August 24, 2018--My New Best Friend: Jeff Sessions

How could it have come to pass that Attorney General Jeff Sessions, in spite of his political beliefs, would become my new best friend and hero?

I must be hallucinating. My meds can have that affect. I'll check with my neurologist. 

But in the meantime, in case you missed it, here's the latest--

On Wednesday Trump taped a segment that was broadcast Thursday morning on his favorite morning talk show--the simply idiotic Fox & Friends.

He turned to one of his favorite bête noirs: Jeff Sessions, who he accused of never having "taken control" of the Justice Department. What he means by not taking control is that Sessions should not have recused himself from the investigation of Russia's interference, in support of Trump, in the 2016 presidential election. 

To Trump, not understanding the responsibilites of Attorneys General, Sessions job as AG was to protect him from all investigations and criminal accusations. Not uphold the law, but to have Trump's back. Even if it meant acting illegally.

On Fox & Trump mused, "What kind of man is this." 

In an unusual pushback, Sessions told Trump just what kind of man he is--

"I took control of the Department of Justice on the day I was sworn in.

"While I am Attorney General, the actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations. I demand the highest standards, and where they are not met, I take action. However, no nation has a more talented, more dedicated group of law enforcement investigators and prosecutors than the United States." 

He added, "I am proud to serve with them and proud of the work we have done in successfully advancing the rule of law."

Do I hear the sounds of walls tumbling down?

June 13, 2017--Jack: Stolen Elections

"I know you're fed up with me and I assume so are most of your readers." Jack was more than half right.

"Most for sure, but not all," I said. "I don't know this for certain, but most people who read my stuff are on the progressive side of issues and, I suspect, don't have too many people like you among their friends or acquaintances. In fact, some tell me that political things have gotten so heated and ugly that they don't want to have anything to do with Trump supporters. That would include people like you."

"'People like me'? I think I know what you mean, but enlighten me."

"Arch conservatives. Donald Trump voters. People I hear from tell me that you aggravate them. You upset them with your willingness to overlook and rationalize the crazy things Trump does. I know you won't admit it, but a lot of what he says and does is really crazy."

"To tell you the truth I am not so eager to talk to them either. They look down their noses at me. To them, maybe you too, I represent the uneducated unwashed. You think you understand me, have me all figured out. Actually, you have me stereotyped and . . ."

"You don't have your own stereotypes?"

"Could be. I'll have to think about that. But there is one thing I am certain of."

"What's that?"

"When it comes to being obsessed with the Russians meddling in our elections your people are a bunch of hypocrites. You too."

"This doesn't concern you?" I said, "That Russia, which could be considered and enemy of ours, may have interfered with our presidential election? Maybe even influenced the outcome? You're OK with that? You call that hypocrisy?" I was outraged.

"You guys have a big problem with this because your candidate lost. If she had won, I'll bet you and they wouldn't be so apoplectic about the Russian hacking business."

"I beg to differ. As an American, not as a Democrat or Republican, this is a very big issue."

"Let me come at this a different way. You're old enough, right, to remember the 1960 election? Kennedy versus Nixon?" I nodded. "Tell me how Kennedy won?"

"What do you mean? He won the popular vote and the Electoral College vote."

"And how did he manage to do that?"

"I think I know where you're going with this."

"A lot of credible historians, and not just liberal ones, feel that his running mate, Lyndon Johnson, rigged the election in Texas and Kennedy's father Joe paid off Mayor Daley in Chicago to steal the vote in Illinois. With Texas' and Illinois' Electoral votes Nixon would have had enough to get to a total of 270, one more than the 269 needed to win a majority in the Electoral College. In other words, plain and simple, your party stole the election."

"First of all, there's a big difference between a foreign power meddling in our election and . . ."

"And," Jack said, finishing my thought, "if the candidates win by playing conventional dirty tricks on each other, like buying votes in Chicago, that's OK with you? To me this sounds like splitting hairs."

"This is something we'll never agree about. I see a big difference between the two situations."

"And I see hypocrisy. OK, so answer me this, and tell the truth--you're sort of all right with what happened in 1960 because your guy won but are furious now because your candidate lost? If Hillary had won with Russian help, would you be so insistent that we have to get to the bottom of this?"

"I hope so."

"One final thing--back in 1960 did any Democrats or liberals speak out about how essential it was to find out if Johnson and Daley cheated? Stole the election for Kennedy?"

"I don't remember it that well," I said, not feeling I was on solid ground.

"Well," Jack said, "I looked it up and couldn't find anyone from your side of the aisle clamoring for an investigation or anything like that. Maybe I missed something. Perhaps one of your friends who read what you'll write about our conversation will find something to contradict me. My two dollars says they won't."

March 22, 2017--Wag the Dog

If I am right that the Russian-connection dots lead back to Donald Trump, and if we learn that in one way or another he authorized some of his people to collude with their Russian paymasters, this situation is much more serious than any other presidential scandal from Teapot Dome to Watergate to Monic Lewinsky.

If true, expect the master of distraction, out of fear and desperation, to trot out the wag-the-dog defense. Wag the Dog, recall, is the title of a Clinton-era 1997 black comedy in which a political spin doctor (Robert De Nero), days before the presidential election, to distract the public from a sex scandal, hires a film producer (Dustin Hoffman), to stage a fake war with Albania.

It worked. The president is reelected.

What distraction might we expect from our current president?

Minimally, a war with North Korea.

Not that North Korea doesn't deserve serious attention and, who knows, at some point military action to "take out" their nuclear arsenal and missile delivery systems since they are working on developing the capability to reach our west coast cities.

But under unrelenting political pressure and media scrutiny, Trump may ignore the diplomatic approach and reach for the "football" and nuclear codes.

My bet, though, is that he has something more Trump-like in mind. Something more reality-show.

He will fulfill one of his most outrageous campaign pledges--he will get the Attorney General to arrange for Hillary Clinton to be indicted.

That would push everything else off the front pages. There will be no talk about healthcare; no back and forth about defunding Meals On Wheels or Planned Parenthood; no coverage of Judge Neil Gorsuch's Supreme Court nomination hearings; no gossip about Ivanka Trump's new West Wing office; and, most important to Trump, talk will be suspended about his possible involvement with the Russians to undermine the presidential election.

It would be his equivalent of Wag the Dog's fake war with Albania.

"Lock Her Up"

March 21, 2016--The Russian Connection

Here's what happened and it's pretty obvious.

Admittedly this is speculation but since it explains most of Donald Trump's behavior regarding Russia's tampering in our election, let me air it out--

Last spring when it was obvious Donald Trump would win the nomination and then that summer, after securing it, one or more members of Trump's entourage with on-going Russian connections (fierce supporter General Michael Flynn and/or campaign chairman Paul Manafort) told candidate Trump that their Russian connections, or handlers, indicated that they had the capacity to hack into Hillary Clinton's campaign and in that way dig up enough dirt to help the underdog, Donald Trump, win the election.

As someone who loves winning above all else, Trump with a nod and a wink gave them the go-ahead.

The rest of the election is history.

All the while, the FBI or NSA, as part of their routine work, were tapping into the Russian ambassador's and other Russian officials' electronic communications.

In the process, they stumbled on Flynn's and Manafort's machinations and began a deeper investigation into their work with Russia, including their involvement in the Clinton sabotage effort.

So here's the big problem--

If a version of this is true, the connected dots lead directly back to Donald J.Trump.

Trump of course knows the full extent of this, especially his own direct involvement, and thus the frantic attempt to divert attention from this festering situation and out of desperation turn the heat on his predecessor, Barack Obama, accusing him of "wiretapping" Trump Tower.

Here's how this will unfold--

Paul Manafort, eventually facing 20 years in prison, will make a James McCord, Watergate-like deal with the prosecutors and throw President Trump under the bus.

That is unless Trump has already been pardoned by his successor, President Mike Pence.

Left to Right--Manafort, Trump, Flynn

February 27, 2017--A Week Without Trump: The Curated Life

This is not going to be easy.

I am addicted to Donald Trump and the only way out is to go cold-turkey. I am obsessed with all things Trump from the entertaining to the outrageous, the infantile to the crypto-totalitarian, and also the hallucinatory. So I need to dose off for a week to see if that works. If it doesn't, I may have to check into the Betty Ford Clinic. I suspect they're offering a new Trump Intervention Program for which there's probably a waiting list.

This means no Fox News, no MSNBC, no CNN. And of course no Steve Bannon, no Reince Priebus, no Ivanka, and, the one I'll miss the most this week, no Kellyanne Conway.

But if I want to cleanse myself, after writing and posting 207 pieces about Trump and his world, it has to be for me no-Trump-none-of-the-time. I'll leave all-Trump-all-the-time to the cable news networks.

One caveat--if it is revealed that Trump knew about or, better, orchestrated the reach-out to the Russians working to undermine Hillary Clinton's campaign in order to help himself win the election, or if the gossip in the infamous BuzzFeed dossier is confirmed, I will not be able to contain myself. I know I will fall off the wagon and immediately resume blogging about Trump.

So, between now and then, here is Monday's Trumpless piece about curated lives--

While waiting for the Trump era to implode, out in LA, some, a few, are living the very good life. A life of unimaginable luxury or vulgarity--take your pick--that is being curated for them because they lack the confidence and taste to figure out what in fact constitutes a lavish life.

For example, there are a couple of places for sale, one asking $250 million, the other twice that, both of which can serve as metaphors for this new Trompian version of conspicuous consumption.

The former, the one that can be yours for $250 mil, at 38,000 square feet, sprawls across the hills of Bel-Air and comes with12 bedrooms, 21 baths, a four-lane bowling alley, and three kitchens. It has an 85-foot infinity pool and a 40-seat theater with reclining seats and a film library stocked with more than 7.000 pre-selected titles. There is a mammoth wine cellar with nothing by the finest wines, carefully pre-selected because, I am certain, the Russian oligarch who will likely buy this pleasure palace does not have the taste buds nor nose to appreciate anything other than icy shots of Stoli. Wine to him will be all Gallo. Dare I say a case of Lafite Rothschild before swine.

But here's my favorite part--as the New York Times reported four-weeks ago, a story that got lost in all the Trump clutter, in addition to the multi-million dollar art collection (included in the purchase price) the less expensive of the places comes with a 12-car garage, or "auto gallery," that includes a collection of collectable cars, including a 1936 Mercedes worth, they say, $15 million. But--a downside--there is no car elevator like the one Mitt Romney famously had in his La Jolla beach house. Nothings perfect.

And how could I forget--in this Age of Trump for two years the place also comes with a fully-paid seven-person staff, including a chef, chauffeur, and masseuse.

As the seller said, "It's all about the feeling and experience you get when your in the house." Or pool, or bowling alley, or movie theater, or one of the nearly two-dozen bathrooms.

*   *   *

For the second day of my week without Trump, with spring training underway, I am working for Tuesday on a baseball story.

So far, so good. Today I managed to mention Trump only four times. For me I consider this progress. Tomorrow . . .

February 20, 2017--From Russia With Malice

The one and likely only good thing that Donald Trump as the new president seemed to have had a chance of contributing to stability in the world--an improved relationship with Russia, actually with Vladimir Putin--may no longer be much of a possibility.

Trump alluded to this during Thursday's hallucinatory press conference, saying maybe he won't be able to "get along" with Putin. Of course blaming the changing situation to attacks by the media and the torrent of leaks that have began to detail the many contacts between members of his team and the Russians, possible even intelligence operatives. Carryings-on Putin will want to be able to plausibly deny.

During the campaign a budding bromance seemed to be developing between Trump and Putin. This was widely mocked in progressive circles as naive on Trump's part, that Putin was not only president of an increasingly belligerent Russia but also a thug and murderer. Trump, though, shrugged this off, saying admiring things about Putin (how "strong" and "smart" he is) and telling Bill O'Reilly that we Americans are not so "innocent"--we also kill people, including heads of state.

Trump brushed this aside, claiming, in my view correctly, that it is in our best interest to have working relationships with all foreign leaders, even unhinged tyrants such as Kim Jong-un of North Korea, who he said during the campaign, he would be willing to talk with, meet with if there was the possibility of making advantageous deals to ratchet back their nuclear capabilities.

But now, because of the unravelling of the Trump administration and perhaps Trump himself, on embarrassing public view during the 77-minute press conference, the Russians appear to be backing away from working with him. This may have been accelerated by Trump's off-hand comment about how popular it would make him if he "shot that [Russian spy] ship right out of the water."

Welcome to World War III.

Hopefully Putin doesn't seem ready for that. He has his own $100 billion fortune to protect.

So ex-KGB agent Putin is not taking too kindly to the evolving revelations about the working connections between representatives of his government and members of the Trump team, including Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort, both of whom have had lucrative relationships with Russia, including with Putin, who likely played them, softening them up for future use as the Trump insurgency built momentum.

As evidence of this cooling bromance, the Times noted late last week that the Russian news channel, Rossiya 24, which had General Flynn on its payroll, "halted its usually glowing coverage of the American president in an apparent sign of displeasure by the Kremlin." Read, by Putin.

Putin certainly knows all about the Russian collaboration with Trump staff that intensified during the run up to Trump's nomination and the likely coordination between Flynn and Manafort among others and the Russian hackers who helped bring down Hillary Clinton's campaign. One does not have to be conspiratorial-minded to connect these dots. Nothing of this magnitude would have been possible without Putin's full knowledge and sign-off.

And, is it too much of a stretch to assume the same thing is true about Trump, who reportedly was obsessed and directly involved with even the smallest details of his campaign, including the signage?

Further, though it seems like years ago, there is that 35-page dossier which was released just a month ago by BuzzFeed that includes compromising material about Trump's peccadilloes while in Moscow for the 2015 Mss Universe Pageant.

And let us not forget--though it has been barely reported--what Donald Junior had to say back in 2008, nine years ago, about the Trump Organization's financial deals with Russia.

Finally reported by the Washington Post last July at a real estate conference in New York, Don Jr. revealed that "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. . . . We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia."

He may be referring to Russian billionaire oligarchs buying 9-figure penthouses in various Trump towers with laundered cash, but then again, without Trump's tax records, who knows.

Once more using Occam's Razor to connect the dots in an effort to come up with the simplest and best explanation for seemingly disparate and contradictory events, one sees an increasingly compromised and perhaps cornered President Trump, now untethered by Putin who is watching the shredding of the Trump presidency and perhaps elements of American democracy. Also, with the goods on Trump's people and perhaps Trump himself, Putin does not have to do very much to have his way with us or extend his imperial reach beyond Russia's borders in the Middle East and Central Europe.

On the other hand, when desperate people feel cornered, they are often at their most dangerous.

January 10, 2017--Delegitimization

I love irony, especially when it lacerates the over-self-confident. None more so than Donald J. Trump. It is especially exquisite when it gets under the skin of the thin-skinned. Say, someone such as Donald J. Trump.

Etymologically, "irony's" literal meaning from the Latin is "simulated ignorance."

The ironist pretends to be ignorant but in truth is sly as a fox. The target, especially when literally ignorant about his own inner realities--once more one might cite Donald J. Trump--doesn't get it but the rest of us are in on the ironic joke. Considering Trump's living in a post-fact world of his own creation, it feels satisfying to see him skewered by simulated facts masquerading as ignorance and squirming to figure out why so much, so many seem to have turned against him. This is the best comeuppance for a bully who lacks self-insight.

Irony currently on display when it comes to the president-elect involves the intelligence community's report about the various ways the Russians attempted to interfere with our recent election.

The report concludes that, with the full endorsement of Vladimir Putin, Russian hackers intercepted and published through WikiLeaks thousands of emails from inside the Clinton campaign and via government sponsored disinformation activities tried to put their thumb on the scale to tip the electoral balance to Trump.

For days prior to the release of the report, Trump did all he could to mock and disparage the impending disclosures, claiming that the U.S. intelligence agencies are biased toward him, all the while trying to keep the finger of blame turned away from his new best friend, Vladimir Putin.

Most of Trump's Twitter raging was directed at any implication that he was elected because he received Russian assistance. He did not speak one word, and still hasn't, about how egregious it is that the Russians would try to influence and thereby undermine one of our most-cherished freedoms--the right to vote and to have every vote counted.

Trump is blind to this critical issue since he is so obsessed with trying to cling to the legitimacy of the election, the legitimacy of his election.

As long as he won he appeared not to care at all about what the Russians were up to. The total narcissist, Trump saw the matter to be all about himself.

But what a wonderful irony his behavior evokes--this man who rose to political prominence by calling into question Barack Obama's legitimacy, spending three years leading the birther movement that claimed Obama was ineligible to be president because he was not born in America, Trump is now worried that his presidency will be viewed the same way. That he too will be seen to be illegitimate.

Also, Trump's attack-dog response to the Russian meddling, the kind of take-no-prisioners politics that worked so well for him during the nomination process as he dismissed one opponent after another mainly through taunts and insults, is not working so well when it comes to the push-back reaction of the leaders of the intelligence community and senior members of Congress.

Senators in particular have brushed off Trump's lack of seriousness when it comes to what the Russians have been up to. They rightly see it as an assault on our democracy, not on Trump, and thus they have been holding hearings to get to the bottom of what transpired. They see this in bipartisan terms--when our basic institutions are attacked, we should come together in response, not give it the dismissive back of our hand. To anyone worried that a potential crypto-fascist Trump will not be held accountable, restrained by our system of checks and balances, this is an encouraging case. It's not all about an untouchable Trump.

And, in this context, it is not a bad thing that most Republicans in Congress did not support Trump and in all likelihood intensely dislike him. I'm being kind.

Now here's the tricky part--

Trump's one early geo-political opportunity is to establish a working relationship with Vladimir Putin that is mutually beneficial. In Trumpian terms--striking a deal that would involve Ukraine, Syria, ISIS, the Baltics and the rest of Eastern Europe, and perhaps even resumed nuclear weapons agreements.

I suspect that Trump is holding back on his criticism of Russia and Putin so as not to undermine this possibility. If there is any hope for a working relationship between our two countries how much should he call out and sanction Russia? Just enough to show them there is a real price to be paid for such behavior but not too severe a one as to preclude a resumption of detente.

Russia's economy is near collapse, ours is so debt-ridden as to be functionally bankrupt and so conditions are ripe for such a deal. How someone as flawed as Trump can get us there is anyone's guess.

January 2, 2017--24 Hours At the New York Times

It took David Sanger, chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times, all of 24 hours to switch the story line.

On Friday his front page article was about how Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin, without overly joining forces, had "boxed in" Donald Trump by Obama's expelling 35 Russian diplomats, otherwise known as spies, and how it was expected that tempestuous Putin, as during the Cold War, would "retaliate" by doing much the same thing to American spies stationed in Russia.

Slipping into Soviet-era rhetoric, the Times party line proclaimed the boxing-in to be extra clever on Obama's part since what was Trump going to do--on his first day in office say to the Russians, who he appears eager to make a "deal" with, "Never mind. Your spies are welcome to return. I don't want this to inhibit my budding bromance with Putin."

If that came to pass we'd all be relieved to know that John McCain doesn't have his hands on the nuclear codes.

This first political reaction by the Times to the Obama moves, was that it effectively exposed Trump's naivety when it comes to Russia in the person of Putin, and would trigger an immediate retaliatory response by the hotblooded Russian president that would so sour any possibility for a real resetting of our relationship with Russia that Trump's efforts to cozy up to Putin would fail even before he was inaugurated and that would expose that Trump is as inept in dealing with the Russians as have been Obama and his succession of diplomats and secretaries of state.

Trump and the Republicans might manage to repeal Obamacare, chipping away at Obama's legacy, but this stealthy move by Obama would guarantee that Trump's presidency would start off with a whopper of a foreign policy failure. Not quite of Bay of Pigs or 9/11 or Syria magnitude, but still a big and embarrassing blunder.

Then a funny thing happened on the way to the boxing-in.

Putin did not retaliate. No U.S. spies were to be expelled. He said that wasn't a good or necessary idea because he didn't want to"create problems for American diplomats." The U.S. went low and he went high.

And then, undoubtedly not able to stifle a chuckle, added, "Furthermore, I invite all children of US diplomats accredited to Russia to the Christmas and New Year tree in the Kremlin." And then he signed the press release, in English, "Vladimir Putin."

Seizing the same moment, Trump tweeted--

Great move on the delay (by V. Putin). I always knew he was very smart.

Within minutes the Russian Embassy in Washington retweeted it.

And then within moments after that David Sanger and the New York Times had a different front page story--this time headlined: "From Russia, an Opening." "Risky," they warned, but an opening nonetheless. No longer so much a boxing-in.

Is it any wonder that a disproportionate number of chess grand masters are Russian?