Two ways that I - *choke* - must defend Donald Trump

Instead of mid-week postings Tuesday/Thursday, I'll do Monday/Wednesday, on account of the World Science Fiction Convention. Also I'm giving a speech in DC and attending - in Raleigh - the symposium of NASA's Innovative and Advanced Concepts program.

== There are some ways that I'll speak up for him ==

Politico does something very detailed and revealing. It recaps all of the 100 days of Donald Trump since he became the presumptive GOP nominee. It's a stroll down memory lane, how the most salient trait of this man is his masterful preventing us from looking away. Even to note mistakes by his enemies! Or the Olympics. Or all those UFOs over Kansas City...

Skimming through the Politico list, one sees that not one day passed without him 'doing something.' And one realizes... there's almost another 100 days till the election... 

No... oh no.... must... look... away... soon.... Really. Soon.

Meanwhile, his ‘team’ solidifies… or congeals. Trump has painted Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton as the candidate of Wall Street, but his announced ‘economic team’ is filled with hedge fund managers, bankers and real estate speculators. Hedger John Paulson made a fortune betting against America before the financial crisis.... 

Howard Lorber's companies include the fourth-largest U.S. tobacco company. (And never forget: the GOP’s line that ‘tobacco is harmless” lasted even longer than “there’s no climate change!”)  Okay, so Trump’s 'economic team' is almost all billionaire crony males. But I interpret this my own way.

It clearly means that DT will not  - despite my hopes – do a ‘center veer’ by announcing a conversion away from Supply Side ('voodoo') "economics" at a debate. He could have served his country in that one way, by dropping a cult that has never made one successful prediction. Ever. Not even one time. Ever-once. While damaging us almost-lethally.

But with these 'advisers'? No way. It’s oligarchs all the way down.

== Where I defend Trump ==

Only, there are some areas where I think he was right and his detractors wrong.  Not many, but here goes:

1) There was one supremely clever move DT ever made, that demonstrably made him a lot of money while doing at least a little good. 

(Nearly all of the rest of his business career, despite parasitical and shady dealings, he appears to have improved his wealth no faster than if he had deposited it all in index funds.)  

That one assertive, brilliant and arguably useful move was investing in New York City,when it was down.

There was a time, in the late 1970s and 1980s, when it looked as if the town would dissolve into some ghostbusters or Kurt Russell-style maelstrom of crime and filth and decay. Businesses were fleeing and city leaders sought any symbol of renewal. 

Donald Trump – in a moment of sagacity – reasoned this is freaking New York! It will be back, huge! So he offered the desperate governments of city and state a deal. “I’ll invest and build… if you free me from almost all taxes, almost forever.”

In retrospect, it was a terrible deal for New York.  The politicians should have set thresholds and/or time limits. But they were desperate. Trump was a shark, feeding off their desperation… but let’s be fair. When he expressed confidence in NYC, it did change the mood, a bit. Others began pondering the likelihood of a comeback. His parasitical instincts did some capitalist good, that time. (But to my knowledge, no other time.)

2)  This starts out not sounding like a recommendation. A group of 50 former national security officials, all of whom have served Republican presidents from Richard M. Nixon to George W. Bush, have signed an open letter calling Donald Trump unqualified to be president and warning that, if elected, “he would be the most reckless President in American history.” They join many others fleeing the Trump train wreck as many of the quasi-sane who remained on the American right have been forced to finally choose their country. 

On the other hand Donald Trump is completely right about most of these people, when he says: “They are nothing more than the failed Washington elite looking to hold onto their power, and it’s time they are held accountable for their actions.” 

To be clear… there were no islands of sanity or clarity or patriotic competence, during either Bush administration… nor during the years in between, when Dennis “friend to boys” Hastert and his co-convicted felon Tom DeLay were the highest GOP officials in the land. 

Did none of you notice? Neither Bush Senior nor Junior, nor Dick Cheney, nor Hastert, nor Tom DeLay nor Condoleeza Rice, nor John Boehner nor any post-Reagan major wielder of Republican power was even mentioned during the Republican convention. Not one of them. Even mentioned.*

Think about that. What kind of party is so ashamed of its leadership, across 28 years, that it never mentions any of them? Or a single large, verifiable accomplishment? And you'd trust such a party with a burnt and doused match?

Why do you think Confederate America… the populist mob that has been cynically whipped up by the Fox-Breitbart-Limbaugh-Beck-Drudge-Goebbels Svengalis… want nothing to do with any former Bushite, of any kind, at any level? They may be steeped in a psychotic, hydrophobic-confederate fury, but they do know one thing! The entire Republican establishment and all of their factotums deserve nothing other than (political) hell.

Which is why so many of your conservative friends have fallen back upon the ultimate refuge of desperate cynics: "I know my side is awful, corrupt and insane and led by self-serving oligarchs... but... but... they're all the same! Democrats too! Yeah, that's the ticket. Democrats are just as bad! Worse!"

Oh but facts. They are inconvenient. See a comparison of outcomes, across the span of both Bush Administrations, versus the Clinton and Obama administrations. 

Anyone who would trust any GOP establishment figure at any level has to be crazy. Including those "respected" Republicans who have been signing statements calling Trump unqualified. Sure he's unqualified! But they are in no position to cast stones.

And on that count, I am in agreement with Donald J. Trump.

== Why do fundies follow a philandering gambling-lord? ==

Trump is everything that non-hypocrite Christians should find bothersome: a philandering, cheating, stealing, egotistical, pathologically-lying gambling lord on his 3rd marriage with many admitted (bragged!) affairs. Who formerly supported gay and abortion rights.

Oh, but then... Christians have the perfect Get Out of Jail card to flash. It's called Confession and Forgiveness.  Hence, when Dr. Ben Carson bragged about having tried (in his youth) to murder a boy with a knife, it just made his ("believe me and take my sobbing word for it!") conversion all the more wondrous and somehow more credible!

DT's 'confessions' and claims of conversion are as thin and transparent and non-credible as they could possibly be.  So why proclaim him washed shiny enough for all the fundies to follow? Yet Bill Clinton -- who has been clean and contrite and and watched like a hawk for 16 years - and busy mostly with charity work - and who attends church far more often than DT -- is not?

Simple.  If you Share My Enemies, then I will make excuses for you.

Period.

== Supposing DT veers ==

Let's make a list of center veers DT might perform, saving them for a debate where it will have biggest shock value. He's already done one. If he did several, then he might do net-service to the country.  One member of my blogmunity suggested:

1. Announce an intention to break up the banks upon election

2. Announce an intention to ban corporate donations and support funding transparency.

My big ones are

3. Conceding Climate change... ("Hey, I studied up on it this week.")

4. Supply Side has been disproved; get over it.

One veer has already happened!  DT proposes spending twice as much on infrastructure repair as Clinton has urged. 

Some veer! Making it all the more ironic and treasonous that Ryan, McConnell etc have spent 6 years blocking a much much smaller bill.

== Monafort is Duke! Enjoy the nightmare ==

I wrote this a week ago, before the latest firestorm: Read up on Paul Monafort. Trump’s campaign manager is the ‘Duke’ of Washington lobbyists, specializing for decades in representing murderous dictators - a model for  Doonesbury’s character. “Manafort accepted $900,000 yearly to lobby for Ferdinand Marcos. He was also involved with the infamous Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaïre and attempted to recruit Siad Barre of Somalia. He talked the US right (AEI & Heritage) into idolizing and channeling $USmillions to Angola’s ruthless Jonas Savimbi. Clients include Lebanese arms-dealer Abdul Rahman al-Assir and the Pakistani Intelligence Agency. He worked as an adviser on the Ukrainian presidential campaign of Viktor Yanukovych, Putin’s pal against whom the Ukrainian people eventually rose up in revolution,  turning Ukraine westward. (Putin and the Russian press credit that ‘machiavellian chessmaster meddler Barack Obama’ with “stealing the Ukraine” from the Russian sphere of influence.)

And now... From Ukraine -- Ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Paul Manafort, the campaign manager for Donald J. Trump, from a pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012.  Investigators assert that the disbursements were part of a corrupt network they say was used to loot Ukrainian assets and influence elections. And some of you dare yammer at us about "Corrupt Hillary?" 

There’s more about this fellow who would likely become DT’s chief of staff in the White House.  The amazing thing is that no one who knows Trump would be surprised by any of this! 

It would be a huge scandal if anyone else hired a guy like this monster who… if Trump wins… will be almost as powerful as Donald Trump Jr. By comparison, Haldeman and Erlichman were saints!

== And some gossipy stuff ==

Donald Trump Junior… shown in photos posing with the dead elephant, leopard and other African creatures he shot down on safari. His brag-proclamation? That after he took trophies for his wall, local villagers got the meat “which they seldom get.” 

Riiiight, dem villagers never seen a rifle before, oh gen'rous Massa Donnie. In fact, they are as capable of hunting game as any spoiled white dude. Better. But locals would go to prison for shooting rare species that governments sell killing rights for, to rich western bushwhackers.

Why raise this? Because the GOP convention made clear that Donald Trump trusts his kids… and only his kids. If he turns the White House into the Trump House, it will be an entire, spoiled Royal Family we’re getting. 

Well, at least these princes are less inbred and better looking than the Windsors… coming from three different fashion model mothers.  Still, didn’t we have a revolution, once?

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* Addendum: Former Speaker Newt Gingrich did get a speech at the recent RNC. Though he too went unmentioned by anyone else.  Newt is a complex case, author of the most brilliant bit of political polemic I've seen, the 1994 Republican Contract With America, that helped the GOP seize control of Congress for 20 of the following 22 years. And at the very beginning, under Gingrich, they did something no GOP-led Congress ever did, before or since.  Newt actually negotiated  with a democratic president, getting some serious legislation passed.

Which was deemed a crime and betrayal by the Fox-Saudi-Koch-financed stars of the New Right, who thereupon rose up against Newt and punished him for that crime, declaring the "Hastert Rule" that any GOP lawmaker who ever again negotiated with a democrat, even for the good of the nation, would be shredded for it. Result? The most rigidly disciplined partisan machine in US political history. Any talking point issued by Roger Ailes in the morning was parroted by almost every Republican office-holder by mid-afternoon, or there'd be hell to pay. 

So yes, Newt got a speech at the RNC and was considered for VP by Trump. But he's not a true "establishment republican." Heck, he even writes sci fi! Sure, he's 40% batshit crazy. But the rest is very clever (the dems should crib his "Contract!") and even, occasionally, a patriot.

Oh, notice those names!  Trump. Gingrich. Christie. Versus Hastert and Ailes.  Yep. If we exclude guys like Pence and squint a bit... yes... it's philanderers versus perverts.  Well, well, the dems had some of the former, too.

The political circus

The true issue dividing Donald Trump from the rest of the Republican Pack? He has realized something that strikes terror into the hearts of the Kochs and Murdochs and Saudis who have grown accustomed to treating the Republican Party as their private legislature.  That the angry white men who make up the GOP's core-base are ready for some populism to mix with their gruel of guns and confederate values. 

Hence, Trump has called -- then pulled back -- but will certainly call again for tax increases on the uber-rich, while Jeb Bush and the rest reiterate their wish for ever-lower rates for the skyrocketing oligarchy, long after Supply Side (Voodoo) "Economics" has been proved never to have made one successful outcome prediction. 

Ever. Even once at all. Ever.

Heck, Trump has also spoken for campaign finance reform (if a bit hypocritically, given he's a self-funding billionaire).

Sure, he's repulsively crazy in many of his own (entertaining) ways. But if Donald Trump is leveraging the disappointment of millions of angry white males, perhaps we should cheer a bit that at least he is pointing out: “hey, the foxes and goppers have been lying to you, like mad, too.”

But what's his secret?

== Trump - Comic or Genius? ==

Scott Adams of Dilbert fame has a blog - Clown Genius - that decrypts the salesmanship methods of Donald Trump.  The essay is revealing and fascinating: 

“As far as I can tell, Trump’s “crazy talk” is always in the correct direction for a skilled persuader. When Trump sets an “anchor” in your mind, it is never random. And it seems to work every time. Now that Trump owns FOX, and I see how well his anchor trick works with the public, I’m going to predict he will be our next president. I think he will move to the center on social issues (already happening) and win against Clinton in a tight election.”

Um… did I also mention that Scott is also – though a genius – a bona fide crackpot much of the time? “Trump owns Fox,” my patoot.  The Donald’s truce with Roger Ailes is based on mutual self- interest that shifts from day to day.  And the notion that Trump might actually become president is based upon comparisons to 1980’s Ronald Reagan that are not pertinent.  

Reagan was likeable, for one thing, and would have lost anyway, but for two things: the Iran hostage crisis and Jimmy Carter’s patriotic willingness to let Paul Volcker cure inflation, even in an election year. (Something no other politician would have done for the country – Carter was our only grownup president.) 

See also: Insane Clown President: Dispatches from the 2016 Circus, by Matt Taibbi. 

How deep can the madness go? As we see the very-right-wing John Boehner canned from House Speaker for not being right-wing enough, we should consider where this could all lead.  Here is a very thoughtful essay that plumbs the 1950s roots of "Movement Conservatism" that is based upon fundamental "values" that cannot be argued-with through evidence or cause and effect.  (To be clear, there is a wing of the Left that is also exactly like this, only smaller and (presently) less dangerous.)

What this writer's analysis fails to do is:

1) Apply the word "confederacy" and thus show that this has a context, a clash of cultures that goes back to 1775 as we reach a frenzy of phase 8 of the American Civil War.

2) Reveal the danger that this movement poses to its cynical instigators. As we've noted, Donald Trump is getting huge response from white males with not only his anti immigrant etc slogans, but also sniping at Rupert Murdoch, whose Fox News is used to utterly controlling the right's narrative.  Including the "do everything for the rich" policies that are the sun that the GOP revolves around.  Ironically it is Trump, the rogue billionaire, who now rails against that centerpiece, drawing millions of former sheep to look up, blinking amid an awakening populism that the Koch-Saudi-Murdoch cabal ought rightfully to fear.

Watch as Mike Huckabee or one or two others take moves in that direction, as they see their options wane. Seeing a chance for a Hail Mary gambit, they may start lacing in some anti-oligarch populism, hoping to strike a chord with those angry white males.

Hence, like all the talk show comedians, I am rooting for Donald to last a good while.  He’s mixing things up and shaking people out of ruts, and drawing white males to at long last question their confederate loyalty to Marse Rupert. By questioning the GOP reflex -- that tax cuts for the rich are the core and central sacredness -- he is laying seeds for a different sort of middle-class right-wing.  One that - while still raving crazy - finally glances at self-interest.

 Now… please… Jerry Brown and Jon Stewart… do the same thing!  Get in and have some fun.

== The banal insatiability of evil ==

The thing about evil is that it is insatiable*.  Republicans already control every lever of power in Alabama. Yet they bend heaven and earth to stymie voting by their minority citizens. Now, after passing a strict voter ID law, they are closing nearly all of the DMV offices in counties where most black citizens reside, making it much harder to get ID. 

I have oft pointed out that sincere Voter ID advocates would push also for compliance assistance to help poor citizens, married-or-divorced women, and young people to comply with an onerous new burden applied by the state.

Not one red state has done this, even a cent! Proving them utter hypocrites. (GOP legislators often appropriate Compliance Assistance funds for big business, when new regulations come down. Alabama did it this year, in amounts that could have kept those offices open.)

Read this.  There is no clearer illustration of the depth to which the red-gray side of our re-ignited Civil War has sunk. 

Oh… and the rationalization of “budget balancing”?  When a state is so poorly run and its economy so wretched that it cannot keep open its DMVs? The most basic service citizens need, in order to have freedom of movement and ID necessary for so many modern tasks? Nothing better illustrates a party's utter incompetence at the craft of government.

Oh, but this is the tip of the iceberg...

== Electoral Dishonesty ==

And now comes evidence that the Confederate cabal is willing to take cheating much farther. "Days after tea party republican Matt Bevin shocked the state of Kentucky by winning the election for governor in a landslide despite having been notably behind in every poll, political experts are still trying to figure out what happened. Initially the blame was directed at registered democratics, who appeared to have turned out to vote in historically small numbers. But now numerical evidence is pointing to the possibility that the election may have simply been rigged in favor Bevin."

Is this more "loser whining?" Or does fact after fact indicate that we should get ready...

... for the most cheating in a U.S. federal election in modern times.  This will happen for two reasons. 

First: "legal cheating" such as gerrymandering and voter suppression laws have reached their effectiveness limits and they can no longer compensate for  increasing demographic disadvantages facing the Republican Party, as well as the hemorrhage of intelligent conservatives (e.g. scientists, law professionals and military officers) who can no longer rationalize any continued relationship with the GOP’s plummet into lunacy. 

The second reason for panic on the right is simpler – if a Democrat enters office in 2016, the courts will eventually rule that corporations are not “people.” They will rule that it is okay to limit the buying of elections. The courts will also (winds are blowing) finally end the travesty of gerrymandering.

Fortunately for Rupert Murdoch, the Kochs and their Saudi partners, there is an ace up their sleeve. Through shells, they own every company that makes voting machines in the U.S. Machines that have proved to be easily hackable.  In blue states, this does not much matter, since most of them require that voters be provided with a paper receipt that then goes into a box, the old-fashioned way. Back-door hackers and machine company owners do not dare attempt major exploits, wherever random precinct audits could nail them.  

But voters in red states like Kentucky don't get such paper audit trails.  They seem blithely trusting of electronics – so long as it’s mostly white males who own the chips and levers.

Is Kentucky an isolated case? Then try these smoking guns. 

1) Virginia’s voting machines were built with a literal back dook… a locked USB port whose physical key was the same for every WinVote machine ever made.  Read this scandalous story.... Virginia Ditches 'America's Worst Voting Machines.'

2) Without paper audit trails, the cheaters in pyrotechnically-corrupt Kansas thought they were safe, till mathematicians arrived!  “Analyzing election returns at a precinct level, Wichita State mathematician Beth Clarkson found that candidate support was correlated, to a statistically significant degree, with the size of the precinct. In Republican primaries, the bias has been toward the establishment candidates over tea partiers. In general elections, it has favored Republican candidates over Democrats, even when the demographics of the precincts in question suggested that the opposite should have been true.” 

Hence, shouldn’t Tea Partiers be just as angry at the Murdoch Machine as democrats are?  Shouldn’t they make common cause over just this one issue?  

“According to their analysis, Mitt Romney could have received over a million extra votes in the 2012 Republican primary, mostly coming at the expense of Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich. President Obama also ceded significant votes to John McCain due to this irregularity, as well.”

Could this underlie some of the support for Donald Trump – the only GOP candidate with the guts to tell off Murdoch and his machine? Read this article and see how Clarkson has been blocked at every level with a consistency that shows complete, Orwell-level contempt for even figleaf accountability.

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* I just spent 3 weeks as Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Residence at the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College, in New York.  Arendt famously commented on how insipidly mundane and inferior one often finds evil men to be, seldom mad-genius types. Far more often one sees -- as she put it -- the "banality of evil."  Banal, yet nearly always insatiable.