I didn't want to write another post today. I wanted to spend this day watching some great old movies from the '60s.
But this is the Trump administration. Every day is WTF Day. Pretty soon, every hour will be WTF hour. Today alone, we've had at least a half-dozen WTF moments -- and as I write, it's still early evening.
Indict Joe! After zooming back and forth about the stim bill, Trump has been tweeting his demands to have Joe Biden (and Obama, and Hillary) indicted for...something. No actual charge is specified. For a while now, Trump has been tweeting an incomprehensibly insane conspiracy theory about something Biden allegedly did wrong in 2016.
I'd rebut this nonsense (as Marcy has tried to do), but there is no need, since only the most deluded followers of the Orange Oaf pretend to comprehend or to care about Trump's paranoid hallucinations.
Speaking of the stim bill: We now learn that our national debt has risen above our economic output.
Remember when Bill Clinton ran a surplus? Remember his no-pain plan to pay back the national debt run up by all previous administrations (primarily the Reagan and Bush I administrations) -- and to do so within ten or fifteen years? Remember how Dubya tossed that plan aside? Remember when Dick Cheney said "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter?" Remember the massive debt incurred by the ill-begotten Iraq War? Remember Bush's tax cuts for the rich? Remember Trump's even stupider tax cuts for the rich? Remember the terrifying deficits Trump ran up before Covid hit?
Remember your introductory Economics class? Specifically, do you remember the day you learned why a country can't just keep printing money?
We've gotta tax the rich, folks. They have all the cash.
The plot to kidnap Governor Whitmer. The FBI broke up a serious-as-a-heart-attack kidnap/general mayhem plot directed against Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. The conspiracy -- a real conspiracy -- was put into motion by various militia maniacs in that state. As I've said many, many times: The conspiracy theorists are the true conspirators.
Apparently, the plot was upended by an "inside man." Facebook helped.
Yet Trump would have you believe that Antifa is the epicenter of all political violence and that the right poses no threat. Worse, Trump refuses to condemn the planned abduction of Whitmer.
In fact, the White House has blamed Whitmer.
Former FBI Director Andrew McCabe holds Trump responsible.
In one tweet Trump wrote, “Liberate Michigan!”
McCabe said that Russia is amplifying Trump’s anti-democratic messages.
“But let’s not be mistaken here,” he continued. “The person most responsible for fomenting this sort of unrest, this sort of division, this sort of violence in this country right now is the president of the United States.”Whitmer concurred.
Pelosi talks 25th. Yes, Nancy Pelosi is making what appear to be serious moves toward invoking the 25th. We may see action tomorrow morning. She would never contemplate such a move unless she truly thinks that Trump has become incapacitated.
This isn't a stunt. We're 26 days away from the election and her party's candidate is heavily favored in all polls. Why would someone in her position want anything to do with a mere stunt? Pelosi has no reason to inject any unpredictability into the situation.
In an interview immediately after her press conference, Pelosi suggested that the president may not be thinking clearly because of the drugs he has taken while being treated for the disease. “The president is, shall we say, in an altered state right now,” Pelosi said on Bloomberg TV. “I don’t know how to answer for that behavior.”
Trump's ever-classy reply:
Crazy Nancy is the one who should be under observation. They don’t call her Crazy for nothing!"They"? They who?
Trump also retweeted the following message, which -- when you study who-said-what -- is a total hoot:
(The 25th Amendment does not work that way, and it’s also not a “coup” to use it) https://t.co/b5Cf05wLMJ
— Andrew Feinberg (@AndrewFeinberg) October 8, 2020
Dig it: Trump retweeted a guy who said that invoking the 25th would not be a coup...!
Feinberg correctly believes that the 25th would be legal and Constitutional. Did Trump intend to convey that message? I don't think so. I doubt that this president understands what he's reading.
This @POTUS has turned his own political suicide into a surreal reality show.
Mike Pence called off a long-scheduled campaign event in Indiana to fly back to DC.
Vice President Mike Pence, currently in Arizona, has cancelled campaign events in Indiana tomorrow and will be returning to Washington, D.C. instead, the AP reports.
His spokesman tells CBS News that “nobody’s sick” and “there’s no positive tests.”
If so, then it seems fair to posit that this remarkable return must have some linkage to Pelosi's move. Or perhaps Pence was concerned by some particularly bizarre outburst on Trump's part -- an outburst as yet unrevealed to the public. Perhaps the same outburst prompted Pelosi to consider the 25th.
Whatever the hell happened, it happened suddenly. Here's reporter Olivia Nuzzi:
I was scheduled to travel with Pence tomorrow as the print pooler. Ahead of his JBA departure, press traveling with him were scheduled for COVID tests at 7am. As of 35 minutes ago, the VP’s office was still communicating with reporters about logistics for the morning.Many suspect that Pence has Covid, but I don't think so. Something else seems to be up.
Senator Mike Lee wants rid of democracy. Yes, he came right out and said it. A fucking senator.
Democracy isn’t the objective; liberty, peace, and prospefity are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that.
There can be no liberty without democracy. Every tyrant has justified his tyranny by speaking of peace and prosperity.
Lee is a traitor.
Raise your heads, ostriches, and survey the landscape: The fascist movement is far more widespread and powerful than you ever thought. The new fascists may call themselves libertarians -- as I'm sure Lee does -- but don't be mislead. We are facing the old enemy.
Broidy. As part of a plea deal, Trump crony Eliott Broidy has pled guilty to the various crimes discussed here. Basically, he was part of a scheme to rip off Africans, because they don't have enough problems.
The second debate. Trump pulled out because the Debate Commission had decided on a virtual format (similar to the third Nixon/JFK debate), but mostly because the new set-up would allow the moderator to stifle Trump's incessant interruptions.
Good lord. Does this president really believe that his deranged performance in Debate #1 actually helped him? Or is he simply looking for a face-saving excuse to duck all debates?
That should be his new name. Donald Duck.
And maybe his tweets should be called quacks. Same as his doctors.
Pretty please, can things just calm down for a few hours...? Honestly, all I wanted to do today was watch Patrick McGoohan glower his way through Ice Station Zebra.
UPDATE: It never stops...! Trump gave an interview to Sean Hannity which was, apparently, quite mad.
What’s absurd about this is not that Trump forgot which Biden he was talking about and there’s no “mayor of Russia,” but that Trump himself tried to do business with that same mayor. https://t.co/C5Q67qk7nN https://t.co/EBTMsAbWzQ
— Josh Rogin (@joshrogin) October 9, 2020
The "mayor of Russia"?
Trump also kept tweeting attacks on Governor Whitmer -- and Antifa! -- while saying not one word against the Boogaloo maniacs arrested for trying to initiate a new Civil War.
Trump's tweets would be indefensible in the best of times, but to say such things so close to an election is self-defeating and downright maniacal. Obviously, he's no longer even trying to win.
Color me dubious about Regeneron or Remdesivir. Who wants to end up like Trump?
Trump and Ripper. If you compare Trump's current tirades to the dialogue delivered by Sterling Hayden as General Jack D. Ripper in Dr. Strangelove, you'll be forced to conclude that Ripper sounds saner. Consider this passage:
[Clemenceau] said war was too important to be left to the generals. When he said that, 50 years ago, he might have been right. But today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
The "precious bodily fluids" bit sounds Trumpy, but as for the rest of it...well, I wish Donald Trump could speak so well. I ask in all seriousness: Is Donald Trump mentally capable of making an argument with the coherence and elegance of this Ripper quote?
5 comments:
Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks, "That's where the money is," he said.
And,dump said you knew I was snake when you put me here. My apologies to snakes.
What is "prospefity"? Is it the ability to afford one's morning covfefe with ease? ^_^
"I ask in all seriousness: Is Donald Trump mentally capable of making an argument with the coherence and elegance of this Ripper quote?"
Short answer...no.
And yes, it is rather scary--and somewhat darkly funny--that Jack D. Ripper sounds more sane than Trump.
Heh. Funny enough.
But Ripper and Trump are about equally insane. Ripper made General, while Cadet Bone Spurs didn’t even try to make Private*. Which is to say that Ripper (who represented someone like Gen. Tommy Power) could act the part of a cogent leader while having gone insane (I think there’s no doubt that all those First Strike guys like Power and LeMay, and the Operation Phoenix creeps, etc, were in fact Completely Insane— drunk on the power to kill and ruined by hubris). Recall from the movie that Ripper preserved his “precious bodily fluids” by drinking only pure grain alcohol.
* On the point of Trump’s tangential contact with reality, we have the assessment of his niece, Mary, a professional Psychologist. She makes the blunt observation that Donald has, in effect, been institutionalized his entire life. And now that he’s slipped the bonds of his handlers, and taken a huge slug of steroids, the content of his “mind” is pretty clearly nuts. Not that the steroids changed that so greatly.
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