Stating The State

                    another chatGPT creation

A minute in, when Trump flat-out lied about the economy he inherited and Republicans gave him a standing O, I turned off the SOTU. Everything to follow was predictable and sad. I returned to making a list of recent events. So many topics, too many to ignore or do justice. So here’s a compendium, in shorthand:

• As if we need more evidence of Trump’s unending desire for fawning adulation, or that, with Pam Bondi’s slavish obeisance, he’s turned the Department of inJustice into a vengeance vehicle, there’s that Soviet-style, North Korea-emulating visage hanging from DOJ headquarters. Pre-Trump, Americans found such submissive, cultish idolatry abhorrent.

• The Supreme Court’s rejection of most of Trump’s unconstitutional wielding of tariffs like a child wields a toy light-saber ought to have been 9-0. Three so-called originalists dissented, ignoring clear, parchmentalized language. Justice Kavanaugh, by acclamation the least intelligent of the nonet, based his dissent on adverse consequences of returning the ill-gotten money. Which is like arguing criminals shouldn’t be punished if it would make their families sad.

• Classic Trump: after the verdict, he’s relentlessly attacked “the f..king courts” (his words), calling the justices, including two of his appointees, traitors. What he should have said, is “the f..king Constitution.” Because that’s how he sees it.  

• Lee Zeldin, head of the Environmental Destruction (sorry: “Protection”) Agency, proudly announced, “We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S. and more.” Unpacking the Trumped-up mendacity and dangerous stupidity would eat up the rest of this column. 

• As Trump hypes his Epstein-distracting warlette on Iran, recall his words after his prior dog-wagging mission: Iran’s nuclear capability had been “completely and totally obliterated,” debunked within days. The lie is reconfirmed by his current demand that they end their nuclear program.  

• Expecting airports to be named after him, Trump has applied for trademarks for gift-shop junk bearing his name, “including clothing, handbags, luggage, jewelry, watches, and tie clips.” GOTUS. It’s pathological.  

• Ignoring the First Amendment, Pentagon Pete Hegseth holds prayer meetings there. His latest was led by a Christian nationalist who favors submissive, non-voting women and finds slavery not so bad. They’ll produce fine soldiers.  

• Sending an unrequested and unnecessary hospital ship to Greenland? The ridiculousness is self-evident. But he may have hallucinated it. The man is unwell. 

• Because they make voting more universally accessible, MAGA hates mail-in ballots, which we’ve had here, scandal-free, for years. Because it’s what he does, Trump lied again about them, including claiming the US is the only country that allows voting that way.  

• Like his tariff usurpation, Trump’s desire to nationalize elections is unconstitutional. Does SCOTUS have a two-fer in them? He lies daily about non-existent Democrats’ election rigging while planning to do just that, including sending ICE agents to polling places. Not to arrest people voting illegally, which doesn’t happen, but because many non-white, legal voters, fearing the harassment and detention for days and weeks we’ve seen, might stay away.  

• A former ICE instructor testified that ICE drastically cut required training and lied to Congress about it. Given the intentional brutality and lawlessness we see from them, it would be surprising if it were otherwise.  

• Kash Patel, the FBI’s most unqualified director ever, who loves using his position for personal pleasure, shared the US men’s hockey victory by guzzling beer with them on live TV, like a frat boy. J. Edgar Hoover, he’s not. A Hegseth/Bondi/Pirro-level embarrassment, he is, confirming, once more, that Trump chooses people for compliance, not competence. 

• If it turns out Trump’s personal law firm, dba Bondi’s DOJ, withheld parts of the Epstein files that explicitly accuse him of sexual abuse and rape, would it surprise you?  

• Decades ago, senators on both sides were honorable, intelligent, and committed to legislating for the common good. Though there’s plenty of competition, no one better represents the level of stupidity and uselessness to which the Republican Party’s choices have descended than Utah’s Mike Lee.  

• After a lifetime of scams, grifts, and ripoffs, Trump’s brazenly corrupt “Board of Peace” tops them all. In part consisting of dictators and murderers, each of whom reportedly contributed a billion dollars for a piece of the action, it’s announced-by-Jared mission is to turn Gaza into an investment opportunity for oligarchs, who’ll be protected by a huge military base. Trump will be the board’s president for life, in control of the money, including ten billion U.S. taxpayer dollars he’s committed, unilaterally, to it. For what purpose, other than enriching himself on other people’s dime? More tie clips? He gets away with such outrageous self-dealing by “virtue” of Republican silence and the manufactured devotion of gratefully suckered MAGAs. The importance of the November election he’s trying so hard to scuttle can’t be overstated. 

• End of partial list. Thank you for your attention to these matters.

Bribocracy

 

                           ChatGPT

“Shall I compare thee to a President’s Day? Washington’s selfless leadership, Lincoln’s timeless eloquence? Thou art less lofty and more intemperate.” (Author unknown.)

America’s political divide is wider than at any time since the Civil War, but there’s one issue on which everyone should agree: Trump’s is the most corrupt and dishonest administration in our history. Rather than hiding it, they wave it like that huge American flag on I-5 north of Mount Vernon. Trump has openly regretted not enriching himself more in his first term. Unable to deny, MAGA's only options are to ignore or embrace. We see both. “At least he’s honest about his dishonesty,” they say, admiringly. Or, “ Everybody cheats.”

It’s not merely embarrassing that our great-until-Trump country twice elected an unscrupulous, bribofacient, self-promoting fraudster; the damage at home and abroad is incalculable. Perhaps MAGA-threatened future historians will elaborate. For now, all we can do is enumerate.

Following FIFA’s pandering “peace prize," Trump’s next briblical acceptance was the Washington Coal Club’s “Undisputed Champion of Beautiful Clean Coal” prize. It’d be hilarious, had he not, a day later ended our government’s ability to regulate climate change emissions, to which coal is the greatest lump-for-lump contributor.

As literate Americans know, “clean coal” isn’t a thing, whereas climate change most definitely is. From his kingly throne, Trump is doing everything possible to boost fossil fuels and impede sustainable, actually clean energy. The money he gets from oil tycoons confirms his bribocratic corruption. With the fingers of others filling his pockets, he raises a middle one to us.

Bribery isn’t Trumpism’s only corruption. There’s cry-wolfery, gaslighting, and “accusation is admission.” Working to rig elections, for example, while lying that every election Trump or MAGAs lost was rigged. It’s as much a part of today’s Republican agenda as climate change denial, pardoning criminals, rewriting history, and lying to our faces. “Democrats rig elections,” they cry, against all evidence, while doing it. MAGAs wolf it down.

Here’s Homeland Insecurity’s Kristi Noem, promoting the restrictive voter ID requirements in the SAVE act, bragging, “ ... when it gets to Election Day ... we've been proactive to make sure that we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders to lead this country.” Confirming the anti-democracy and anti-Democrats purposes of voter ID, Republican Study Committee Chair August Pfluger (R-Texas) added, “The American people did not give Republicans a mandate to make excuses. They gave us one to deliver wins, and the SAVE America Act is exactly that.” (Italics mine.) Okay, well, they’re not lying about that. Ms. Noem did lie about another ICE shooting, though.

 

If states requiring it made voter ID equally accessible across all demographics, it’d be okay. In red states, it’s the opposite. They just said so. And who trusts Trump’s DOJ to protect the Georgia ballots they commandeered with no legal justification? His desire to “nationalize” elections is, of course, unconstitutional. Would it matter to his agreeable Supreme Court?

Noem. Bondi. Who can say who’s worse? In a tight race, impudent, arrogant, toadying Pam pulled ahead last week, when she broadcast her and her boss’s contempt for the Constitution; yelling, deflecting, insulting, refusing to answer legitimate, Constitutionally required oversight of her handling of the Epstein files. Why are you asking about that when the DOW is over fifty thousand, she sneered, non-sequiturally. While she scanned her staff-prepared, scripted whataboutisms to gotchify Democrats, Republicans on the Committee, living and dead, like every MAGA, couldn’t hide their glee. In a Congress containing Republicans of old, as in the Nixon era, the hearing would have adjourned immediately, to begin impeachment proceedings. But that party is as dead as climate regulation.

There are rumblings. In deep red South Texas last week, in a district Trump won by seventeen points, a Democrat soundly beat a Republican for state senate despite being outspent by millions of dollars. The same happened in very red Louisiana. Texas Republicans’ unprecedented and cynical mid-cycle gerrymandering, along with growing revulsion at Trump’s ICE brutality and, maybe, his transparent lying, have created unanticipated blue districts, while spurring blue states like California, after Trump’s Constitution-rewriting SCOTUS greenlit Texas, to do the same.

Clear-eyed voters know to assume every word uttered by Trump and his collection of collaborators is a lie; that every action is to their benefit, not ours. As scales drop from pinkish eyes, there might still be hope. But November is far enough away for plenty of Republican meddling.

Now, a mea kinda culpa. Last week, I praised the “unmitigated joy” of Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance. Since then, enthusiastic critics have sent translations which, if accurately rendered, were vulgar. I was disappointed and promised to address it. Since then, though, I’ve seen sources indicating the crudités had been edited in compliance with broadcast standards.

Few words, if any, have single comparables between languages; by definition, translations are subjective. Unless those taking offense are fluent Spanish speakers and heard it directly, I’ll stick with joyful.

Good Bunny

 

Without outrage, MAGAs have nothing. Without being offended, they’d be nothing. If it wasn’t unmistakable before, the Super Bowl (went Seahawks!) removed any doubt. Trump’s and MAGA’s anger over Bad Bunny’s halftime performance began long before it happened. Nothing, it seems, makes that crowd so infuriated as seeing people – especially those of darker hues – having fun. Exuberant fun. Occasionally sexy? For sure. But, even with some soft-boiled political Easter eggs, always celebratory. At the end, naming all countries in the Americas, as if we’re part of a whole, together. The actual not-fake wedding was sweet and hopeful. As was the omnipresent visual message, “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.” Only in Trump’s America could that be considered a subversive provocation.

So offended were MAGAs that they hied to a YouTube-only counterprogram featuring a badly lip-syncing, white-man-jumping, over-hilled Kid Rock, who’d once sung his way to fame lauding statutory rape. Maybe that explains his connection with Trump. There was also some guy who sang an anti-woke song. Good times. Wish I’d been there.

Sure, it’d have been nice to have had subtitles for Mr. Bunny, but it was about vibe, not vocabulary. Besides, what language is required to recognize pure joy? Not the one MAGA speaks, evidently. It was a celebration of America’s unique melting pot that accounts for so much of its greatness. Which explains the freakout of Make America Ghastly Again. Having once designated liberals as “snowflakes,” under Trump they’ve taken ownership of the term. They NEED to be angry at not-like-thems. If it weren’t so pitiful and, for that matter, anti-America, it’d be hilarious.

But, mostly, it’s just sad. Unlike Bad Bunny, MAGAs are unhappy people, preferring an even unhappier leader. Because it’s all they know how to do, if poorly, House Republicans are calling for an investigation.

Their reaction to the halftime show was a MAGA microcosm. The response to Trump posting an image of Barack and Michelle Obama as apes is as macro as it gets. Within seconds of the revulsion expressed by decent people, Pressed Secretary Leavitt referred to it as fake outrage. “Report on something today that actually matters to the American public,” she demanded, dootifully. Because having America represented by the most overtly racist “president” in our history shouldn’t bother anyone. Rather, for MAGA, it’s celebrated.

The rush to defend Trump’s awfulness, as always, was a stampede. Came the predictable blaming of an unnamed staffer. Trump hadn’t seen it, or didn’t watch to the end. Then, acknowledging it was he who posted it, Trump refused to apologize. Of course not. It’d be like 7-Up apologizing for selling soft drinks.

When it’s not outrage, it’s cruelty, as from organizations whose inhumanity MAGA will defend to the death. Literally. ICE, for one. I hadn’t known this while I served there, but in Vietnam, some GIs left ace of spades playing cards on the bodies of Vietnamese they’d killed. Sometimes in their mouths. Now we learn that ICE is doing the same, placing similar cards, professionally produced, in the vehicles they’ve broken into and dragged out the occupants. It clarifies the kinds of people ICE is hiring, and those who stay silent. Make America Ghoulish Again.

Like cutting USAID, ostensibly to save money, leading to tens of thousands of deaths and disease in Africa and elsewhere, particularly among children; and then spending taxpayer money to fund “MAGA-aligned” organizations in Europe. Why aren’t Trump supporters appalled? Jesus would be.

Some might say I’m being hypocritical when deploring MAGA outrage, for what are my columns if not that? Maybe so, but there’s a fundamental difference. My words, and those of No Kings protestors, anti-ICE demonstrations, and the tens of Antifa activists, are aimed at protecting and preserving the values of our republic: fairness, equality of rights and voting, healthcare, and help for those in need. It’s outrage at our government for eliminating those most basic tenets of a functioning democracy. Following Trump’s directions, MAGA is against all of that. If indignation can be righteous, this is it.

Like outrage, for another example, at the Pentagon for making the largest ever purchase of munitions from Israel, for internationally banned anti-personnel cluster bombs. Tough guy, that Hegseth, who also threatened Scouting for allowing girls and not being God-promoting enough, because he’s nothing if not the embodiment of godliness.

Or at Trump’s DOJ for shutting down Minnesota prosecutors’ investigations of the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Or having a “president” who’s such a petty, needy, and insecure bully that he withholds funds for New York unless it renames Dulles Airport and Penn Station after him. And, in one of his more insane rants, threatens to prevent opening the Gordie Howe Bridge between the US and Canada.

This is what MAGA and the not-so GOP defend. While condemning Bad Bunny. Can they go lower? In preparation for November, they already are.

McBillions

 

               Image created using ChatGPT

The lowball estimate of how much personal money Trump has grifted during the first year of his second “presidency” is around $1.2 billion. This is not counting the billions made by his spawn during this time, or the $10 billion he stands to make from suing himself, which is to say his IRS, run by his appointees, because his tax returns were leaked. After, truth-teller that he is, he’d been promising to release them himself for ten years.

This must be challenging for his MAGA idolators who, with tears in their eyes, continue to praise his selflessness in refusing his presidential salary (is he still?) because he loves and has sacrificed everything for us. In total, his Ovaltine haul is at least $4 billion. 

One might wonder how he came up with ten billion to compensate whatever trauma he suffered from the release of those returns, especially since it didn’t impair his reelection. The reelection that’s providing him with the aforementioned loot. Doesn’t matter. Because all of his appointees, from heads of the definitely not weaponized DOJ and FBI, to the Departments of Interior, Education, Commerce, and more, cater slavishly to his regal demands, it seems assured the IRS, after due consideration of the ethics and legalities, doubtless after in-depth consultation with ethical and legal icon Pam Bondi, will cough up the money. Maybe with interest. Bondi’s compliant DOJ would be charged with defending the IRS, too. Convenient. Whatever the amount, it’ll be our tax money, going directly to him.

He said he’d donate to charities, though. Presumably not like the one the courts shut down because he was stealing from it. What’s the over/under on how much he gets and how much he’ll keep?

Has there ever been a “presidency” from which more lawsuits have emerged or toward which they’ve been aimed? Lawsuits are as much a part of Trump as bone spurs aren’t. He sues. Always has. Especially people, like contractors he hires, lacking time or money to fight, who’ll pay him off. It’s how he ran his businesses, and how he’s “running” the country.

Cruel fate (ours) has inpocketed him our entire system of justice, through which, filled with people chosen for their pliability and disregard for our Constitution, he charges anyone he chooses with made-up crimes. Or sues. If only he could clone Judge Aileen Cannon, whose delay tactics and confounding rulings on indictments for his many crimes allowed him to go (for now) scot free (it doesn’t mean what you think). If every courtroom had her cloneliness in charge, lawsuits against him would be thrown out in a minute, and the people he’s had indicted would be convicted before they sat down.

Speaking of not sitting down, I don’t intend to see the Melania movie. Reviews are predictably split along party lines; if you bought Trump sneakers, you’ll love it. The significance, though, is Bezos’s bribery and Melania’s grift, as she stands to make millions off it. But MAGAs love the movie like they love life and hate immigrants, Melania excepted. Money for nothin’ and chicks for fee.

My intention this week was to back off, if slightly, from the democracy-damaging aspects of Trump and his klatch. Focus on stuff that’s only irritating and, based on decades of revelations of Trump’s ethos, predictable and almost amusing. But then came this from President-in-Fact and truly horrible person Stephen Miller: “Plenty of countries in history have experimented with importing a foreign labor class. The West is the first and only civilization to import a foreign labor class that is granted full political rights, including welfare & the right to vote... In America, for generations now, the policy has been that anyone who would economically benefit from moving to the US can do so, exercise the franchise in the US and their children, the moment they are born, will be full American citizens with all the rights and benefits therein.” He wasn’t suggesting it’s a positive.

In other words, per Herr Miller, the US should have a “labor class” that does our dirty work but receives no benefits, like citizenship. Or healthcare. There’s a word for that. To Übermensch Miller’s obvious disappointment, that side lost the Civil War. This link draws the appropriate historical comparison. He’s the one calling the shots (literally) for ICE and CBP. With Trump’s decline, his is the disordered mind behind it all. It’s what American values are up against, and it suffuses all of Trumpism.

As relentlessly depressing as is everything Trump, last week wasn’t all bad. A judge ordered the release of five-year-old Liam Ramos from ICE custody, and, in doing so, said the obvious: “Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency...” 

Also, in Texas, the yellow rose showed a blue tinge. First a district, then the state?

A guy can dream.