Watching Each Other

In November, 2015 Donald Trump called 

for increased domestic security measures, namely a "database" of Muslims in the country. Now he has a new tactic in mind: getting people to spy on their neighbors.

“The real greatest resource is all of you, because you have all those eyes and you see what’s happening,” the business mogul told the crowd at a rally in Myrtle Beach, S.C. Tuesday night, according to The Hill. “People move into a house a block down the road, you know who’s going in,” he said. "You can see and you report them to the local police."

He acknowledged this wouldn't be a perfect system: “We know if there’s something going on, report them. Most likely you’ll be wrong, but that’s OK."

"Getting people to spy on their neighbors," the Time reporter cynically, but accurately, noted. Donald Trump may be an inspiration, albeit in a state wise enough  to have decisively rejected him last November.  Ashleigh Albert of The Philadelphia Inquirer reports

Drivers on New Jersey state highways can now dial #77 to report distracted driving, the Division of Highway Traffic Safety announced Thursday. Since 1995, #77 in New Jersey has been used to report aggressive driving. It will now support both types of calls.

The initiative is the first of its kind nationally, according to the Division of Highway Traffic Safety. Pennsylvania does not have a hotline to report aggressive driving.

Of course it's the first of its kind nationally, because it's a lousy idea.  However, it's hard to tell that to a father who lost his 18-year-old daughter to a driver using his cell phone:

“A lot of people don’t even bother to report distracted driving, but it’s the same thing as drunk driving, which is why I support the initiative 100 percent. I think it’s a great thing and offers hope,” Kellenyi said.

No, it's not the same thing. There is actually a means, the breathalyzer, to verify an individual is driving while intoxicated, and a standard which is determined legislatively.  A charge of driving while distracted is far more vague, more difficult to enforce, and subject to varying interpretations and abuse.

A State Police dispatcher simulated use of the system when she

seemingly asked a caller who had dialed #77 for the make, model, color, and license-plate number of the car, if possible. She then forwarded the call to the corresponding local police agency, which will send local officers to the scene. If the behavior was later witnessed by an officer, a summons could be issued.

Regrettably, we are not told specifically that this would constitute a "chargeable offense," allowing insurance companies to raise their rates, perenially among the highest in the nation.  In either case, it will provide a nice revenue boost for local governments.

New Jersey's Attorney General probably is aware of the irony of encouraging drivers to use their cell phones to call police to tell them other drivers are using their cell phones, yet

emphasized the importance of not becoming a distracted driver in order to report other reckless drivers. Drivers are encouraged to pull over, use a hands-free headset, or have a passenger make the call.

If the license-plate number of the allegedly distracted driver is provided, a letter detailing the incident will be sent to the vehicle owner's home.

For those keeping score at home, the governor of the State of New Jersey (currently Republican Chris Christie) is very generously empowered constitutionally and has the power to appoint an Attorney General partial to a big, intrusive government (libertarian proving even a stopped clock is right twice a day, below).





It should be a boon for estranged husbands or wives. Imagine the ability to tell your wife as she flies out the door (perhaps with the child you've been arguing over) that the local police department will be notified of her driving behavior. That will do wonders for the family unit.

In all fairness, New Jersey isn't the first place to ask citizens to keep a close watch on their neighbors, just as Donald Trump wasn't the first politician who believes they should keep tabs on them. Bahrain, Vietnam, Iran, and China have elevated it to an art form.  And Syria.






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Trumpian Behavior

"Now that Obama's poll numbers are in tailspin," tweeted Donald J. Trump in October of 2012, "watch for him to launch a strike in Libya or Iran. He is desperate." He repeated this advice more than a dozen times in 2013 and 2014.

That strike against Libya or Iran never came.  In retrospect, we should have expected that as president.Trump would launch a military strike, legitimately prompted or otherwise, of some sort somewhere in that theatre.

If you're Donald J. Trump, it's what you do- whatever heinous thing it is that you accuse your opponent of doing, This President- with his extensive and profitable business enterprises around the globe- has been in constant violation of the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution. This is anastoundingly ironic violation committed by the man whose twin campaign slogans were "Make America Great Again" and "Crooked Hillary."

The New York Times on January 27 reported that the President

spent his first week in office repeating the lie that between three million and five million people had voted illegally in the November election, first to members of Congress, then on Twitter, then in an ABC News interview, then again on Twitter on Friday, citing an unsubstantiated claim popular in conspiracy circles.

On Wednesday, Mr. Trump had announced in a pair of tweets that he would be asking for a “major investigation” into voter fraud, “including those registered to vote in two states.”

There is no word on whether the Trump family or regime remains infested with individuals committing this dastardly form of voter fraud. Chief Strategist Seve Bannon, Press Secretary Sean Spicer, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, son-in-law and diplomat-at-large Jared Kushner, and daughter Tiffany Trump may still be thwarting American democracy by being registered in two states.

Given that this is not illegal, the President of the United States is ignorant and corrupt, and the newest Associate Justice of the Supreme Court is a plagiarist, this inconvenient fact is approximately #998 of 1000 sins of this young Administration.  But it should be a reminder both that GOP voter suppression is nothing more than a tool to elect Republicans, and that President Trump, most adoring that which he publicly most abhors, is a thoroughly unpredictable, hence dangerous, man.












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Mrs. Kushner Is A Trump

Several years ago, when right-win talk radio was in its infancy, there was in New York City a conservative show host named Bob Grant, born Robert Ciro Gigante. Lacking a Ph.D. in English grammar but possessing a keen nose for controversy, he often would refer to an individual he disagreed with as "a fake, a phony, and a fraud."

There is no indication whether Grant ever knew Ivanka Trump, but he might as well have. Annie Karni of Politico reports that Ms. Trump recently was interviewed by CBS' Gayle King, wherein she
"defended her role both as a champion of women and as someone who is choosing to stay away from the public fight to defund Planned Parenthood." She

defended her position, arguing that she is playing a long game, and that speaking out on issues where she doesn’t see a win won’t help her be effective in the White House.

“I’ll take hits from some critics who say that I should take to the street,” she said. “And then other people will in the long-term respect where I get to. But I think most of the impact I have, over time most people will not actually know about.” She has also noted that the line item for women’s health increased in the Trump administration’s proposed budget.

The latter smacks as an accounting trick because funding for women's health is cut in Trump's budget.

Most of the impact I have, over time most people will not actually know about. The future may not be ours to see, but the present is in plain view.

The president's daughter and trusted advisor was not able to stop her father from pushing the GOP's healthcare bill by playing on his opposition to reproductive freedom. "The irony is" Trump tweeted on March 24,"that the Freedom Caucus, which is very pro-life and against Planned Parenthood, allows P.P. to continue if they stop this plan!"

Ms. Trump's alleged influence did not extend to Vice President Pence, who on March 30 cast the deciding vote in the Senate to advance a bill which would allow states to deny funding to Planned Parenthood. Nor did it stop daddy from encouraging the legislation when twenty-four days earlier he told The New York Times

As I said throughout the campaign, I am pro-life and I am deeply committed to investing in women’s health and plan to significantly increase federal funding in support of nonabortion services such as cancer screenings.   Polling shows the majority of Americans oppose public funding for abortion, even those who identify as pro-choice. There is an opportunity for organizations to continue the important work they do in support of women’s health, while not providing abortion services.

"Polling shows the majority of Americans oppose public funding for abortion." The wife of Jared Kushner was unable even to prevent the President from implying the existence of public funding for abortion, illegal (except in the rarest, most dire circumstances) under terms of the annually re-authorized Hyde Amendment.

Posting on Slate, Matthew Dessem notes President Trump's

policies couldn’t possibly be any worse, which means it’s impossible that Ivanka made them any better. That shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who’s followed empowerment feminism, a philosophy whose alliance with capitalism means its support of women stops the second rich people start getting uncomfortable. Or as (Samantha) Bee puts it, Ivanka “pushes #WomenWhoWork, but not in, like, a pushy, cunty way that would alienate social conservatives.” It seems like pretty good preparation for her current job, which, as Bee ably documents, is pushing Donald Trump’s punishingly racist, sexist, and anti-poor policies, but not in, like, a badly-dressed, southern accent way that would alienate social liberals. Nice work, if you can get it.











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Competence, Maybe

On the opening day of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Monday, March 20, 2017, Utah Republican Orrin Hatch at or about 11:45 a.m. stated  "Judge Gorsuch’s legal experience is well-known. … he has the highest level of professional qualifications including integrity, competence."

Guess again, Senator. Politico reports

Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch copied the structure and language used by several authors and failed to cite source material in his book and an academic article, according to documents provided to POLITICO.

The documents show that several passages from the tenth chapter of his 2006 book, “The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia,” read nearly verbatim to a 1984 article in the Indiana Law Journal. In several other instances in that book and an academic article published in 2000, Gorsuch borrowed from the ideas, quotes and structures of scholarly and legal works without citing them.

The findings come as Republicans are on the brink of changing Senate rules to confirm Gorsuch over the vehement objections of Democrats. The documents could raise questions about the rigor of Gorsuch’s scholarship, which Republicans have portrayed during the confirmation process as unimpeachable.

The White House has defended Gorsuch vigorously against the charges, although "six experts on academic integrity contacted independently by POLITICO differed in their assessment of what Gorsuch did, ranging from calling it a clear impropriety to mere sloppiness."

There is quite an irony here, although not this one.

In rationalizing his decision not to consider President Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland as Associate Justice of the Surpreme Court, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell stated on March 16  "The Senate will continue to observe the Biden Rule so that the American people have a voice in this momentous decision."

The "Biden rule" is not constitutional mandate, law, or even well-understood principle.  Delaware Senator Biden in 1992 gave a speech on the floor suggesting that consideration of a nominee to the Supreme Court during a presidential election year might promote "conflagration."

There was no opening at the time, the statement was made three months later into the election cycle than was Garland's nomination, and Biden recommened in the same speech that consideration of a nominee be made during the transition period.

But let's play along. McConnell was suggesting that such an  admonition (however misundersood) was coming from a serious, respectable, and credible Democratic Senator. Thus, it should be notable that the same Joseph Biden was impelled to drop out of the 1988 presidential primary campaign after footage appeared revealing that he had lifted details of the speech, and of the life of, British politician Neil Kinnock without attribution.

During the recent presidential transition period, Monica Crowley withdrew as a nominee for a position on Donald Trump's National Security Council after a report that she had plagiarized several portions in her book entitled "What the (Bleep) Just Happened."

There are far better reasons to reject Neil Gorsuch than the probability that he is a plagiarist. There undoubtedly otherwise would be 52 Republican votes (most, enthusiastic) in the U.S. Senate for a candidate who, in the words of one commentary, "generally landed his judicial gavel on the opposite side of rights for workers, women, students or those who do not have the big money to influence elections. In other words, people who look to the courts to provide relief for wrongs committed by people and corporations in more powerful positions."

So Gorsuch still probably will be approved. But Democrats need to point out that if he is to be, it demonstrates that the Republican Senate will approve for any position any hard-right, extremist ideologue, lack of integrity notwithstanding.

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Loose Tweets

In an interview with the Financial Times published Sunday, President Trump stated "You know, if you issue hundreds of tweets and every once in a while you have a clinker, that's not so bad."

Ironically, that itself is a clinker, or rather a clunker, which presumably is what Trump meant. But lest we think he was unusually self-effacing by admitting that his batting average falls somewhere below .997, the President went back to his well-known well yet again, contending  "My last tweet, you know the one that you are talking about perhaps, was the one about being in quotes, wiretapped, meaning surveilled. Guess what, it is turning out to be true."

In fairness, that was not the tweet in which he suggested that Barack Obama himself had set up the bugs (cartoon below from Monte Wolverton/L.A. Daily News).  Rather, Trump was referring to the tweet, one among a series, alleging "Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism."

Two weeks after the barrage, Trump would claim "Wiretapping is pretty old-fashioned stuff,". "But that really covers surveillance and many other things."

No it  doesn't. All wiretapping is surveillance but not all surveillance is wiretapping. Wiretapping is wiretapping.  When the President's press spokesperson attempted to rationalize the tweet by claiming the boss was trying to expand the meaning of the word, linguist Jeffrey Nunberg instead explained 

Is “wiretap” a colloquial term? Not by my lights, but it might seem that way to Trump; the fact that he writes it as two words, spelling the second one “tapp,” suggests that he hasn’t encountered it in writing all that often. As Lucy Ferris has written of Trump’s chronic misspellings, “If you see a word correctly spelled millions of times, then regardless of the peculiarities of English orthography, you’re apt to know when it looks ‘wrong.’” 






Whatever evidence Senate Intelligence Committee chairpersonNunes apparently received from the Administration and then surreptiously traveled to the White House to give to the President has not been revealed to the general public. But it should not be forgottent that Trump claimed or strongly implied a) there was wiretapping; b) he was the target; c) Obama ordered the acting; d) nothing was found; and e) it is McCarthyism.

As of now,  we cannot determine the validity of (a), (b), (c), or (d) and know that (e) is false.   Even if the first four parts are valid, that would leave the President of the United States and leader of the free world with an average of 80%. That's a little more than one among the hundreds Donald J. Trump claimed.

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Put Up Or Shut Up

Think Progress' Aaron Rupar reviewed Sean Spicer's Friday news conference and noted the presidential press secretary

attacked Hillary Clinton, saying that she was the one with the Russia problem.

“It was Hillary Clinton that was the architect of the last administration’s failed reset policy,” he said. “She told Russian state TV it was designed to strengthen Russia. That was their goal, to strengthen Russia.”

He continued: “She used her office to make concession after concession, selling off one fifth of our country’s uranium, paid speeches, paid deals, getting personal calls from Vladimir Putin. I think if you really want to talk about a Russian connection of substance, that’s where you should be looking.”







 
Spicer did not say what "concession(s)" he was speaking of, nor whether Donald Trump, as either a private citizen or presidential candidate, ever disapproved of it.

The calamity about the uranium deal got its start in the notorious "Clinton Cash" by Peter Schweizer, turned into a movie produced by a Breitbart guy named Stephen K. Bannon (yes, that Steve Bannon). Checking out the claim that Hillary Clinton engineered the uranium deal, Snopes found

Among the ways these accusations stray from the facts is in attributing a power of veto or approval to Secretary Clinton that she simply did not have. Clinton was one of nine cabinet members and department heads that sit on the CFIUS, and the secretary of the treasury is its chairperson. CFIUS members are collectively charged with evaluating the transaction for potential national security issues, then turning their findings over to the president. By law, the committee can’t veto a transaction; only the president can. According to The New York Times, Clinton may not have even directly participated in the Uranium One decision. Then-Assistant Secretary of State Jose Fernandez, whose job it was to represent the State Dept. on CFIUS, said Clinton herself “never intervened” in committee matters.

Neither did Spicer specify what "paid speeches, paid deals" he was referring to. Presumably, he was talking in part about the Clinton Foundation, about which Snopes remarked

Of the $145 million allegedly contributed to the Clinton Foundation by Uranium One investors, the lion’s share — $131.3 million — came from a single donor, Frank Giustra, the company’s founder. But Giustra sold off his entire stake in the company in 2007, three years before the Russia deal and at least 18 months before Clinton became secretary of state. 

Of the remaining individuals connected with Uranium One who donated to the Clinton Foundation, only one was found to have contributed during the same time frame that the deal was taking place.

Spicer's attempt to distract and divert attention is not only vague and dishonest, but also slick. Lost in his charges/non-charges was his reference to personal calls from Vladimir Putin, an inference to.... what?

There may be something to Spicer's claims, and it is not reassuring that Mrs. Clinton has not chosen to rebut the charges.  Still, the burden of proof is on the claimant to present some sort of evidence which, of course, Mr. Spicer will not.

It is a standard tactic of this Administration to make baseless attacks, or at least ones it finds inconvenient to substantiate.  Either way, they believe voters, whether supporters or critics of the President, are never owed the truth.

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Worse Than Insane

Keith Olbermann displayed impressive understanding of foreign policy when after President Trump recently presented to German chancellor Angela Merkel a bill for NATO expenses, he remarked

Geographically, Germany is essential to American security. It is our symbolic front against Russia and Russia's primary geo-poitical goal since 1945 has been to break up the German-American alliance.  Politically, Germany is essential to American security because the last time we pushed it away, after World War I, when it rose up again it was powerful enough to start World War II.If we help it with its self-defense, even if we pay a little more of the freight tahn it does, we are in effect paying for our self-defense.








Olbermann's argument about Donald Trump, however, is less persuasive when he cites a "twenty question screening test for psychopaths" in which the maximu score is forty points." He states "the threshold for probably being a psychopath is thirty points. Trump's words and actions got him thirty-two points."

Psychoanalyst Steven Reisner would not agree. Alluding to what we lay people might recognize as a variant of self-fulfilling  prophecy, he explains

the real problem with diagnosing Trump as mentally ill based on deviation from the norm is that Trump himself is a master at determining what counts as normal. Especially in our brave new world of reality television, Trump has an outsize influence—he is such a virtuoso of media-made reality that media coverage itself often helps turn his wildest statements into fact sooner than fact checkers can convince Americans otherwise. Let’s not forget that immigrants may not have been rioting in Sweden when Trump made his mysterious claim, but they actually did begin rioting soon afterward. And Trumps’ far-fetched statements about a deep state and rampant immigrant terrorism may actually help bring these about, strengthening Trump’s hand. And now, even his outlandish claim of being wiretapped is being given some credence.

Though regrettably (favorably) quoting Freud (Reisner is an analyst, after all), Reisner recognizes that Trump is (italics his)

a reality artist, one who is adept at the strategies that turn his biggest whoppers into reality. It is reminiscent of Charles Foster Kane, in Orson Welles’ classic film, who, when informed by the war reporter he dispatched to Cuba that there was no war to be found but only delightful girls and beautiful scenery worthy of prose poems, famously replied, “Dear Wheeler, you provide the prose poems, I’ll provide the war.”

When last July Olbermann contended that Trump could not pass a "sanity test," he nonetheless recounted an episode lending credence to the idea that Trump is less unbalanced than canny operator. He recalled that he

had interviewed Trump as long ago as 1983 and always thought him a horse’s ass, but after running into him when we both worked at NBC, and then in the lobby of one of his apartment buildings in which I lived, I was stunned to encounter a quiet, succinct, seemingly sincere co-worker and (in essence) landlord. In one role he described himself as an anti-Bush, pro-Obama liberal; in the other, he urged me to contact him personally with any problems or suggestions about the building. Then he got on the campaign stage and, boom! He was America’s newest Mussolini Impersonator.

Ever the mental health professional, Reisner does not explicitly label Trump a con man but explains

By the sheer force of his personality, power, bullying tendencies, and money, Trump can bend reality to his perspective, which he does using a simple technique: He simply shifts the evidence for what is real from facts to feelings.

Thus he employs to great effect his strategy of appearing insane, impulsive, vengeful, and unpredictable—frightening his opponents with “American carnage” at one moment and taking advantage of their relief, the next, when he suddenly appears compassionate, reasonable, and “presidential.” He intensifies his supporters’ feelings, too, when it serves his reality—elevating their pain and suffering into evidence of his own sanity in a world gone mad and mobilizing their aggression at those who can be blamed for their misery. Bobbing and weaving between cruelty and compassion, impulsivity and sobriety, he makes his own definitions of what is real, changing them when they cease to be useful and turning the tables on his critics when challenged significantly.

There may be nothing more characteristic of 21st century American society than the triumph of the heart over the head, emotion over thought, and Reisner maintains

We must understand that Trump thrives in the aftermath of his provocations. Like a looter who instigates a riot, Trump is a master at navigating the chaos he himself provokes. To call Trump’s exaggeration of immigrant criminality delusional is to miss Trump’s real aim of bolstering the emotional evidence for his narrative: that outsiders have stolen Americans’ birthright and only a strong leader can make this right. To make his claim an emotional reality, he plans to create a new police force to crack down on immigrant crime and widely publicize the evidence.

In the same veing, though less scholarly and more succinctly, Steve M. captures the essence of support for the President when he remarks

Trump fans don't want him to be a president -- they want him to be an action-movie hero. They want him to transcend politics. No, that's not quite accurate -- they want him to kick politics' ass. They want him to leave politics bleeding to death in an alley. And many of them, although probably fewer and fewer every day, still think that's possible.

It is probably inaccurate to  consider Trump mentally ill and misleading to maintain that he couldn't pass some sort of "sanity test."  Doing so is, as Reisner points out

playing right into Trump’s preferred reality—no longer holding him to account on the basis of law, politics, and personal responsibility, but rather transferring him, like Brer Rabbit, into the briar patch of feelings, charisma, and threat. And in that particular briar patch, Trump is the professional and the psychiatrists are amateurs. So, like the gangster or outlaw who runs out of bullets when faced with a stronger foe, they stoop to the last resort and throw their gun: He’s crazy! When in reality what they are saying is: He is off-the-charts scary, and I don’t know how to stop him.

"We must abandon the comforting delusion that Trump is delusional," concludes Reisner. Let's not let President Trump off easy when the reality is probably even more dangerous.

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