5 V 2018: Newt Gingrich Again

I read an opinion piece by Newt Gingrich that’s being peddled by Fox News. He says Trumpy should just say “no” to that bully Muller’s questions. Trump is too busy, says Newt, to have a detailed memory of events of the first year of his presidency. Try asking Trump what his golf score has been over the last several years.

I have a good memory of Mr. Gingrich’s unremitting efforts to introduce extreme polarization and intolerance into American political life. Though he left public office under a cloud after the House voted (395 to 28) to reprimand him for an ethics violation, he has continued to pop up from time to time to display his corrosive views and personality. As I wrote in an earlier entry, I was hoping that he would fade into a life of silent repose at the Vatican with Mrs. Gingrich III. How wrong I was! The era of Trump has brought many bugs of the woodwork, Gingrich among them. Old reactionaries never fade away.

3 V 2018: Misc.

1) Now we learn that Mr. Emmett Flood had been on Bill Clinton’s legal team during the impeachment crisis. So he’s moving on from Slick Willy to Duplicitous Donald, after defending however many indefensibles in the intervening years.

2) CNN reports: “This year’s Nobel Prize for Literature is in jeopardy over a sex scandal.”If charges of sexual misconduct are enough to derail the prize for literature, mightn’t they have some impact on the prize for peace. The Trumpites have been heard chanting “Nobel! Nobel!” – a word not usually found in their lexicon. And some Republican members of the House who share Mr. Trump’s esteem for the truth and his skill at fooling the rubes, have written a letter urging Trump’s candidacy. The recommendation of such grave and sober legislators is bound to carry weight, though I’m certain that if I were to make a big enough contribution to their campaign funds, they would nominate me for a Nobel Prize.

3) Now Giuliani, a figure so widely respected for his sobriety and credibility, is peddling new versions of the Donald – Stormy – Michael ménage à trois. Cohen bought Stormy’s silence for $130,000 that he paid out of his monthly retainers of $35,000. Some devotion! That’s 3.7 months’ of a hardworking fixer’s pay. Oh, but Trump, who, of course, knew nothing of this payment at the time it occurred, later reimbursed Cohen for the money he had paid out of his retainer or, according to an earlier version, from his home-equity line of credit. The bond between Cohen and Trump must be a strong one, for behavior more typical of Trump would have been to stiff Cohen, and call him a sucker and loser.

2 V 2018: Sleaze and contagion

So Trump has a new mouthpiece, a man hailed as “a veteran white collar defense attorney.” Now Emmet Flood can’t have agreed to work for Trump because he needs money. I cannot even imagine the vast income of someone in his line of work, who defends the sort of people he represents. Maybe he accepted the job because of the staggering challenge of defending Trump, a client far more irresponsible and garrulous than any Flood usually represents. Will Flood succeed where all others have failed? Will he stop Trump’s mouthing off? Will he take away his Twitter account? Will he cajole Trump into concentrating on something?

Mr. Flood will have developed a strong stomach from dealing with wholly unprincipled and sleazy people in his legal practice, but he is sure to be retching for the first few days of his service in the Trump Gang. He will be nauseated, but he will be lucky if that is all the sickness he suffers. Mendacity, contempt for law, utter selfishness, and disdain for all that is decent are diseases that are cultivated in the Trump world, and Mr. Flood will be lucky if he is not infected.

28 IV 2018: The King of Tarts

We’ve now seen what I’m sure is only the tip of the iceberg of Trump’s bought and paid for love affairs. Some Trumpites from the mega-churches assert that Trump has been born again and has been forgiven all his past sins. I cannot imagine how they know. But whatever the state of his soul, more and more evidence of Trump’s serial polygamy is coming to light and fleshing out what we already know of this weak, impulsive, and mendacious character. Forgiven or not, Trump’s fundamental character remains unchanged and renders him unfit to hold the office or President. If he truly has had a change of heart, he should follow Richard Nixon’s example and put himself where he will no longer be a danger to others.

11 IV 2018: The Impeach Nunes Movement

So the congressman who represents the world of infamy, the leading rat of the House, David Nunes, is blathering about impeaching honest men. I look forward to the time when maybe Nunes is impeached or, at least, is listed in retrospectives on the Trumpzeit as the slimiest burrower in Donald’s dung heap.

8 IV 2018: U.S. is committing suicide??

Back again after a long hiatus … Not much has changed fundamentally since last August. But we’ve seen more, learned more of Trump and his ménage. Trump clearly needs psychiatric treatment (or to be put in prison) so that he does no more harm to himself and others. His family, friends, and appointees have proven to be wannabe plutocrats who are, if not criminal, at least sleazy through and through. Why don’t the American people and their elected representatives do something about this. Perhaps Mr. Jimmy Carter is right; maybe the American people want a jerk for president, someone as ignorant as they, someone as selfish as they, someone as hypocritical as they, someone as irresponsible as they. Unless the course of things changes soon, I have to conclude that the United States of America has a death-wish.

How will it die? It could wait and die of greed and the surfeit attendant upon it; it could die of sentimentality; it could die from ignorance. Or Americans might lose patience and slaughter one another, since we hate each other so. How could they accomplish this slaughter? The easiest way would be with firearms. There are plenty of them around.

As several investigations get closer and closer to Trump, he will surely try to distract us with a war. If we survive the war, maybe we will be chastened and move towards democracy. Perhaps we will have enough new citizens, young people and immigrants, whom the plutocrats have not yet seduced with their K-Mart, television, sports, and scandals, to find our way back to our ideals.

23 X 2017: Who crossed the line?

I read in the paper last week about the lawsuit brought by the ACLU for various disaffected people who had been with those blocking traffic, smashing windows, and overturning planters downtown, against the St. Louis Police for being too severe with them. The same article reports a statement of Sgt. Matthew Karnowski: “He also said police found six guns after the arrests.” I assume the guns were found on the ground, dropped there by people who’d been carrying them illegally. The police were dealing with an armed crowd of people who themselves or whose associates had committed acts of vandalism. “Innocent bystanders” who have any sense will keep well clear when the law is being ostentatiously broken. The protesters must find a way to separate themselves from criminals or potential criminals. The protesters may mean their demonstrations to be peaceful, but how can they be believed when people in the demonstrations break the law? Is the misbehavior associated with the demonstrations part of a plan to provoke the police? Is it intended to frighten the public? Or does it happen when a demonstration becomes an invitation to a block party for people with nothing better to do.

Today’s news reports the closing of an interstate highway and another invasion of the Galleria. On a television segment someone covering the closing of I-64 read off the list of the protesters demands, a long wishlist of wrongs to be righted. Few, if any, of these problems can be corrected at once. Most are long-term goals. But none of them can be achieved without serious leadership in the black community, and serious, disciplined behavior by protesters who wish to persuade the larger community.

21 X 2017: No right to be heard

I found on CNN this headline:

Bannon delivers blistering attack on former President George W. Bush

Why does the press continue to report drivel designed to shock?

George W. Bush’s criticisms of the selfish, pusillanimous kind of state that Bannon advocates apparently came too close to home, and Bannon, like his puppet Trumpy, was compelled to counterpunch. Wannabe-fascists like them ought really to have thicker skins, but there it is. Bannon launched a very nasty personal attack on Mr. Bush, asserting, in effect, “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Now who is it who really does not know what he’s talking about? Why report this piece of ugliness from a public enemy like Bannon? Why allow him any standing beyond that of a radio-show host like Rush Limbaugh, a cunning man pandering to the ignorant?

19 X 2017: Unlimited free speech

Read about racist Richard Spencer’s attempts to make himself heard at the University of Florida. In a piece from the Associated Press that reported estimated cost of security for the event at $600,000, it was said that public universities “are compelled by the First Amendment to provide a speaking forum.” This is news to me. I believe the First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech, but it surely does not guarantee an audience. State universities must restrict access to some who demand to speak on campus. Otherwise they would have to accommodate speakers who assert the moon is made of green cheese, that the earth is flat, and that there is no human-caused climate change. University of Florida was silly to be suckered in by an appeal to free speech.

Once Spencer was there and given a venue, he was prevented from speaking by the hecklers who made up a majority of the audience. These were suckers also, for I’m sure Mr. Spencer gets a lot more points with his base by being shouted down than by actually speaking.

Right-wing nutcases and publicity hounds should not be allowed to speak on university campuses. “But if the students invite them ….” The students are students. They are not adults and show that they are not with some regularity.

“Oh, but we are trying to have a diverse campus.” We really ought to get rid of diverse and diversity. These terms have no commonly agreed upon meaning in political discourse. If diversity is truly insisted upon, and any group of students can invite any speaker, the number of abusers of women, liars, egomaniacs, adulterers, cheats, and frauds on campus will increase, and in addition to this familiar group of reprobates, absolute diversity would require that a place be made for sadists, cannibals, and pederasts if a student group invites them.

Will common sense and moral authority ever return to America’s universities?

17 X 2017: “Thy banners make tyranny tremble”

This is a line from the first verse of the old patriotic song “O Columbia, Gem of the Ocean.” The entire verse is as follows:

O Columbia! the gem of the ocean,
The home of the brave and the free,
The shrine of each patriot’s devotion,
A world offers homage to thee;
Thy mandates make heroes assemble,
When Liberty’s form stands in view;
Thy banners make tyranny tremble,
When borne by the red, white, and blue.
When borne by the red, white, and blue,
When borne by the red, white, and blue,
Thy banners make tyranny tremble,
When borne by the red, white and blue.

This is rather frothy stuff, but still it would have been a better national anthem than the impossible “O say, can you see.”

What I’ve been thinking about is the line: “Thy banners make tyranny tremble.” The United States of America is forsaking its role of leadership of the free world, reneging on its promises and treaties, and colluding with tyrants of every type. Pretenses to “Moral Leadership,” already called into question by torture of prisoners and “collateral damage,” are made truly ridiculous by our President’s expressions of admiration for and uncritical association with tyrants world-wide. Who is it trembles at our banners now? The upright, I would say, the idealistic, those who collaborate in service of justice and peace. They are the ones now afraid of the United States.