Bits & Pieces #76

 

Today, a discussion of globalization led to Richard Haass saying that the problem favors Trump because he is the outsider and can shout about already negotiated bad trade deals that Hillary can be accused of having a hand in. No one on the panel which included most of the regular Scarborough sycophants brought up the obvious argument that Trump, not Hillary, employs factories full of foreign workers making him huge profits overseas, very much to the deficit of American workers.

How does this liar find the stones to even open his mouth about trade and labor practices? This is a thief who ends every contract by stiffing the workers and his partners on the last paycheck. That’s what leads to 3,500 lawsuits. That’s why Trump is not a suitable candidate t be President of this or any country.

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Sarah Palin was back in the spotlight this weekend making speeches for Trump. God! With friends like her…

I heard a GOP spokesman ask; “is Sarah Palin the best person to articulate our message?” You gotta be kidding, right? Palin isn’t the best person to articulate a grocery list. So why does Trump have this dumb camp follower with him? Could it be because nobody else wants to be there?

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Donald Trump in a sickeningly dishonest attempt to play for the non-fanatic vote has reneged on his promise to deport eleven million people who are here illegally. He is obviously abandoning everything that won him the primary and grabbing for any voter dumb enough to believe anything he says. It was fun to watch one of his less artful spokeswomen sit with a group of three reporters who were on the floor with laughter as she tried unsuccessfully to explain that he hadn’t changed his position just the words that describe it. The three reporters were laughing so hard they were unable to question her.

Trump is a con man, who thinks he can convince all of us that “yes” means “no”. He feels this way because he has already convinced the slowest among us that this is true. A con man can only succeed in an atmosphere of stupidity and greed. Trump who has been conning people for years understands this. He also understands that his followers are either the most naïve or the dumbest voters on the American scene. He is adamant in the belief that he will be able to find more of them; all he has to do is keep turning over stones.

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The Benghazi Committee after wasting another $7 million of your money came to the same conclusion as the previous six committees on the same subject. Miraculously, they came up with the conclusion that Hillary had nothing to do with the events of that terrible night. When even those on the committee admit that it was an attempt to stop Hillary’s presidential drive it gives you some idea how phony the whole mess was. But it’s typical of all the attacks on Hillary over the years, starting with fantasy of Whitewater and continuing thru the current email prayer to the Clinton Initiative noise. It’s always been clear that the GOP has no soul. Now they are showing that they have no brains or balls. Of course that won’t stop them from continuing on with all their phony bullshit but one would think that if their constituents had any brains they would recognize the same old crap when they wiped it off their shoes.

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Joe Scarborough went off like a Gallagher inspired watermelon when the latest Benghazi committee published their report saying, finally, that it had nothing to do with Hillary Clinton, that it was a military mess pure and simple. So Joe thinks we should spend more time and money on this GOP inspired attack based on nothing. Perfect, Joe, you’ve done it again.

I watched a focus group of mixed voters dealing with this. All of them had an opinion but none of them seemed to be aware that the responsibility for protecting the men at Benghazi was with the CIA not the State Department. Unless you have the knowledge to understand how things worked over there, you can’t come to an intelligent decision about what happened and where the responsibility for it was.

You can’t fix stupid.

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Alex Castellanos, the sleaziest con man the GOP has to offer, was babbling about how Trump is going to get a big bump when the American public sees what a great family man he is and gets a look at his wonderful family. He’s referring, of course to the crew of Playboy bunnies and animal killers that Trump parades out behind him on every imaginable occasion.

Okay, let’s take a look at them. Trump himself has, on any number of occasions given full credit to Ivana, his first wife, who he divorced, for the raising of his children. He has taken no credit for raising, what he calls a great family, until now, when he needs them for political reasons. And yes he is a family man, a very many families man, this being his third wife, each of whom has produced progeny for him.

But let’s take a brief look at the three oldest Trumpets. First there’s Ivanka, a lovely, well-spoken young woman who after giving a speech for her father puts the made in China dress she was wearing for sale on the Internet. That’s real class. And then there are Eric and Junior whose idea of great fun is shooting defenseless animals, not for food but for sport. Any pussy can shoot an animal with a gun. It doesn’t take any kind of guts. If these two Trumpets want to convince us of their manhood I suggest a sport in which, an old college buddy of mine used to partake. He would hunt grisly bear with a Bowie knife. That takes balls.

If you think I’m out of line by bringing up Trump’s family, please look to Alex Castellanos, may be the only person in the country with a lower Fact Check rating than Trump himself. He is actually the one who brought them into the discussion. I’m just taking his lead.

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We all want to see ISIS crushed but the way to do it isn’t by falsely identifying every violent incident in the world as their work. Yes, they are a horrific organization but even if they wanted to they would not be capable of all the mischief that is blamed on them all over the world. Even as this is being written we have done a significant job of shrinking ISIS in the last six months. It seems obvious that we will shrink them to insignificance as a military power in the foreseeable future. The problem is that even one who should know better, like our own Secretary of State, John Kerry, feeds the fire of ISIS invincibility by the attribution every incident to terrorist players.

Donald Trump, who loves to wave the flag and would most certainly lead us into a war with someone, has openly stated that we should declare war on ISIS. Of course he wants that because he thinks it will benefit his campaign. This supposed supporter of veterans wants to get more American kids killed to benefit his political aims.

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Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsberg got herself in trouble a couple of weeks ago by attacking Donald Trump. Many would agree with what she had to say but more would agree on the fact that she should have held her tongue. She, herself, indicated later that she was sorry she had spoken out and apologized for her honesty.

This did not seem to soften the storm of accusations that came from the Right. There were repeated demands for her to resign or at least recuse herself from any cases that had anything to do with anything significant.

Of course this is ridiculous. Right wing justices, led by Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas have put themselves in situations that should have demanded resignation or at the very least recusal more times then we can recall but never took either path.

Thomas actually sat on a case in which his wife was involved and Scalia spoke and appeared at many far Right activities, especially those of the Heritage Foundation. He also hung around with VP Dick Cheney, although to his credit he was smart enough not to go hunting with the Veep.

Ginsberg should not have said what she did, but it’s over now and it’s time for us to get on with the business of the world. Only debris clinging members of the GOP will reach out to this incident to keep from drowning.

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Watched an interview with Haley Barbour this week. This is a man with whom intelligent people will almost always disagree but he is a great character and a lot of fun when he isn’t talking politics. An example of this was the line he dropped about how much money Hillary Clinton was raising and spending on the campaign. According to Haley she has gathered together enough cash to burn a wet mule. You don’t think that’s funny you just ain’t paying attention.

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Nice fight on Face the Nation between Ben Domenech publisher of the Federalist and Matt Schlapp, head of the American Conservative Union. Schlapp was ranting about how good Trump was for the party and then Domenech stomped him, claiming that this was the end of the Republican party which Lincoln had founded. He attacked the choice of Pence as being just another middle aged white guy and accused the party of running against the American values on which it was based.

Schlapp insisted that people were calling him and aligning themselves with Trump now that he picked Pence as his VP. Ben jumped in saying that the GOP was now the party of Trump and as such, it had abandoned the concept of the constitutional rights of all races or creeds. He went on to state that the American Eagle’s wings were broad enough to carry everyone who wanted to come here. He posited that the GOP had given up statesmanship for xenophobia, free markets for protectionism, and high principals for a belief in party politics. He pointed out that they are getting zero black votes in most states and that was causing race baiting, the result of which will be the end of the party of Lincoln.

Then Peggy Noonan and Bob Schieffer spoke the hardest truth I have heard on the political scene in the last decade. Both admitted that this is a country that no longer looks to its elected leaders mainly because those leaders have betrayed us. We elect congress after congress and they do nothing but look to their own benefits. Nothing is done to solve the problems of the people. We elect presidents and they either as in the case of Bush, sell us out and destroy our economy or in the case of Obama bang their heads against a congress that cares only that he not be a success. This isn’t government by the people or for the people but government looking to take the people.

Peggy Noonan used the police chief in Dallas as an example of the kind of person that Americans must look to in a world where those they elected do not function. It’s the reason why there is a nation full of followers for a man who has no background in government and is a lying, egomaniacal, sociopath. The voters are willing to grasp at any straw, no matter how rotten, to get away from what they have now.

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Kelly Ward who is unsuccessfully taking on John McCain in the GOP primary in Arizona has jumped on the aggression train big time when she diagnoses McCain as too old to hold office. I’m not a McCain fan at all, but in her attack, Ward proves she is too stupid to hold office. This is a woman who claims to be a doctor.   Why is it that so many doctors want to be politicians? These are people who have cost the taxpayers millions of dollars in what will now be wasted education, They have taken the places in medical institutions that could have gone to care givers who wanted to help the sick not use them as a stepping-stone to political office. So Dr. Ward, who is at this point trailing McCain by some 26 points in the polls is really nothing but pond scum.