Tag: Donald Trump

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Cuomo’s Franken-sense

With Eric Adams on the outs Andrew Cuomo, former governor of New York State, has stepped in to run in a primary against Adams for mayor of New York City.

Adams is on the outs because he sucked up to Donald Trump in an obvious attempt to extract a shutdown of the investigation into charges of bribery against him which almost certainly would have resulted in conviction, according to insiders at the Attorney-General’s office of New York.

Well, a lot of people have stepped up to demand that Cuomo extract himself from the primary because, well, everybody knows he’s a sexual abuser.

Do they?

Here’s a summary of the claims made against Cuomo:

    • Lindsay Boylan: described several years of “uncomfortable interactions”.  He once “forcibly” kissed her and even compared her to a former girlfriend.  Yes, that’s it.  Cuomo’s former aide Melissa DeRosa claims Boylan never complained about it while working for Cuomo.
    • Charlotte Bennett: Cuomo once asked her about her sex life.
    • Anna Ruch:  Cuomo placed a hand on her back and once asked if he could kiss her.  Yes, that’s it.
    • Ana Liss: Cuomo once called her “sweetheart” and kissed her hand.  (I’m not making this up: this is Liss’ complaint.  Check it out.)
    • Karen Hinton:  Cuomo once hugged her.  “Unethically”.  That’s it.
    • Brittany Commisso: Cuomo once groped her breast.  She told Cuomo that his actions might get them into trouble.  Did she mean the two of them or the two of them.  Either way, this is probably most serious charge levelled against Cuomo, if it is true.
    • Kaitlin (mystery accuser): Cuomo made her feel uncomfortable, more than once.
    • Jessica Bakeman: Cuomo went crazy here– he touched her arms, shoulders, back, and waist and once held her hand for some time.  Again, I am not making this up.
    • Alyssa McGrath: Cuomo “ogled” staff and commented on their appearance.
    • Someone else said that Cuomo, noting a diet drink on the employee’s desk, asked if her goal was to look like a Playboy Bunny.

All of the allegations are evidence of a distasteful personality, immaturity, and poor judgment.  They shouldn’t be dismissed, entirely, as complaints, but, at most, they deserve a very stern letter to the administrator. 

None of these are serious.  None of them really rise to the level of “sexual harassment”.  None of these are sufficient to demand the resignation of  the governor of a state.  But most prominent Democrats– terrified, I think, of offending the feminist wing of the party– immediately piled on.  Biden, Harris, Schumer, Pelosi, and dozens more.  The party must be purified!

All the righteous denunciation of Cuomo by Democratic Party leaders and staffers for these minor offenses plays right into the hands of voters who kind of mostly shrug at this kind of behavior in the real world and don’t respect hard-core feminists for what they perceive to be hyper-sensitivity to minor issues.  It’s plays into the hands of conservatives who describe liberal feminists as snowflakes for presenting themselves as suffering victims of slight offenses.

All of the allegations are in that fuzzy area of “inappropriate” and “uncomfortable”.  None of them are really serious enough to justify the “cancellation” of Cuomo, though they do reveal that he was a compulsive flirt who obviously did hit on women in his orbit.  He was probing, obviously, for a favorable response, to see if one of them might like to go further.  Some of them (who aren’t part of the cabal) might have.

Why is he the target?

Because the Democrats have a habit of forming circular firing squads.  They know they can’t take down the long list of womanizers in the Trump Administration so how do you rally the troops and proclaim your own virtue when the enemy won’t willingly capitulate?  You attack someone in your own party, like Al Franken, or Eliot Spitzer, or Andrew Cuomo, who actually, on the whole, are on your side, but might also be standing in the way of an ambitious woman (like Kathy Hochul) who could use a leg up.

When Cuomo resigned, Kathy Hochul, as Lieutenant Governor, became Governor of New York.  She barely won re-election in 2022.  She has flip-flopped on some major issues (like a congestion tax for Manhattan) and seems afraid to commit to a position on others.

 

 

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Trump the Negotiator

If you read– and believed– “the Art of the Deal” you might have come away with the impression that Trump was a brilliant negotiator. You might be surprised that he negotiated himself into 6 bankruptcies. Ironically, he made his real fortune selling himself, in the “reality” (ha ha!) tv series “The Apprentice.” As a great businessman. Most of the buildings with his name on it are owned by people who paid him for the right to stick his name on the front.

Then you won’t be surprised if he seems to get paltry returns for his “tough” negotiations on tariffs. What he got, so it appears, is stuff that was already in place in both Mexico and Canada, and a few symbolic gestures.

The EU will take note of just how serious he might or might not be.

Canada spending over $1 billion to interdict fentanyl? About 47 pounds goes over the border annually from Canada. That’s about $21.2 million a pound we are spending on this puppet show.

Does not strike me as the most efficient use of tax dollars.

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Elon Musk Cops No Subsidy

Apparently Elon Musk is on-board with getting rid of the $7500 federal tax break for electric vehicles. (Some Tesla models have some Chinese components and don’t qualify, so it won’t affect him as much as it will GM and Ford).

Why? Musk wants to get rid of ALL government subsidies for all enterprises. Hey, I’m on board with that! The oil industry gets $20 billion a year. Consumers will have to pick up the slack at the pump. The movie industry gets massive state subsidies as localities compete against each other to get Jennifer Lopez and Leonardo Di Caprio to come visit. Best of all, no more tax-payer subsidized sports stadiums. And no more states luring GM and Ford to build their plants in union-unfriendly Kentucky or Tennessee. Detroit will be happy.

I will believe it when I see it. Most likely, they will only try to remove subsidies for industries that benefit the consumer or the environment, but I’m open-minded.

I also hear that the Trump administration wants credit card interest rates dropped to no more than 10%. That might make up for Walmart having to increase their prices because of tariffs on Chinese goods (70% of Walmart’s products come from China).

Gosh, it’s going to be interesting.

The only time in history in which the working classes dramatically improved their economic status was the period after World War II up to the Ronald Reagan era (1980). Since then, under both Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, the working classes’ income level and prosperity has been stagnant, while the investor class has seen lavish increases in wealth.

It is a mass hallucination to believe working class people improved their lot from 2016-2020, but inflation did eat away their income from 2020-2024.

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Billy Graham’s Sheepskin

The New York Times, in a piece on evangelicals and Trump, described Billy Graham as “non partisan”.

I responded:

“but he was mostly not a partisan activist”? Are you kidding? Only a fool would have believed that Graham was anything but a life-long Republican. What this article overlooks is that this sheepskin of “non-partisan”, in the face of issues like nuclear war, racism, pollution, poverty, and global warming, is in fact as rabidly partisan as it gets. By not speaking out on those issues, Graham played to Republicans: he provided them a “comfortable pew” from which to hold a studied indifference to issues that had and have a profound effect on all of our lives. It is no surprise to me that he voted for Trump in 2012, the ultimate sell-out. Graham’s primary interest was in the status he received by being invited to the White House, and I was royally embarrassed when even Clinton and Obama acceded to it.

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The Republican Convention 2024

JD Vance is a dud.

The CNN & PBS panelists need to sharpen their wits. If Biden is responsible for inflation why did all the developed nations have it? Inflation in Biden’s first year was about 6.0%. None of Biden’s policies could, at that time, have had an impact. Unless you believe presidents can go back in time, what he inherited was Trump’s inflation.

The Teamsters (Sean O’Brien) did NOT endorse Donald Trump. He has offered to speak at both conventions.

Unreported crime is up. Think about it. (The crime rate is actually down).

Real household income has increased significantly under Biden, even in Vance’s home town!

Trump endorsed the Iraq war before he changed his mind much later.

Home prices went up 27% under Trump.

Trump had initiated the plan to leave Afghanistan before he left office and Biden essentially merely enacted it. What is not often remarked upon is that the U. S. had been losing that war badly by then and short of an injection of 100,000 or more troops, could not have changed the outcome. Evacuations under those circumstances are always going to be horrendously messy.

Unemployment under Trump was 6.7%. (Biden: 3.6%)

Yes, Trump tore up NAFTA… and then replaced it with an almost identical trade deal.

The most promising move to counter China was Obama’s Asian-Pacific trade alliance … which Trump tore up, clearly out of spite.

Most economists predicted that battling inflation with higher interest rates would increase unemployment and slow GDP growth. Biden, remarkably, reduced inflation without the expected recession. Why don’t the Democrats talk more about that? It really was quite remarkable.

The Republicans at the convention keep alluding to decaying infrastructure; Biden is the first president in decades to pass a substantial infrastructure bill.

Trump was a failure in business. He took a large capital stake from his daddy, blew it all on bad real estate deals, built casinos and golf courses that failed, owned a football team that failed, created Trump University (failed again), all while selling his image to gullible fans as some kind of business genius. He finally made money parlaying his fake image to a TV show (“The Apprentice”) which did, finally, make him a lot money. As H. L. Menken (maybe) observed, nobody every went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.

The most striking thing about the convention so far is how the party has become the Trump Family Compact. Everything is Trump. Every speaker is required to genuflect to Trump. Every statement is calibrated to flatter and wheedle the divine leader. For a party that used to brag about being “rogue” and thinking independently, this slavish adoration a single personality must be humiliating.

One does begin to shed a few tears for how sensitive they are: they constantly whine about the “media” being mean to them and hurting their feelings. Poor Sarah Huckabee could hardly bear to be insulted by a TV hostess. I guess they all missed Politics 101 in which you learn that politicians should probably have some backbone, or find another profession.

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Will Biden Drop Out

I suspect, at this moment, that Joe Biden will drop out.  And it will be astonishing.

Why will he drop out?  Because his blundering performance at the debate was not an anomaly, and, even when confronted with a very, very serious crisis in his candidacy, he is still unable to present a coherent, assertive presence to the media and public.

It wasn’t Biden being caught in an unexpected situation for which he  was unprepared and then responded with a poor choice of words or lack of command of the facts of the circumstance.  He had all the time in the world and all the staff in the world and all the resources in the world to prepare for the debate and he still managed to muff it on a ridiculous scale.  Then, after creating a dire crisis for his candidacy, he could not even muster a credible display of recovered command and assertiveness to even begin to counter-act the devasting effect of his debate performance.

He has offered excuses: he had a cold.  He had jet lag.  He works too hard and doesn’t get enough sleep.  The fact that he even feels the need to offer excuses in very telling.  He knows he has a serious problem.

Both Nancy Pelosi and James Clyburn have indicated some reservations, when one would have expected fulsome support and a strong assertion of confidence.

There will be, in the coming days, a monumental clash between the insular coterie of family and friends surrounding Biden and the wider world of Democratic donors, strategists, Congressional delegates, party apparatchiks, and others, who will quietly begin to insinuate the obvious.  Will it penetrate?  I suspect it will, eventually.

And then… chaos.  Representative James Clyburn will surely expect Kamala Harris to replace Biden, but others in the party will be hesitant to back the loser of the 2020 primaries, someone the party has had persistent doubts about, and the challenge of a black woman winning a presidential race in America, particularly after the Hilary Clinton fiasco in 2016.

But what if, instead, they turn to Gavin Newsom, or Josh Shapiro?  Will this alienate the black voters the Democrats depend on to win elections?

More dangerously, a segment of the voting public has clearly shifted their support to the repulsive Donald Trump.  Having overcome their rational hesitation to adopt him as their candidate, will they, once they have overcome those reservations, hesitate to return to the Democratic candidate?  Will an embittered Kamala Harris withdraw from the campaign?  Or will she accept a VP nomination with the new candidate?

I doubt we will get a really great replacement like Sherrod Brown or Sheldon Whitehouse.  Getchen Witmer would be a terrific replacement.  Pete Buttigieg or Amy Klobuchar would be viable.  Newsom?  Probably.  Shapiro?  Maybe.

Trump is very vulnerable to attack by a vigorous, smart opponent.  The Democrats owe it to the world to find one.

If they don’t, history should be as unkind to Biden as it is now to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, at least among the more sophisticated observers.  He will be the man whose bungling missteps and selfish narcissism gave us the worst president in the history of the United States, again.

 

 

 

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Trump Will Not Win This Election

[My Wrong Pick]
Trump and the Angry Uneducated White Men
Donald Trump is not going to be president of the United States. He cannot win the demographics. He will probably do pretty well among angry, disenfranchised white voters, and old white women. But he has not, so far, demonstrated the slightest attraction to blacks, hispanics, women, educated white men, educated white women, educated people of no specific gender, or establishment Republicans.

How Does He Do It?

One is forced to consider how he might just do it, as if the possibility itself must be considered for some reason. Trump is volatile, and he doesn’t embrace a lot of the traditional Republican values. He has even– God Help Him! — let slip that he would consider raising taxes on the rich, if necessary, to deal with the mythic crisis called “The Budget Deficit”, which is only ever a problem when it can be used to justify slashing social spending. You want a war? Hey, here’s my gigantic American Government Credit Card.

So, he is volatile. He might take positions that a lot of Americans would find appealing, even if they don’t like his boorishness.

We cannot afford to forget that Americans are very, very angry at their government. Most of them could not name a single policy that they actually want to change, or how they would change it, aside from the obvious: no boots on the ground in Syria. They do want to tear up trade agreements but I suspect most people would be easily frightened into keeping them, if the consequences of a trade war with China were described to them in vivid terms.

But Trump looks like a bully and sometimes you like the bully if he’s on your side.

Or if you think he’s on your side.

I lost it at the Movies

Do Americans cling to an obsolete, nostalgic image of impervious American power and prestige? When the marines could just land somewhere and “take” a country or city, and the rubber or oil or coffee or bananas would just flow through American corporations to American consumers in American malls?

2021-05-05 Update

Yeah, obviously I was wrong.

Perhaps the most astonishing thing about this election cycle is the fact that the two people most people want to be president– Bernie Sanders and John Kasich– will not be the nominees.

Is there a problem with a system that produces two of the most unwanted presidential candidates in history?

Is there a problem with the obscenity of the fact that the wife of a former president is about to become the next president of the United States? Is the U.S. actually a tin-pot dictatorship?

Why the hell doesn’t someone start a third party? If people hate their government so much– no matter which party is in power– why don’t they do something about it? Is this an abusive relationship? Are the American voters enablers?

 

Wednesday, May 05, 2021

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Palin Pizza Trump Taco

Yesterday, Sarah Palin and Donald Trump had pizza together in New York at Famiglia’s, a chain, in Times Square. The pizza at Famiglias is widely regarded by New Yorker’s as detestable.

She muttered something about a real New York pizza as she left.

And I don’t want to contribute any more to the mad media fascination with the most mediocre mind in American politics.

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Bush-Libby

In 2001, George Bush Jr., following his Christian principles, and his instincts for justice and integrity and honor, appointed Reggie B. Walton to the Federal bench. No more molly-coddling criminals under my administration! Walton was known for his tough as nails approach to sentencing– the only way to stop crime in this country is to make sure that criminals pay the full penalty for their offences! By Golly, America wanted frontier justice and George Bush delivered!

When the U.S. sent Mayer Arar to Syria for some good, old-fashioned torture, and it was later revealed that it was all a mistake– no apologies! We are tough even on uncommitted crimes!

Until… until Dick Cheney’s good friend “Scooter” appeared before Reggie B. Walton and Reggie B. Walton did exactly what George Bush Jr. appointed him to do– deliver a tough sentence.

And then George W. Bush commuted his sentence (note: but he did not pardon him, which would have allowed Libby to continue practicing law).

Since then, Republican apologists have been performing the kind of verbal acrobatics that would make even George Orwell blush. Bush doesn’t want to undermine the judge, according to his White House Spokesflunky Tony Snow: “The point here is to do what is consistent with the dictates of justice”.

There you go. To do “what is consistent with the dictates of justice”. One of the fundamental principles of justice, of course, is equality under the law. So if a judge sentences Scooter Libby to two and a half years in jail and that turns out to be about average for obstruction of justice, then — then…. well, let’s not be coy here: nobody ever thought George Bush or his gang wanted the law to apply equally to themselves. Don’t forget that none of those raging militarists in the White House ever served in a wartime army either. Other people do that stuff. When they come back, we slash their veterans benefits. It’s the Republican way.

So when other people commit crime, the Republicans want the law to be merciless, uncompromising, and relentlessly destructive. But not, of course, for our crimes.

What Bush has done is absolutely the opposite of the “dictates of justice”: he has applied the law unequally. He has over-ruled a judge and jury. He has short-circuited due process. Don’t buy all the whining about a “conviction” being sufficient punishment– they don’t believe that about any other criminal– why should we think they really believe it about Libby?

But it doesn’t even matter if Bush agreed with the verdict or the sentence at all. It is completely irrelevant, if a country has a constitution and an independent judiciary. What Bush just did, from the point of view of any one who believes in constitutional government, was despicable.

He has done a favor for his friend. He has offered compassion and clemency to someone who did him a favor by taking the brunt of the Valerie Plame scandal and not implicating his superiors.

There are two ways Bush could have made things right. He could have advocated understanding and compassion for every single person who comes before Judge Walton.

Or he could have let Libby serve his full sentence, just like everyone else.

If you’re not outraged enough, consider this: as Bush was giving speeches about how “harsh” and “unfair” the Libby sentence was, he was simultaneously advancing new legislation that would make it even more difficult for judges to give more lenient sentences to any criminals, after taking into consideration special circumstances.

There’s a point at which it’s hard to even muster a fresh feeling of outrage at an administration this bad. This is raging hypocrisy. This is vindictiveness, spite, hatred, and stupidity, on a scale I could not have imagined 20 years ago, when even Nixon had more common sense than anyone in the Bush White House.

Why is there no scandal? Why is there no move to impeach Bush? Because most people believe what they see on TV?

Why not just pardon him? Now.

Yes, now– because Bush will indeed pardon Libby when he leaves office– no question about it. He’ll also pardon the rest of his friends after they are indicated, charged, and whatever. He’s got nothing to lose now– Bush is probably becoming dimly aware of the fact that his administration is going to go down in history as the worst ever.

I was surprised that Giuliani and Romney both endorsed the commutation. I think they may come to regret this. But then again, there is an important message here that they may wish to send out to their supporters and colleagues and campaign workers, and that message is: We will take care of you! If you have to do something of “borderline legality” on behalf of the campaign– don’t worry. We will take care of you.

[2022-05-07] As you probably know by now, I was wrong.  Bush, I think because he had become dimly aware of how Dick Cheney and others had mis-used him and led him down a garden path of quagmire and mediocrity, did not pardon Libby, to the consternation of Dick Cheney who fully expected Libby to be rewarded for taking the fall for his (Valerie Plame) scandal.

This is probably the most honorable thing George W. Bush did.  Then, to highlight the fact that it was honorable, Donald Trump came along and gave Libby the pardon he craved.  Bush never looked more honorable.

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Go to Bed Crying for Scott Twaddle: He will be Your Inspiration

The United States Navy likes to take civilians on joy-rides on their submarines.

You can’t wait for your turn? You’ll have a long wait, unless you’re rich or famous, or well-connected. No, no, these rides are not for the people who pay for the submarines. These thrilling excursions are for people who, at a time of a threatening peace, are in a position to promote massive expenditures of your money on more, bigger, faster, deadlier submarines.

You see, there are a whole raft of deadly submarines out there, just waiting to whack us one with a big nuclear missile. These submarines come from our deadly foes, like… well, Britain might get mad at us someday. The Russians still aren’t fond of us, really. China? Someday they might well have a sub that comes back up after it submerges. And North Korea– rumour has it that they are plotting our final destruction at this very moment. So, yes, by all means, more $2 billion submersibles, please.

That’s why there are the joy rides. You see, Congress is not always as forthcoming with the money for these toys weapons deterrents as they should be. So they must be promoted. So if you are a Congressman and you and your famous or rich loved one would like a thrilling ride in a giant steel cigar, the navy will oblige.

But there are some limitations, my friends. If you and your significant other– one can’t imagine a submarine hosting Elton John and “friend”– go joy-riding together and the excursion happens to last more than a day, you are not allowed to bunk down together. Oh no, no, no! You must sleep in separate bunks. And the rules are spelled out in case you still don’t get it: no sex. We can’t have love on a submarine!

When the nuclear-powered attack submarine Greeneville hit a Japanese trawler, it was not out on a training mission as first reported. No, the training mission had been cancelled. But important visitors had been promised a ride so, at an operating cost of $25,000 a day, the navy obliged. The Greeneville was out on a joy ride. The Ehime Maru, the Japanese Trawler whose name barely rates a mention in the follow-up news stories, was out on a genuine training mission, teaching young people how to fish. They were out in the middle of a very big ocean. Then a nuclear-powered submarine on a joy ride bashed into their hull and sank them, and twelve people died.

The New York Times has published a lengthy article about the grief and despair experienced by the crew of the Greeneville! I may have missed a similar article on the families of the dead fishermen. I must have missed it. If I didn’t miss it, this weird apologia is a pathetic joke in extremely bad taste.

But if they ever published an article about the families of the dead fishermen, it is not listed in the links to this article. I’m afraid the suffering of these families did not rate the New York Times.

This article is interesting in a perverse way. I wouldn’t normally argue that the grief of the submariners or their wives should be completely over-looked or ignored. There is a place for genuine sympathy for crew members who didn’t make the mistake but worry about public perception that they were responsible for needless death.

We only honor them, after all, when they are responsible for needful death. We give them medals.

But this article attacks a perception that does not exist. Who out there, in his right mind, thinks that the working crew were responsible for this disaster? No one. We all know that it was the Navy brass that made the decision to go joy-riding, and the Navy brass that wanted visitors to experience the thrill and excitement of riding a death machine, and the commander of the sub who did not take adequate measures– measures that are normally required as a matter of policy– to ensure that no vessels were above them when they pulled their stunt.

The New York Times quotes a submariner’s spouse: ”

In 16 years here I’ve never faced that kind of crisis. It makes you get more loyal, more defensive. I’ve gone to bed crying for Scott Waddle. And his crew — it’s going to affect them for the rest of their lives.

One hopes she shed a tear or two for the families of the dead fishermen.

Why does the New York Times publish this drivel? Remember, we’re talking here about the poor submariners who got to sail back into port alive. Are you supposed to forget all about the Japanese fishermen and go, “oh, those poor submariners…”?

Well, we know why. Somebody got to the New York Times. I don’t mean in a sinister way. I mean that someone high-ranking in the Navy or government called an editor or the publisher at the New York Times and gave them a big lecture about how they were ignoring the sufferings of the poor crew and how they were needlessly damaging the reputation of the brave and courageous men of the armed forces. God help us, they might even have accused the New York Times of undermining NATIONAL SECURITY by giving needless focus to the families of the dead.

Like a rotting fish.

10 Years Later (2011)

How about that! Here it is about ten years later and all those people lamenting the fate of Commander Scott Twaddle… well, he’s now a motivational speaker. Here he is on Youtube.

Yes, people are paying a lot of money to hear Scott Twaddle twaddle about his astonishing courage in dealing with his own astonishing incompetence.  I hope part of his speech is about how people are so stupid that you can actually make a lot of money bragging about your biggest mistake.

Is this where Donald Trump got the idea of running for president?

You couldn’t make this shit up.

Sometimes I am truly flabbergasted by the turn of events… And other times, I am silenced by the unspeakable, incomprehensible absurdity of human behavior.