It’s a new year and we’re now in the Twenties. Some of the old questions (many of which have never been answered) must now give way to new questions.
• Old Question: What does Vladimir Putin have on Donald Trump? This has never been definitively answered, but it’s got to be a doozy. It’s got to be more than the promise of Trump Tower Moscow and more than urinating hookers. As long as Trump keeps bending over backward (and forward) to give Putin everything he wants, we’ll probably never know the answer to that question.
• New Question: What does Donald Trump have on Lindsey Graham? Graham was one of Trump’s most vocal critics back in 2016, but now…it’s really embarrassing. The late Emil Franzi used to say that a (male) politician should never get caught with a live boy or a dead girl. Lord only knows what Trump has on Graham. There’s just no way that the Senator would have negotiated that 180 with a g-force of 12 without some serious outside motivation.
There probably aren’t a whole lot of people outside of his state of South Carolina who would give a crap if he turned out to be gay (a rumor that he vehemently denies). Graham used to be all laid back and genteel. Now he publicly loses his crap on a regular basis and it’s always over Trump. Whatever Trump has on Graham, it’s probably gasp-worthy.
• Old Question: Exactly how dumb is the average Trump supporter? We used to try to guess, but our guesses were usually way off. As time went by, we learned that the average Trump voter had less education than people who voted Democrat, but that doesn’t make them any less American or any less deserving of the opportunity to vote. It just makes them…well, you know.
• New Question: Really, how dumb is the average Trump supporter? My old friend Jimmy Kimmel recently provided us with some new data on that subject. (Back in the 1990s, Jimmy and I used to be on KRQ in the mornings with the legendary drive-time deejay Mike Elliott.)
Jimmy conducted a man on the street thing the other night (apparently at the intersection of Dumbass Avenue and Inbred Boulevard). On the first day of the Trump Impeachment Trial, he had the interviewer ask this question: How did you vote today on the impeachment? One after another, people stepped forward and said, “Oh, I voted not to impeach.” These people expressed their support for Trump and swore that they had somehow voted for him not to be impeached (which, of course, had already happened but, since the average American thinks that “impeached” means convicted, not accused, confusion reigned). The interviewer even asked some people how they had voted that day. Some swore that they had done so at a polling place while others said that they had done so on their phones. It started off funny, but quickly devolved into cringe-worthy.
• Old Question: What would it take to turn away from Trump? He used to brag about how he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. Naïve Americans that we were at the time, we didn’t believe that to be true, but by the middle of his first year in office, we realized that it was one of the rare occasions when he actually spoke the truth.
• New Question: Seriously, is there anything that would cause Trumpistas to turn away from him? The answer is probably no. I was wondering what would have happened when he was at Davos, Switzerland last week if he had snapped after learning that Time Magazine’s Person of the Year Greta Thunberg had a more-prestigious speaking time than he did.
It flashed in my head that he would barge into the auditorium, go on stage and try to choke the life out of the young environmental activist. I quickly realized that such a thing would be impossible. There’s no way he could get those hands all the way around somebody’s neck.
• Old Question: What is wrong with George Will? It turns out that there’s nothing wrong with him, at all. Oh, he still wears bowties and he thinks that baseball is cool, but he showed his integrity by leaving the Republican Party Rather than having to suck up to Donald Trump.
• New Question: What is wrong with Peggy Noonan? I read her Saturday column in The Wall Street Journal. The former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan can put words together and she’s usually pretty insightful. But last week, after acknowledging that Trump is guilty as all hell of the charges against him, she tried to explain why somebody would vote to acquit him.
There are actually only two explanations for such behavior. Either you’re a moron and you don’t believe that he did what he’s accused of or you accept the charges but you just don’t think that they’re that big of a deal. But then Noonan threw in that lame thing about don’t impeach him because it’s an election year. That’s like a cop saying, “We’re not going to arrest you for the armed robbery that you just committed because you’re already scheduled to go on trial for manslaughter in a few months.” That’s plain stupid.
• Old and New Question: Why Trump? Best answer yet given: “He’s our O.J.” Indeed.
This article appears in Jan 30 – Feb 5, 2020.
If you’re like me, I found it hard to sleep after reading about Alan Dershowitz — the president’s impeachment lawyer — and his defense argument that if a sitting president thinks his re-election is what’s best for the nation, then anything he does to increase his/her chances of re-election are in the interest of the nation and therefore not illegal.
In other words, the president’s personal interests and those of the nation are one and the same.
I couldn’t put my finger on it right away, but a nagging in the back of my mind kept me tossing and turning until I couldn’t try to sleep anymore and got up to watch some early morning Netflix, and that’s when it happened, as I was watching a documentary series on World War Two.
When a leader thinks he/she knows what is best for the people of a nation and takes the country in a direction that he/she thinks is best, regardless of what the people think for themselves, is the kind of scary bedtime story Republicans have been telling to their children about Democrats for years and here the president’s lawyer was using it for a defense of a president that has put his personal interests above all.
Submitting to and having someone tell you what to do because they know better — especially the government — is an antithesis to most Americans, but here we are with the president’s defenders saying that — exactly.
So the question is what happens when this president, or any president for that matter, decides that in the “national interest” freedom of the press isn’t good for the country, or your particular religion isn’t in keeping with his/her personal interest, or your right to possess arms goes against his/her personal interests and on and on.
Is this country ready to make that leap because if there was ever a slippery slope this is it and at the bottom there is a pile of broken dreams, promises, misery, death and destruction resulting from every despot, dictator and tyrant that has come before.
Is this how America goes out — with a high-priced lawyer’s twisted words — or will true justice prevail to save this great nation and all its people from one man’s personal interests.
There is a simple answer to all your questions. He is better than any alternative that has been offered.
That really should require some serious soul searching. By the way, this country’s self proclaimed, educated elite aren’t all that smart or they would know this.
Does Hillary ring a bell? Bring on the next loser.
Hey look! The dumbass is back!
Yeah, Hillary was a bad choice… but guess who an even worse choice was? Yep, your orange hero.
I would give you advice to do some serious soul searching on this, although I understand that tRump puppets don’t have souls. Heck, when it comes to brains, they don’t have those either.
I get it. You’re not all that smart, otherwise you would know this.
sgsmith, I offer you the following reflection:
We hear a lot about National Security {NS} (e.g. Edward Snowden compromised our NS and so he is a bad guy etc). Most people think that National Security means something like the safety of the people–you know, “securing the blessing of liberty for ourselves and our posterity”. But NS as currently used in the USA means no such thing. It means what we used to call State Security–i.e. the future of the political entity USA, with virtually nothing to do with the safety of Americans. So if the “powers that be” think that letting 100 million Americans die of Coronavirus will enhance the chance of survival of America, they can (and will) do it in the name of NS.
Dershowitz is making the same argument. I agree with you that it is a horrible argument, but horrible because NS as currently used is a horrible doctrine, and countless evils are done in its name. One of the very few advantages of Trump (and his team) is that they say the normally quiet parts (like what NS is) out loud, and wake some of us up.
Mr Danehy I must admit that i was skeptical of a Trump candidacy when it first appeared. With 50 years of disappointment under my belt I wondered if he was any different.
My main issues were and still are:
Eliminate or neutralize the Taliban and bring troops home.
Enforcing not just immigration laws, but all laws. Don’t just stop enforcing some and act like they don’t exist.
Hold China accountable for theft of intellectual property and reduce the “dumping” of low quality knock offs sent to the US.
Reduce unemployment rates for all and specifically put minorities back to work where they can be productive members of society, with families that stay together.
Stop bowing to world leaders in some sort of an apologetic stance and hold leaders like N Korea’s Jong-un to account.
Develop energy independence from the world while we expand opportunities for alternative sources.
Reduce constraining regulations on all business to become the economic super power that we should be.
I encourage you to take a look around. It has all happened. Just hating Trump is not a vision, it is actually more like the last gasp for power when, over the last 50 years those craving it have proven that no good has come from it.
I will join those voting for four more years of continued progress and successes. Simply insulting people that you disagree with accomplishes nothing but division.
I’m voting for my country. I wish you would too. Don
As an 84 year old New Yorker, born and raised, I remember the decades long loss of our reputation by the grifters who sold the Brooklyn bridge to rubes from the central U.S. The rubes never go away, they are always here for the taking. I remember 1973 when The Donald and his father, AKA the Trump Co, were hailed into Federal court in Brooklyn charged with ordering their rental agents not to show Trump properties to people of color. Appearing in court with their lawyer Roy Cohn they got the usual slap on the wrist that is given to the wealthy. A no Fault judgement but the requirement that showings for the next two years were under court supervision. I remember the trial of the Central Park Five and the letters that the dirt bag wrote to the N.Y. newspapers advocating the execution of the teen agers that he believed were guilty, before they were charged. I won’t even go into his monumental failures as a businessman except to ask, how can any one vote for a dimwit who puts 6 casinos into bankruptcy to be the chief executive of a trillion dollar nation? Or the man representing them, as the leader of their country, who refers to more unfortunate countries as those shitty countries. or The stories about Trump, that are numerous in N.Y, like getting the Braille elevator plates off the elevators in Trump tower because blind people will never live in the building. I proudly point to the fact that 85 per cent of voting New Yorkers, in the city, in the 2016 election, voted against one of their own. Hmm. Think that they were telling you something?
sgsmith, Right On!
When Dershowitz said “If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.” I frigging gasped! A dark sense of deja vu sank deep into my soul. And words I had read long ago, whose source I can’t recall for the life of me still haunt me. Spoiler alert: Yes, I invoke Godwin’s law!
I paraphrase but here’s the gist: They’re thoughts someone had about Hitler. Hitler never saw himself or his acts as evil but rather as virtuous. For no man _in his own mind_ is “evil” or acts out of evil motives, but rather out of noble and virtuous ones! These virtuous, self-righteous leaders actually believe their actions _advance_ “the good of their people.” By extending and expanding Germany’s borders Hitler hoped to make Germany less vulnerable to invasions by its immediate neighbors. By exterminating Gypsies, Jews, the infirm, and feeble minded, Hitler hope genetically to improve Germany’s evolutionary chances into the future. It was all done for a “good” cause, in _Hitler’s mind_!
And so, by analogous argument, Dershowitz attempts to justify Trump’s actions and motives. I suspect all criminal defense attorneys must reach down into their bag of rhetorical tricks, but here Dershowitz manages to scrape Mephistophelean bottom. And little else remains.
Screw the Constitution, screw the Separation of Powers, screw We the People. What Donald J Trump _believes_ is “good” for the nation is _all that matters_. All else is for “reasonable men,” and whatever that abstract legalism means. The Don’s phenomenological, subjective universe is all that _really_ matters! Shame on Dershowitz for attempting to turn the law on its head. I acknowledge that everyone is entitled to the _Best Defense_, but not at the cost of the destroying the very foundations of _our_ social contract, a construct built on consensus and reasonableness.
And I strongly agree with FactChecker. “National Security” is a false god notion introduced by bureaucrats and the Supreme Court to cover, hide, and bury all manner of government and bureaucratic negligence, waste, malfeasance, and even out-right criminality.
Be well.
Fact Checker 13,
I appreciate your comment about how the meaning of National Security (NS) has transmogrified.
During my more than 20 years in the U.S. Army, I personally took part in a logistics exercise played out on the coast of Virginia to determine how much oil could be “liberated” after Iran fell. Fortunately, the 48-hour exercise proved it would be impossible to secure an appreciable amount of oil to make the operation worth the cost in men and equipment, but desperate — and not very imaginative — people in Washington had to know for National Security.
I also had an opportunity to play cat and mouse games with elements of the Baader Meinhof Red Army Faction (RAF) in West Germany as part of a personal security detail for a future Chief of Staff of the United States Army protecting National Security interests in Europe during the Cold War.
I have learned that the meaning of National Security is too frequently tied to the political goals of one side or another, whether it is going into Panama to secure and arrest a dictator that the United States did business with, or letting the person responsible for planning the 911 attacks get away while a new war in Iraq was initiated on a pretext of securing non-existent weapons of mass destruction.
However, what is happening now in American politics — thanks in no small part to the efforts of America’s foreign enemies through cyber warfare and weaponized propaganda techniques — a large portion of our population and far too many elected representative are poised to shred the Constitution and all it represents for the benefit of one man who leveraged a lifetime of lying, cheating and gambling with other peoples money into a political career that defies all definitions of public service.
Trump 2020, to suggest there are no better alternatives to an amoral, narcissistic sociopath is ridiculous. At least 60% of qualified American adults are a superior choice.
Why didn’t they run dsimpson? Because they were content to sit back and complain? Out of all these comments I do not see one that offers solutions. Only criticism.
Looks like I answered my own question. Thank me.
Dearest Commenters,
This isn’t hard to understand. People say they want a president when they really want a king.
A king ye want, a king ye shall have.
Might as well put George III on the ballot in November. At least people will get a choice of transparency.
Pulitzer Tommy couldn’t find his ass hole with both hands if you gave him a map, a flashlight, 2 good hints and a helper. Yet, he has the brass to talk about other people’s lack of smarts.
It is obvious that Danehy had little fuel in his writer’s tank when he regurgitated this week I suppose this newest heros are Shiff, Nadler and Pelosi otherwise known as the 2020 answer to the 3 stooges!!!
And what started as a DOJ/CIA/FBI partisan witch hunt will end today. Americans could see right through it. Now get to work investigating Bidens and the whistle-blower crimes. Also serve Tulsi’s lawsuit on Hillary. These folks are not above the law. They just think they are.
President Trump went for an eye exam yesterday. The doctor determined that he doesn’t need glasses. That’s because Trump has 20-20 !!!
Well, I’m glad Tom got this off his chest. Trump supporters are dumb, dare we say deplorable? Lindsay Graham is a closeted gay from South Carolina. Case closed.
But no, Clinton played the “deplorable” card last time around and managed to piss off enough of the Democratic base of workers to actually lose an election to Donald John Trump. So let’s double down. Trump is homophobic, so let’s try that on for size and attack his enablers from a dumb-ass state.
One reason, among many, for the electorate’s distaste for Tom’s Democratic Party is its veneer of intellectual superiority and alleged coastal elitism. If intellect is considered a virtue in politics, a wise person does not repeat previous mistakes but instead learns from them and adjusts. For the Democrats including those here in the desert hinterlands, who opine ” But Hillary won the popular vote,” a simple study in our Constitution aided by some fairly basic math demonstrates that really stupid people running major party campaigns can’t count high enough to figure a majority of electoral votes.
Trump and his Republicans need to be defeated. Lame attacks on half the voters’ intelligence is a losing and stupid strategy.
One problem. The majority of US states do not want to be run by coastal elites. And they will not let you change the rules to do so.
https://www.facebook.com/thedeplorablechoir/videos/567501797135058/?vh=e&d=n
Leave it up to you to post a cheesy hillbilly song that attempts to school “the libtards.”
I would use the word pathetic to describe it, but I don’t need to offend the group that identifies as pathetic. They have so much more going for them than a know-nothing who sock-puppets behind the username tRump 2020. And several hundred other names.
I pity you.
Like the 150,000 who wanted ticket to attend a Trump rally the other day. In Jersey? Meanwhile Biden couldn’t fill a pay toilet.
I love it.
We get it. Morons live in Jersey. Quit your sock-puppeting as tRump 2020.
It’s beneath even you.
Regardless of the trial or lack thereof, Trump was impeached. Third one in history.
And that proves what exactly.
AZ/DC You are right on that one. Jersey is a heavy Blue State. Meaning most of it’s citizens vote Democrat. Therefore, making them morons.
Even me, eh? I didn’t realize I was in the company of such superior intelligence.
I didn’t say that everyone who lives in Jersey is a moron. Learn reading comprehension and we’ll get along better. Also, get your nose out of IMPO(TU)S’s ass. I believe that you can improve. Prove me correct. Please!
P.S. – Quit sock-puppeting as Bitch-Ass Chump 20 funny.
Sorry, but I kinda like things the way they are. I also like backing a winner. You honestly think anyone of those Bozos can beat Trump. Talk to me in November.
You “like backing a winner”?
Then quit backing an orange loser asshole that uses the US Constitution to wipe his ass.
Unless, of course, you like the idea of putin infiltrating our country.
P.S. – I notice that you’re ignoring the fact that I’ve exposed you as a sock-puppet. Someone is looking really guilty! That person might be…you.
You haven’t exposed me as anything.
Yeah, I have.
You’re right about that whole sock puppet thing. I’ll admit that a long, long time ago my T.V. name was Lambchop. I did that for a year or so but had to give it up. It seems that Shari Lewis’s repeatedly sticking her finger in my ass, as much as it felt good was giving me a rash.
I have to admit you’re right about that whole sock puppet thing. A long, long time ago my T.V. name was Lambchop. I went by that name for a year or so, but had to give it up. As nice as it felt, I was starting to get a rash in my asshole from Shari Lewis’s finger. Nice while it lasted.
The rationale of some of Trump lapdogs in the Senate, is, yeah he did it but we don’t want to overturn the 2016 vote. If they voted to convict they would actually be confirming the 3 million vote will of the majority.
Boo-Hoo.