Nuclear Don

“I am the first one that would like to see ... nobody have nukes, but we’re never going to fall behind any country even if it’s a friendly country, we’re never going to fall behind on nuclear power. It would be wonderful, a dream would be that no country would have nukes, but if countries are going to have nukes, we’re going to be at the top of the pack”   ~ Donald Trump, February 24^th, 2017.

Trump’s recent comment about nuclear weapons wasn’t his only foray into that topic.

 There was the December 2015 interview with Hugh Hewitt in which Trump was asked about the nuclear triad.  Trump’s answer was sheer gobbledygook because he had no idea what the triad is and so he sounded like the high school kid who is called on to describe the previous night’s homework assignment when he didn’t even crack the book.  (For the sake of clarification, the triad includes ground based ICBMs, submarine launched ICBMs and strategic bombers).

There was the suggestion, made several times by Trump that he wants to be “unpredictable” as regards a first strike.

In March of 2016 he suggested that he wouldn’t rule out the use of nukes against ISIS.

Two months later Trump declared that he would see no problem with a nuclear arms race in Asia. 

Trump has made other statements about nuclear weapons and suffice to say that they all fluctuated between nonsense and terrifying. 

Trump’s proclamation may have been lost on many Americans.  After all every day presents a new chore of sorting through another one of Trump’s toxic spills. It’s easy to lose track of one of Trump’s turds floating by when you have to deal with his daily massive release of crap.

It didn’t get by me though.  You see I lived through much of the Cold War. Many, many Americans either have forgotten about or never experienced those years when the world was on a razor’s edge of destruction.  I lived through that period in history of brinkmanship; of nations (particularly The United States and The Soviet Union) contending for the biggest arsenal with the most potent yields. 

The Cesspool that is Trumpistan

As I sit here fighting the flu for the first time in years, I’m struggling to sit upright while doing a short post commenting on “A journey to the center of Trumpistan”.  I have lived in a conservative county in Oregon for two years and am looking for work elsewhere so I can leave this area populated by dimwits.  My experience with supporters of the Tweeting Twit is similar to the examples given about Trumpistan.  Most of them are so stupid that they couldn’t spell God even if you spotted them the g & d.  They are convinced that the Tweeting Twit is already a much better president than Obama.  They are convinced that all Muslims are evil.  They are proud of their Christianity, even though they espouse ideas and values that would make Jesus want to slam down a fifth of tequila in frustration.  The Bill of Rights for them is only about the Second Amendment, which is frightening given that Oregon is an open carry state.

Reading the examples of idiocy mentioned in the Trumpistan post is making me feel more physically ill than I already am.  As is the case with my collaborator, I have lost patience with the morons who think that the Tweeting Twit is going to be good for America.  I have a good friend who I haven’t spoken with in a few months.  The last time I was in his presence, he labeled Bernie Sanders a “Commie Jew bastard”.  I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t even want to engage in a political discussion with supporters of the Tweeting Twit.  They are generally stupid, ill-informed, and would have fit in well in George Wallace’s Alabama and Lester Maddox’s Georgia.

~ Posted by Exile in Oregon - Medford OR

A Journey to the Center of Trumpistan (With apologies to Jules Verne)

Have you ever watched one of those movies in which a brave protagonist risks taking a new, untested potion or goes into the unfinished time machine against the warnings of colleagues?

“You can’t!  It hasn’t been tested.  You could die or come out of it horribly damaged.”

But the hero proceeds, despite entreaties and comes out of the experience exhausted and dazed with a profound change in his personality. 

Recently I had just such an experience.  A fellow on a liberal Facebook page had posted that he was going to troll a pro-Trump page and correct spelling errors.  Right off I concluded that the task would be like fishing with sticks of dynamite.  I mean really, where is the sport?

But his post did inspire me to explore the page myself.  I knew that there would be inherent dangers in this kind of a mission.  I could conceivably return from my journey a changed man; an evangelist perhaps; or maybe suspicious of foreign headgear like the dreaded hijab.  I might emerge with a belief that the Earth is only 6000 years old – and flat as a billiard table.  And I might return with a hatred for the Chinese for hatching that global warming hooey.

And then there would be the physical risks.  There was always the chance of my sides being completely split asunder from laughter or permanent neck damage from repetitive head shaking.  But I damned those risks and determined that I would take A JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF TRUMPISTAN!

The Press is the Enemy - redux

We’ve heard that paranoid line before, those of us who lived through the Nixon years.  Richard Nixon was probably the most paranoid president in American history up to now.  In one of his taped Oval Office conversations with Henry Kissinger in December 1972, Nixon told Kissinger “Never forget, the press is the enemy. The establishment is the enemy. The professors are the enemy.”  

Nixon went so far as to create an enemies list in 1971.  In a memo of that year from John Dean, White House Counsel, Dean stated “This memorandum addresses the matter of how we can maximize the fact of our incumbency in dealing with persons known to be active in their opposition to our Administration; stated a bit more bluntly—how we can use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.”  The plan was to accomplish this by means of tax audits from the IRS and by manipulating grant availability, federal contracts, litigation, and prosecution.  Paul Newman was on that enemies list and often said that being on the list was one of his proudest accomplishments.

The ICE Man Cometh

The Latino workers who drive the forklifts, do the shipping, receiving, clerical work and run our production line walked off the job last Thursday.  I wasn’t there (the office that I work in is a 30 minute drive away) but I imagine you could’ve heard a pin drop.  That is, I imagine, when a manager wasn’t having a fit.  The news trickled into our office building around mid-morning and there were varying reactions. I was in the break room when one of my co-workers walked in and said jokingly to another sitting at a table, “See what happens when you voted for Trump?”

I turned to the seated man, “You voted for Trump?  Howabout if I  come over there and kick your ass.” And yeah I was joking – sort of.

Seated man said, “You heard what happened?  That’s not right.”  I told him that I supported the warehouse workers.  ‘ Fuck that!” I’m right on board with ‘em.”

There were varied reactions in our office. I can guess what the managers in that building thought but they were more or less hamstrung for the short term; can’t fire the entire crew on each shift. But I’m not ruling out some reprisal down the road.  The warehouse manager isn’t exactly a sweetheart and the company lost a full day of receiving, producing and shipping; and of course, revenue. Because that’s what it’s all about - money, money and more money.  The cause of human rights and compassion are fine but do it on your own time and don’t get in the way of revenue. Thursday was the Day Without Immigrants protest and it hit our company right in the bank account which was of course part of the overall goal; show the nation and most importantly the Trump regime that immigrants help keep the machine moving.

That Was the Week That Was

Since I last did a post about the rampant insanity surrounding the administration of He Who Must Not Be Named (HWMNBN), I decided to observe the never ending looney happenings for about a week and reflect on them.  Here’s what happened in a big ugly nutshell.

The Three R's

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How Can We Miss Him If He Won't Go Away?

I didn’t get home from work in time this evening to watch the network news, so I didn’t see what latest daft release came from the White House or El Presidente’s Twitter account.  He Who Must Not Be Named (HWMNBN) hasn’t yet been in office for a month and I’m already almost completely worn down mentally from the constant stream of absurdities from him and from his staff.  I’m 61 and, in the immortal words of Major Kong from Dr. Strangelove, “Well I've been to one World (sic) Fair, a picnic and a rodeo, and that's the stupidest thing I even heard come over a set of earphones.”  Come to think of it, I’ve done all three of those.  The ’64 World’s Fair was so cool it took at least a couple of visits.

Hope is...

Our last post was about the Trump triggered gloom that so many of us are waking up to every morning.  We get up in the morning with a case of the heebie-jeebies wondering what Trumpian mischief we’ll be greeted with.  And then we continue through the day to learn that the President of the United States actually tweeted another inanity or vomited more vengeful bile. It's a routine that's become demoralizing and physically tiring.   

We’re less than three weeks into what’s already seemed like a blackish eternity and hope has been a rarity; a little flicker in a dark dank cavern of tyranny.  But it’s made its presence known, hope has.  And when it does we smile, pump a fist and exclaim, “Yes!”  In any resistance even the smallest, most seemingly insignificant little victory is cause for hope. It serves to bolster the notion that we’re keeping at bay the degradation of our democracy and all that America is supposed to stand for.  Every victory is a promise to repair the damage to America’s reputation that’s being done by the charlatan squatter currently occupying the White House.    

Hope started the very first day with the Women’s Marches where legions of like-minded men and women in all 50 states and 60 countries told Trump and his minions that no, we are not going to go gentle into your dark night.  And since that first day we’ve seen what hope can be and what hope is.

Disgust, Despair and Fear (Or, Donald Trump is a Dick)

“Donald Trump is a dick.”  That’s now become my walk into the house after work greeting.  “Donald Trump is a dick.”  And that’s when I’m feeling charitable.  It’s not unusual for the adjective to be a vulgarity.  Maybe I shouldn’t Google the news at work.  Maybe I shouldn’t peek at Facebook at work.  Maybe I shouldn’t listen to the news in the car on the way home.  Then I might come home with a cheery, “Hi.”  Of course Donald Trump would still be a dick.