The Trump Tapes: The beginning of the end

It looks like Trump is finally meeting his waterloo. Not that he had much chance of being elected even before the Trump tapes leaked yesterday.  Now, however, instead of merely losing in a landslide, we have speculation of him bowing out of the race, and it’s a foregone conclusion that his campaign will go down as the most disgraceful in history. (for now)

One wonders why these tapes couldn’t have been leaked before the primaries.  It’s hard not to be cynical.  The media, liberal and conservative alike, have been feeding us 24 hour a day Trump coverage — it has been in their interest to keep him in the race as long as possible.  Did the leaker sit on these tapes knowing he or she would get a better payday in October than in December? For that matter, how much did he make on these tapes?

We didn’t learn anything new from the tapes.  Did anyone actually believe that Trump was a gentleman?  He has spent the better part of his campaign spewing racism, sexism and xenophobia.  It’s not that far of a stretch to imagine him as a sexual predater.  When you look at the feigned shock of Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence,  it’s hard to feel anything other than revulsion.  He has no right to distance himself from Trump.  Especially considering he has all he morality of a hyenna.

The big loser is Ted Cruz.   After endorsing Trump last month, Cruz lost every shread of credibilty he had gained from his speech at the Republican convention in which he pointedly failed to endorse Trump, advising the delegates to “…vote your consience.”  I’m picturing Cruz alone in his house with a 5th of scotch smacking his forehead Chris Farley style while crying, “I’m so stupid!”

Has there ever been a person that looked forward to a debate more than Hillary Clinton is looking forward to tomorrow’s rematch with Trump?  It’s going to take all of her restraint to refrain from opening with her pattented shimmy while exclaiming, “Okay!”

 

In his cups

Yesterday somebody climbed Trump Tower using suction cups.  Who could have been so attention starved to have attempted such a stunt?

The clown car has arrived

The Republican convention, which will conclude tonight with a speech by the potential OOTUS (Orangutan of the United States) has not disappointed.  Outside Cleveland’s Quicken Loans Arena you have cops and media outnumbering protesters by an impressive margin, but inside the Arena is where the real crazy people are.

On Monday night Melania Trump gave a speech and we awoke Tuesday morning to the news that large chunks of it had been plagiarized from Michelle Obama’s 2008 convention speech.  The media erupted in a swarm of indignation and outrage, but can I say something?  Who cares!  So she pilfered a few lines from the first lady.  Here’s a news flash:  It’s not a rare thing for potential first ladies to speak about family values or their husbands leadership ability.

What irks me the most about this [non] scandal is you can just picture some smarmy millennial on his iphone googling away until he uncovered the ‘scandal of the century.’  I guaranteed you this kind of thing has happened before but nobody cared.

Now we all owe a debt of gratitude to Lyin’ Ted Cruz for making our Wednesday night entertainment-packed.  Cruz’s speech, in which he failed to endorse Donald Trump, while delivering the opening salvo of his 2020 campaign, was like the high school kid getting his revenge on the school bully.  My hat is off to him.  He provided the image of the convention:  The Trump family standing in shocked disbelief, frowning and scowling.

I can’t wait for tonight.

 

Get on your knees, Mitt!

You can’t deny — this Trump stuff is gold.  I just woke and wondered if I dreamed that in one news cycle Trump insinuated that Mitt Romney would have blown him for an endorsement – AND – bragged about his penis size on national TV at a debate.  You can’t make this stuff up!

Trump is actually causing the Republican party leadership as much angst as Democratic voters.  You have people like Peggy Noonan talking about the breakup of the Republican Party.  That’s extreme, but even to broach something like that is remarkable.

If Trump were to win the presidency the worst damage he could do would be via Supreme Court Justice appointments.  Don’t get me wrong, this is, in and of itself, pretty bad, but it’s no worse than if Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio were making the appointments.  The Congress would not allow him to build a wall on the Mexican border, or deport Muslims.  They would be just as divisive under him as they are under Obama.

Now if only the Democrats would realize that Bernie Sanders has a much better chance of defeating Trump than Hillary Clinton.  Imagine a Sanders-Trump contest.  All the center-right Republicans would threaten to move out of the country.  Soar-ry, Canada!

Troubling Times

The Trump stuff is starting to get a little scary. He’s like a cartoon character — a buffoon – and it’s hard to take his platform seriously.  After all, other than promising to build a wall, or make Mexico build a wall, he really hasn’t said anything. If you go by his history he’s even a little more liberal than his hapless opponents.

No, what’s worrying me are his followers.  Trump’s jingoistic, xenophobic banter has brought to the surface a virulent racism in this country, so much so that I’m beginning to wonder if we’ve progressed at all since the 1950s.

Coded racism has long been a staple of Republican (and even Democratic) candidates.  One need look no further than patron saint, Ronald Reagan launching his 1980 campaign at the Neshoba County fair, a few miles away from Philadelphia, Mississippi, a town associated with the 1964 murder of civil rights workers.  There, he used the term, states rights, a kind of code for tacitly approved racism.

But with the ascendance of Trump there is no longer a need for code words.  He can vilify Muslims and Mexicans, thus empowering rednecks across the land to speak their minds.  And I’m not just referring to the South.  There were plenty of racists in the New York metropolitan area six years ago when I lived there.  Drive ten miles in any direction from Manhattan and you’ll see what i mean.  Long Island and New Jersey are cesspools.

Even here in the Bay Area, one of the most liberal places on the planet, you can find racism.  A singer with whom I worked with just last night friended me on Facebook.  No sooner did I accept her request than I saw that her page was littered with racist posts.  One showed a pair of four or five year old African American boys teasing and hitting a white girl, with the implication that violence starts at a young age.  She also compared these children to Palestinians.

By itself the post is merely ignorance.  In light of the violence and bile we have seen at Trump rallies, however, it’s unsettling.  What level of racism would be unleashed should this man somehow gain the White House?

 

 

Sayonara Scalia

And just like that the Supreme Court has a chance to become a moral, humane body.  The Republicans will do their best to obstruct but they are a beaten party, their power waning faster than Nazgul’s after the ring was thrown into Mt Doom.

There is precedent to stall a Supreme Court appointment. In 1969 it took a Democratic Congress 391 days to appoint Harry Blackmun after Abe Fortas retired.  Bring it on, I say, because the next president will be a Democrat.  Wait a minute, what’s that I see in the distance?   Why it’s the clown car pulling up to the TV studio, and out pour the Republican candidates for president!

Scalia was proof that intelligence and education do not equate to morality.  He was a virulent racist and homophobe who wrote that African Americans belonged at ‘slower track,’less advanced  Universities.

He, like his fellow right wing Justices was an abomination.  He promoted states rights, which is thinly veiled code for white’s rights, and he was anti abortion, gay rights, and gun control.  He was a strict constitutionalist until it meant going against the document, which he did in Bush v Gore.   He, along with the four other right wing justices, voted in favor of allowing Florida Secretary of State, Katherine Harris’s previous certification of George Bush as the winner of the primary to stand, thus giving him the presidency.  This would lead to the deaths of thousand of Iraqis, as well as the severe erosion of civil rights, continued degradation of financial regulations, and ultimately the great financial collapse of 2007.

There are people in power of great intelligence who are amoral and inherently evil.  Scalia was one of these people and it is of utmost importance to this country that we replace him with someone with courage and moral integrity.  Appointing Justices is the most important thing a president does.  A vote for oompa-loompa Trump or batshit-crazy Ted Cruz is a vote for the further erosion of civil rights.