Trump Derangement Syndrome "The Next Pandemic"? Don't Make Me Laugh!

"Da Donald can do no wrong! He da man! It da left dat derange!"

One of the tropes still circulating amongst the Trumpkins is that the Left is hysterical and over-reacting to their beloved, brain dead buffoon - manifesting in TDS or "Trump Derangement Syndrome".  In the fantasies of these Right wing pundit knuckle draggers, most of the Left  as well as Democrats are in the throes of TDS and now even going through "five stages".  So writes the latest imp to make such a claim, Joseph Epstein (WSJ, July 10, p. A17,  'The Next Pandemic: Trump Derangement Syndrome' )

  This balmy bozo-  because that's precisely what Epstein is-   given  his reputation for sloppy thinking and misleading  journalism precedes him, e.g.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/07/22/when-misleading-op-ed-wall-street-journal-irks-academics-its-time-fact-check-faculty


Trots out this latest codswallop as all Trump's poll  numbers are sinking, even eroding among his  base.  This has incited them to flail and render any kind of crappola to try to convince us it's all the Dems' fault,  or else that this animated pustule isn't as degenerate as we know he is.  Anyway in his WSJ op-ed  Epstein confabulates five "stages" as integral to the TDS   onset  and I cite these below:

Stage (1) The "afflicted decides before 2016 that Trump has serious, even strenuous character flaws that disqualified him from the presidency or any other public office".

Well, let's see. How about advocating pussy grabbing (in that 2005 'Access Hollywood' tape with Billy Bush)  as well as assaults on various women including at Miss Universe pageants?  One of the women  (Summer Vernos)  even brought a lawsuit after Trump "thrust his genitals at her."  Sounds disqualifying enough to me and I will take Summer at her word 1 million times before the lying Trump.  (Who's now amassed over 16,000 lies according to the running WaPo tally over the last 3 1/2 years.)

Stage (2) "One dwells upon Donald Trump's looks", the hairdo and golf apparel.

Actually, I could care less about this bloated buffoon's looks.. But I do castigate the orange imp for how he's consistently disparaged the appearance of women,   e.g.

https://www.businessinsider.com/trumps-worst-insults-toward-women-2018-10


whether calling 2016 Reep candidate Carly Fiorina and  the adult-film actress Stormy Daniels "Horseface,"  or calling other women "sluts", "dogs" or worse.  All of these examples say more about this reprobate's basic character than anything any critic could say about his appearance.   Knowing that, it's incredible to me Epstein would even go there.

Stage (3)  "One is ready to believe anything- pernicious or salacious- about Mr. Trump - and to reject anything that might be good for the country."

Oh, oh, you mean like Stormy Daniels taking  the Donald across her knee and spanking him with a copy of FORBES?   E.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2018/01/why-do-white-evangelicals-worship.html


Wherein we learn:

The spanking was revealed in a string of emails.  Subsequently,  Mother Jones basically confirmed all the sordid details that Daniels described from her 2006 encounters  For reference, see:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/01/stormy-daniels-trump-spanking-forbes-and-shark-week.html

"According  to a trove of  2009 emails exchanged between political operatives (advising Daniels at the time on a possible political campaign), the adult film actress claimed that her affair with Trump included spanking him with a copy of Forbes.  By one account,  a political consultant to Andrea Dubé related in an email that:

"He made her sit with him for three hours watching Shark Week. Another time he had her spank him with a Forbes magazine," 

The magazine used evidently had Dotard's  face on the cover which no doubt provides endless material for any Freudian school psychiatrists and psychologists. "

Stormy having sex with this turd then whacking his fat ass?  Sounds pretty perverse - and convincing to me. Not to mention allowing Russian prostitutes to urinate all over him in a Moscow hotel while the Miss Universe pageant was held in Moscow in 2013.  All integrated into the dossier prepared by Christopher Steele - which the Right's  nitwits now try to disparage.

According to an earlier (2017)  AP report in the Denver Post ( 'Ex Spy Regarded as Dependable') :

"Three British intelligence agents interviewed by the Associated Press described Steele as well regarded in the intelligence community, with excellent Russian skills and high level sources."

According to one Financial Times account, Steele was the "UK intelligence expert on Russia".

James Nixey, the head of Chatham House's Russia and Eurasia program, informed the AP that sections of the dossier document created by Steele "read exactly as reports from the secret services"

In other words, professional through and through, no exaggerations and no fillers that hadn't been  sourced.  So the Trumpkins and their hacks like Epstein,  Dan Henninger,  Holman Jenkins Jr. or Kim Strassel can squawk all they want about the "corrupt Steele dossier"  but I will make a Vegas bet on its veracity any day before anything coming out of Trump's piehole. Or that of his enablers and acolytes.

Epstein then inserts the example of TDS "afflicted" going so low and over the edge as to aver "he secretly admires King Jong Un's wardrobe"".   Actually, I  was more concerned with how he's openly professed love for the North Korean tyrant, i.e after saying numerous times he's "in love" with Kim.  And Kim sent him a "love letter."  These are all well documented, not fantasies or ideations.

Stage (4) "One imputes evil to Mr. Trump."

Actually, as an atheist I am averse to appending the term "evil" to anyone.  Having said that,  I do maintain a human can over time reach such a level of moral turpitude and character degradation he can at least asymptotically approach evil.  That is Trump, as when he had  migrant children locked up in cages, separated them from their parents.  Also, when he equated Charlottesville (2017) protesters with the Nazis and white nationalist scum who attacked them, including killing one woman (Heather Heyer).  Trump  claiming there were "some very fine people" on both sides. No, only on one!  As Nicole Wallace put it at the time:

"There are not two sides to this. There are hideous, hateful enemies of America, enemies of freedom, and there were people truly exercising their free speech."

Stage (5)  "One is weighted down with all the symptoms of the first four stages but brings to them an added choleric intensity of anger."

If Eppie means anger at the way Dotard has totally fucked up the response to the coronavirus so that over 130,000 if our fellow citizens are now dead- he has it right!  Or how Trump has not  only botched the initial U.S. response but is now actively inciting an even larger death toll by pushing for a premature opening of schools.  As Michelle Goldberg wrote(NY Times, 'Trump Threatens To Turn Pandemic Schooling Into Culture War'):


"Donald Trump has approached the extraordinarily complex challenge of educating children during a pandemic just as he’s approached most other matters of governing: with bullying, bluster and propaganda."

Reinforcing what Chris Hayes' timely take two nights ago:

"Also today he said he disagreed with the CDC guidelines for opening the schools. So he's now pushing the CDC to override their own guidelines.

So if I've got that right, we don't want the guidance of the nation's top health agency on how to stay safe in a pandemic to be the reason why we don't send our kids to school,  while we're suffering from the worst outbreak in the world.  So the president will tell them to change the guidance.  And it's not the first time he's done that.  He did it back in April and May when he didn't like the CDC reopening guidance for business.  He even pressured governors to ignore that guidance, just like he pushed the CDC to change their guidance for reopening churches. And now he's not happy with the CDC guidance on schools.

So what do you think is going to happen? Look, the last person in the world you can trust right now with the safety of your kids is Donald Trump."

 Epstein ends by saying those he fancies suffering from TDS can end the malady and "they don't even have to put on a mask" only "turn off the television set."  

Yeah, but see, Eppie, Trump will find a way to get back into our attention by again insinuating himself in some other outrageous way, whether via a new, demented executive order - maybe trying to fire Anthony Fauci, or threatening to send active military against Black Lives Matter protesters.

Methinks Eppie has got the wrong derangement syndrome and the wrong cast of victims who are afflicted.  

The great Dem Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan once described ever lowered thresholds for accepting deviant and disreputable behavior in terms of "defining deviancy down."  With Epstein's article on a "TDS pandemic"  we now see just how low Trump's media apparatchiks are prepared to go to justify his deviancy.

Update:  We can now add WSJ columnist Barton Swaim to the stable of Trump defenders and  acolytes determined to 'define deviancy down' for their master.  This after his op-ed piece today ('Will Democrats Accept A Trump Victory', p. A13), writing:

"The president now seems likely to lose. But if he wins may I suggest an alternative theory (to stealing the election)?   A Trump victory in November will have nothing to do with the Russians, the Chinese,  the coronavirus or 'voter suppression'.

It will have everything to do with Democrats' foul behavior over the previous four years."

Democrats' foul behavior?  Is Swaim living on an alternate Earth, or simply blind and fucking nuts?  Did Dems lock migrant kids - often as young as two or three- in cages and separate them from their parents:? Did Dems side with marching Nazis and KKK'ers in Charlottesville?  Did Dems appoint a toady to foul any concept of justice and turn the DOJ into Trump's personal protectors?  Did Dems seek help from a foreign nation (Ukraine)  to take out his political opponent? Thereby violating his oath of office by using it for personal gain?  Did the Dems call the pandemic a 'hoax' for two weeks, wasting valuable time to control the virus, then upend CDC guidelines while also failing to organize a national response? Instead letting states compete with  each other for personal protective gear as is happening again now? Did Dems embrace the notion that masks are for 'elites'  - thereby setting the unmasked against the masked and enabling the virus to spread?

The answer to all the above is 'NO!' - leaving Trump as the only foul entity to be singled out.  As well as now Swaim in his perverse effort to defend him. And no, there is no way in hell we will accept a Trump election win, after the way this demented orange maggot has sought to undermine mail ballots-- which  elimination even he admitted would be the "only way to win".  


See Also:

2020 Elections | Election Integrity

Recruiting Poll Workers Is Key to Thwart Trump’s Attacks on Our Voting Systems

And:

The worst president ever keeps getting worse

Excerpt:

"Think about all that has happened since April 5. That was before security forces attacked peaceful protesters  in Lafayette Square so that Trump could stage a bizarre photo-op. 

Before he pushed to send the armed forces into the streets. Before he embraced white  power and called Black Lives Matter a  symbol of hate.  Before he vowed to veto the defense authorization bill to prevent the renaming of military bases named after Confederate generals. Before he used the novel coronavirus as an excuse to  shut down immigration and threatened to revoke  the visas of college students unable to attend classes in the fall. 

Before he ignored reports that a Russian intelligence unit had placed a bounty  on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. Before he moved to pull out of the World Health Organization."

• Cartoon: Trump's monuments

The "Mueller Show"- Too Many Questions, Not Enough Answers - And Dems Letting Reeps Get Away With Skullduggery

"Mueller’s refusal to play star witness was aided by a disorganised flurry of questions from Democratic lawmakers. Had the party wanted to squeeze more juice from the Mueller lemon, lawmakers would have ceded their time to a single interrogator. Each preferred to retain their five-minute moment on television. The result were squandered hearings that enhanced the impression of Democratic disarray."   - Edward Luce, The Financial Times

Well, the Bob Mueller Show is over. The question now on pundits' minds - as well as everyone else's is: Was it worth it? We knew from the get go the jut-jawed former FBI head was a reluctant witness.  Meaning he had been sending a very clear message: He didn’t want to testify. In other words: Leave me the hell alone.

That was the  the not-so-subtle subtext underpinning  the agreement to submit to House Democrats  (Intelligence and Judiciary Committees) subpoenas, and hence yesterday's "show" which we watched from one end to the other.    What did we come away with?  First,  Mueller was not on his game, particularly in the first (Judiciary committee) session.  He indeed displayed every one of his 75 years of age and at times it was almost painful to watch, especially as the nonstop questions (WAY too many) kept bombarding him - forcing him to often pause to try to get his textual reference (from his own report) orientation.    This isn't just me, or Janice - who fully agreed with that sentiment.  David Axelrod, a former top Obama White House strategist while Bob Mueller was still serving as F.B.I. director, wrote on Twitter.:

"This is delicate to say, but Mueller, whom I deeply respect, has not publicly testified before Congress in at least six years. And he does not appear as sharp as he was then"

Well, that was putting it tamely, to say the least.  Fortunately,  Mueller delivered a far more coherent performance in the afternoon, when the questioning focused on Russia’s interference in the 2016 election instead of whether the president had obstructed justice.  Even so, he was not as focused or verbally precise as he was in his dozens of previous appearances as FBI director.  As I indicated, at times his hesitancy was almost too painful to watch - in the first session. Further,  the tone deaf barrage of questions didn't help, almost turning the a.m. session into a farce.  (With the exception of Jerrold Nadler's 3 well -focused questions getting Mueller to affirm his investigation was no hoax, and no "witch hunt".  Also that Trump broke the law.)

By the time mark of 25 minutes into the hearings, it ought to have been obvious to anyone with a brain that Mueller was not the Mueller of old - but way too old (now) - to deal with the  question onslaught for 6- 7 hours. And even if the Reeps wouldn't pull back, the Dems should have, especially as way too many questions were "Look at me!"  efforts we could have done without. There were also too many questions in literal barrages, off the topic and of the "gotcha" semantics  type, hatched and hurled by the assorted Reeptards.  Like the imp by the name of Doug Collins from GA, and another imp (John Lee Rat-cliffe) from Texas, not to mention the  (Ranking) traitor, errrr Intel committee member,  Devin Nunes who continued to beat the drums for the Steele dossier as the trigger for Mueller's probe in the followup Intelligence Committee session.

Permutations of this  horse shit, via at least 10 attempted questions,  were proffered by Nunes and his clique of clowns time after time during the p.m. Intel hearings.  These sought to portray the ostensible Hillary- FBI- Steele Dossier- Fusion GPS conspiracy as the basis for attacking Trump's legitimacy as president.  All, I might add, skillfully  swatted down by Mueller.  (Who almost seemed to evince a wry smile when Nunes belched about a "conspiracy" - via Mueller & Co.- at the end of the House Intel session..)

In retrospect, it was fortuitous that the DOJ testimony guidelines -  outlined in AG Barr's letter prior to the hearings -  were beneficial in allowing Mueller to bat away numerous nutso questions from the Reeptard Peanut gallery.  Time after time when Nunes or one of his puppets asked about the Steele dossier or Fusion GPS, Mueller simply gave a terse  swipe away,e.g. "I can't get into that.",   "That is outside of my bailiwick"  Or: "That's outside my purview".    So Mueller, even though not having his best day, wasn't having any of this recycled codswallop.

However, what I saw yesterday as the real threat to a long term hearings benefit (for the Ds)  was the Repukes' unified and repeated efforts to malign and undermine Mueller's integrity and character.  They did this by using obscure citations from his Report on certain language used, and related semantics issues pushed via loaded questions .  Likely further emboldened to continue by the total absence of any Dem ripostes or even mild contradiction.  For example, Georgia conservative Collins in his Judiciary turn fired off 8-10 questions, grilling  Mueller on the "colloquial differences" between collusion and conspiracy, trying to trap him into admitting a contradiction, i.e. from the words used in his report.    The objective was to paint Mueller as a liar or misrepresenting his words in his report.   Given Mueller in the a.m. was not his best-  hesitant, halting and slow - it was almost like watching a rabid Rottweiler ripping into an elderly Great Dane.

I literally screamed that the next Dem ought to squelch that meme one time by either allowing Mueller to respond to the obfuscations and innuendo of Collins, or better, making a cogent argument to dispel the wretched efforts at tarring the former special  prosecutor.  But what did we get instead?  The female rep simply launched robotically into her own questions, oblivious to Mueller's struggles,   leaving Collins' scurrilous suggestions hanging in the air like ripe turds at a garden party.

This was repeated when the TX slimeball  John Lee Ratcliffe tore into Mueller for not following special counsel rules and "writing about decisions that weren't reached."  Again, invoking cheap semantics ploys to confuse and obfuscate, as when Ratcliffe bloviated:

"In the special counsel's job nowhere does it say you were to conclusively determine Donald Trump's innocence or that the special counsel report should determine whether or not to exonerate him.  It's not in any of the documents. It's not in your appointment order. It's not in the special counsel regulations. It's not in the OLC opinions. It's not in the Justice Manual and it's not in the Principles of Federal Prosecution."

Going on to witlessly blab:

"So Americans need to know this as they listen to the Democrats and socialists or the others in the aisle  as they do dramatic readings from Volume II of this report that was not authorized under the law to be written.  It was written to a legal standard that does not exist at the Justice Department. and it was written in violation of every DOJ  principle about extra prosecutorial commentary."


The claim by Ratcliffe of Volume II (obstruction )  "not being authorized" is especially choice given Mueller had an unlimited remit to investigate anything connected to the main case. That included any EFFORTS at obstruction such as Trump ordering his attorney Don McGahn to fire Mueller.  The fact he didn't succeed doesn't mean the crime didn't occur ("in the end nothing was obstructed" according to the WSJ editorial yesterday).  Thus, the Trump Reep protectors (and WSJ) either ignore or forget the attempt is also a crime, just like attempted murder is a crime - even if it doesn't succeed.   Just like an attempted theft by a shoplifter is a crime, despite being caught in the act.  (Dem Judiciary member:  "Simply trying to obstruct justice can be a crime, right?"   Mueller: True.)

 In Ratcliff'e pursuit of the semantics of the exoneration theme, he conflates multiple aspects in connection with Mueller's statement that he could not exonerate Trump.  Recall Mueller  (in Vol. 2) identified 10 incidents in which Trump attempted to obstruct justice, for example by firing the director of the FBI, though he stopped short of charging the Dotard with a crime.   In his words:  "If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said that," Mueller said in May during his first public comments about his investigation. "We did not determine whether the president did commit a crime." " 

What Ratcliffe  (and another Reep imp on the intel committee) did was to conflate a positive authority ( i.e. to exonerate) with a negatively -framed  statement embodying an acknowledged limited authority (i.e. "could not exonerate")  Then he desperately tried to twist the latter as unwarranted and disallowed because no special "DOJ document" existed to support it.  Well, of course not, asshole! Because Mueller referenced a negatively framed outcome, not a positive power he innately possessed! Hence, Mueller's act of non-exoneration emerges not as an "extra prosecutorial comment" but a humble recognition on Mueller's part.   As for the claim of a "legal standard that doesn't exist", well no, because it's plain common sense!   Finding insufficient evidence to indict for a crime, is NOT the same as averring no crime. By extension, asserting (as a special prosecutor) he would have exonerated Trump IF the confidence was there to does not constitute misuse of prosecutorial power.  There is no special undocumented "power" being invoked, but rather a qualified take on the extent of that power. A huge difference!

 Thus Ratcliffe was off base in his demand that Mueller provide a DOJ "report" to substantiate that he could not exonerate Trump, as well as claiming the Mueller Report Vol. II was "not authorized".  Obama's former acting solicitor general Neal Katyal  also bounced Ratcliffe's specious malarkey in a subsequent tweet e.g.


But again, we desperately waited for a Judiciary Committee Dem counter blast in Mueller's defense, but none came.  As Janice put it, "The silence was deafening". The next Dem like the earlier one (following Collins disreputable framing)  simply went on with her own questions like a wind-up automaton, oblivious to Ratcliffe's insinuations.  It ought to have been done and IF Dems had done their background checks on this House Repuke they might have learned CNN reported  that Ratcliffe's argument was previously made by Emmet Flood, the former White House lawyer who oversaw the Trump administration's response to the special counsel's probe, to Attorney General William Barr following the release of Mueller's report


At other times, assorted pukes assaulted Mueller's character and reputation, by bombarding him with specious, technical questions that further  weaponized semantics - and which no Dem had any remote idea how to rebut in their own turns.  Or, it may have been they were so committed to their notes and asking their own questions they opted to ignore the GOP subversion. Bad idea! So they allowed the Reeps to get away with withering  and coordinated skullduggery (def. dishonorable proceedings, using trickery, deceitful behavior)

As Janice put it, after another round of GOOPr slanted questions and no direct rebuttal from the House Dems:  "What's the matter, can't they think on their feet? Don't they realize they have to deal not only with Mueller but the Reeps efforts to slander him?"   Well no, hon, evidently
 having spent hours in preparations - even in mock hearings  - according to the pundits, they were not about to allow their own questions to take a back seat to repelling the tactical (and well thought out) Republican attacks. So by the end of the session I had: House GOP 7, Dems 2.

It would have made more tactical sense, instead of  the Dems peppering Mueller with hundreds of rapid fire (often redundant) questions, nearly half of which he had to ask to repeat, i.e  for citations , to instead limit them to one or two and then focus on rebutting the gnarly Reeptard attacks on Mueller's character.   Indeed, former prosecutor Neal Katyal gave the template (getting 3 simple answers)  days before, e.g.

Opinion | With Three Simple Answers, Mueller Can Speak Volumes ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/22/opinion/robert-mueller-testimony-trump.html

It also didn't redound to the Dems benefit to ask so many questions given Mueller was not on his game in the a.m. I also believe it led to dozens of his terse one word responses ("correct", "true", etc.), which as one pundit noted, detracted from a desirable coherence.  I warrant most Americans watching - by the 4th or 5th House Judiciary member's 5 minute turn (with another 5-7 questions in rapid succession) would have simply turned off the tube.  Indeed, if one hadn't actually read the Mueller report the thrust of questioning would have appeared haphazard, and mostly desperate.  Again, I present the link to the full Mueller report which readers can access here:

www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf

At the end of the day, what did we learn? Well, that the Dems need to cease relying on Mueller (or the courts) to carry the ball forward for them on impeachment.  The trope now circulating in the mainstream media is that the Mueller testimony didn't do much at all. As one talking head (Jonathan Karl) opined this a.m. on ABC, "not only did it not advance the ball for impeachment, it may have set it back."

Which merely tells me the Dems need to do their duty to protect the nation, and not depend on outside forces or agents to make the case for them.  Or provide cover- say to drive a "groundswell" of supporting public opinion- to justify opening an impeachment inquiry. As former  Dem Senator and Watergate investigator Elizabeth Holtzman noted on 'All In' last night, the Framers never intended political considerations to govern whether to impeach a "rogue" president. Oh no. In her words:

"People say well we shouldn't do an impeachment now because we can solve it in the next election.  That was exactly the issue that arose on the floor of the (Constitutional) Convention in Philadelphia. When impeachment was mentioned delegates said 'Oh no, we'll solve the problem in the next election'.  But opponents said, look, we can't have a president who's going to destroy our democracy. 

And that argument, that the election will be the solution, lost. The framers said oh no, we can't trust our democracy to someone who is going to destroy it - for any period.  The point is that politics is not just the way to look at this, We have to go at it in terms that congress has the responsibility to save the country.  "

Adding:

"What happens if he's re-elected?  And there is no impeachment?  What is he doing in his next term? If we don't deal with that now, who else will? If   impeachment is not used now, what is the check? We will be well on our way to  dictatorship or some kind of tyranny."


Thus exposing that Pelosi's hope to oust Dotard finally in the 2020 election may come a cropper, and indeed many pundits already see him using the Electoral College to sneak in another win - despite losing the popular vote.  (The National Popular Vote movement might stop that but right now it's halted at 196, and needs 74 more votes from at least a dozen smaller states to go over the top - and is not likely to happen). 

Indeed.  And Mueller made it clear, though he didn't use the I-word specifically, that impeachment is the legal and constitutional remedy for a rogue president who believes he's above the law.   Pelosi might do well to read Mike Littwin's comments in his recent (July 25-26) column in the  COS Independent, e.g.:

"Trump tells the House that he is basically above investigation, and the House doesn’t fight back. It doesn’t rally the troops. It slow-walks any objection through the courts. Despite rumblings, the members have basically followed Pelosi’s lead, even when she openly feuded with the Squad. Trump ended the feud, at least for now. But what Pelosi knows is that an impeachment inquiry would inevitably lead to impeachment. It’s all there. Read the report. I have because, well, it’s my job, and I promise you it’s all in there.

Adam Serwer writes in  The Atlantic  how we react to this moment —

  “The Democratic Party cannot fulfill its constitutional responsibilities because its leadership lives in abject terror of being ejected from office by alienating the voters to whom Trump’s nationalism appeals. In effect, the majority of the American electorate, which voted against Trump in 2016 and then gave the Democrats a House majority in 2018, has no representation.”

The bottom line is the ball is in Pelosi's court to deal with this rogue  resident we have flouting every norm and law, while he's  seeking active help from foreign nations to get re-elected.   She said yesterday after Mueller's testimony she wants to "have the strongest hand" before moving forward, but she already has that "hand" in his total stonewalling which amounts to blatant obstruction and violation of checks and balances.  While Nancy waits for the courts to render critical decisions, Trump is eviscerating her and turning the House into eunuchs.  If the Dems are blown out next year in the general  election- or even just lose the electoral college once more but win the popular vote -   she will have to share much of the blame.

Holtzman's fear - and my own- is if congress doesn't move on this soon, and cease waiting for the courts, Trump may well get a second term and there will be no more checks and balances.

Littwin again:

"If you missed the recent Nate Cohn story on the front page of The New York Times, he wrote that Trump could lose the popular vote in 2020 by 5 percent and still somehow win the Electoral College, thereby rewarding Trump’s efforts to keep America divided." 

Are you listening, Nancy, or do you still have your head buried in the sand?

See also:

Robert Mueller

Here Are 7 Crucial Takeaways from Robert Mueller’s Testimony

And:

Robert Mueller

Witness for the non-Prosecution: Mueller, Pelosi and Trump's Likely Triumph

And:

Little Robbie Mueller’s book report

Bruce Ticker

Robert Mueller

Excerpt:

"As most viewers can figure out, a disturbing pattern emerged long before the 10:52 mark of the House Judiciary Committee’s hearing, which opened at 8:30 a.m. All Democrats on the committee would read excerpts of the report and ask Mueller, the former special counsel, to confirm those excerpts.

Mueller repeatedly affirmed those excerpts with such phrases as “yes,” “correct” and “that’s true.” He conceded that Trump was never “exonerated,” which the report made clear in its description of 10 incidents that constituted obstruction of justice....

One does not need to read the Mueller report – I gave up on it after a few pages – to conclude that this president must go. He is a serial criminal, cruel to vulnerable people whether citizens or migrants, a race baiter and reckless with foreign issues. There is much more, but that is enough. In terms of criminal offenses, there is sufficient evidence to warrant impeachment."

"Mission Accomplished?" Yeppers! A 'Wag The Dog' Show To Divert Attention

"BWAHAHAHA! I wanted my nice, new and smart missiles to clobber them Russians too!"

"We are tethered to a buffoon. He rages and veers, spreading ugliness, like an oil slick smothering everything in its viscous mantle. He’s about to bomb Syria. He’s not about to bomb Syria. His attention span is nonexistent. He attacks the foundations of our Republic: an independent judiciary, a free press, truth itself. His cabinet looks terrorized, the way Saddam Hussein’s once did.

President Donald Trump is dangerous. The main things mitigating the danger are his incompetence and cowardice. We live in a time that teaches how outrage can turn to a shrug, how the unthinkable repeated over and over can induce moral numbness, how a madman’s manic certainties can overwhelm reason.....Trump’s main war, beyond all the military bluster, is on truth. "  - Roger Cohen in NY Times, Saturday

When the corporo-media blabbered about Trump announcing "Mission accomplished!" after his Friday night fireworks display in Syria,  I had to settle down after howling with laughter for nearly a full minute, as wifey can attest. Why? Because those were the same dumbass words used by bumbling birdbrain Gee Dumbya Bush on an aircraft carrier - before the reality of what he started in Iraq came back to bite him in the proverbial butt.

In  the Weekend WSJ  piece 'Pentagon Urges Caution On Syria Strike', (p.A6) we read the supposed move to strike was after:  "Mr Trump was moved by images of children with foam bubbling from their mouths, aides said."                                                                             

Give me a break. When all is said and done Trump cares more about his night time cheese burger not being undercooked than those gassed kids  foaming at the mouth in Douma.    Sorry, but at 71 - and having investigated a lot of political chicanery (as well as political assassinations) over the past five decades.   I am way too cynical a person to swallow any codswallop churned out by  "aides" quoted in the mainstream media.  So why the hell would I blandly accept that the lying thug occupying the White House suddenly found grace,  humanity and a moral conscience in response to the awful scenes of gassed Syrian kids? 

Nope, this  Friday night fireworks farce - which was almost entirely cosmetic - was all about using crass deflection to take the heat and spotlight of the media off  Trump, given the latest Mueller probe revelations.   If you need a template, Google  "Wag the Dog".  That's where this "show strike" sits.   Wait. Did I just write "show strike"? Yes, I did, after reading those exact words in the Weekend WSJ  piece .To wit:

"The military had identified potential windows for strikes including one Thursday night.  Gen. Mattis cancelled them out of concerns that anything other than a 'show strike'  risked broader escalation with the Russians in particular."

Got that? So despite Trump’s tough language,  e.g. "Get ready, Russia! The missiles will be coming!", Dotard's only  option - short of possible nuclear war-  was one with no genuine punch to damage Assad’s broader war machine.  Or  negate his government’s command and control of its forces - i.e.  beyond its chemical weapons. This is backed up by the post-strike reports  (Denver Post, April,, 14, p 14A) of Syrians pouring into the streets chanting cries of conquest at "the West's failed efforts to subdue them."   We also learned that hundreds danced and waved in the streets of Damascus Saturday morning. And why wouldn't they,  given those cruise missile strikes did nothing to really take out Assad's forces, e.g. which had since occupied Douma?

 Nor did they take out the  Syrians' most substantial military assets - including jet fighters- which had been rapidly moved into protected bunkers after idiot Trump tweeted his threats to strike days in advance.  (Yes, some of the Tomahawk missiles did eradicate the residue of chlorine gas left in drums. But let's try to remember the chlorine was one of the items Assad was permitted to keep after last year's strike, and there is no real evidence - e.g. from blood samples of purported victims - that a nerve agent like Sarin was used.)

In the same (WSJ) piece we also learned Trump was upset and "unhappy"   because "he had been pushing for an attack that would not only punish the Syrian regime but also exact a price from two of its international patrons, Russia and Iran."   The meathead had to be informed by Mattis and the other generals of the risk of accidentally killing hundreds of Russians and starting a wider conflict, even nuclear war. (See also, 'Trump Bowed to Pentagon Restraint', WSJ today, p. A1)

Clearly, Dotard never learned or read about the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. However, another real possibility is that this unglued mutt wanted to make an example of a strike on Russian military  interests to "prove" there was no Russian collusion.  I.e. "How could I have colluded with 'em if I just lobbed missiles at 'em?"   Taking us all for morons.

But the generals' persistence is precisely why the attack ended up a "show strike'.  So when Doturd blabbed "This was a precisely executed strike"  - well yeah, if you regard it in the sense of  a precisely executed  "nothing burger" show strike, careful to avoid hitting Russian targets. And let me make it abundantly clear here, for anyone slow on the uptake, that I was absolutely NOT rooting for serious target strikes, or any at all! I wanted the imp to go before congress for an authorization like Obama did way back when, as opposed to using some canned executive authorization based on 9/11. As Sen. Tim Kaine put it this morning, on CBS Early Show:

"The president is wrong about being backed by the Constitution. This was an illegal military act. It is one I would have likely supported if he brought it to congress. I mean, we have a president not a king.  And it's the Constitution which says it is congress which gets to declare war not the president.

What the president can do is defend the United States against imminent attack. But if it's a matter of going on offense, against a sovereign nation of Syria, he's got to come to congress."

 Sen. Kaine also made pointed reference to the fact there is  no overarching strategy, no long term goals that the Trump bunch has defined.  These, he added, are what determines whether a military response makes sense or not. In other words, these one off missile show strikes merely disclose Trump and his gang are ad libbing.  Or perhaps trying to get simpletons to believe he won't tolerate crossing "red lines", but Obama would.

But anyway, given Friday night's fireworks were basically....well, fireworks (at $1 m a pop), there is  unlikely to be any change in the overall balance of forces in Syria seven years into its bloody civil war.   The only real way out of the morass, as one commentator on MSNBC put it days before,  is for Trump to sit down with his pal Putin and work things out.  This is given that Putin basically controls all the forces the U.S. opposes.

What has most astounded me in the aftermath of Friday's night's show is when I read how Trump's favorable ratings had gone up to rival those in his first 100 days, making me wonder how much lower the nation's average I.Q. had dipped. (Wifey estimated just two ticks above "moron" level.) The fools who've been polled to enhance Dotard's approval seem not have processed that a  degenerate mutant isn't "moved" by any sights or scenes of human misery because: a) he really doesn't see any misery other than in reflections of his own ego, and b)  a psychopath lacks any capacity for empathy - which would be required to act on a genuine moral basis. Hence, he lacks any moral compass or conscience, operating instead solely out of a premoral mind and narcissism. That is, his only concerns are immediate and self- gratifying.  He saw the images of the kids foaming mouths-  from the chlorine gas - and decided his ego would be gratified if he used their plight as justification for a fireworks strike on Syria. This self-serving action would  then take the media spotlight  (and scrutiny) off him. Case closed.

So, the motivation for this cruise missile show strike was clearly to gain a wag the dog distraction.  Any person of basic sentience  and intellect, who can read and process analytically,  should be able to see this. You don't need  a Mensa level I.Q.,  or shouldn't.  Especially after it was revealed that the Mueller investigation now has evidence that  Michael  Cohen really did visit Prague in 2016 to meet with the Russkies, as the Steele Dossier had documented.

Yes, we are learning more and more of the Steele dossier's validity with each passing day and you can be assured the piss segment of that document will also be verified at some point. To recap:

"Trump's perverted conduct in Moscow (2013) included hiring the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton Hotel. where he knew President and Mrs. Obama (whom he hated) had  stayed on one of their official trips to Russia, and defiling the bed where they had slept by employing a number of prostitutes to perform a 'golden showers'  (urination) show in front of him.   The hotel was known to be under FSB control with microphones and concealed cameras in all the main rooms to record anything they wanted to."

There is no reason at all to doubt this account - despite the fact the breathless media has declared it the most contentious (and "salacious") part of the dossier. The reason is that the reported behavior (from Steele's  "Source E") is perfectly compatible with Trump's psychological profile of malignant narcissism, sexual libertinism and vengeful payback. It is indeed exactly what this POS would do to a bed which he knew the Obamas had slept in. And moreover, this behavior is totally consistent with that of a loathsome asshole who brags about grabbing pussies.

In many respects, one might use the metaphor of Trump grabbing the nation's "pussy" Friday night to distract it from his looming legal problems, and especially the news in the wake of the Cohen bust.   And why wouldn't he,   given the tidal wave of negative news flooding in, right up until Dotard ordered the strike? As Max Boot put it in the Sunday  WaPo:

"Friday ... brought news that Cohen is under criminal investigation by the Justice Department for a litany of offenses. That same day, the deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee resigned after the disclosure that he had paid $1.6 million in hush money to a former mistress, a Playboy playmate, whom he had impregnated. The broker of the hush money was none other than Cohen.

It is hard to imagine how Trump can do his job — for example, approving military strikes on Syria — while drowning in this rising tide of scandal. There is an old tradition, more honored in theory than fact, that issues of national security are kept separate from domestic politics, but Trump is utterly incapable of making any such distinction. For him, everything is political — and all politics is personal."

What has in the end been fortuitous for us all, the remaining sane citizens of this country, is that Trump did not actuate the wider strikes he really wanted,, namely on the Russians. Had he been enabled and done so (and make no mistake John "Ripper" Bolton was prompting him) we might not be having this conversation at all.  Let's thank our lucky stars or whatever,  that Gen. Jim  "Mad Dog" Mattis is still in the White House to exert some level of oversight on this impetuous, psychopathic, septuagenarian toddler.

See also:

‘Mission Accomplished!’ But What Is the Mission?

And:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/chris-floyd/78689/alchemical-reactions-transmuting-death-dealing-dung-into-pr-gold

Excerpt:

If  the US/UK/France really believed the building they targeted (and hit) in a heavily populated civilian area of Damascus was actually making chemical weapons, what do they think would have happened if all that toxic material had been dispersed by explosions throughout the surrounding neighborhoods? Hundreds if not thousands of civilians would have died. So either the "Western powers" knowingly risked killing thousands of innocent people -- or else they knew the building was not actually a chemical weapons facility.

And:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/eric-margolis/78683/playing-with-nuclear-matches

And:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/richard-eskow/78705/7-questions-about-the-syria-airstrikes-that-aren-t-being-asked