ENOUGH!

The question facing Republicans is no longer whether or not to support Donald Trump's candidacy.

Today in North Carolina, the ante was raised. Trump obliquely suggested that "Second Amendment people" might take matters into their own hands to end Hillary Clinton's presidency. 

His inflammatory comments pose a whole new question: Should the Republican Party and its leaders demand that Trump step down as the party's nominee?

Further, the Secret Service ought to be looking into whether Trump's remarks constitute incitement to commit a crime. Positing the notion of assassination before a crowd that includes rabid gun zealots may meet the test of dangerously yelling "fire" in a crowded movie theater.

Is a restraining order called for?

Here's what Trump said with regard to gun possession, Clinton court appointees and the Second Amendment: “If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know.”

Oh yes he does know.

The remark can be paired with one he made during the primary campaign.

"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, okay, and I wouldn't lose any voters, okay?" Those are the kind of voters Trump was speaking to today. That is the kind of behavior he condones. He's done so on numerous other occasions as well.

With Trump, referring to violence is simply another macho rhetorical device. It is time he face the potential consequences of his words.

So where are you on this, Republicans? Will you call for Trump's resignation as nominee of your party?

The answer should be clear. It's time to get the hook out to yank this dangerous fanatic off the political stage before someone gets killed.

A "Good Trump" should endorse Garland for the Supreme Court

If Donald Trump were just a fraction as smart as he claims to be, he would endorse the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to be on the US Supreme Court.

Say what?

Trump needs to prove there is indeed “another” Trump, as ex-candidate Ben Carson claimed in endorsing Trump. If there is a “Good Trump,” it's time for him to step up, and there's no better way than by endorsing Garland.

Trump could certainly benefit from the “halo effect” that surrounds the eminently qualified and virtuous Garland. No senator in either party argues that Garland is anything less than a prudent, thoughtful judge who would bring much to the Supreme Court.

In supporting Garland, Trump would once again set himself apart from the hide-bound conservative Republican establishment. That would prove that he can at least be consistent in his willingness to buck the hide-bound orthodoxy of the Republican Congressional leadership.

He would take a stand against partisan gridlock. In short, he would be seen as rising above politics, something many yearn for.

He would prove that he knows character when he sees it and that he believes it should be rewarded.

He could wrap himself in that holy of holies, The U.S. Constitution.

He could, at last, begin to be seen as a healer rather than the terrible divider he has been for the past year.

And finally, he would begin to expand his base, which he desperately needs to do to win in November.

The problem is that so far Trump has given no evidence that there is a “Good Trump,” except apparently to Carson.

A Republican 'Firewall" against Trump

We are beginning to see a plausible Republican “firewall” against Donald Trump. You’d expect to read about it in the New York Times, but the paper is too busy helping the Clinton campaign (Bernie can’t win, Bernie faces cool reception from Blacks, etc) to strike out editorially against a clear and present danger to the Republic: Donald Trump.

No, I first ran across the vision of a blueprint for blocking Trump in The Washington Post. In early December the Post Editorial board wrote:

“As Mr. Trump’s fellow Republican candidates now acknowledge, there is a real-world cost to a campaign that gains traction by spewing hatred, bigotry and rage. Criticizing Mr. Trump is no longer sufficient. It is time to say clearly he is anathema to the Republican Party, and to the nation.

The full editorial is HERE.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ending-the-gops-season-of-denial/2015/12/08/b8549424-9dd3-11e5-a3c5-c77f2cc5a43c_story.html?tid=a_inl

Then, yesterday (Feb. 21) Danielle Allen, a Post contributing columnist, gets down to cases urging those Republican candidates who have dropped out, or should drop out, to, as a “great act of public service” revoke their pledge to support whomever the Republican party nominates.

“Be bold,” she writes, “stand up and shout that you will not support Trump if he is your party’s nominee. Do it together. Hold one big mother of a news conference.”

She calls for the also-rans to endorse Marco Rubio, not because she does (she plans to vote for Hillary Clinton), but because Rubio is NOT Trump, whom she calls an opportunistic demagogue. Trump’s tactic of exploiting a divided nation are akin to Hitler’s, she says, citing Hannah Arendt’s book “Men in Dark Times.”

In closing, Allen calls on Sen. Ted Cruz to withdraw as well and to support Rubio. Addressing Cruz directly, she writes,  “You are drawing too close to Trump’s politics. You too should change course."

She points the finger at the non-Trump Republican candidates, saying, “You are the ones on whom this burden falls. No one else can do it.”

Her column can be read HERE:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/moment-of-truth-we-must-stop-trump/2016/02/21/0172e788-d8a7-11e5-925f-1d10062cc82d_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-b%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

The dilemma for anyone-but-Trump Republicans is clear. Should the Republican convention reject the billionaire bully, Trump no doubt would launch an independent campaign that would ensure victory for whomever the Democrats nominate. On the other hand, with Trump carrying the Republican banner into November, there’s no certainty either Clinton or Sanders would win (although the polls, for what they’re worth in this wacko year, suggest that Sanders has a better shot.)

So the Republicans have a choice: Do they want a wing-nut, unstable, racist Republican demagogue in the White House or one of those shifty, lefty Democrats?

Trump's contrived "disgust" with Hillary's trip to the toilet

Anyone who has ever majored in college psychology knows that the big pay-off in the field is in advertising. The 2016 presidential campaign is about to unleash the full force of psychological manipulation on the vulnerable voters in Iowa and New Hampshire…and South Carolina etc.

Opponents will be portrayed in grainy black-and-white, nightmare footage. We’ll hear creepy voices. We’ll see candid, hand-held photos of opposition candidates exposed in unguarded moments. Sound bites will flash by utterly out of context.

It all taps into our psychological vulnerabilities, needs and fears.

It is also a dangerous charade. Without a “media literate” electorate, a functioning, rational democracy is impossible.

But wait, there’s more!

This year’s campaign has introduced and entirely new psychological element beyond advertising manipulations. It arrives courtesy of the one, the only, Donald Trump. Although he would deny it, I’m guessing it is the product of invisible, high-paid geniuses — those psychology majors—hired by his campaign.

I’m thinking this is no less than the work of the candidate’s psyops (psychological operations) team. It is also a hand-and-glove fit with the candidate's own weird psychological profile and acting skills.

It works on several fronts. I’ve mentioned before Trump’s use of the non-verbal. Without “saying” anything in words (allowing deniability) he speaks volumes in gestures. The smirk, the pause, the nod, mimicking (of the disabled no less), the flailing of arms, flagrant ignoring of “boundaries.”

Others include overt bulling and outright lying. (We are seeing increasing references to Hitler and “The Big Lie” in expressed concerns about Trump as The Leader.)

I’m particularly intrigued with Trump’s technique of producing off-the-wall and crudely vivid mini-images. Their being indelible attaches them permanently and subconsciously to Trump’s victim. Because the images are disgusting, to use Trump’s own word, they have a particular deep psychological resonance with conservative voters.

See research reference: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2014/10/30/your-brains-response-to-a-gross-photo-can-reveal-your-political-leanings/

You can bet that the Trump psyops team is well aware of the research.

And so we have Trump citing and critiquing Hillary Clinton’s trip to the toilet in the recent Democratic debate. Without going into the scatological details of the non-event, Trump simply labeled her break as “disgusting.”

He leaves his audience to fill-in-the-blanks.

As noted above, disgusting images set off conservative subconscious alarms.
The image, of course, provides a graphic association to Trump and his backers’ views of Clinton and her campaign.

Clever, huh? And oh so funny.

Would any other Republican candidate invoke Trump’s own biological need to defecate, let alone label it “disgusting”?

In the odd world of Republican politics, they would seem to be missing a psychological opening to right-wingers.

Beyond drum-beat citations of  “American Exceptionalism” and the nation’s seemingly divine mission (God bless America!) and the dangers of terrorism, they should be invoking Donald in the toilet.

This, fellow citizens, it what we call democracy in action.

Calling for help

Of all the trans-Gulf of Mexico ironies that link the Republican convention in Tampa and Isaac’s destruction in New Orleans, one stands out and illuminates conservative myth and the plight of this nation.

After the hurricane finally passes through leaving wrecked homes and devastated businesses, flooded neighborhoods and ruined roads, vulnerable communities and a and destroyed schools and hospitals, who will be called upon to provide assistance?

The government, that’s who.

The very government that the resurgent Republican right wing wants to “drown in the bathtub.”

Meanwhile there’s all this water in New Orleans to clean up.

You’ve perhaps seen the photo of Mitt Romney backed by business owners wearing t-shirts emblazoned with “Government didn’t build my business. I did.”

Oh really?

Ever hire someone who learned to read in school? Perhaps you yourselves attended a few classes? Ever have goods arrive by a truck that has used the public roads? Ever rely on an interstate highway? Ever depend on a cop to patrol the commercial area?

When you turn on the tap and water flows out or when you flush the toilet and ... well never mind ... you get the picture.

And what about the protections provided by the military, bloated as it is?

And what have unregulated businesses brought you? If Isaac is yet another “extreme weather event” in the Global Warming destruction of the planet, where will the blame lie as the Earth becomes less and less habitable and your business tanks?

You could start with the oil lobbyists and Wall Street financiers picking up the tab in Tampa.

If the government is at fault, it’s because it hasn’t done enough. And it hasn’t done enough — and will do even less under the Republicans — because it has been taken over by British Petroleum, Exxon/Mobil, Chase Bank and countless global financial and commercial interests.

I suggest that when the Republican convention adjourns Thursday, the delegates cruise across the Gulf to witness what their handiwork has wrought. And when they call for help, let them note whom they are calling.

Suspicious unsupported comments on liberal sites

I'm beginning to wonder whether the Republican presidential money machine is paying folks to post non-sense, ad hominem responses to articles on liberal web sites.

Case in point are comments (replete with egregious spelling errors) attached to a current article by George Lakoff and Elisabeth Wehling on the Common Dreams site.

Do these comments really come from regular readers of Common Dreams? I don't think so. So what brings them to Common Dreams? The Koch brothers?

If the comments made any sense at all, or addressed the issues raised in the article, they would have value. Instead they are vacuous rants devoid of any substance.

Obama and Lincoln: Myth and Reality

President Obama’s State of the Union address created its own context and successfully addressed it.

Unfortunately, the context had nothing to do with reality.

Obama portrayed the task before Congress and the government as being an effort to move the nation forward, primarily economically but also strategically.

What American, Democrat, Republican or independent could disagree with that?

The problem is that Congress's real context is political, and it is all about power, not progress.

Sweet reason and cooperation has little to do with keeping, or seizing, power.

Republicans have to disagree to make themselves an alternative. Democrats have to defend themselves and push forward to be distinctive.

In a polarized political world, both can’t win, but both can lose, taking the rest of us down with them.

The reality is that both parties must raise hundreds of millions of dollars in the next year so that they can successfully hold onto or grab more power in 2012.

How do you raise that kind of money. You put forward a program that is “worth it.”

Worth it to whom?

Worth it to those who have the money. That's money to throw at a media-driven political system of attack ads and irrelevancy. Buy the propaganda system and you gain the power.

The political appeal now is not to the people, but to vested interests, primarily multi-national corporation executives and the financial market and hedge fund managers.

Obama’s speech was largely nationalistic myth-making. It shared the theme found in Lincoln’s First Inaugural address in which he sought to heal the ominous and growing divisions between North and South.

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

The words didn’t work for Lincoln, and they aren’t going to work for Obama. We have no “better angels of our nature.” Until “our nature” is fundamentally changed, it will be devoid of angels and inhabited by very human demons — greed and the lust for power.

If there is good news, it’s that President Obama is fully capable of identifying and addressing the problems of reality. The bad news is that if he does, he will be instantly unelectable.

HERE is another commentary that takes a similar, but not identical, tack.

Morning Choices

I'm in the habit of reading the newspaper the first thing each morning.

I'm convinced it's a bad habit. So today I turned first to a random page from "The Essence of Tao," an anthology brilliantly and inspiringly compiled by Maggie Pinkney.

Above is the page, a single Marcus Aurelius quote. I pondered it over coffee and Wheaties topped with banana and apple slices.

Beneath the book is the "news" from the New York Times. I left the Times for later. Much later.

When I finally turned to the paper, I saw its wrenching, haphazard chronicle as an infinitesimal part of a universe — one that is "a single life, comprising one substance and one soul."

The "ands," "buts" and "becauses" of politics

The front page of today’s New York Times carries a 19-word caption that says volumes about our values and our civic life.

The caption runs under a photo of Meg Whitman, the multi-millionaire former corporate executive who is running for governor of California. She is exhorting a crowd of rural supporters.

Here’s the caption:

“Meg Whitman, in Spreckels, Calif., on Thursday, has spent $141 million on her campaign, but is still viewed unfavorably.”

The word that jumps out off the page is “but.”

Why not “and” (and delete the “still”)?

“Meg Whitman, in Spreckels, Calif., on Thursday, has spent $141 million on her campaign, AND is viewed unfavorably.”

Or better yet, why not, “BECAUSE Meg Whitman, shown here in Spreckels, Calif. Thursday, has spent $141 million on her campaign, she is still viewed unfavorably”?

The story under the photo notes that the $141 million was Whitman’s own money.

And therein, reports the Times, is part of Ms. Whitman’s problem. As a CEO of eBay, she amassed millions in bonuses and she is now using that largesse to buy public office.

Polls show that California voters are hardly celebrating her goodly fortune or her attempted electoral purchase. She’s expected to lose on Tuesday.

But that caption reflects political conventional wisdom: Whitman’s deep pocketbook would be expected to buy success at the polls.

This campaign surprises me because analysts have been quick to call the influential Tea Party movement “populist.” If it were truly populist, it would be running from the Meg Whitmans of the world as well as corporations (the ones who send jobs overseas, or hide profits off-shore from taxes — we make up the loss — or purveyed quickie mortgages that brought the economy to its knees.)

Ironically, these are the very interests powering the Tea Party and the anticipated Republican tsunami on Tuesday.

The good news, reported in this story, is that most voters in California seem to be “getting it.”

But why aren’t “populist” voters elsewhere? Could it be prejudice, fear of the unknown, impatience, amnesia (who, after all, made this mess?), ignorance or just plain scapegoating?

Or perhaps it’s all about frustration over a lack of real political choices. The Democrats are only marginally better on these issues than the Republicans. Both parties feed at the same money trough. Those executives whose compensation packages are in the stratosphere make out like bandits no matter which party is in power.

What we need is a real populist movement coupled with a real populist party that attacks inequity, injustice and militarism, whose soldier/victims are the poor, uneducated and unemployed.

Above all, a different kind of populism would tear down and reform a political system rigged by the privileged rich and a corporate Darwinian culture.

Putting your $2,730 to work

You’ve probably done the math.

$819,000,000,000 / 300,000,000

No?

The nominator (the first number) is the amount of the Obama-backed stimulus package that passed the House with nary a Republican "yes" vote. A version of it is now before the Senate.

The second number, the denominator, is roughly the nation’s population.

And, unless I’ve lost a zero along the way, the result of the division is $2,730 for each man, woman and child in the country.

I don’t know about you, but it is an exceedingly small fraction of what our family lost in the stock market last year. For many more, it is a very small part of their personal debt — consumer debt and other debt.

Sure, the government could give that $2,730 back to us in tax cuts. That's what the Republicans want.

What would you do with it? I’d tuck it away in a very, very safe place. Like between the mattress and the box springs.

I could invest it in the stock market along with the money of others. There the Wall Street financial managers would rake off millions in bonuses even as they reduce our money to junk status.

Some might use part of the Republican tax cut to buy Chinese-made flat screen TVs or Japanese-made computer consoles. Some might pay down a portion of credit card debt, or part of school loans. Or the car insurance or the health insurance or the back rent. I doubt many would give it to charity, but we can hope.

No, the $2,730 tax cut would do little to stimulate the economy or to create jobs, at least not in this country. But it would continue to grow the government’s debt. (What was it that Republicans once stood for? Fiscal restraint?)

We need to spend the $819 billion so that it multiplies in our economy. It’s called social investment. Think education, health, research, bridges, railroads, clean energy, peaceful diplomacy.

Not bad for $2,730.

It's whole lot better than tucking a tax cut under the mattress or buying a flat screen TV.

Christian candidates?

I hope that at some point the Republican presidential candidates will realize that millions of Christians as well as those of other faiths deeply resent the verbal pillorying of those good and moral people who have chosen to have no religious belief.

The candidates, who loudly proclaim their Christianity, need to be reminded that Christ was very clear that love should be unconditional.

Indeed, we might well question whether candidates who ostracize and marginalize the non-religious are Christians at all.

I don’t say that to criticize them as much as to state a fact for them to consider.

They obviously don’t believe they are being hypocritical, but many of us believe they are — and we vote.

Voters should demand that these candidates, given their avowed adherence to Christ’s teachings, speak and act on them.

If doing so costs them the Republican presidential nomination, so be it.