa guitar solo, more and more weird things about the Russians are coming out.

The latest is the news that both the White House Chief of Staff whose name I can never quite remember well enough to type tried to get the head of the FBI to say publicly that there was nothing to the Russia Story (which is rather illegal given the circumstances) and Mr. Spicer seems to have arranged some phone calls from the head of the CIA to reporters to tell them there was nothing to the story although nobody seems to have details on why there was nothing to it. It’s not clear just yet whether Mr. Spicer broke the law or stretched it but my word it surely does not look good. 

All this froo fra and attempt to put a lid on story about the connections between the Trump campaign and Russia and just what they were are of course making it worse,  and one can be pretty sure that neither party thought to do this all by himself. Trump one assumes has told them to do these.

But why? Why risk having the story get more legs by trying to squash it? It does give one pause – Trump is a sitting president he’s in charge of the Dept of Justice and he’s gotten an absolute troglodyte in as Attorney General who about as likely to launch any sort of investigation as he is to admit he’s racist baboon (no insult to the Baboon’s intended).

Meantime both houses of congress are under GOP control run by a pair of small brained ideologues who wouldn’t care if Trump put slot machines in the oval office and was chopping the heads off of bunnies in the rose garden as long as he signs the tax cut bill (once they figure out what it is, they are not skilled men these men).  So one can pretty sure no probes will be forthcoming form them.

So, one wonders, why the panic? Why stomp all over the city insisting in louder and more hysterical voices that there is nothing to the story? Which can only make more people think that there is a there there.

Two hypotheses come to mind – one is simple stupidity – these are not bright people we are talking about and doing something stupid like this simply because they are unable to understand how this would play out is a logical conclusion.

The other one, which I think is more interesting, is that whatever is being covered up is absolute dynamite something so toxic that all support for him would vanish in an instant. Knowing just what sort of horrible things Trump has done that the GOP iare perfectly okay with, one does have to wonder what it could be.

You just can't keep up

Not a bit. On any given day there is enough madness flying about to last as the saying goes a month of Sundays.  Between the decidedly mixed signals being sent to Europe:  “We Will honor our EU commitments” “The EU must die!” and the continuing drum beat of spooky stuff out of a spy novel involving Russia (the covert peace plan that would allow Trump to undo the sanctions that a close Trump associate did or did not deliver to one of the presidents of Ukraine- the Russian appointed one) , the mystifying claim of first terrorist attacks and then a rising crime rate in Sweden caused by refugees,  the invite than canceled invite to the annual right wing hate fest called CPAC  to one alleged human being  Milo Yiannopoulos who creeped the world out to point where not only did he get uninvited to jabber to CPAC, Simon & Shuster killed his book deal (no word if he had to give the money back).

The times are simply just too crazy to cope.

And it’s only been a month.

Today apparently Trump has decided that Anti-Semitism is bad.  Not that he’s going to do anything about the white nationalists in his organization  (which isn’t very organized) including one Steve Bannon. But he has spoken about it and for his followers, that is enough. Deeds are not needed only words.

We are in trouble folks.

 

Quick thoughts from a couple of days 2/14 & 2/15

2/14/17

Happy Valentine’s Day

One keeps trying to write something and one keeps finding oneself hopelessly behind the stories as they lurch into the sunlight the after the other to dance their little dance and then be replaced by a newer and more grotesque grotesques.

This morning Mr. Flynn the National Security advisor quit mostly because his lies about his ties to Russia and folks had proof and that things were getting a little hot so someone needed to be tossed to the wolves. Thus exit Mr. Flynn.

The right is falling all over themselves to say “well things happen and let’s just move on here”.  Which is actually pretty much par for the course in DC – when proof emerged that W had blown off a briefing paper titled “Bin Laden determined to strike the US” and that he had the rest of the establishment had lied about WMD’s (poison gas actually) and this was treated as while mildly interesting, it was not dire enough to warrant anything actually being done about it.

Now we have Flynn leaving and they are saying well okay that’s it.

No it isn’t.

When Obama bum rushed some number of Russians out of the country and imposed even more sanctions on Russia for their interference in the US elections, Flynn  bowled several people over in order to get to a phone so he call Russia and reassure them that once Trump was president things would be fine. Flagrant violation of several laws this was and of course he lied about it. This is what got him canned.

About this time Trump tweeted some sort of mash note to Putin saying how smart he was for not responding to what Obama did. The timing is weird as hell one must say.

And here’s the thing – what the hell made Flynn do that? Did he just get the idea to contact the Russians on his own or did someone –say,  Trump for example – tell him to make the call.

If the later we are in deep deep waters.

In one of my stupid on-line comments I suggested watching this unfold was something like watching a John Le Carre novel from the outside – we’re not seeing what is going on inside the intelligence community or inside the white house or Congress.

2/15/17

Well coming as not much of a surprise, per various news reports Flynn wasn’t the only one in the Trump Camp with links to the Russians, no names yet but it doesn’t look good and the FBI is per the Times investigating – which does raise the uncomfortable question of hey why were these contacts kept under wraps with you gabbed about emails? (The professor also notes with grim amusement that the same folks who praised the little creep who runs the FBI with being a  hero for leaking about the Emails suddenly find leaks ‘a concern’. The professor has not had much amusement lately so he’ll take what he can get.

Meantime one of the websites I cruse comes in interesting story. Trump once Flynn’s corpse was safely stowed away under the Bus took to Twitter to complain about all the leaks that had come out of the Intelligence Community. Bad Intelligence community Bad, the tweets said.

Anyway per this story the intelligence community is really really really angry at Trump now. I suspect that Flynn’s quick and brutal fall from grace was a warning from the Intelligence Community which it would seem Trump did not take.  Hence the Intelligence Community is now really pissed and one of them sent an email to this former NSA staffer John Schindler saying per his quote “he will die in jail”

I don’t think he meant Flynn.

To quote Betty Davis  “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be bumpy flight.”

 

 

The President is barking mad.

I had been naively hoping that we could get two weeks into the new administration without a constructional crisis.

Said crisis is that the DHS has decided to ignore, the judges suspension of the Muslim travel ban order.  The Professor will call it that under the looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck rule. This is a duck. Rudy G maybe not remembering that other folks pay attention to what folks say on Fox News came out and said this is a Muslim ban. 

It’s not quite a full blown crisis just yet as the order merely suspended but did not overturn the order. A ruling on the constitutionality of this order has not been made.

Meantime Bannon who is as evil a little creep as I have ever seen making Grima Wormtongue seem principled has been put on the National Security Council which  folks are calling dangerous even crazy…

This brings me to the main part of this ramble.

The Professor has seen more than his share of insane behavior – a long ago moment at some Thanksgiving dinner when a guest insisted that his dog was talking to him in the night comes to mind – as he went on, it became clear that he mentally had left us far far away, and any attempt to drag his attention away from his frustration that while he knew his dog was taking to him, he couldn’t understand what he was saying was going to fail. And so the conversation dropped away until there was a moment of very heavy silence at which some brave soul started talking about sports or something and with palpable relief, the rest of the party jumped on the bandwagon.

I was reminded of this incident as I watch with mounting fear and horror the news and the new president’s ongoing war with reality.  He has left us, there may be moments of lucidity here and there but for the most part the new President while he may be sleeping in the White House is living in cloud koo koo land.

In what may be the most disastrous interview on tape (I date myself yes but there doesn’t seem to be a current version of this expression, the Professor would appreciate any suggestions along this line) Trump ranted about illegal voting and the size of the crowd. Both topics that have turned into major embarrassments solely due to Trump not being able to shut up about them.

We are also informed that the new President has been upset and unable to ‘enjoy’ his presidency due to the negative coverage of the crowd side compared to that of Obama’s swearing in. And that he’s upset CNN is being so hard on him considering his relationship with the president of NBC who has something to do with CNN but I forget what.

While it has only been less than two weeks, the Professor feels a need to state this in as plain fact. The president is insane – at a reality denying level that reminds one of a man in a bunker, but he at least had been in power for some time, was being poisoned by a quack doctor and was in the process of losing World War 2.

Alas our system does not have a quick and easy means to remove a president who is barking mad- there is impeachment and it is a mark of how bad things are is that it is being talked of already.

These are indeed frightening times.