11 VII 2019: Jeffrey Epstein, Sex Offender Deluxe; the Stench Arising from Trump’s Gulag

Listening to the news very nearly makes me ill.

Jeffrey Epstein: Well, Trump described him as a “great guy” with a preference for younger women. I guess so.

Clearly, Epstein also believes that when you’re a star you can …. He was caught at his sins some years ago, but his sins were forgiven. He got a slap on the wrist at a rigged trial at which he was represented by Alan Dershowitz and Kenneth Star (anything for some glitz and a buck). He did have to register as a sex offender, but I’m sure Jeffrey doesn’t mind, because everybody already knew that he is a sex offender.

So Jeffrey got off easy, and at once returned to his old ways, and now he’s again being brought to court. Who knows how this trial will come out? All I’ve heard is that he has asked that his financial situation not be brought up at the trial – reminds me of Trump with his income tax returns.

Alexander Acosta, now Secretary of Labor, was years ago the prosecuting attorney who bungled Epstein’s trial and collaborated in getting him ‘easy time.’ The best Mr. Trump has found to say for Mr. Acosta so far is that he is a hard worker. Clearly Trump is waiting for the rest of the story to come out, for other wealthy sinners who frequented Epstein’s island paradise have so far kept silent, but surely the whole story will go from bad to worse. I think Acosta and Trump had better have a look at Cardinal Law’s playbook for suppressing scandal arising from sex abuse, for this looks like a movers-and-shakers version of the clergy abuse scandal.

2) I hear that the secret pol-ICE will on Sunday begin raids to round up some illegals. This is to be, I suppose, the first pogrom in Trump’s expulsion of a million immigrants from our shores, his own War on Immigrants. If the ICE boys can also manage to smash up a few bodegas, we can have our own Kristalnacht.

The misery of the men, women, and children that Trump has imprisoned on our Southern border continues without hope of relief. I heard on the radio that the border police who guard these prisoners find it a hazardous duty because the stench arising from the never-washed bodies is so intense that it penetrates the guards’ clothing. 

8 VII 2019: Glory and utter shame

Two items caught my attention in today’s Post-Dispatch.

1) The victory of the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team: Aren’t they a joy? Their countrywomen and men must support wholeheartedly their demand for equitable compensation.

2) Yet again the incompetence, indifference, and viciousness of the Trump administration’s treatment of migrants is openly displayed. Kevin McAleenan of Homeland Security (what a euphemism!) explained the government’s abuse of migrants because “It’s an extraordinarily challenging situation.” But is the government so lacking in foresight and so rigid in their non-response to humanitarian emergencies that this explanation could at all suffice? In addition, our duplicitous President, sounding like a holocaust denier, tweets that reports of the awful treatment of the migrants are much exaggerated. 

I think Sen. Jeff Merkley is right to perceive in this disaster “an underlying philosophy that it’s O.K. to treat refugees in this fashion.” This would be an application of the principle that non-whites have no rights. But I would say more. This atrocious mistreatment of refugees is not merely tolerated by the administration as being O.K., it is being done on purpose. It is a well-planned screw-up whose dog-whistled purpose is to reduce dramatically the number of brown-skin people entering our country. It is part of a determined effort to keep America white, a goal of the white supremacist program of Trump and his inner circle.

7 VII 2019: Just short of holocaust

We’ve seen the photographs, heard the reports of the inhumane treatment of migrants at our southern border. I am sure that what we have seen and heard is only part of the horror. Now we learn about the secret Facebook group of thousands of current and retired border guards who share their bigotry, brutality, and sadism with one another. To tell you the truth, I am not surprised. We know what the personnel of the extermination camps were like. Indeed, if to our cages, holding cells, and concentration camps we would add gas chambers and crematoria, we would have our very own Dachau and Auschwitz.

6 VII 2019: Trump’s parade rained upon

Well the Trumpist Fourth of July celebration has come and gone. It was, they say, unlike any celebration of the past. Of course, Trump is not interested in doing what his inferior predecessors have done. No, Trump wants to impress his peers, the despots he so much admires and whose club he is trying to join. 

But the military didn’t like their role in the show, the Park Service wanted to know who would pay for it, and much of the country objected to the Trump ist America, America Trump ist! message. Now the Dear Respected Marshal of North Korea and the Autocrat of Russia and the Crown Prince of the Saudis never hear this kind of back-talk. So the King of America has a way to go before he can join the despots’ club.

Trump should have played to his strengths and put together a parade of Bikers for Trump, neo-nazis, white supremacists, alt-righters, ICE agents, and border guards. They would all have been eager to participate and many in his base would have loved it.

1 VII 2019: He can’t help lying

So now Trump is claiming falsely that Pres. Obama was begging again and again to meet with the Korean mass murderer. Trump makes things up as he goes along as he rewrites the truth to evade responsibility or support his self-aggrandizement. I don’t think he can stop lying,

Perhaps it is his compulsion to lie that accounts for Trump’s preference for murderous dictators who also lie instinctively.

Trump and his toadies are now said to be trying to rewrite the Mueller investigation, to claim bias where there was none. A leading figure in this is Rep. Jim Jordan who seems to know everything except that a sexual predator was buggering the wrestlers he was coaching at Ohio State.

25 VI 2019: Can’t afford not to believe Trump

As expected, Republicans are falling all over themselves as they rush forward to support their Leader when he denies assaulting E. Jean Carroll. But of course, they have to at least pretend they believe him. The intelligent among them know quite well that Trump is a pathological liar. But how would they look if they begin to question Trump’s denial after they have accepted countless other lies? No, they have to keep the Big Lie of Trump’s integrity rolling forward, lest it roll back and crush them.

24 VI 2019: America’s UNembarrassment.

So, Trump learned only ten minutes before the jump off that 150 people might be killed by American ordnance launched at Iran. (What did the fool think would be the results of the attacks he planned?) Then, deeply moved, he called off the attack. (Does anyone really believe that criminal gives a damn about 150 Iraquis?) But lest anyone think he’s going soft, he also added some more sanctions and threatened Iraq with “obliteration like you’ve never seen before.” Can’t our bully boy come up with something less trite? Yeah, eblitertion like youse nevah seen before!

Isn’t America finally embarrassed by this ninny? I guess not. We’ve become inured to marathon amorality. Witness the case of E. Jean Carroll. She is the 22nd woman to accuse Trump of sexual misbehavior and the country manages to blow it off! Trump’s morals or lack thereof do not matter to the pseudo-evangelicals who have decided that Trump must be some kind of righteous gentile, like Cyrus of Persia, who, one supposes must have raped lots of women in his time and even so got a good write-up in the Bible. Then there are all those people who voted for Trump and cannot bring themselves to admit what a monster they have created. Then, the rest of the country has not registered much shock over this latest allegation because, well, it is the 22nd, and, more than that, we know damn well that our Predator President will get away with it. 

Trump, Cyrus of PersiaWe won’t call Trump to account for one accusation of sexual misconduct. OK Will we call him to account for five accusations? No, these may be politically motivated. OK, how about ten accusations? Let’s give him the benefit of a doubt. What about fifteen accusations? Look, he is a rich and famous man and surely women just throw themselves at him, and don’t call him immoral — he has been married three times! Then will we not investigate after more than twenty accusations? No. As Kellianne would say, “Blah! Blah! Blah!”

22 VI 2019: When the search for truth amounts to treason

I watched on YouTube a superb lecture given at Hillsdale College by the military historian Anthony Beevor entitled “The Soviet Role in World War II.” Towards the end of his lecture Beevor reported that in the contemporary Russia of Vladimir Putin research into the embarrassing truths of the “Great Patriotic War” is now regarded as treasonable. I was, of course, reminded of Putin’s great admirer, the President of the United States, who routinely shouts “treason,” “enemies of the people,” and other big-lie denunciations of his critics who seek to discover and publish the truth.

21 VI 2019: Trump’s birthday card from Kim Jong Un, greetings from a dictator to a wanna-be dictator.

Trump received a birthday greeting for Kim Jong Un. The White House said that the letter lacked substance and was merely an expression of good wishes.

Trump flashed this letter before some Time correspondents, not allowing them to read it and threatening a photographer he thought had tried to take a photo of the letter with prison. So I suppose Trump’s birthday cards are top secret, even if he parades them before reporters.

Today, following up on Trump’s twitter-boast that in the next week ICE will begin to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, ICE has announced raids in ten cities on this coming Sunday. So anyone at risk should lay low on Sunday, and again Trump’s boasting has caused a security breach.

“Millions” sounds like Trump’s earlier boasts at Trumpite Party rallies, and I wonder now, as I did then, how Trump proposes to accomplish such a mass deportation. Mass deportations are routine projects for mass murderers, so Trump will have to consult Hitler’s and Stalin’s playbooks to see how many cattle cars he will need to deport these millions.

20 VI 2019: State security applies only to Trump’s misdeeds

The device that has kept Trump from becoming even more notorious than he has is the non-disclosure agreement. If it were possible to identify the many times that Trump has used non-disclosure agreements to conceal his many dishonesties, infidelities, and outright lies, we would find that Trump’s life has been papered with non-disclosure agreements.

Trump’s more recent abuse of office has renewed and strengthened this pattern, for surely “executive privilege,” as applied by Trump to everyone who has entered the White House, is the biggest and best non-disclosure agreement that anyone can imagine. What Stormy Daniels dared to do, Hope Hicks has not.

But non-disclosure seems to apply only to Trump’s sins, not to national security. When the NY Times learned of the secret attacks on Russia’s electronic grid, they made every effort to be certain that security would not be compromised by publication of the story. The Times was told, in effect, “no problem.” This suggests that the Trump administration is far more zealous about concealing Trump’s misdeeds that maintaining national security.