Tag: Donald Trump

The Free Press vs Donald Trump

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Constitutionally Protected
Adrian Walker writing in The Boston Globe said, “I can barely believe it needs to be said, but the free press is not the “enemy of the people.” The press is constitutionally protected, and it is their function in a free society to protect the society from a corrupt and incompetent government. In the case of Donald Trump the need is especially great.

Adrian Walker Writes For The Boston Globe

Editorial Campaign
350 newspapers have joined The Boston Globe in the #FreePress editorial campaign convincing the  commander-in-chief of paranoid narcissism that the press is out to get him. It has become part of the Trump rally routine to slander journalists. He relishes eliciting jeers when he points to journalists covering his rallies. The attack is relentless.

In His Cross-Hairs
Free speech is the biggest enemy to Trump and that is why journalists are in his cross-hairs. Facts and their messengers are Trump’s real enemies and he will do everything within his power to discredit and silence criticism. The need to silence the opposition has no place in a free society, and is the tactic of totalitarian regimes.

Jack Shafer Writes For Politico.com

An Avalanche Of Editorials
Jack Shafer, writing for Politico.com believes the coordinated editorial response is sure to backfire. He opines that for one thing, Trump supporter’s don’t read newspapers. So, in Jack’s opinion “an avalanche of editorials singing from the same script is unlikely to move the opinion needle or deter Trump from attacking journalists and news organizations.”

Media Disapproval
Sadly, I agree with Jack. The public opinion of the media has been below 30% for over a decade. A “national press cabal” convened to oppose Trump may seem to the public as proof that he is being unfairly attacked. OMG, the last thing we want for Donald Trump is to improve his approval rating by convincing the electorate that Trump is the victim of the “deep state” in a coordinated effort with the liberal left.

Calamity Is All About Shining A Light On The Vile & Evil

My Plan
My plan as a progressive “voice” is to continue to attack Trump and his policies. I will not join in any form of coordinated national editorial campaign against Trump. I detest every cell in Trump’s polluted body, but I refuse to give him “fresh material” to use in his anti-journalist attacks. So, as in the past you can expect www.CalamityPolitics.com to make fresh attacks on Trump for everything from his failed orange flop-over to his vile sexism, corruption, tariff policies, environmental policy, climate change and bigotry.

Darlene

 

This, Too, Shall Pass

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The Dark Jester

by T.K. McNeil

“Every empire turns to dust and every ego will be crushed”
– Martyn Jacuqes, The Crack of Doom

No one can see the future. Just ask stock traders, poker players, or the weather man. One method used to predict future events is trends. Unfortunately, trends come and go. Be it good or bad, there is a tendency to be trapped in the current scenario. Which is why when it came to imagining transportation of the future, Futurists of the 19th century described what was basically a horse and buggy with a mechanized horse.

The very concept of the internal combustion engine was so far beyond the context that they knew it was difficult to foresee a time beyond it. In the throws of the Second World War the National Socialist regime referred to their administration as “the thousand-year Reich.” While the Nazis were only in power for 12 years there was no reason not to believe the “thousand-year” rhetoric at the time.

Donald Trump is president but it will not be forever, even though it already feels like it has been.  The Nixon administration was truly abhorrent and seemed like it would never end but it did, because people took action. Remember George W. Bush? Me neither. Not unless I really try.

It is both funny and somewhat tragic to realize that we thought W. was as bad as it could get and Obama arrived just in the nick of time to save us all. It was warm and fuzzy while it lasted.  But, going from Obama to Trump was a shock that the country has not yet recovered from.  The ‘he’ll never win’ complacency that let him do just that hangs over every day of his presidency.

Cultural amnesia can be a terrible thing that can allow us to get used to anything, but we can’t allow it. This is not normal and it is not right. This is exactly why our systems has checks and balances like the two houses and the judiciary as well as two term limits on the presidency. To keep the unfit from ruling too freely for too long.

No matter what happens we need to remember that. The power is ultimately ours, as is our destiny. It might hurt but we need to remember everything Donald Trump has said and done. Hold it our hearts and minds and make sure he does not get away with it. It is a dark time now but this, too, shall pass. Hopefully sooner than later.

“Democracy Is Unquestionably The Worst Form Of Government”

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Winston Churchill Questions The Value Of Democracy

More Than T-Shirt Philosophy

“Democracy is, unquestionably, the worst form of government” (ever conceived in the mind of man), “except for every other kind that has ever been tried,” Unknown (re-quoted by Churchill in House of Commons, 1947).)

Absolute Power 

Critics of democracy and its often accompanying capitalism, have a sad tendency to overlook what has happened historically when other forms replace it. Fascist Italy and Spain are but two glaring examples. Both of which reverted back to flawed but greatly preferable democratic systems at the first opportunity. While single party, and even single ruler, states might have some attraction, particularly in terms of efficiency; for any form of governance to work, given human nature if nothing else, there needs to be enforceable controls on power. “Absolute power corrupts absolutely” is far more than a catchy tee-shirt slogan.

Democracy Needs A Population Of The Faithful

Democracy is an ideal. Liberty of thought and action, one person, one vote. We have representative democracy in the United States. The “ideal” is always a goal. As always, real democracy is obstructed by the partisan and the powerful, but even they give the ideal endless lip service. Democracy is more about faith. Faith, and attitude of mind that personal liberty is sacrosanct and that although the majority rules, there is a respect for the minority and their rights established by law.

Political Parties In A Democracy

One of the great advantages to democracy is the, at least ostensible, ability to limit the power of leaders particularly in terms of civil crackdowns and war, as well as the ability to get rid of leaders that prove too dangerous or criminally corrupt to keep in office. At every stage of an American presidential election from the primaries to inauguration, there are particular safeguards, mostly left to the political party brass, to keep the unfit and potentially dangerous from even seeking election.

Nixon Is The Only U.S. President To Ever Resign From Office

Is Impeachment A Possibility?

When a lunatic or warmonger does happen to slip through (*cough* Nixon *cough*), there is always the possibility of impeachment. Except, really there isn’t. I do not want to  rain on anybody’s protest movement but the chance of Trump being removed from office by impeachment is inthe negative numbers.

Laws Are Fallible 

You are probably thinking, something like, “but that is what impeachments are for!”  You are correct; that is what the impeachment process was created to do. Unfortunately, rules and processes only work when applied correctly and as written. Sadly, rules are as fallible as the  mortals who create and enforce them. As such, no sitting American president has ever been successfully removed from office as the direct result of impeachment.

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His Walls Don’t Go All The Way To The Top

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Contractors Build Wall “Samples” For Trump To View

“Build The Wall!”

“Build the Wall!” became a poplar chant of the 2016 campaign, along with, ‘Lock Her Up’. While both have all the real world meaning of ‘Gabba Gabba Hey!’, only the former has actually been carried over as presidential policy, having some very interesting effects on cross-border relations both to the south and the north. Even so, the rhetoric about a border wall has a special form of crazy and stupid related to it, greater than nearly anything else Trump has ever said, except perhaps describing “Falling in love” with North Korean dictator, Kim Jung Un.

Berliners Celebrate the End To The Berlin Wall

Very much aside from the assertion that the Mexican government is going to be footing the bill for a wall meant to keep its citizens from cross-border travel, the other challenges are cost and topography, while daunting, are far from insurmountable. Trump’s wall if it extended the entire southern border would crawl across the deserts of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas for a total of 1,957 miles. To put that in perspective, the Berlin Wall is 87 miles long, 11 feet high and three feet thick.

Berlin Wall

Building a similar wall between the U.S. and Mexico, while extremely expensive, and needing to be built up mountains and over rivers, is technically possible. Homeland Security estimates the cost at $17 million dollars per mile. Gulp. Do we really have the national will or financial wear-with-all to build such an absurdity, when we are facing a pending infrastructure collapse, a faltering health care system where care is denied to millions of citizens, as well as a staggering and ballooning foreign debt? Just doing a reality check, folks.

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Sex, Lies and Science

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Sex, Lies And Science

By T.K. McNeil

Well, Brett Kavanaugh has made it to the Supreme Court, in what might prove to be the most controversial appointment since President Hindenburg was pressured into naming a new Chancellor in January of 1933 (hint, the appointee’s surname rhymes with Shmitler). Old ghosts of partisan divisions arose again, each holding to the Party Line. Daily Wire mastermind Ben Shapiro, in characteristic too-much-coffee hyper-speed banter, spent over an hour arguing that the whole thing was a set-up. Sure Ben, and the moon landing was an elaborate hoax (sarcasm detected).

The Left, honestly, was not much better. While saner voices tried to be heard, others were yelling about how appointing Kavanaugh was, essentially, the same as legalizing rape (which no one has or would) and the more extreme end literally calling for riots if Kavanaugh was appointed (the images of burning limousines after Trump’s inauguration still sharp in my mind). Meanwhile officials seemed be flip-flopping like decked salmon and Trump was carrying on his tradition of self-contradictory statements, seeming to forget what he had said merely days before. Let’s all just take a breath for a minute. Deep breath in. Good. And now out. Continue reading

Rough Trade

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Dark Jester

T. K. McNeil

The Trump trunk of disgusting pronouncements is so full that it is damn near impossible to pull out any  one thing President Trump has said in the first 630 plus days of his term that could lead to his undoing. There is just so much to choose from! Although politics is famously unpredictable, his chestnut about how “trade wars are good and easy to win” just might be the spark that incinerates his presidency. Trade wars and tariffs have brought down other administrations.

Puffing And Blustering To Make MAGA

In addition to being laughably incorrect by any logical standard-countries who hate each other (France and Germany for instance) regularly enter into flawed but necessary trade agreements, precisely because trade wars are universally recognized as the greater of the two evils.  On the face of it Trump’s election campaign was about the re-invigoration of the American economy, but truly it was a campaign to convince US voters the world image of the United States was in tatters.  MAGA is all about the Trump voter self-image.The MAGA hat was like Popeye’s can of spinach, it puffed up the wearer’s ego just like spinach puffed up Popeye’s muscles.

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Witch Hunt

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Witch Hunt

D. S. Mitchell

Donald Trump The Victim

Historically, “witch hunt” referred to the persecution of the weak and powerless by the powerful.  Usually, when the term witch hunt is used, it is meant metaphorically, referring to a period in the past. Today the term has been turned on its head. Under Trumpism a belief has developed, a dark corrupt suggestion, of a ‘deep state’ persecution of him.

Narcissists thrive on enemies, and Trump is no exception. In fact Trump brings a new finesse to the      age-old blame game. All those pre-election assertions of a ‘deep state’ have hardened since he became president. He believes, and vigorously promotes the idea that he is under siege from all quarters; the Mexicans, the Muslims, the immigrants, the Democrats.  Trump merely points and everyone looks toward the new enemy. Then his red capped crowd of pitchfork carriers goes after his newly declared target. Believe me, there is no end to his enemies list, in fact, it is a growing thing.

Today, instead of calling out Trump and his extremist “witch hunters” for crimes against immigrants, Muslims, POC, women, and the press; the greatest perpetrator has become the greatest complainer.  In this newly created world, Trump is the martyr. A contortionists’ twist on reality, but a “truth” that Trump hammers out daily on Twitter.

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There Is One Born Every Minute

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There Is One Born Every Minute

Trevor K. McNeil

Is There Really an ‘American Dream’?

The promoted mythology holds that anyone in the United States can achieve greatness through vision, persistence and hard work. Sadly, as Hunter S. Thompson bluntly put it after narrowly losing his run for Sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado “I,unfortunately proved what I set out to prove … that the American Dream really is f**ked.’

One of the great myths of the ‘American Century’ is that of the ‘Self-Made’ man. Statistics counter that claim, suggesting almost no one born poor in this country ever achieves staggering wealth; and those who do rarely achieve it by ‘hard work’ within the established system. Think lottery.

Donald Trump first hit the national radar during the glitzy big hair days of the 1980’s and 1990’s.  It began slowly, with small mentions in the gossip columns of Palm Beach and New York. By the end of the 90’s Trump had become a staple in New York society columns and the tabloids. In fact, the tabloids and reality TV created the Donald Trump persona we know today.

Everything was over the top for the future president. He had a big airplane with the Trump name emblazoned on its side. He was a billionaire businessman playing himself on a weekly reality TV series. Being seen at the right places with a harem of plastic barbies on his arm came easy and he did it all with a  Gordon Geko-esque swagger (ask your parents).

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Why I Vote

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Why I Vote

D. S. Mitchell

I grew up in Portland, Oregon. I graduated from Lincoln High School in 1964. I am a white female. I grew up in poverty. Both my mother and father were union members. They divorced when I was a teen.

But I was blessed. Everybody said I was smart. So when I graduated from high school I headed to college. I, like many others of my generation, was the first person in my family to graduate from college.

With the help of several great scholarships, I received my BS in Social Science/Political Science in 1972 from Portland State University. Not a particularly useful degree, in itself. My original intent had been to continue to law school, but my full-time job, parenting, and physical exhaustion, halted my education at that time. Ten years later, in 1982, I returned to Clark Community College and obtained an Associate Degree in Nursing. After graduation with my ADA, I worked for the next 33 years as a Registered Nurse in hospitals in Oregon, Washington, California and Nevada. I still keep up my RN license, and do volunteer work.

I have never missed voting in an election since I came of voting age. My mother called herself a “Roosevelt Democrat”. I am a passionate progressive in the vein of Bernie Sanders. I believe in political activism. If you have a political agenda, which we all do, it is necessary to speak up.

It amazes me to hear people say they, “hate government intervention in their lives.”

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The Trump-Russian Collusion Timeline

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The Trump-Russian Collusion Timeline

D. S. Mitchell

centers on 12 dates. The Sept-Oct 2018 issue of Mother Jones magazine draws a painful conclusion; the Russian Investigation Is NO hoax.  So, if you have clung to the belief that a president of the United States would never betray his country to win an election,  you better check out the timeline Mother Jones has drawn of the Trump campaign activities & Trump speeches and collusion, is the only conclusion.

June 15/2016: As reports surfaced of the Democratic National Committee hacks, Trump & Team issued the following: “We believe it was the DNC that did the “hacking” as a way to distract from the many issues facing their deeply flawed candidate.”

June/16/2018: Donald Trump, Jr and three Trump campaign officials, including Paul Manafort, meet with a Russian attorney with known ties to the Kremlin to discuss, offered “dirt” on Hillary.

7/27/2016: Trump makes his now famous plea to Putin, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.” A recent disclosure in a Mueller indictment, reveals that Russian Intelligence first targeted a key Hillary Clinton email provider, “on  or about” the same date.

9/7 & 8/2016: Obama officials alleged publicly that the Russians were likely behind the DNC hack. The Trump response came on Kremlin backed RT no less, during an interview, “I think maybe the Democrats are putting that out. Who knows, but I think it’s pretty unlikely.”

9/26/2016: During the first presidential debate, candidate Trump said, “I don’t think anybody knows it was Russia…it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, okay?”

10/9/2016: During the second debate when Clinton accuses Trump of benefiting from Russian interference his response was to deflect, “She doesn’t know if it’s the Russians doing the hacking. Maybe there is no hacking.”

12/9/2016: Trump’s transition team attacks CIA’s published conclusion that Russia had interfered in the 2016 elections to help Trump.  According to Trump, “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.”

12/31/2016: Trump announces, “I also know things that other people don’t know, and so they cannot be sure of the situation.”

1/13/2017: Trump posts  to Twitter, “Russia says nothing exists.”

9/22/2017:  Facebook’s announcement that Russian operatives had purchased ads on their platform, drew the following response, a “hoax”.

11/12/2017:  After a private meeting with Putin, Trump says, “He said he absolutely did not meddle in our elections. He did not do what they are saying. I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it.”

7/16/2018: In Helsinki, Putin & Trump take the stage together and Trump sides with Putin over US Intel agencies. “They said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be.”

“As emails stolen from the DNC and HRC were disseminated by WikiLeaks and Russian intelligence,” something soon became clear, “These actors weren’t just snooping; they were weaponizing what they found, using a noxious brew of fake news, astroturfed social-media posts, and bots.”

For the entire article, written by Pema Levy and AJ Vicens pick up a copy of Mother Jones at the news stand or subscribe for home delivery. I get mine delivered.

Please, support THE BLUE WAVE PROJECT, Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley’s action group raising money for progressive candidates nationwide.