Thomas Friedman Outlines How Trump is Dangerous to all Man Kind

I couldn't say it better.

Link to Friedman "Connect the Dots" and it is not Russia related

The Trump Thing That Drives Us Bonkers

RSL came into the living room last Friday and stated that the thing that Trump does that drives her nuts more than anything else is his trivial bullying.  I had to agree with her.  If it was just Conservative policies being implemented, I might be upset but it wouldn't effect my inner being the way it does.  After all, I went through 8 years of Bush II and never hated him the way I do Trump.   Bush II policies, which I didn't agree with in certain key ways, did not cause me to rant and vent anger in a manner like this in an effort to restore my inner calm.

Michael Gerson's column today identifies the Trump behavior that generates this difference and postulates that it is destroying the GOP.  It is the Trump preference for bullying and postulating falsehoods that ignore facts and truths.  He says it better than I ever could, but it will take time to see if it is really destroying the GOP.  This is the GOP that supports Mitch McConnell's and Ted Cruz's lies and deceit about the effect GOP policies will have on real people.

Anyway, here it the link.

Link to Gerson column

!@#$%^&*()

WE CANNOT RID OURSELVES OF THIS !@#$%^&*() ADMINISTRATION SOON ENOUGH.  I HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH DAMAGE THEY WILL DO TO THE GLOBAL ECONOMY.

FREE TRADE DOES NOT CAUSE INFERITILITY.  FREE TRADE DOES NOT CAUSE SPOUSAL ABUSE.  FREE TRADE DOES NOT CAUSE ABORTIONS.  IN FACT, ABORTIONS ARE LOWER TODAY THAN THEY HAVE BEEN FOR YEARS AND THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH FREE TRADE.  IT HAS TO DO WITH ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY AND EDUCATION.

Real news reveals the idiots in the White House

Thank Goodness the Yankees and Cubs Won

There will be at least 6 more days when baseball can distract me from the chaos in Washington.

And thank goodness I am golfing today, so I will not focus on today's chaos, although that will not stop me from ranting about it here.

So Trump wants to renegotiate a treaty that a bunch of Countries signed with Iran and all agree Iran is complying with.  Since it took years to get all those countries to agree to the global sanctions that took years for Iran to feel the pain and years to negotiate the treaty, why does Trump think he can get a better deal in a matter of months?  He has had 8 months to find a peace treaty between the Palestinians and the Israeli's and how is that going?  Last time I read anything, Israel was ready to build another zillion settlements on the West Bank.  Nice way to try and not anger some desperate people who just might become terrorists.

And Trump wants so badly to have his name on a Healthcare bill he is using executive orders to change it around the edges.  Thank goodness I go on Medicare in 9 months.  And thank goodness I live in NY.  The one thing about all this is that Trump doesn't seem to understand health insurance is regulated by the states and the Affordable Care Act.  He can get Congress to change the Affordable Care Act, but the states will still determine what will happen within there own state. And if NY, continues with the law it had in place before the Affordable Health Care Act, insurance companies will not be able to exclude those with pre-existing conditions and all of Trump's efforts to harm people with pre-existing conditions will wash over NY with no effect other than the fact that the end of Federal subsidies for lower middle income people will cause them to lose their health insurance because they can't afford it without the subsidy.  Of course, a lot of them voted for Trump, so maybe they don't care about Health Insurance; although what I really think is that they believed Trump would be a man of his word and give them the best health insurance ever.  Fools!!!

Well, if Trump stops the subsidies, ObamaCare will become TrumpCare because Trump is in charge now and the buck stops at his desk.  No name is permanent when it comes to HealthCare.  After all, the Heritage Foundation (Republicans) developed the concepts of ObamaCare.  George Romney (Republican) implemented those Concepts in Massachusetts.  and now it is called ObamaCare, but once Trump makes his changes, it will be TrumpCare, no doubt.

So much chaos, I ran out of anger before I got to my main point.  You may have seen Trump tossing 8 rolls of paper towels at a Puerto Rico FEMA event when Trump visited.  He thinks that solved the problem so now he can bring FEMA home.  Meanwhile, there is little water and electricity in Puerto Rico.  Puerto Rico is now in the state of a 3rd World poverty ridden country and those people are American Citizens living on land governed by the USA.  Trump is either the President of the whole country or he is not and should be impeached.  Trump is a disgusting greedy narcissistic individual and the fact that he has such an impact on so many people is a stunning testimony to our failure as a nation.  If I lived in another country, I would not respect us.  Because as a Nation, we are who we elect as a President.  It may not be me, but it is we!

Off to Queens and a falafel sandwich.  I hope I play better than yesterday.

What the H*ll is Going on in the U.S.A.

I have a lot of foreign readers and I know that is what you are asking.  It is also what my mind is asking and I have taken a lot of time to think about this before putting fingers to the keyboard.

The only answer is really what did you think a prominent promoter of the birther movement would really believe.  Trump is a racist for some reason and he believes in his heart that racists deserve respect for their views.  And he believes the alt-right view that there is an alt-left violent extremist movement.  While I will acknowledge that criminal acts occurred during the Inauguration demonstration, the fact is that was a small minority of the many thousands who have demonstrated against Trump on multiple occasions without any criminal acts.  In contrast, what are we to make of people who march at night with torches (a favorite KKK activity), throw their hands in the air with Heil Hitler salutes, and believe in white supremacy.

All you have to do is look at the historical horrors of Slavery, Apartheid, Nazi Germany, and Russia in repeated ways to know white people are not a superior race to any other race.  Human beings are all the same.  We can be honorable loving people or we can be horrible.  Asian cultures have had multiple genocides.  Africa has corruption, rampant criminality, and smaller genocides.  The Islamic world is full of examples of innocents being slaughtered in the name of religious piety.

The alt-right wants to return to a culture where white people reign supreme over other people.  They have no other goal, and Donald Trump believes in that goal for some reason.  That is why Trump was a birther during the Obama Administration.  That is why he was unfit to be President and I for one cannot fathom how any respectable Republican could justify putting this man in the White House so they could have a conservative Supreme Court and pass tax cuts for the wealthy.

This is a nightmare.  It is exhausting for those of us who live with this b*llsh*t every single day of the week.  And I don't understand how any respectable human being could work for this man. Anyone who does has a questionable character.

So my foreign readers, I know each of you has your own challenges in this area.  The world is a pretty f*cking ugly place right now because government has failed in the Islamic world, migrants are causing stress in the Western world, and people are fed up with this and listening to Alt-right candidates all over the place.  We need a global decency movement that can still deal with authoritarian thugs.

Wow, Thursday 7/27 has my Head Shaking

There is much to write about, and I hope I can be succinct.

1st, the skinny repeal plan will probably be my health insurance nightmare for 7 months if it passes.  Why, because if you remove the requirement that everybody get health insurance, you have what NY had before Obamacare.  Insurance companies must cover anybody who applies for health insurance.  And if people wait until they are sick to sign up for health insurance, insurance companies get screwed.  So they raise premiums to cover that risk.  I was paying $1500 a month for health insurance in 2012 for 1 person.  Now I pay roughly $700 a month on an equivalent basis including deductibles. So if the Senate passes the Skinny Repeal, they will be raising the costs for everybody in the individual market by probably at least 100%.  But we cannot be sure because all the GOP Senate Leadership wants is to pass something so they can negotiate with the House, and who knows what will happen in that process.  The House bill maintained an incentive for the uninsured to not be uninsured.  I am stunned by the lack of normal process in both the House and the Senate as they attempt to repeal and replace Obamacare and effects 18% of the economy.

2nd Ross Douthat is responsible for the Wow.  He lays out a comprehensive logic for the impeachment of President Trump, all revolving around his "management" of Attorney General Sessions.  "If it were any other President suddenly behaving this erratically and irrationally, we'd be talking about mental incapacity, speculating about strokes, considering 25th Amendment remedies"  You have to read the column.

Link to Douthat column

I'll stop there.

This weeks's most outrageous Trump act:  Politicizing the Boy Scouts as purveyor of Trump Values.

P.S. 7/28  Charles Krauthammer also wants to impeach Trump (almost, he'd go there if the House started a process)

Link to Krauthammer column

Why Russia Matters - Follow the Money

I always enjoy finding I have written something before a pundit columnist writes about it.  It is not that I think they read this blog, it is just enough encouragement that I do have some original value when I write.  So thank you Ruth Marcus for discussing the concept of outrage overload.

The New Republic came earlier this week and one article was a very long cataloging of how Trump's Manhattan properties have been used by Russian mobsters to launder money, conduct other nefarious activities and in general help to enrich Donald Trump.  Trump was on the proverbial financial ropes in the early 1990's when individual wealthy Russians started buying his condominiums.  These sales helped make his condominium business succeed and that success, along with the Russian mob's continued buying of these condominiums, morphed into Trump licensing his name so that the Real Estate business provided an annuity income to him.  It doesn't take too much extrapolation to see the possibility that the Russian mob through their condominium ownership in the U.S. is responsible for much of Donald Trump's income.

So without the benefit of Trump's Tax Returns which might reveal a path to unraveling this relationship, we are left only with the possibility that the Special Prosecutor will unravel this mess with the powers that they have.  I saw something that suggested they can get the IRS to give them the tax returns.  And of course, Trump always signals the path to follow because he is compelled to be a bully.  This week he tweeted, and his lawyers went on TV stating, telling Bob Mueller, that Trump's finances are out-of-bounds, and not part of Mueller's charge of what to investigate.  Go Bob Go.  At least key members of the GOP spoke publicly saying Trump is wrong about the mandate of the Special Prosecutor and Bob Mueller can go wherever he wants to with his investigation.

As I have stated from the get-go, I believe Donald Trump is using the office of the Presidency to enrich himself in a manner that is certainly unethical and almost certainly in violation of the Emoluments Clause, so I believe all this will be the path to impeaching this poor example of humanity.  I just don't know what it will take to get the House GOP to allow this to come to a vote and get 30 to 40 members of the House GOP to agree with the Democrats that Impeachment is warranted.  Perhaps a Trump firing of Bob Mueller will get them moving.

So why do the Russians like Donald Trump?  At this point, I believe it is one of two possibilities.

1.  Trump is in financial cahoots explicitly with certain Russian individuals through the Condominium Business and the Russians think they can influence him in important ways.  As an example, we have cut off supplying arms to Syrian Rebels who have been fighting both Assad and Al Qaeda and ISIS.  These are obviously the good rebels and you wonder why Trump would agree to stop supplying them with arms.  The only possible answer is Russia wanted this.

2.  Trump is a naive simpleton who thinks anybody who is rich and buys his properties is an OK person.  He cannot contemplate that money laundering is bad, the sources of such money bad, or that free wheeling criminal activity based within property he developed is bad.  He loves being rich so badly that he is blind to how anybody else got rich and sees no evil in their wealth.   In this case, the Russians are well aware of his simpleness and know how to manipulate him.  The result is the same as the 1st path, it is just that this alone is probably not a criminal activity by Trump or his company, it simply shows unethical the collective enterprise is.

Either path can explain why Trump's people took so many meetings with the Russians during the campaign.  What I cannot explain is why Jeff Sessions had so many meetings with the Russians.  I thought he was a believer in Ronald Reagan's view of Russia that you have to Trust, but Verify everything with them.

And now to the overload this week.  Politically D.C. is in a chaotic place because Trump is a terrible manager.  He has no concept of political process.  The examples this week are too numerous for me to go into.  So I will provide a link to a column that goes through the White House portion of this chaos.  For the Congressional chaos you will have to read past issues of newspapers, if you didn't already.

Link to Column about chaos in Trump Administration


Meanwhile, what is wrong with Poland?  Why are they ending the Independent Judiciary?  Is Poland going to return to a Dictatorship?  I have enough trouble keeping up with things in the U.S.  Poland was my favorite investment when I was an Emerging Market Portfolio Manager and at one time, I was so comfortable with their direction, that my portfolio was the single largest holder of their US $ bonds.

Trump Overload and The Rule of Law

There really is no link between the two, they are just the two topics I feel compelled to write about today.

I saw a short article somewhere this morning about how Trump so dominates the news cycle that one can not escape paying some attention to it and that is both exhausting and frustrating to those who think he is dangerous.  I am trying to pay less attention, but since I am a news junkie, I can only take that so far.

Then there is David Leonhardt's column this morning.  He highlights 5 ways in which King Donald is  trying to downgrade the Rule of Law which is what Monarch's do.  It is a worthwhile read and would be very scary if it were not for the Judicial system which is doing its job.  What is noteworthy is that most of the GOP is tolerating it and many are embracing it in state houses across RedState America. That is very sad and a call to protest in every way possible.

Link to column

The Wall Street Journal Comes Close to a Call for Impeachment

From the Washington Post

"Any GOP leader losing the support of the semi-official organ of Republican conservatism should know that his partisans are headed to the exits."

link to WSJ editorial

Trump Commits Treason by Trusting Russia More than Allies

If this doesn't get the GOP legislator's moving on impeachment, I am wondering what it will take.

This is TREASON in my mind.

link to article

And here is a comment from the WAPO article that I could not resist adding.

ILLEGITIMATE 45TH

5:47 PM EDT

First he bans the American media from the meeting, then he invites in the Russian media, then he provides classified information to the Russian spies, and finally takes several photos with these Russian officials with the warmest of smiles, not even bothering to restrain his display of overwhelming joy and camaraderie. Thoroughly disgusting and despicable! 

Things the New GOP Tolerates & would impeach a Democrat if they did the

This is a complete copy of a NYT Editorial today.

"It wasn’t so long ago that Republicans in Congress cared about how a president comported himself in office. They cared a lot! The president is, after all, commander in chief of the armed forces, steward of the most powerful nation on earth, role model for America’s children — and he should act at all times with the dignity his station demands. It’s not O.K. to behave in a manner that demeans the office and embarrasses the country. Shirt sleeves in the Oval Office? Disrespectful. Shoes on the Resolute desk? Even worse. Lying? Despicable, if not impeachable.

Now seems like a good moment to update the standards. What do Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and other Republican leaders think a president may say or do and still deserve their enthusiastic support? We offer this handy reference list in hopes of protecting them from charges of hypocrisy in the future. They can consult it should they ever feel tempted to insist on different standards for another president. So, herewith, the Congressional Republican’s Guide to Presidential Behavior.

If you are the president, you may freely:

• attack private citizens on Twitter

• delegitimize federal judges who rule against you

• refuse to take responsibility for military actions gone awry

• fire the F.B.I. chief in the middle of his expanding investigation into your campaign and your associates

• accuse a former president, without evidence, of an impeachable offense

• employ top aides with financial and other connections to a hostile foreign power

• blame the judiciary, in advance, for any terror attacks

• call the media “the enemy of the American people”

• demand personal loyalty from the F.B.I. director

• threaten the former F.B.I. director

• accept foreign payments to your businesses, in possible violation of the Constitution

• occupy the White House with the help of a hostile foreign power

• intimidate congressional witnesses

• allow White House staff members to use their personal email for government business

• neglect to fill thousands of crucial federal government positions for months

• claim, without evidence, that millions of people voted illegally

• fail to fire high-ranking members of your national security team for weeks, even after knowing they lied to your vice president and exposed themselves to blackmail

• refuse to release tax returns

• hide the White House visitors’ list from the public

• vacation at one of your private residences nearly every weekend

• use an unsecured personal cellphone

• criticize specific businesses for dropping your family members’ products

• review and discuss highly sensitive intelligence in a restaurant, and allow the Army officer carrying the “nuclear football” to be photographed and identified by name

• obstruct justice

• hire relatives for key White House posts, and let them meet with foreign officials and engage in business at the same time

• promote family businesses on federal government websites

• tweet, tweet, tweet

• collude with members of Congress to try to shut down investigations of you and your associates

• threaten military conflict with other nations in the middle of news interviews

• compare the U.S. intelligence community to Nazis

• display complete ignorance about international relations, your own administration’s policies, American history and the basic structure of our system of governmentOMMENTS

• skip daily intelligence briefings

• repeat untruths

• lie

If you’re a Republican legislator, stick this list on the fridge and give it a quick read the next time you get upset at a president."

RedStateVT's Favorite WSJ Columnist Calls for Trump Impeachment

OK, when you read the column you will see Bret Stephens doesn't quite say that.  But what he does say is "Where there is smoke, there is likely a fire" and the truth needs to be uncovered.

Link to Bret Stephens Column

And RedStateVT doesn't like Bret because he is liberal.  Bret has written many things that I do not agree with, but at least he sees the light here.

King Donald Strikes Again

King's don't like to be challenged.  So they want to strike back at any one who does and intimidate others who might challenge them by punishing those who challenged them.

So the 3 highest ranking people in the Justice Department who know some of the details about Trump's campaign collusion with Russia have all been fired:  Comey, the Head of the FBI, Yates, the holdover Acting Head of the Justice Department, Preet Bharara, the D.A. for the Southern District of NY.

I'm glad some GOP senators now see the need for an independent commission.  The only question is whether the Sessions led Justice Department will destroy the evidence that they have in their possession already.  I suspect they will and probably already are doing so, even though that is illegal. But if you destroy the evidence that you destroyed the evidence than you really have no proof that an illegal act was committed.

Meanwhile, can you imagine what is going on in the IRS with Trump's tax returns.  I can assure you his tax bill is being reduced.

Even George Will Wants to Begin Impeachment ASAP

No one can accuse George Will of not being a Conservative.

Link to George Will Column

Jennifer Rubin Says the GOP Has Sold It's Soul

Trump's number one goal is to dominate the news cycle in as many ways as possible, it is not to lead. The manner in which he does so without rebellion from GOP leaders is the gestalt that Rubin is disgusted with.

Link To Rubin Column

Could This Interview Finally Convince the Voters that Impeachment is a Necessity NOW!!!

From a Politico article about a Time Magazine interview with King Donald.  He is completely delusional.

"In a wide-ranging interview with Time Magazine, President Donald Trump defended his prior controversial statements on wiretapping, voter fraud and an array of other issues, claiming that he has ultimately been proven right time and time again."

“I’m a very instinctual person, but my instinct turns out to be right,” Trump told Time’s Washington bureau chief Michael Scherer in an interview conducted Wednesday and published Thursday morning. “I tend to be right. I’m an instinctual person, I happen to be a person that knows how life works.”