Final stretch

 

(9.5-minute read) 

Even though the publicity was almost entirely negative, there was a great deal of it, and that drew a tremendous amount of attention to Trump Tower. Almost immediately we saw an upsurge in the sales of apartments. I’m not saying that’s a good thing, and in truth it probably says something perverse about the culture we live in. But I’m a businessman, and I learned a lesson from that experience:  good publicity is preferable to bad, but from a bottom-line perspective, bad publicity is sometimes better than no publicity at all. Controversy, in short, sells.

Trump: The Art of the Deal, pages 175-176[1]

~

            Trump recognized that his support was perverse back in 1987 when he published this book.  His need for publicity is purposeful.  Trump wants publicity, good or bad.  Corporate media helps Trump pound in the lies with wall-to-wall coverage.  It worked then. 

It works now.

Finally got here

            As we enter the final stretch the rapist DonOLD Trump is visibly deteriorating before our very eyes.[2]  He shows up at rallies looking disheveled.  He’s low energy.  Really, he’s just a fraction of his former 2016 self.  He calls countries and leaders by the wrong names.  He gives non-answers to questions that are at times literally world jumbles.  He says that he will accomplish things within days or weeks that he didn’t accomplish when he was president.  Sometimes he just glitches out entirely on words.  He can barely hold onto a coherent train of thought.  His rhetoric is becoming even more vile and threatening.  He has dreams/concepts of committing violence against people.  Like Nixon Trump has an enemies list.[3] 

“One rough hour.  And I mean real rough.  The word will get out and it will end immediately.  It’ll end immediately.”[4] –DonOLD Trump

            If President Biden had said even a fraction of what Trump is spouting, corporate media would have given it wall to wall coverage and been calling him for him to step down.  Seriously.  Trump confused North Korea, Iran and Iraq multiple times.[5]  If they report Trump’s malfunctions at all they usually sane wash what he says or does.  Trump’s surrogates will jump through hoops to try and sane-itize Trump and claim that he talks in abstracts or doesn’t really mean what he says.  They portray Trump’s incoherency as being intellectual when in reality he speaks at the 4^th grade level.[6]  (That’s being charitable, others say 3^rd grade.)

No.  Mr. inject-some-bleach-ex-President the rapist Trump means the crazy shit he says and does. 

Trump has the depth of a shallow man.

Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?

            Of course we are.  For fuck’s sake, people, we were in a pandemic and thousands of people were dying and being hospitalized every day.  MAGA either likes to forget about the last year of Trump’s administration or their brains are as fried as his.  Trump was in office for 4 years not 3.  That last year still counts.  And Trump botched it bad.

Why isn’t Trump running on his actual record as President?  I mean besides saying that everything was the greatest in the history of the United States if not the world during his administration.  Trump utterly failed in his handling of the pandemic.  A few hundred thousand people died needlessly.  Naturally Mr. inject-some-bleach doesn’t accept responsibility and blames everyone else. 

& During Trump’s time in office a record number of guns were sold.[7]  & The murder rate went up.  & There were 1707 mass shootings in his 4 years.[8]  (Mass shootings continue to increase.  More guns.  More shootings.)  & Trump got rid of Roe v. Wade.  & He still claims that everybody wanted him to do that.  & The longest government shutdown in American history happened.  (He tried again during this 2024 election cycle but was unable to get enough MAGA Republicans to go along with it.)  & He withheld $400 million in aid to Ukraine.  & He is estimated to have made over $160,000,000 off of foreign nations while he was in office.[9]  & The Saudis gave Jared and Ivanka a couple billion dollars to play around with.[10]  & In spite of saying that he wouldn’t have time to play golf when he was President taxpayers paid $141 million for him to golf 279 times while he was President.[11]  & I’ll stop with a short list this time. 

            There are a couple of points that I’ll make early in what will be a lengthy piece.

            & Trump will lose the popular vote even if he gets elected again because of the electoral college. 

            & At a rally Trump said that when he gets reelected, he’ll change Ft. Liberty’s name back to Ft. Bragg.[12]  The crowd went wild.  White racists eat this stuff up!  Ft. Bragg was named after a Confederate General that was relieved of his command by Jefferson Davis for being a poor commander. 

& That so many cheered renaming a fort back to a racist General that helped try to overthrow our democracy sums up why so many racists support the racist Trump. 

This is the MAGA ideology and morality.

Things to come.

            Trump’s dominant policies are playing the perpetual victim, lying, hate, and revenge.  He wants to stop people, not just media, from being able to say anything bad about him.  He wants his political opposition tried and jailed.  He wants people hurt.  Physically hurt.  He talks about having a day of violence when President and the MAGA Supremes have given him immunity.  (If Vice President Kamala loses should President Biden have a day of real rough violence against MAGA leadership?  Would he have the same immunity that Trump claims?)

            And this is as good place as any to interject that yes, Trump’s being tried in multiple courts.  He along with some of his supporters and associates committed multiple state and federal crimes when he tried to overthrow our democracy.  Yes, usually it’s innocent until proven guilty but then Trump keeps bragging about the crimes he committed. 

            Prosecutor Jack Smith is doing document dumps of the evidence that he has gathered, 165 pages so far with several hundred more to be released.  The evidence Smith has gathered came from MAGA Republicans not Democrats or political opposition.  Cabinet members.  Aids.  Advisors. Assistants.  Appointees.  Lawyers.  People from his inner circle.  People that were with him almost every day.  They are uniform in their opinions of what kind of man Trump is.  Over 70 witnesses have testified so far before Grand Juries.  Republicans. 

            The only reason that all this is taking place now right before the election is because Trump dragged the procedures out every step of the way in every criminal case that he’s involved in.  You know why? 

Trump knows he’s guilty.

Immigrants are the new Jews.

            Like Nazis scapegoated the Jews MAGA scapegoats immigrants.  Trump uses the same playbook that the Nazis did.  Practically every question that Trump’s asked he responds with the evils of immigrants.  Whether the question is about crime, the shortage of housing, economics, hospitals, childcare, hurricane relief, you name it MAGA blames immigrants.  Trump throws around numbers that are at best misleading and often wholly inaccurate.  Like when he mentions crime statistics that cover 40 years as if they all belong to the Biden Administration when in fact they come from lots of administrations, including his. 

            Before I go any further Trump did not have a copy of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.”[13]  He was given a copy of “My New Order” by a friend.  His ex-wife said that he read from it.  Trump said that he didn’t.  His running mate JD Vance once called Trump “America’s Hitler.”[14] 

            What Trump is doing mirrors what Nazis did during Hitler’s rise to power.  Because Trump, like the Nazis, lumps in LGBTQIA people and the disabled with his comments. 

That didn’t end well for Germany or the world.

Guardrails will be gone

            If the rapist Trump wins this time there will be NO guardrails to stop him from executing any of his dark impulses for vengeance and taking government apart.  He will be surrounded by sycophants and enablers.  Trump is a billionaire dilettante buffoon that can’t be believed and is easily manipulated.  The dictators that Trump admires aren’t afraid of him.  All they have to do is sit back and watch MAGA take the country apart without ever having to fire a shot.  Look at the damage that MAGA has already done already to our nation since they slimed upon the scene.  Thanks to the MAGA Supremes and their take on “presidential immunity”, Trump will be free and unfettered to execute his policies of revenge and hate.

            Trump will be free to round up Hispanics.  When Trump first started running for office in 2015 he made racist remarks about Mexicans that got him fired from his show the Apprentice.[15]  There are a lot of Hispanics citizens that will be caught up in Trump’s violent raids to be sent to camps.  Yet there are Hispanics that support his racism.  If you support MAGA and Trump you support racism. 

MAGA won’t stop with immigrants.

Stiffing people.

            Trump has been stiffing working people most of his adult life.  He learned it from his racist daddy.  I’m not going to do another list here because the list would be too long.  Trump stiffs or grifts municipalities, vendors, employees, lawyers.  Good grief, he even stiffed Rudi Giuliani on $2 million in legal fees![16] 

            What Trump says he’ll do and what he actually does can be two entirely different things.  President Obama had passed a rule increasing the number of people eligible to receive overtime pay to 4.2 million people.  Trump cut that back to 1.2 million people with his rule that reduced the number of new people eligible to receive overtime.[17]  Trump and MAGA Republicans opposed increasing people eligible to receive overtime.  So now the man that bragged about cheating workers out of overtime pay says that he’ll eliminate the tax on overtime in order to curry union votes.[18]    

Trump’s actions say otherwise.

Same 2020 threats

            Trump is making the same claims about Harris that he made about Biden in 2020.  An economic collapse didn’t happen.  Instead President Biden, with VP Harris at his side, put our nation’s economy back together.  Not an easy feat but Biden pulled it off. 

            Trump made a lot of dire predictions about what would happen in 2020 if Biden was elected.[19]  Trump said that the stock market would collapse.[20]  It didn’t.  Instead it has achieved record highs.  Trump claimed would be a depression, the auto industry would be eradicated, there would be a total locked down, there wouldn’t be any Christmas or other holidays, guns would be confiscated, religion would be gone, oil would be taken away, We’d have to learn to speak Chinese because China would own the United States, the suburbs would be destroyed, police departments across America would be defunded, and on and on. 

None of his predictions came true.

https://yadayadayadablahblah.blogspot.com/

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump:_The_Art_of_the_Deal

[2] Deteriorating, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0vdmf_cIsU

[3] https://exhibits.lib.unc.edu/exhibits/show/watergate/nixon-s-enemies-list

[4] https://www.c-span.org/video/?538747-1/president-trump-campaigns-erie-pennsylvania

[5] Confused, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0vdmf_cIsU

[6] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/06/us/politics/trump-speeches-age-cognitive-decline.html

[7] https://www.factcheck.org/2021/10/trumps-final-numbers/

[8] https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/

[9] https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/10/trump-foreign-business-deals-1020

[10] https://www.newsweek.com/jared-kushner-addresses-2-billion-given-saudis-1869757

[11] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/278-years-golf/

[12] Ft. Liberty back to Ft. Bragg, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFXk6qAGM6U

[13] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-hitler-mein-kampf/

[14] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-hitler-vance-quote/

[15] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fired-the-apprentice/

[16] https://www.newsweek.com/rudy-giuliani-doesnt-collect-trump-money-election-georgia-defamation-1966289

[17] Trump overtime rule, https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/aug/20/tim-walz/fact-check-tim-walz-misleads-about-trump-and-overt/

[18] Hated overtime, https://www.youtube.com/shorts/nYSghlnIjyA

[19] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/apocalypse-delayed-trump-promising-doom-never-comes-rcna170151

[20] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-stock-market-prediction/

BC MTG

 

(4-minute read)

Bee healthy

            For sure I’m going to upset some health food fanatics here but I need to talk about the latest Batshit Crazy (BC) stance that Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (MTG) has taken.  Now granted it isn’t as crazy her claim about Jewish space lasers or the weather being controlled by “they” as in they’re controlling the weather and starting hurricanes for no earthly reason.  But her encouragement to drink raw milk has the distinct possibility of causing harm to people.[1]  And I say this as a person that LOVEs milk and that had raw milk a LOT growing up.  My Aunt and Uncle had dairy cows and people bought milk from them. 

            I spent a lot of time with my grandparents growing up.  My Aunt and Uncle provided them with raw milk.  (I also spent time with them.)  For breakfast I would have a huge bowl of corn flakes and pour that top cream on the cereal.  OMG!  It was so good! 

            Later in life when my folks moved to a bigger city my dad ran a milk route for a Mennonite that had several trucks.  He did it for the extra income.  Mom stayed at home to watch over the kids.  (I’m here to tell you we were a full-time job.)  It wasn’t a delivery route but a pick-up route. 

I would often go with him on weekends.  While he was unloading his truck I would wait for him in the drivers’ room.  It was NOT a lounge.  Know what they had in there?  A chest freezer loaded with ice-cream bars.  ALL kinds of ice cream bars.  They were free to the drivers!  So when I went with Dad I could count on having an ice cream cone in the end.  I would have one.  One!  Because … Dad.

Anyway. 

Farmers would set their milk cans in wash tubs in front of their barn or house.  Dad would pick them up, load them in the truck and take them to the dairy.  It was a hard job.  He would lift and stack those cans of milk clear to the ceiling of the truck front to back.  He was short but strong.  He had worked loading coal onto trucks when he was young using a big steel scoop shovel.  Dad was used to hard work.  He had got out of the army when WW2 was over and was diagnosed with heart problems then.  He died at the age of 57 from a heart attack.  Might have been from the stress of spending 6 months under fire during the Battle of the Bulge.  I’m the current keeper of the bronze star he was awarded and the flag that draped his coffin.  I have wandered again.

Back to MTG and raw milk. 

Later on the trucks were upgraded to tanker trucks.  Loading them was a lot easier for Dad.  Here’s the thing.  Dad had to test those loads of milk while still in the farmers refrigerated tank, before putting it in the tanker truck.  He had to check for a variety of things.  Blood  (Yes blood).  Odor.  Appearance.  And such.  If any of it was bad Dad couldn’t load it because it would contaminate the entire load in the truck.  The milk in the truck was tested again before he could unload the truck. 

Do you know why all of this testing was done?  If you are one of those folks that struggles with the obvious it’s because RAW MILK kept making people fucking sick!  Some folks don’t like doing business with a product that comes from a business that makes them fucking sick!  In the case of raw milk, thanks to Louis Pasteur,[2] business responded.  At least the businesses that cared did, especially once the government made them care.

Occasionally Dad had to reject loads.  He hated it when he had to do that.  He was a factory worker and understood that the farmers needed the money.  There were some rather intense conversations with them at times but Dad had to think of all those that were involved, including his boss.  The community of people had to come first over the needs of the individual. 

            Here’s the part that I don’t understand.  Why would people want to go back to a time when that’s all that people had available in their diet, people got sick from food-borne illnesses more often and life expectancy was lower?  Like a small child’s age lower. 

Well, it’s because MAGA doesn’t believe in science and progress.  They reject history and live in a mythical world where people like MAGA Marjorie believe that Democrats control the weather and cause hurricanes.[3]  And they seriously believe this kind of outrageous garbage and much much worse. 

Sadly there are many other MAGA members of the House and Senate that are like MTG or even more extreme.  And they joined in with right-wing social media, Russia and Iran in pumping out lies during a hurricane disaster to make things worse.

Chaos is what MAGA does best.

https://yadayadayadablahblah.blogspot.com/

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[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-raw-milk-trend-b2625332.html

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Pasteur

[3] https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/oct/10/marjorie-taylor-greene/us-rep-marjorie-taylor-green-cited-patents-as-proo/

Trump’s accomplishments

 

            Just in case a few of you missed me and my posts, I am dealing with some health issues.  My posting is going to be a little more sporadic at times in the coming weeks. 

A list of FIRSTs for Trump.

I borrowed this list from Wikipedia.[1]  It’s sourced. 

• First president to reach the age of 70 prior to his election to the presidency.  He’s 78 years old now and observably in cognitive decline. 
• First president to assume the office without having had any prior public service experience, military or political. 
• First president to have been divorced more than once. He married his first wife Ivana Trump in 1977 and divorced in 1992, married his second wife Marla Maples in 1993 and divorced in 1999. 
• First president to marry three times.  Based upon his history it could be 4 depending upon how it works out with Laura Loomer. 
• First president to have children from three different wives.  That we know of. 
• First president to begin tenure with a net negative approval rating in the history of modern political polling. 
• First president to cross over the DMZ and enter North Korea while in office. (2019 Koreas–United States DMZ Summit).  It was where his love affair with Kim Jong Un started.  I couldn’t find if they had any alone time together. 
• First president to be impeached twice by the U.S. House of Representatives (in 2019 and in 2021). 
• First president to have a Senate impeachment trial after his presidency.  If Republicans had had any guts, honor or integrity he would have been convicted. 
• First president to run for reelection after being impeached.  He’s trying to avoid jail. 
• First president to never receive an approval rating over 50%. 
• First president to not personally hand over the nuclear football to his successor. 
• First president to be indicted by a grand jury in a state case. 
• First president to be indicted by a grand jury in a federal case. 
• First president to be indicted by a grand jury in a federal case for actions taken while in office. 
• First president to stand trial for state criminal charges.  Being President will not stop state prosecutions.  He could have another first in being the first President to do time in prison while in office. 
• First president to be held in criminal contempt of court in a state trial. 
• First president to be found guilty of committing felony offenses. 

But wait! 

Major 1^st time Accomplishments.

            Trump did have some better firsts.

• First president presumed to be a billionaire prior to assuming office. 
• First president to be a resident of Florida. 
• First president to have an Orthodox Jewish rabbi (Marvin Hier) give a benediction at his inauguration. 
• First president to have a female campaign manager (Kellyanne Conway). 
• First president to appoint an Indian American to a Cabinet-level position (Nikki Haley). 
• First president to appoint an openly gay person to serve in an acting Cabinet-level position (Richard Grenell). 
• First president to meet with two emperors of Japan while in office, Akihito and Naruhito. 
• First president to have a personal YouTube channel and reach 1 million subscribers. 
• First president to appoint a Hasidic Jew to an U.S. administration position requiring Senate confirmation (Mitchell Silk). 
• First president to attend and speak at the Libertarian National Convention, as well as speak at a convention for an opposing political party. 
• First president to use Bitcoin.

Does the good outweigh the bad?

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_firsts