Our First Un-American President

When Donald Trump rode down that golden escalator in June, 2015 and announced he would run for President of the United States, the guffaws could be heard round the world. What a colossal doofus!  A shady real estate mogul, a beauty pageant owner, a dubious celebrity famous for firing people, saw himself as the perfect person to fill the highest job in the land. Clearly the run would be short-lived and hilariously inept.  In his long history as a famous figure, there was not a moment spent in public service. No sign that he knew a thing about governing or world affairs. No sign that he even cared. What on earth would qualify him?

The closest he had ever come to government involvement was when he pretended he had proof positive our then-sitting president, Barack Obama, was born in Africa, making him illegitimate and unfit to serve.  It turned out, of course, to be a lie, but the fact that the lie would not die energized Trump and gave him the idea that he of all people might just be able to pull that president thing off.

He blustered his way through a long campaign that put him in front as the fiery populist against a rigid, anachronistic loser of an establishment. Along the way he discovered the benefits of the religious right, a gun culture based on fuzzy Second Amendment logic, fears of a rogue government fueled by right wing talk radio and Fox News, and a work force desperate enough to want to believe a slimy billionaire known for stiffing underlings could be their messiah.

The seduction of screaming crowds hooked him but good.  From that first rally forward he would do whatever he had to do to win. He knew he had to give lip service to the needs of the country, but it would always be Trump first, cronies second, and the country a distant third.

He saw early on that his crowds loved him most when he dropped his billionaire mantle and pretended to be one of them. He took to wearing flaming red "Make America Great Again" baseball caps. He developed a rumpled look, used superlatives like "beautiful, fantastic, the greatest", and made promises he could never keep about what he and he alone would do if elected.

He waged war against the press, a known fascist tactic, and the press, to our surprise, didn't fight back. They ate it up.

But his ace-in-the-hole turned out to be Hillary Clinton, a far more qualified candidate who, after years of attacks from both the left and the right, was waging an uphill battle. Just as Trump had pressed for Obama's birthplace illegitimacy with no basis in fact, he took to calling his opponent--without a shred of evidence--a crook. He built a flimsy case based on a handful of errant emails and rejoiced when his crowds took to chanting "lock her up!"

He found he could say anything and his followers would buy it. He was eerily on to something when he said "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and I wouldn't lose any voters."  He knew his people far better than we did.

And then the thing happened that was so far-fetched no one but a few observant pundits would have believed it:  Donald Trump became president of a country that had long warned against creeping fascism and the threat of oligarchy.  His mission was to take apart a government based on constitutional regulations and social constructs, and now he was on his way.  His motto and guiding principal is as he said soon after taking office: "I'm president. I can do what I want."

Did the Russians have a hand in attempting to alter our election?  Of course they did. Could Trump surround himself with any more Russian operatives? Yes, he could and probably will.  A country that once saw Russia as our enemy now embraces a president who cannot and will not condemn them.  In time, we'll find out why. We will follow the money and find out why. But in the meantime, who are these people with access to our most sensitive secrets? Top security clearances go to anyone Trump wants in the room. The vetting process--a process once seen as serious and inviolate, with a threat of jail for lying on security clearance applications--is another in a long list of obligatory regulations meant only for other people.

Already, less than a half-year in, the Trump administration is embroiled in scandals of a magnitude far beyond anything we could imagine that night we gasped at the realization that this vicious, egotistical, supremely unqualified man-child would be leading our country.  The scope of scandal is breathtaking, even at this early stage, and it promises to get worse.

And now Donald Trump has taken his Ugly American act outside our borders, showing the rest of the world what a terrible choice we've made.  In every country he has visited--Saudi Arabia, Israel, Italy, Belgium--he is an embarrassment, an object of ridicule, a preening, ignorant, crude representation of the worst of us.

He is our first un-American president.  Americans now have to decide what that means and how we'll deal with it.  Our true character is being tested and the fate of our nation depends on the course we take.  Trump may see our presidency as a joke, and Washington as his playground, but we've struggled too long and too hard as a country to become Donald Trump's willing foils. No matter what he says, he just isn't worth it.

(Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars)

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Photo:  Jesse Walker

 Trump again. I know. I'm obsessed with who he is, how he got here, where he's going, and who's going down with him. Day by day, in every way, it's as if the planet has tilted and those of us still upright are experiencing an existential vertigo.  (In other words, "What the hell is happening??")

In a matter of a precious few months Donald Trump vanquished more than a dozen barely worthy but infinitely better opponents and now he's as astonished as anyone that it's looking less like a political coup and more like a damned junta!

He's the general in charge of an army of rapscallions and scalawags just itching to start the looting and pillaging. But forget all that!  He, Donald J. Trump of Donald J. Trump fame, gets to be the general!

It's the power of positive thinking gone ballistic. It worked! The man is at the top of his game--a bigger con game than even he, Donald J. Trump, could imagine, and he'll do anything to stay up there. It's not about them. It's not about us.  It's about him, him, a thousand times him.

So let's talk about how he got here. (This won't take long.) He got here because the American press and the TV pundits put the last remnant of journalistic ethics in mothballs in order to whoop it up with a goofy blowhard who could be counted on to give them stories that practically wrote themselves.

When Donald Trump won his party's presidential nomination and promised to go after Hillary Clinton with a vengeance the world has never seen, nobody-- not even the alert, ever-ready (cough cough) press corps--thought he actually meant "with a vengeance the world had never seen."

When he took to calling her "crooked Hillary" everyone on his side got a huge laugh out of it, while  our side--the Hillary side--did a kind of "ho-hum, that's all you got?"

It was the press that wouldn't let it go, the press playing the willing foil to Trump's childish attacks on them, the press settling in and going along, no matter how low the road would take them.

Now Trump's attacks have moved from the silly "crooked Hillary", from the astonishing "Hillary Clinton is a bigot", to the outright bald-faced lie, "the Clinton Foundation is a scam".

Just last week, Trump, struggling to follow along with the hated teleprompter, said, about the Clinton Foundation, that "access and favors were sold for cash." That's a lie.

In the same on-the-cuff speech he said, "Clinton used her private email to cover corruption".  That's a lie.

Everyone, including the press, knows by now that any words surrounding "I", "I'm", "she", "they", and "the people" will form as if by magic into outrageous, slanderous lies.  He lies.  Of course he lies.  But the crowds!  The polls!  The ratings! 

Not so with Hillary Clinton.  They grab onto every word, waiting for the moment when what they're hearing can be pulled out and molded into something you might expect from the murky Hillary character they've so carefully crafted over a quarter of a century.

Nobody could be happier than Donald that he gets away with it while Hillary doesn't. So it's not surprising that Trump would latch onto a recent Associated Press story about the numbers of Clinton Foundation donors who were able to have an audience with Hillary Clinton while she was Secretary of State and claim he knew it was crooked all along.

The article began like this:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- More than half the people outside the government who met with Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state gave money - either personally or through companies or groups - to the Clinton Foundation. It's an extraordinary proportion indicating her possible ethics challenges if elected president.  (My bold)

The perception, the article explains, is that Hillary Clinton has been selling access to the State Department, the price being a substantial donation to the family foundation. The AP has been on this for a long time, it said, working to bring out the truth about how the Clintons might have profited by using both the State Department and the Clinton Foundation for their own personal gain.

There is nothing in the article to suggest the two reporters working on the story found the answer.  Nothing that would raise new questions about the Clinton's ethics or bring to light the need for such a lengthy investigation. (The Clinton Foundation is a 501(C)(3) not-for-profit foundation. Their records are public.)  But Donald Trump, ever the opportunist, weighed in on it as if the evidence against the Clintons was obvious.  From that same AP article: 

Trump fiercely criticized the links between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department, saying his general election opponent had delivered "lie after lie after lie."

"Hillary Clinton is totally unfit to hold public office," Trump said at a rally Tuesday night in Austin, Texas. "It is impossible to figure out where the Clinton Foundation ends and the State Department begins. It is now abundantly clear that the Clintons set up a business to profit from public office."

Well, no, this story does not prove Hillary Clinton is unfit to hold public office, and it's not abundantly clear that the Clinton Foundation was set up for anyone's profit. What's unclear (with abundance) is the reasoning behind the AP's decision to publish an article devoid of any actual research, based solely on what it might look like.

Nancy LaTourneau writes in the Washington Monthly:

But here is where the AP blew their story. In an attempt to provide an example of how this becomes an “optics” problem for Hillary Clinton, they focused much of the article on the fact that she met several times with Muhammad Yunus, a Clinton Foundation donor. In case you don’t recognize that name, he is an economist from Bangladesh who pioneered the concepts of microcredit and microfinance as a way to fight poverty, and founded Grameen Bank. For those efforts, Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2010.
The connection the AP tries to make is that SoS Clinton met with Yunus because he was a Clinton Foundation donor. What they didn’t mention is that their relationship goes back over 30 years to the time Hillary (as first lady of Arkansas) heard about his work and brought him to her state to explore the possibility of implementing microfinance programs to assist the poor.

(Note: I'm taking bets on how many times the anti-Hillary opportunists will use that original AP story against her.  Add it to the long list of dubious ammunition.  File it under "I got nothin. Hey! What's this. ..?")

But where is the mea culpa from the press? When will they admit they had a hand in building up Trump's popularity and an equal hand in creating Clinton's unpopularity?  The press reports and the people listen.  We depend on them to give us facts to help us make decisions. Politics can be entertaining but there's a reason it's not categorized as "entertainment".

(I leave you with this breaking news: Hillary Clinton's top aide, Huma Abedin has just announced she is separating from her husband, Anthony Weiner, presumably over another sexting incident. At MSNBC, Andrea Mitchell is asking Ann Coulter what she thinks Donald Trump will make of this, while. at CNN, a four-person panel is waiting for the commercial break so they can discuss what Donald Trump will have to say about this. Seriously.)

(Cross-posted at Dagblog and Crooks and Liars)

Paul Ryan to Poor Parents: Even Your Kids Are Ashamed Of You

Photo:  Salon

Paul Ryan took to the podium at CPAC on Thursday and did not disappoint those of us waiting to pick at the lies this duly elected government official must tell in order to remind us all that our government --the very same government he volunteered to be a part of; the very same government that pays him a handsome salary and will give him lifelong perks--has been infiltrated so thoroughly by the socialists (that's us) huge chunks of it must be eradicated and the spoils turned over immediately to the only saviors who have our best interests at heart--the privateers.   (Why does Paul Ryan lie?  Because he's Paul Ryan and that's what Paul Ryan does and does and does.) 

Here's a portion of what he said:

"The way I see it, let the other side be the party of personalities. We’ll be the party of ideas. And I’m optimistic about our chances—because the Left? The Left isn’t just out of ideas. It’s out of touch. Take Obamacare. We now know that this law will discourage millions of people from working. [We do?] And the Left thinks this is a good thing. [They do?] They say, “Hey, this is a new freedom—the freedom not to work.” [Who says that?  Lemme at em!] But I don’t think the problem is too many people are working—I think the problem is not enough people can find work. [ Now you're talking] And if people leave the workforce, our economy will shrink—there will be less opportunity, not more. [Yeah, that's what we've been saying ever since you guys came up with that crazy outsourcing idea] So the Left is making a big mistake here. [They are?] What they’re offering people is a full stomach—and an empty soul. [Okay, now--what?] The American people want more than that."

 So then he went on to explain that remark about the full stomach and the empty soul:                               

"This reminds me of a story I heard from Eloise Anderson. She serves in the cabinet of my friend Governor Scott Walker. She once met a young boy from a poor family. And every day at school, he would get a free lunch from a government program. But he told Eloise he didn’t want a free lunch. He wanted his own lunch—one in a brown-paper bag just like the other kids’. He wanted one, he said, because he knew a kid with a brown-paper bag had someone who cared for him."

Now, I know I'm not the only one to sit up and take notice over that one.  It's been all over the place.  But the emphasis from most corners has been on Paul Ryan's misuse of an anecdote that was lifted initially by Eloise Anderson, Scott Walker's appointee to the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families, who skewed the story to serve her own purposes after apparently finding something somewhat similar in Laura Schroff's book, An Invisible Thread.

I don't care where it came from.  I don't care that Paul Ryan was careless about the source.  What grinds me most about this are these words out of Paul Ryan's mouth:

She once met a young boy from a poor family. And every day at school, he would get a free lunch from a government program. But he told Eloise he didn’t want a free lunch. He wanted his own lunch—one in a brown-paper bag just like the other kids’. He wanted one, he said, because he knew a kid with a brown-paper bag had someone who cared for him.

This is a representative of our government shaming poor people.  This is a man of privilege--a man who never hesitates to vote against safety-net programs designed to pull underprivileged people up and out and on their own; a man who, through his own "Ryan Budget", offered up huge cuts to the safety nets in order to give more to the rich and to the military--shaming poor parents by telling them their own children don't want a free lunch.

He told a crowd--and the rest of us by extension via TV cameras--that poor kids are ashamed of their parents, that poor parents who accept government aid ought to be ashamed, and that we on the left are guilty of encouraging that kind of behavior:

"That’s what the Left just doesn’t understand. We don’t want people to leave the workforce; we want them to share their skills and talents with the rest of us. And people don’t just want a life of comfort; they want a life of dignity—of self-determination. A life of equal outcomes is not nearly as enriching as a life of equal opportunity."

This is what Paul Ryan does, and why he is so dangerous.  A quick reading of that quote above has everybody nodding their heads.  Skills!  Talents!  Dignity! Self-determination! Equal opportunity!

But what he's really doing is equating essential programs like welfare and SNAP to "a life of comfort".  He's suggesting poor people are poor because they like it that way.  A "life of dignity" means getting out from under the government wing and going it alone.  "Self-determination" means you brought this on yourself.

The "Brown bag" story means stop using your kids as pawns in order to get people to feel sorry for you and give you stuff.

And, oh, by the way, get a job.  (But good luck with that, since the dreaded Obamacare just killed that avenue for you, too.  The theory goes that employers hate the idea of Obamacare so much they're cutting their workforce in order to show how much they hate it.  The insurance companies thank them very much.)

This is Paul Ryan. He is wildly successful.  We pay him, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to his other income sources.  We will give him health and retirement benefits for the rest of his life--not that he needs us to pay for them.  We've given him the power, as a representative of the people, to use this public platform and he uses it to screw the least of us.

If there's a lesson to be learned here, it's this:  Live with it.

_________________
Cross-posted at Dagblog and Liberaland.  Featured on Crooks and Liars MBRU.

Why You Gotta Lie? A compendium of the Worst from the GOP Revels

The media is abuzz about the speeches at the 2012 GOP Convention in Tampa, critiquing them on style, effectiveness, the number of laughs, the number of attacks on Barack Obama--especially the attacks on Obama.  Clint Eastwood even got an invisible Obama to sit in an empty chair and become the foil for some raucously out-there jokes.

On the last night of the convention, the night when Mitt Romney was to accept his party's nomination and give the speech everyone was waiting for, he was outstripped by an aging but really, really famous Academy Award-winning actor/director who called President Obama crazy and twice pretended that Obama was making crude suggestions about where Romney could put his, um, ideas.  This was a moment so bizarre it rendered even the usually verbose Rachel Maddow speechless.  The reaction over the Twitterverse, indeed over the entire Internets, was "What the Hell was THAT?"

The Romney people were scrambling the next morning to tone down the tittering. "C'mon! It was just a light moment on an otherwise wonderful night."  But it could be that the distractions are a blessing in disguise.  The first days of the convention got a lot of attention, mainly because the main speeches were rife with easily refutable lies.

The folks in the Romney camp would just as soon everybody--especially the newsguys--forget about that part.  They're out there making their case for a Romney/Ryan win and the Clint Eastwood mess is a much more agreeable distraction than a bunch of lyin' liars.

So in case anyone actually believes all that stuff coming out of their Party party, let's take a look at some of the prevarication highlights (Wouldn't it be great if the Republicans could make their case without lying about their opposition? The problem for them is if they couldn't lie about the opposition, they wouldn't have a case):

Remember Mike Huckabee's speech, where he hints at an old, outrageous (and debunked) lie that says President Obama not only believes in abortion, but believes in killing babies afterward?  This is what he said:

Let me clear the air about whether guys like me would only support an evangelical. Of the four people on the two tickets, the only self-professed evangelical is Barack Obama, and he supports changing the definition of marriage, believes that human life is disposable and expendable at any time in the womb or even beyond the womb, and tells people of faith that they must bow their knees to the god of government and violate their faith and conscience in order to comply with what he calls health care.

(More on the origins of that lie here.)

And more:

MediaIte:  Jon Stewart video on RNC first night misquotes about Obama.

Alternet is on it with Six Big Lies from the first day of the Convention

The always entertaining LOLGOP looks at the "reporting" by Howie Kurtz.

Michael Tomasky, Howie's Daily Beast colleague, finds a web of lies in Ryan's speech.

ThinkProgress checks out the Wednesday night line-up.

The WaPo editorial board dissects Ryan's misleading speech.

Brian Beutler lists Ryan's top five fibs over at TPM.

Joan Walsh calls Ryan's lies "brazen".

Ryan Grim sets the record straight on Ryan's lies about the GM Janesville factory closing.

Alex Pareene makes fun of Rand Paul, that guy who said he got all choked up emotionally, it being like a "lump between my chin and my belly button." (To be fair, it sounds like something I might say on one of the many occasions when I begin talking before thinking, but if I saw those words on a teleprompter in front of me I would hope I'd have the good sense to think twice before saying them out loud.)

But worst than that, he's still trying out the debunked sentence-out-of-context, "You didn't build that", to see if anyone on earth will buy the lie that Barack Obama meant it as a slight to small business owners.  (Apparently they will.  Paul's audience LOVED it.)

Dan Amira at New York Magazine called Ryan's speech "effective."  He also called it "appalling and disingenuous."

Conservative Ted Frier rips Ryan for his lies in "GOP holds Masked Ball, not Convention".

Business Insider says there's a little problem with Ryan's account of Obama's role in the the AAA Credit Rating downgrade.

Chris at Eclectablog does his own round-up of GOP lies from the Convention.

And on and on it goes.  One has to wonder if putting Clint Eastwood on stage in a dumb conversation with an empty chair mightn't have been somebody's brilliant idea to make this last convention night so memorable everybody would forget about those damnable, sticky lies.

 Mightn't it have been better to give Mitt Romney a speech that was unforgettable?  Oh, right.  Romney. Even the man chosen to introduce Romney--Marco Rubio--gave a token few minutes to talk about their party's chosen leader before turning the attention to his own--Marco Rubio's--life story.  Poor Mitt gets no respect. When people are reduced to keeping count of the number of times his name is mentioned throughout the entire convention, it's clear it's not about him, it's about, I don't know. . .2016?