4 I 2020: Look! What’s that up in the sky?

Various outlets of Russian media are claiming that Trump’s impeachment is the real explanation for his murder of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani. Of course they are right. Trump has not gone so far as to start a war as a distraction from his impeachment, but he is well on his way.

The hit on Soleimani was an assassination, was a Pearl Harbor. Let’s not mince words. Soleimani was planning attacks on American contractors, military and diplomatic personnel. How many others in this troubled world are doing the same thing? Will Trump put out contracts on all of them and reduce our military to the status of hit-men? “The Boss wants Soleimani out of the way. Take care of it.”

Trump alleges that he was acting to protect Americans and American interests.  What’s wrong with that? He was protecting American military whom he has scattered around the Near East. He was protecting American diplomats whose installations are devoted to espionage and clandestine operations. He was protecting American contractors, the shock troops in America’s undeclared wars.

Now I must admit that the first time I heard this term “contractor” used in connection with the Near East was when several American contractors were brutally murdered by the Iraqui resistance. My first thought was: How dreadful! American contractors travel over there to supervise construction, operate heavy equipment, restore the Iraqui infrastructure, and what do they get? But then I learned that “contractor” is a camouflage word for a mercenary, a hired gun. “Contractors'” work is very dangerous — just look at the Wikipedia article “List of private contractor deaths in Iraq” — but they are paid very well for a skill that is of no value at home. These contractors are America’s “militia” in the Near East, a small proxy army. I’m sorry to hear that an American contractor was recently killed in Iraq, but contracting is a demanding job.

30 XII 2019: Unamerican tweeter activity

Today we heard again from Mr. Ken Cuccinelli who put his feet in his mouth again in a tweet (Oh, the apple does not fall far from the tree, does it?) in which he said that Grafton Thomas is not as “american” as he ought to be. Thomas is the deranged man who attacked a Hanukkah party in a rabbi’s home in N.Y. state. He is the son of a sometime illegal alien, now a U.S. citizen, whose children are all birthright citizens. But Ken attributes Thomas’ hate crime to a want of amurrican values. He wrote: “Apparently, American values did not take hold among this entire family, at least this one violent, and apparently bigoted son.” Ken might have since deleted this tweet; at least it has disappeared. Why would he delete it??? Because it made even more obvious that he is a xenophobic nutcase.

You know, the name Cuccinelli sounds more Italian than American. Ken’s great-grandfather, Dominic Cuccinelli, was an immigrant. His grandfather, Dominick, was conceived in Italy and born in the U.S. Ties to the old country remained strong, for Dominick got his cousins Mario and Silvio into the United States. Did the Cuccinelli family absorb American values? No doubt they did, but “at least this one violent, and apparently bigoted son,” their famous son, Ken, has not. His career and his atrocious behavior as part of the Trump Gang show clearly that whatever values he holds, he does not share American values.

27 XII 2019: No glass ceiling for “christian” women

Donald Trump has proven time and again that he is a misogynist. But he seems to be trying to overcome his deservedly awful reputation by appointment of able women to high places in his regime. We’ve read of the appointment of the photogenic Pastor Paula White as White House Advisor on Religion, and now there is cheering news that the good-looking woman who calls herself “Jenna Ellis, Esq.” is to be joining Rudy and the rest on Trump’s legal team. 

Like Pastor White, Jenna Ellis, Esq. is a professional “christian.” Her particular apostolate is constant denunciation of gays and all their works and pomps. She has been assistant professor of legal studies at Colorado Christian University and has more recently been appointed to be director of the Public Policy Center at the James Dobson Family Institute. What “christian” credentials! 

Why does an inveterate pagan like Trump want to have good-looking “christian” women around him? Well, Paula is blond and Jenna is almost, so maybe they are avatars of Ivanka. Or maybe he hopes that professionally “christian” women will be able to resist his powerful sexual magnetism and won’t come on to him at embarrassing times.      

One would expect these appointments to be welcomed by the Evangelical Party. However, there may be a surprise in store, for it says in First Corinthians: “Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.” But the Evangelical Party has shown that it will ignore any number of biblical injunctions in its quest for political influence.

24 XII 2019: Hate mongering politicians, murderous voters

News today about a woman in Iowa named Nicole Marie Poole Franklin who, enabled by Trump’s dog-whistle war against people of color, revved up her Jeep Cherokee and ran over a twelve-year-old African-American boy and a fourteen-year-old Hispanic girl. Police Chief Michael Venema declared at a press conference: “I want to say, in the strongest terms possible, that there is no place in our community — or any other — for this type of hatred and violence.” Very true, but that means there is no place for Trump, Stephen Miller, the White Supremacists, the rebel militias, and all the rest who feel that their hates and prejudices have been made legitimate by the Age of Trump.

23 XII 2019: 1) Pharisees howl 2) Trump staying out of the light

1) Everywhere I’ve seen articles headed “200 evangelical leaders slam Christianity Today“* The 200 denounce the author of the spirited editorial in Christianity Today because they claim he “offensively questioned the spiritual integrity and Christian witness of tens-of-millions of believers who take seriously their civic and moral obligations.” Let’s look at this. offensively questioned: If they were not offended the editorial failed. Pharisees find any criticism deeply offensive and sometimes react violently. questioned the spiritual integrity and Christian witness of tens-of-millions: No. He was not questioning the integrity of the tens-of-millions, but of their leaders. Like speaks to like, and evangelical hustlers swarm around Trump because their avarice, debauchery, lust for power, demagoguery, and insincerity are perfectly matched by his. I read that he is going to install in the White House his thrice-married spiritual director and Chair of the Evangelical Advisory Board, Pastor Paula White, as a kind of Secretary of Religion. Pastors of mega-churches, televangelists, and evangelical movers and shakers must be hoping that evangelicalism is on its way to again being made the state religion and that Trump will force America to be “christian country.”

*Google search could not squeeze all this into their titling over a Fox report, so it reads “Nearly 200 evangelical leaders condemned Christianity ….”      

2) Trump’s craving for secrecy is a paradox. He has led a resolutely public life of which most would be ashamed. So why the utter refusal to cooperate with Congress? Maybe he believes in the divine right of kings to be never answerable to the people they govern. Maybe he is so absolute in his refusal to cooperate because if you give them something innocuous, then they will be demanding something that could be damaging. Or maybe he thinks that the monarch-president is more broadly protected by the Vth amendment and so all his court can decline to testify because it might tend to incriminate Trump. Or maybe it is as simple as John 3:20: “For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.” 

17 XII 2019: Pre-perjured puppets

I was happy to find an article that answered my question: “Don’t the Republican senators have to at least pretend to be ready to make an impartial judgement in the impeachment case?” And I’ve learned from Prof. Jeffrey K. Tulis that they do. Like members of a jury they must take an oath and declare “I solemnly swear [or affirm] that in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of [the person being impeached], now pending, I will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws. So help me God.” Now I don’t see how Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell, just to cite two, can possibly take this oath in good conscience and in compliance with the law. Mr. Graham, an intimate of the President, has already boasted “I’m not trying to pretend to be a fair juror,” and Mr. McConnell has pledged to work closely with the accused, that is with Trump’s, legal team. So we will have a trial with at least one potential juror announcing his verdict in advance and another collaborating with the lawyers of the person on trial. In an ordinary trial the prejudiced can be rejected from the jury at the voir dire. So we must rely on prejudiced senators to reject themselves. I propose that any senator who cannot truthfully take the oath should recuse him/herself from the impeachment trial. If they do not, I propose that there be an investigation into their words and actions during the trial, and if they have broken their oaths they should be charged with perjury.

14 XII 2019: Against the will of the people

A standard Republican complaint about the impeachment effort is that the Democrats are trying to undo the 2016 election and going against the will of the American people. But I seem to recall that one third of the American people did not vote, and that Trump received a minority of the votes of those who did. There was not much real interest in removing Trump from office when he was elected, but we have gotten to know him in the last three years, and despise him. But impeach him? A hard road to travel. People seem unsure that innate dishonesty, narcissism, buffoonery, sexism, racism, and contempt for the Constitution are legal grounds for impeachment. And of course all the Republicans and the Trump BaSe are remaining “loyal” to their impeccable leader. However, I wish I could ask all the Republicans in Congress and all the Trumpites around the country if they would leave one of their daughters alone with Trump or would give him their savings to invest.

14 XII 2019: Phone calls covered. What about the tweets?

I read that “senior aides” to President Trump have more severely restricted access to his phone calls to foreign leaders. Recent events surely provoked this. I don’t think these restrictions are intended to strengthen national security, but are an attempt to draw a veil of secrecy around Trump’s ineptitude and mental illness. 

If this is their goal, they will also have to do something to control the flow and content of his tweets, for in his tweets the President displays his real personality.

11 XII 2019: Trump tries to liven up the plot. Flunky, Clown, and Angry Cracker in the House GOP drama

Trump tried to add a new dimension to the Page-Strzok saga, retailing to a slavering crowd a make-believe rumor. Trump fantasizes about Page + Strzok as if they were a romantic couple on a TV reality show. The writers know that the show will lose interest if the course of true love runs smoothly, so they think up a big complication they can insert into the lives of the TV lovers to make the plot more suspenseful and interesting. Our President lives in a reality-TV world and his thinking is shaped by this. 

Republicans on the Judiciary Committee have been making a lot of speechettes that are sound bites for the folks at home and get-well cards for Trump. They are afraid of the Playground Bully, afraid he’ll go crazy if he’s not handled right, afraid he will come after them if their devotion seems anything short of abject. The behavior of some Republicans in the House makes this obvious. We’ve seen Devin Nunes as the flunky who is more than willing to be a fool for Trump. Matt Graetz is still starring as the class clown. Doug Collins can go from folksy to self-righteous on cue, so he is playing the angry cracker role. Will they receive awards commensurate with their self-abnegation? Tune in later as the unreality show stumbles onward.

3 XII 2019: Trump, fake it ’til you make it

I just viewed the footage of the President of the United States faking an orgasm at one of his nazi-revival rallies. Even Hitler who enjoyed his ecstatic moments in his speeches never tried this. I don’t know how Trump’s evangelical fans feel about it, but I was shocked and disgusted.

On reflection, however, I realized there is nothing surprising here. Trump runs his rallies as a combination liars’ and comedy club in which his lies are usually as crude as his humor. But though Trump’s fan-base found him funny, his faked orgasm, obviously based on a lot of practice, is actually a part of his liars’ club repertoire. Since Trump lies about everything else, it comes as no surprise that he fakes orgasms.