The New-New Testament; The Bible According to Trump

The Book of Nemesis

The Trumpmandments

In the beginning and the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep, the U.S. Mint said, Let there be money: and there was money. And then, as day was divided into night, it came to pass that there was a great greed; and it was good. So sayeth Gordon Gekko, the fictional god of Wall Street.

Man took the money and greed and said, Let there be power, and there was power. Then money, greed, and power became the Holy Trinity and it was worshipped by those who follow the true path of corruption.  It would come to be called the Great Holy Trifecta. Using the great gift of greed in man, many would prosper and gather great wealth and with great wealth came great power to rule others and make the rules that all must follow.

Centuries after the creation of money, a new savior was born in New York City and His birth was foretold by a great light in the east.   This beacon was atop of the tower on the Empire State Building having been recently replaced after its removal in 1933 by King Kong. This savior would be born to parents who had acquired great sums of money through greed and abuse of power. The family was the embodiment of the Great Holy Trifecta of money, greed, and power. And thus, the Great Donald was born and he was rich.  No wise men visited as we all know The Donald is a genius and in need of no further enlightenment.

The new blonde savior would build tall towers to His glory and they would be named Trump Towers. He would place them in states and countries far and wide, in honor of his Holy Name. It came to pass one day that the new savior would seek to rule the country of His birth and He would convince enough people in three key states to win the presidency in 2016 YOT, the Year of Our Trump. It would be a miracle that, of the 250 million who voted, 107,000 people in three states would decide this election.


The Book of Trumperonomy

And it came to pass that Trump was now all-powerful and he would ascend to the penthouse in his tower to use his superior brain to develop a new set of commandments to replace the pesky ones that Moses brought down from Mount Horeb. As the savior, Trump pondered in his penthouse the vision of the new commandments as they appeared to him in a series of  Tweets and several Fox News broadcasts.  By executive order, He repealed the outdated Moses commandments.  And thus, the New Ten Commandments were born and would be forever called The Trumpmandments. To wit:



The Trumpmandments

1. I am Lord Trump, and thou shalt not have any strange presidents before me; who aren’t named Putin.
2. Thou shalt not slander the name of Trump or you should be prepared for a Tweet-Storm the likes of which the world has never seen.
3. Remember to keep holy Golf Day; which may be any day with a “Y” in the name.  All such rounds should be played on a Trump-owned course of course.
4. Honor thy father and mother, but only if they have money and keep you in their will.
5. Thou shalt not kill without profit.
6. Thou shalt not commit adultery; unless of course, she is smoking hot and you have a great prenup.
7. Thou shalt not steal unless nobody is looking, you aren’t caught, and/or you happen to have a good law firm on retainer.
8. Thou shalt not tell a lie or bear false witness against your neighbor; just joking on that one; we all know Truth is not Truth and you can’t believe your lying eyes and ears.
9. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife; see Trumpmandment #7 for exceptions.
10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods; just take what you want and have a good lawyer; you might want to avoid any named Rudy.

Devil's Museum in Kaunas, Lithuania

There was an evil in all of Christendom that went by many names.  He is Satan, Beelzebub, and Lucifer, and he came to visit the earth during the Time of Trump and he wisely said, “My work here is done.”

That Was The Year That Was

Here we are again.  We’ve survived another trip around our sun and it‘s time to reflect on the events of 2019 and prognosticate about our future.  If we can be honest with ourselves in this post-truth period of national division, looking in either direction can be disheartening.  We have seen an erosion of our democracy to a level few thought possible just a few short decades ago. 

That Was The Year That Was**

Who could have conceived that we would have a president who was caught stealing from the charity he set up for fire fighter’s widows and veterans, and his supporters would just yawn and look the other way?  Yes, Donald J. Trump has been stealing from this charity since 1989 when he wrote a $7 check to pay for Don Jr.’s Boy Scout initiation fee. 

Think about that minor infraction for just a second and you will get a deeper appreciation of the absolute contempt we should all be feeling.  Here he is, the future president of the United States, with his son embarking on his adventure in scouting where their mission is to “prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes by instilling in them the values of the Scout Oath and Scout Law.”  From the values stated in that Scout Oath we read, “to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.”  Yes, Don Jr. got a good life-lesson in morality when his father paid for his entry into this revered organization with money stolen from a charity he operated.  Such moral bankruptcy deserves more than just a yawn of disinterest and an eye roll.

This 20^th year of the new millennium has seen a shift from the New Information Age to the Age of Disinformation.  We have come to a place where political lies are not just innocent whoppers or mere exaggerations of the truth designed to spin a conversation in a particular direction; we have entered a new period where lies and whole cloth fabrications are extolled repeatedly in ALL CAPS in nationally televised tweets and shouted from podiums to hordes of adoring fans.  These lies are designed to further a corrupt intent.  The scale of dishonesty is gargantuan and we must now wade through the quagmire of untruths in order to arrive at any comprehension of current events.  Yes, Rudy Giuliani’s quote from 2018 bears repeating, “Truth isn’t truth.”

Truth Isn't Truth, Rudy Guiliani
 

However, dis-information, negative ads, and shameless hypocrisy are not the only signs of our democratic demise, a complete tectonic shift in the political foundation of the Republican Party may also be considered a harbinger of the forthcoming apocalypse.  Who would have thought that the recent ‘tea party’ revolution of conservatism would be corrupted so easily by a blonde charlatan?  One of the pillars of that conservatism was fiscal responsibility, which seems to be  “Gone With the Wind” much as Rhett Butler walked away from Scarlett and into the embrace of the morning Georgia fog.  Our continuing prosperity has been propped up by a sharp upturn in our national debt; we have borrowed against our future.

Fake Fact

Speaking of financial health, our economy would appear to be going gangbusters.  The Dow is suffering nosebleed in the stratosphere of all-time highs.  Corporate taxes as a percentage of all tax revenue are down to a low of 3.5%.  For reference, they were around 9% in 2010.  The lowering of corporate taxes and the lowering of personal income taxes, particularly for the wealthy, has meant a shortfall that has pushed our national debt to above $23 trillion or even more by some observations.  Now the holders of our national purse strings are sounding the alarm of foreboding shortfalls with a proclaimed need to scale back Medicare ($800B) and Medicaid ($200B), a lowering of Social Security benefits, cutting federal pensions (not for Congress of course), and other belt-tightening with cuts to social programs.  You can’t let Amazon pay $0 in corporate taxes and not have to make up the loss somewhere.  A strong military, a regular Republican talking point, our infrastructure of highways, waterways, electrical grid, etc., are maintained through taxation.  This tax burden has been slowly shifted away from corporations and the wealthy and on to the middle class in various, subtle, and ominous ways.

Meanwhile, the democracy-threatening trend toward an American oligarchy continues.  It has been with us since before the era-of-Trump, but it has gone into Hyperdrive since his inauguration.  America was heretofore a shining example of representative democracy but it has now become a nation controlled by the political and financial influence of the uber-rich and hyper-wealthy.  Trump didn’t start this trend but he is surely not going to do anything to stop it.  In fact, the recent tax cuts, which mostly benefitted large corporations and those wealthy donors, will exacerbate the problem.  Campaign finance reform wasn’t on any docket in 2019 and I will go out on a limb and predict that you won’t see any movement in 2020.

Stanley King

On the religious front, there was a recent crack in the evangelical façade when a single article in an evangelical publication called out Trump’s lack of morality and basically indicated that the benefits to that community were outweighed by the immoral behavior of their unlikely benefactor.  Yes, their womanizing thrice-married and morally bankrupt savior was called out.  It will be interesting to see if others will realize that Donald J. Trump, is not the answer to “what would Jesus do?”

What Would Trump Do?

Toward the end of 2019, emails surfaced that would indicate that Stephen Miller, a top advisor to President Trump, is a white nationalist.  Twenty-five Jewish members of Congress sent a letter to President Donald Trump calling on White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller to be dismissed after the release of a series of emails in which Miller allegedly shared white supremacist views.  The White House has been dismissive of such previous claims, stating that this would be impossible since Mr. Miller is Jewish.  They must be confusing white supremacists with white nationalists.  While most of us would identify as nationalists, i.e., expressing a love of country, adding the adjective “white” in front of that label would indicate someone who believes the white race to be inherently superior to other races and would include those who would advocate racial segregation.

While white supremacists can also be white nationalists, most in the former category would exclude Jews.  A quick review of the topics listed in the many Miller emails posted at the Southern Poverty Law Center would indicate strong feelings and support of much if not all of the objectives expressed by white nationalists.  President Trump’s past predilections along these lines, his father’s racist associations and actions, Trump’s ties to Breitbart, and his ties to Steve Bannon, would all seem to be sympathetic to a white nationalist agenda.

This, boys and girls, brings us to Impeachment.  The president has been impeached.  He was impeached for Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Congress.  He was only found at fault for those two narrow articles.  The House ran out of time or perhaps there could have been more.  In late December more emails surfaced that gave further credence to the abuse of power charges as they provided a direct timeline 90 minutes after the phone call where the DOD was notified to suspend further Ukrainian support and to keep it a secret on a need-to-know basis.  It would seem that impeachment is difficult, as it should be.  The framers of our constitution were intentionally vague, as they perhaps believed that cool heads would prevail and figure out a just method to proceed.  Boy, were they shortsighted. 

I feel that the America that I knew in the middle of the last century is just a curiosity of a bygone era.  Morality has gone the way of the hula-hoop, Slinky, Play-dough, Lincoln logs, erector sets, Gilbert chemistry sets, cap pistols, plastic model airplanes, water-rockets, Viewmaster 3D viewers, Mr. Potato Head, balsa-wood airplanes, Tinker Toys, transistor radios, rubber army men, Legos, and American Flyer trains.  I don’t long for black and white television and being restricted to an outdated set of Encyclopedia Britannica for research.  I do long for the days of civility, cooperation, negotiation, and compromise in our political leaders.

Tinker Toys

Our nation’s shift to the right comes at a time when world politics seems to be at a crossroads.  In the United Kingdom, Trump’s fellow New Yorker and brother from another mother, Boris Johnson (born Upper East Side, New York, June 19, 1964), has taken their Conservative Party down the road of isolation with a move to leave the European Union.  (Trump was born June 14, 1946, in Queens, NY.)  I guess we could start a rumor that Boris Johnson is Trump’s illegitimate son.  Boris looks a bit like Trump and he has been described as an “unprecedented blend of comedian, conman, faux subversive, showman, and populist media confection.”  With the exception of “comedian,” I’ve heard most of those terms used to describe The Donald.

Boris (left)                            Trump (right)

Early in 2020, I predict that the impeachment charges will be forwarded to the Senate for trial.  This trial will be an un-funny joke where the president will be exonerated of all charges.  I further believe that more information will come forward during the year that will add more weight to the crimes already committed, but none of this will matter.  If stealing money from a charity for widows of firefighters and veterans doesn’t raise an eyebrow among his supporters, his requesting assistance from a foreign power to help with his reelection and ignoring congressional subpoenas is but a minor distraction.

I further predict with relative certainty, that the GOP will purge more voter rolls, make gerrymandering more of an art, and keep the function of counting votes a mystery wrapped in a riddle based on 19^th century technology.  This upcoming election will be as assailable and vague as the GOP needs it to be in order to assure a win for their party.  The Democrats, on the other hand, will be sitting on both hands.  They have not yet come up with a strong candidate who can challenge this morally vulnerable “leader of the free world.”

Barring a major downturn in the economy, or a Jeffrey Epstein videotape showing Trump in a minor role, I fear the 2020 election will provide us with four more years of Trump Unchained and even Quentin Tarantino couldn’t imagine this script.

**  The title, That Was The Year That Was, gives a tip of the hat to Tom Lehrer who wrote and sang the political satire album of that same name in 1965.  It is available on Spotify and Amazon Music and its lyrics are apropos today.

TWTYTW

That Was the Year That Was (1965) is a live album recorded at the hungry i in San Francisco, containing performances by Tom Lehrer of satiric topical songs he originally wrote for the NBC television series That Was The Week That Was, known informally as TW3 (1964–65). All of the songs related to items then in the news.^[2] The album peaked at #18 on Billboard's Top 200 Albums on January 8, 1966, and was on the chart for 51 weeks.

It's The Economy, Stupid

I just love it when my Republican friends sign their work.  Yes, Stupid*, it is about the economy.  The problem with this typical 4-word slogan is that it oversimplifies a complex issue.  It’s like looking at the gas gauge and telling everyone that the car is ready for your long driving vacation.  We have enough gas, so let’s jump in the car and “Get your motor runnin,' Head out on the highway, Lookin' for adventure, And whatever comes our way.”  You may be Born to Be Wild but that’s the kind of logic that gets you to the "Florida-Georgia Line" only to have one of your four bald tires blow.  That’s the type of thinking that puts you in the middle of a long stretch of “dark desert highway” crossing Death Valley headed for the Hotel California when your failure to change the oil for the last 50,000 miles causes your engine to seize.

Destination, Hotel California

Yes, the economy is important but you can’t just look at the Dow Jones Industrial average and declare, “All is well.”  You can point to the low unemployment numbers all you want, but when people are working two jobs and still qualify for food stamps, things aren’t rosy for everyone.  When farmers can’t sell their crops because someone got into a tariff war with a major trading partner and farmers now must rely on government charity (our tax dollars), the economy may not be in the wonderful shape indicated by stock market numbers.

Donald Trump took an economy left to him by his predecessor that was doing well and managed, or mismanaged depending on your point of view, and borrowed against our children’s future to lower taxes.  For the lower 90% of us, it was a temporary break.  For big business and the wealthy, it was a permanent windfall.  Yes, by running up the national debt to above $120 trillion**, the economy appears to be doing well.

**Note: the published National Debt is $23 trillion;
this chart uses additional factors.

I am reminded of a neighbor friend of mine.  He had a nice house and had recently done some major remodeling.  He put in a pool and added a new room to the back of the house.  He then installed a new driveway next to his house that allowed him a way to park his large new boat in the side yard.  We were invited over for a holiday party those many years ago and we saw that the inside of the house had also benefitted from his apparent new-found wealth.  The room addition now sported a giant flat-screen television.  This was back when such displays cost as much as $10,000 to $15,000.  They had a new kitchen and new tile floors.  As he owned his own business, I assumed that things were going very well.  His economy was very good by all appearances.

It wasn’t but a few years after this holiday party that the "For Sale" sign went up.  When asked, he admitted that he had been caught up in the sub-prime mortgage debacle.  The housing bubble had burst.  Much like the bald tires on our vacation car, my neighbor’s fun ride was at an end.  His mortgage was underwater, the economy had taken a nose-dive, and those mortgage payments had become unmanageable.  He had taken the cash out of his over-valued home spent it perhaps unwisely and ended up being forced to move in with his mother-in-law.

This is an over-simplification of our economy.  I doubt that any of us will be moving back with the in-laws.  I don't think England would take us back and they have their own problems.  The U.S. economy is due for a recession in either 2020 or 2021 depending on which group of economists you believe.  While president Trump will take credit for our current good economic news, I’ll give good odds that you will never hear him take any blame when the downturn eventually comes.  If he has learned to delegate anything, blame has to top the list.

Trump took an economy on the rise and didn’t screw it up.  He did, however, accomplish this partially on the backs of future generations.  Politicians regularly take credit for the highs of our cyclic economy and cast aspersions on others during the lows.  This current presidency is not ALL about the economy.  Trump is managing our national financial vehicle as he has his many business ventures.  He puts the pedal to the metal and has no concern for those bald tires or regular oil changes.  He will take credit for an economy that ends up in the winner’s circle but will deflect and point fingers elsewhere when the crews are called in to haul away the wreck.  The national debt tin-can has been kicked down the road for someone else to deal with.

Are you really better off?

We may never know if Trump is a successful businessman or just an adept conman.  Given his predilection to brag about nearly every accomplishment, I find it of some concern that he has managed to keep his financial health such a secret.  He has certainly done a better job keeping his personal finances more secret than our national security secrets.  Is he in financial debt to some Russian oligarch or Saudi prince, perhaps both?  His unilateral deference to all things Russian or Saudi gives rise to speculation.  We would be right to suspect that there are financial ties and concerns of which we should be wary.  Trump’s perpetual-audit excuse is beginning to wear thin when it comes to his tax returns.

James Carville’s, “It’s the economy, stupid,” will be heard loud and clear this 2020 presidential election.  I can only hope that voters will take a long hard look at that economy.  While your taxes may have gone down a bit, are you really better off than you were four years ago?  Since the sub-prime mortgage-related crash of 2008, the overwhelming majority of new jobs earn less than $50,000 a year and many don’t pay much above minimum wage.  Many average Americans  could be considered “working poor.”

Bocce ball court, a true level playing field

The poverty threshold for a family of four is $25,000.  If that family wants to own a car, watch cable TV, have decent healthcare, send their two children through college, own a home, take vacations, etc., they must earn considerably more.  A minimum wage job at $7.25 hr brings in $15,000; but only if you never get sick, never take a vacation, and work 52 weeks a year.  I think most Democrats and true and honest Republicans don’t believe in a redistribution of wealth but would fully endorse a level playing field.  If leveling that playing field brings a bit of temporary pain to the wealthy, it may be unavoidable.  The playing field is not level if a good education is relegated to the wealthy with connections.  The playing field is not level if not all Americans are afforded some level of quality healthcare as a birthright.  The playing field is not level if corporations can make obscene profit margins while paying wages that require full-time employees to go on public assistance in order to get proper nutrition and adequate shelter.

The Gilded Age, Mark Twain, and Charles Dudley Warner
Telling a tale of graft, materialism, and corruption in public life.

Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner wrote “The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today” in 1873, referring to the Reconstruction period after 1860.  The reference was of a glittery surface and an underbelly of corruption, greed, unrestrained capitalism, and conspicuous consumption.  Welcome to the second Gilded Age, Gilded Age 2.0 if you will, where the working poor ride buses or walk to work and can barely afford basic necessities, the middle class is dwindling and treading water financially, and the top 1% enjoys the fruits of the labors of others to whom they refuse to pay a living wage.  Donald Trump, after signing his massive tax cut told his wealthy friends at a gathering at Mar-a-Lago, “You all just got a lot richer.”

Alva Vanderbilt, 1883

Tenement life in 1883

We have always been a class society.  The middle-class flies coach, the upper-class flies first class, and the uber-rich cruise in private jets.  In the recent past, however, mobility between classes was at least possible and the American Dream of homeownership was more than just a dream.  Remember to vote for the American Dream in 2020, to avoid the American Nightmare in 2021.


* Note:  Apologies to my Republican friends, I wasn't calling you "stupid."  But if you think this president is above the law, has done nothing against our Constitution, has meaningfully cooperated with the House investigations as is his duty under the Constitution, has helped our environment so that it may be enjoyed by future generations, and has been fiscally conservative, you may want to re-think your choice of grape-flavored beverages.

Use Caution When Draining the Swamp

For those who have never worked at any level of our government, it's easy to think of "government" as a single entity with a political face.  The actual image is far more complex.  While politicians are both admired and despised based upon their known actions, literally tens of thousands of people are often behind the scenes of these public faces doing the daily work of our government.  There are mailroom clerks, administrative personnel, embassy staffers, foreign-service administrators, etc., who are career government employees, not elected to office, but who serve the goals of our government operations.  Add to this the teachers, police, fire, road crews, water and sewer workers, safety inspectors, city planners, and thousands of other positions that make life in this country possible. 

The heartbeat of our government was no more readily apparent than during the recent political hearings where the American public saw highly intelligent apolitical government employees who were very good at their jobs.  They were articulate and showed passion, dedication, and expertise in their respective fields of endeavor.  For them to be singled out and ridiculed by this president is unconscionable.  They did their jobs and reported facts without elaboration and for this, they were condemned because they didn’t tell this president what he wanted to hear.

When you talk about draining the swamp, have an objective.  The job is too important to go in without a plan.  If you drain the swamp and end up with a desert, what have you accomplished?  This president isn’t draining a swamp he is just a 3-year-old having a tantrum.  He breaks or sets fire to everything he touches.

Trump the Firestarter

Our government is huge for a reason; there is a lot of work to be done.  Could it be done more efficiently?  Of course, it could.  Is there corruption?  Yes, there is, but I would venture that the vast majority of it comes from the elected political component rather than the dedicated career professionals.  You are not eliminating corruption by firing employees who disagree with you, you are adding to the corruption problem.

As we watched the hearings surrounding the impeachment trial there was a stark contrast between the politicians who were playing to the cameras trying to make new sound bytes for the evening news and then there were the hard-working professionals who give us all hope.  No matter what position you may hold regarding the necessity for these hearings, it was disgusting to watch career government employees being insulted and their integrity impugned by politicians trying to score points for some political advantage.  Those who participated in such obscenities should feel the wrath of their constituencies at the ballot box.

I fear that there will be further shenanigans during the Senate portion of this process.  All senators will be required to swear an oath prior to the trial that reads...,

"I solemnly swear (or affirm) that in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of President Donald John Trump, now pending, I will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws: So help me God.” 

It is difficult to believe that Mitch McConnell won't burst into flames spouting such blasphemy.  He has already declared the innocence of Donald Trump and has coordinated his efforts with the accused.  "Impartial justice" would appear to have a different meaning in the rarified atmosphere of political euphemisms.  We all know the predicted outcome for the Senate charade but even I thought they would go through the motions and give the appearance of fairness.

Mitch McConnell

It would appear that, even though Donald Trump came to his office with no experience in political matters, he has managed to exploit the weaknesses of our democracy.  He figured out that, as long as he holds a majority in either the House or Senate, he will never be removed from office.  It took him three tries, but he also found his Roy Cohen in the persona of William Barr.  With control of the Attorney General's office, the legality of his actions can be twisted and spun to fit almost any scenario.  Donald Trump will never be a good politician but he can certainly show the rest of them what it means to be really good at corruption.  Our president has decades of experience in all things corrupt.

Roy Cohen (rt) was Joseph McCarthy's "witch hunt" chief counsel

Elected official corruption can be lessened with term limits and independent oversight.  Full transparency of officials’ finances should be a requirement for all elected offices.  No elected official should be able to vote on legislation if they have received any financial support from any person or a business that might benefit from that vote.  Perhaps we could have all congressional leaders sign, under oath, a statement that they will never vote on a piece of legislation that directly involves an entity from which they have or expect to receive something of value.  Therefore, violations would be seen as perjury of their oath in addition to any other violations of law.  Laws are meaningless without enforceable consequences. 

The Extortion Ship Sets Sail with Captain Trump at the Helm

We now have a corrupt businessman sailing the USS American Democracy into treacherous waters.  What Trump has undoubtedly done in his previous personal business ventures, and what he recently did with Ukraine, he is now doing with businesses. Extortion comes naturally to someone who places winning above all else; it's just another tool in the box.  To Trump, personal financial gain and a lust for power justify all activities without regard to inconvenient laws, annoying regulations, or God forbid, morals.

Our Sinking Democracy

Donald Trump, like many wheelers and dealers, likes to play in the big leagues, but with other people’s money.  Call it bribery, extortion, or quid pro quo, it all amounts to Donald Trump using his position as president to offer favorable financial incentives to big business in return for political/financial/ego support.  In private business, “tit for tat” incentives may be legal, but when it comes to using our tax dollars to buy such favors, this is never legal.  For Trump, the term “legal” seems to mean anything that you aren’t caught at.

The president is given wide latitude by U.S. trade laws in the realm of setting tariffs and enacting trade policy.  It had been felt that our president would be above the influence of special interests.  Whoever wrote such policy had obviously never met the likes of one Donald J. Trump.  This president wields this power as a Jedi knight might a lightsaber.  He uses it to slay his enemies, vanquish those who don’t swear fealty to his omnipotent power and to reward those who provide him solace.

You have to know how to kiss the ring.

Our current trade wars and subsequent tariffs have provided Trump with a golden opportunity.  He can now selectively exempt certain businesses from paying these tariffs thereby giving them a financial advantage over their competition.

Trump recently visited an Apple plant that he promptly took credit for, even though the plant had been in operation since 2013.  Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, did not correct Trump, but rather praised him for creating the “strongest economy in the world.”  Apple is seeking exemptions from Chinese tariffs since it assembles many of its products there.

It’s not just American companies that are useful to Trump (all roads lead to Putin), US sanctions placed on Russia for interfering in our elections were costly to Putin's friend Oleg Deripaska.  In 2018, his company received a waiver from aluminum tariffs.  When Democrats found out about the waiver, Trump’s Commerce Department tried to explain it away as a “clerical error.”

Getting back to our Star Wars lightsaber analogy, the Pentagon recently shocked likely JEDI (Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure) contract lead contender, Amazon, by awarding the cloud computing deal to Microsoft.  Trump warned Jeff Bezos, who’s Washington Post has been critical of Trump, that he was going to have “problems.”  While Microsoft and Amazon aren’t sympathetic victims, the mere fact that Trump is misusing his powers in such a brazen way only strengthens the need for his ouster in 2020.

You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind.  A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination.  That's the signpost up ahead—your next stop, the Authoritarian State.

Polls and Statistics

Someone once said there are lies, damned lies, and statistics.  It would seem that national polls are based on all three.  2016 pollsters had Hillary Clinton as our next president in a landslide.  We all know how that turned out.

 The following quote came from the LA Times on October 4, 2016:

"...the election forecast at Nate Silver’s fivethirtyeight.com gives Hillary Clinton a 71.2% chance of beating Donald Trump (who accordingly has a 28.8% chance of winning); the New York Times Upshot blog has her at 80%; Daily Kos Elections has her at 72%; and the Princeton Election Consortium at 85% or 91%, depending on how you crunch the raw numbers."

Hillary Clinton wins by 70%

Here we are embarking on yet another presidential election year.  We are already being bombarded with studies, polls, and the results of statistical analysis.  Math was never my strong suit but I’m generally good using logic.  Hindsight is also something that has served me well in the past.  So, how accurate can these polls be?  I know I’ve never been asked a political question in response to a national poll but, then again, I don’t answer the phone to “unknown number” or similar cryptic Caller ID’s.

A friend recently put up a meme that was questioning California taxes (hinting at the socialism involved) and then pointing out that, even with its high taxes, California was 42^nd in the nation with its educational system.  I had trouble swallowing that number and went about verifying its accuracy.  He was right, California is 42^nd in the nation according to accepted statistics.

I still had trouble getting my head around that number so, like Paul Harvey before me, I decided to get, “the rest of the story.”

Paul Harvey, "Now you know, the rest of the story."

What I found was a case study on how numbers can be misleading.  National education polls generally rely on test results from NAEP or the National Assessment of Education Progress, aka, the national report card.  These tests average scores for various subjects such as math, reading, and science for different grade levels.

While this sounds logical, further analysis shows it can present an incomplete picture.  One study of these results found that most published interpretations “ignore heterogeneity.”  Yeah, I had to look that one up too and the definition still didn’t explain the problem.  It seems that they are referring to the failure of these tests to evaluate the impact of the variations in socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds.  This was starting to sound like some type of left-wing spin to counter the raw number scores until I got into the real-world examples.

The CATO Institute published a paper in November of 2018 that used Texas and Iowa as a comparison.  Iowa (#8) ranks much higher than Texas (#33) in the usual educational rankings of students in the K-12 scores.  With those numbers, you would think that you would be better off taking a job in Iowa and putting your kids in that system rather than Texas.  You might be wrong.

Iowa is 87% White, 5% Hispanic, 3% Black, and 2% Asian.  Texas, on the other hand, is 43% White, 38% Hispanic, 12% Black, and 4% Asian.  The poverty rates for both states for their White population are equal at 7%.  This could give Iowa a significant advantage in student test scores if you believe that poverty has an influence on education.  I would personally accept that premise.  With 93% of the poverty for each state focused on their respective minority populations, and with Iowa having but 13% of their citizens occupying that classification, they might understandably have a better raw score ranking.

With just that one additional factor of poverty, you can see why the raw test scores averaged across each state might not paint an accurate picture of their educational systems.  With Iowa, outscoring Texas in each of three tests in reading, math, and science at both the fourth and eighth-grade levels; it would reasonably be assumed that disaggregated comparisons by race would show similar results.  In actuality, Texas outscores Iowa in all but one category in twenty exams given by both states.  The one exception is the reading test for eighth-grade Hispanic students where Iowa tops Texas.  The disaggregated comparison puts White scores in each state head to head and likewise compares Hispanic, Black and Asian scores in the three categories.  By this arguably more even comparison, the Texas school system is better than the one in Iowa even though the raw numbers have the results flipped.

President Harry Truman holds a copy of the Chicago Daily Tribune bearing the infamous headline "Dewey Defeats Truman" in November 1948.  The polls were so sure that newspapers pre-printed their headlines much to their embarrassment.

The point of all of this is just to show that polls and surveys are only as reliable as the methodology used for the results.  When you see that a new poll has been released and it shows favorable results that you want to believe, take it with a grain of salt.  At this point and with recent history in mind, you might want to go off your low-sodium diet, remove the cap and dump the salt shaker.  When in doubt, review the quote and national map graphic above.

Get off your ass and vote!

Trump is a Genius

Yes, what Albert Einstein was to mathematics, what Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was to music, what Stephen Hawking was to theoretical physics, and what Charles Darwin was to biology, Donald J. Trump is to corruption.  He is a corruption savant.  If there is an easy and honest way to accomplish something, “The Donald” will find a more convoluted corrupt way to achieve the same goal.  Donald Trump is the Marie Curie of corruption.

Corruption is from the Latin word ‘corrumpere’ meaning to mar, bribe, spoil, seduce, or destroy.  In the mid-14^th century, it meant corrupted, debased in character, depraved morally, or perverted from good to bad.  In the late-14^th century, it also included contamination, the impairment of purity, and the seduction of a woman. In the Old French, it was ‘corropt’, meaning unhealthy or uncouth.  Etymological studies find that in its intransitive sense, the meaning of corruption is to putrefy and change from a sound to a putrid state.  I thought it was a good idea to see how this colorful and descriptive word might be applicable to the world’s most prodigious liar.

Donald Trump may not be a good businessman but he is a good corrupt businessman.  The nature of big-city real estate, particularly in New York, is to demand a small bit of larceny in order to achieve any level of success.  That is New York’s problem and an easy one to circumvent by avoidance even in that city; don't do business with him and you are safe.  The problem for us is that he has now brought his genius-level corruption to the world-stage where it impacts those outside the Empire State.  Now everyone from Bangor to Honolulu and from Fairbanks to Miami is within his corruptive clutches.  We will ignore for the time being the remaining 7.7 billion other folks who may also be impacted by his actions.

We have sadly come to accept a certain level of corruption in our government.  A little nepotism here, a favor for a friend there, or perhaps even a campaign donation finding its way into a home remodeling job will hardly raise an eyebrow anymore.  What caught us all off-guard with this president, however, was the openness and gravity of the corruption; the sheer audacity of it all.  We are now expected to accept campaign funds being used to pay off a porn star for her silence regarding an extramarital affair.  We are supposed to look the other way when the president’s admitted financial ties to Russia are the backdrop to a complete reversal of 45 years of Cold War animosity between our two countries.  In the most recent case of this president’s adoration of Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, the Russian president’s word is accepted above those of the whole of our intelligence community and the findings published in a bi-partisan two-volume Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report regarding Russian interference in our 2016 election.  Our president would have you believe the ex-KGB agent and current president of Russia over everyone else in our government.  What explanation could there be for that level of denial, if not blatant corruption?

I am reminded of a quote from Rodney Dangerfield in the movie comedy Back to School where Rodney plays a character named Thornton Melon.  Mr. Melon is a successful businessman who returns to school.  In the scene, he is in a business class and the professor is discussing a sound business plan.  Thornton calls out the teacher and tells him he has “left out a bunch of stuff.”  When asked, “Like what for instance,” Melon replies, “First of all you're going to have to grease the local politicians for the sudden zoning problems that always come up.  Then there's the kickbacks to the carpenters, and if you plan on using any cement in this building I'm sure the teamsters would like to have a little chat with ya, and that'll cost ya.  Oh and don't forget a little something for the building inspectors. Then there's long term costs such as waste disposal.  I don't know if you're familiar with who runs that business but I assure you it's not the boy scouts.”

Rodney Dangerfield in Back to School

Mr. Melon’s depiction of rampant corruption in various areas of business is perhaps accurate and somewhat cynical if not comical.  It is, however, this very corruption that President Trump claims to want to dispose of in Ukraine but he adopts it as a tool when it benefits his interests.  Donald J. Trump the businessman, brought with him the immorality and corrupt work ethic from that wheeling and dealing world of real estate and business to the White House.  He promised reform and to "drain the swamp."  It would appear that he has changed the meaning of "drain the swamp" from one of an ethical standard to one that embodies anything he doesn't like.

Misspeak or Freudian Slip?

Trump's properties have now become attractive destinations for foreign governments and business interests who want to curry favor with this president.  Even our own government operations have been steered to Trump-branded properties delivering a financial emolument to their namesake.  In February of 2017, the State Department booked 19 rooms at the Vancouver, BC Trump hotel.  The US military has likewise spent over $200,000 at Trump’s Turnberry Scottish resort even though it is inconvenient to locate there.  Mar-a-Lago is now the Winter White House as advertised and promoted on a State Department website in April of 2017, with descriptions of praise for its “Venetian and Portuguese influences and private collection of antiques.”

The president’s claims of his financial separation from his businesses are belied by the fact that, while business direction has been transferred to his children, he still has open accounts with the business to withdraw any needed monies.  The new tax reform initiatives are due to save Trump businesses tens of millions of dollars annually.  This article and this writer don’t have the time or inclination to further detail the numerous examples of corruption perpetrated by this president in his three years in office.  Suffice it to say that this presidency will probably be tied up in court battles for years.  To read a chronological list of the president's corruptive practices, you might want to visit this GQ (my bible) article.

The problem faced by all of us today stems from the caustic nature of government corruption, particularly on this scale.  We all realize that some level of corruption will always be present; this is nothing new.  What is new is Donald J. Trump’s blatant and blasé attitude toward that corruption.  His “above-the-law” defense rings hollow to us but he is getting away with it before our very eyes.  His open corruption breeds more corruption elsewhere.  If the president can do it and make money, why is it wrong for anyone else?  How can we demand corruption reform from countries like Ukraine when our president abuses his power for political and financial gain?

We earlier stated that Donald Trump was the Marie Curie of corruption.  Madame Curie was a true genius in her field of radioactivity but it brought about her eventual demise.  President Trump should be wary of his field of endeavor and worry that corruption may too be a cause of his undoing.

Marie Curie

Footnote:  Marie Curie was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize and she was the only winner of two such prizes.  Donald J. Trump's much sought after Nobel Peace Prize is still elusive.

Donald Trump in 2020?

Welcome to the Divided States of America.  While we have long had our two-party system of government, prior to January 20, 2017, the gap between Democrat and Republican or liberal and conservative was a manageable space.  The process of compromise might slow things down, but in a democracy, that’s how we roll.  We have now become divided like no time in our history since the Civil War.  What can we do to correct the situation?  Well, we have a built-in remedy called the ballot box and our upcoming 2020 elections may be the most important in my lifetime.  What do we have to look forward to next November?  Let’s look at where we are now.

Trump Supporter defined:
You, like many Americans, were fed up with our government and the congressional swamp.  You were outraged at its failure to make progress in the many issues that are important to you.  You are a proud American and you believe in a strong military.  You are a patriot who still gets a tingle when you see our flag flying and hear our national anthem.  You are not alone; most Democrats also share those values.

Donald J. Trump entered the presidential race and you had a sense that you knew him.  You had perhaps read about his exploits in the tabloids or watched him on his Apprentice reality television show.  He had money and bravado that you admired.  He made many promises that made you think he could and would make a positive impact on our lethargic Congress and he would get things done.

Analysis

Here we are nearing the end of his first term as president and we can now look back at his promises and see all that he has accomplished.  We will see that he has made many changes and that he has kept his promise to shake things up.

President Trump’s major campaign promises:

1. Build a wall along the Mexican border and find a way to get Mexico to pay for that wall.
2. Repeal the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare.
3. Suspend immigration from terror-prone places.
4. Cut taxes for people and businesses.
5. Address our crumbling infrastructure with a $550 billion fund.
6. Improve trade with a repeal of NAFTA and TPP and use tariffs to our benefit.
7. Root out corruption and drain the swamp.

Let’s look at these promises one at a time:

1.  While the president gets an “E” for the effort to build a border wall, his inability to negotiate with a Congress that controls the purse strings, has made these efforts ineffective.  He lacked the ability to sell the idea of a simple but extremely expensive solution to a very complex immigration problem.  Since he ignored the experts with more comprehensive ideas for physical border security, his plan has essentially failed.  His 2,000-year-old solution (Great Wall of China, 221 BC) fails to deter a determined population from crossing our southern border.  We also now know that he had no idea how Mexico would pay for the wall, only that it made a nice sound bite.  None of this even begins to solve the overall problem of illegal immigration.

2.  President Trump’s attempts to repeal Obamacare have failed for good reason, people like it.  Yes, it is flawed and needs work, but Trump has no plan to replace this Band-Aid on our overall national healthcare problem.  Donald Trump does not deal well with complexity, hasn’t hired people who might be able to help, and doesn’t listen to the ones he has hired.  Republicans have tried over 70 times to repeal, delay, defund, or otherwise neutralize Obamacare without effect so it is not all on Trump.  Obamacare is the law of the land and until someone comes up with a better solution, President Trump’s efforts would be better spent on repairing the Affordable Care Act.

3.  The president’s efforts to ban travel from certain countries felt to be terrorist sponsors have failed.  Executive Order 13769, and its replacement, 13780, aka the Muslim bans, have been hit with restraining orders that prevented enforcement or they have been struck down by the courts.  Most court findings have dealt with the discriminatory nature of the Order.

4.  President Trump successfully pushed through his tax-cut bill.  Federal tax receipts from corporations have plunged.  About one-third of these benefits went to foreigners as many U.S. corporations are either foreign subsidiaries or their stock is owned by foreigners.  Therefore, a third of this went overseas.  On the U.S. side of things, the benefits went mostly (84%) to the wealthiest 10 percent of the population.  From 2017 to 2018, the corporate tax rate went from 23.4% to 12.1% but personal income taxes as a percentage of income fell but from 9.6% to 9.2%.  Instead of paying down our national debt in this good economic time, Trump has pushed our debt past $22 trillion.  Corporations and the very wealthy got the lion’s share of this debt increase and the average taxpayer got a few crumbs.

5.  Trump’s $550 billion infrastructure fund never materialized.  In his third year, his State of the Union address mentioned a $200 billion infrastructure fund to be used to stimulate other investments.  In a bipartisan effort, Democrats approved $2 trillion to be used to repair our crumbling infrastructure and create thousands of jobs.  During an infrastructure meeting at the White House, in a staged move, Trump made a short speech and walked out of the meeting.  He immediately marched outside to a podium set up in the Rose Garden in front of waiting news cameras to announce that he was nixing the infrastructure deal because the nasty Democrats were supporting the Mueller investigation.  Now that that investigation is over and now that it would be in Trump’s best interests to revive this significant investment in our jobs economy, what is stopping him?  Well, I guess that the impeachment hearings could be lined up as his next scapegoat.

6.  The replacement of NAFTA, with the new USMCA, has cleared initial hurdles but it has not been ratified by the three participating countries.  USMCA is essentially a minor update to NAFTA with changes for automakers, enforcement of labor standards, and intellectual/digital property protections.  TPP was never ratified.  A tariff war has been started to the detriment of farmers and various sectors of our economy.  These tariffs and resulting retaliatory actions taken by our trading partners have reduced domestic economic output, income, and employment.  These tariffs have imposed an $87 billion tax on Americans.  I say this because, while businesses may absorb the initial cost increase, they will pass these on to us with higher costs.  It is estimated that, if all the announced tariffs were fully imposed, U.S. GDP would fall by 0.66 percent amounting to $165 billion.  This would offset around 40% of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.  Wages would fall by 0.44 percent and employment would fall off by half a million.

7.  The status of Trump draining the swamp and getting rid of corruption would seem to be self-evident.  I have lost track of the number of Trump appointees who have gone to jail, are awaiting sentencing, are under indictment, or are under investigation.  At this moment, Roger Stone has been found guilty of all seven counts in his indictment and he is awaiting a ruling on how much time he will serve.

Where do we go from here?  

The choices will be simple, vote for Trump or “the other guy/gal.”  Right now, the latter choice is unknown.  Trump, however, is a known entity.  Here is what we know to be factual.  I will try to keep opinions and left-wing rhetoric out of this.  We won’t go into the merits of what he has promised but only how effective he has been in his job bringing those promises to fruition.

• Trump has in his favor the fact that he has tried to fulfill many of his campaign promises.  His inexperience in government, however, finds him ill-equipped to fulfill those promises.  No matter how smart he thinks he is, he is a poor negotiator.  He dictates but does not negotiate.  This possibly worked for him as a real estate developer but it is a non-starter in government.  A CEO of a corporation can act in an authoritarian manner, but the president is only one of three co-equal branches of government.  Being decisive can be a good thing, but not when you are wrong.
• Draining the swamp does not mean digging a moat and adding more alligators and snakes.  No one person can do it all; he needs help.  He needs intelligent people who can tell him when he is right and tell him when he is wrong.  He was smart enough to hire some of those people in the beginning but his pride/ego seems to have gotten in the way.  He has fired the people who might have helped him achieve his goals.  Six of the people he hired are now convicted felons.
• Donald Trump has a strange sense of truth.  I don’t think I need to elaborate this point as his conflicting, captured-on-video statements, are put up nightly on the news side by side.  In this department, he is regularly shown to outdo Nixon and the 1919 White Sox.  Ben Franklin was a teller of tall tales and his kite and the key story is pure fiction.  Tall tales are very different from outright lies meant to deceive others and persuade them to take some desired action.  Repeating a lie many times does not make it true.  Robert Ripley used lies that couldn’t be verified with outrageous facts that couldn’t possibly be made up, and he combined that with an enormous sense of audacity and built his “Believe It or Not” empire.  Luckily, Robert Ripley was not our president.
• Trump’s morality as the leader of a civilized society should not be a major point of contention.  Normally, live and let live would be a wise motto to follow and a person’s private life should be their own business.  Donald Trump’s extremes, however, make it a matter for consideration.  I needn’t elaborate on his deviations from societal norms as they are well documented.  His declarations of religious piety are almost laughable.  Evangelicals would do well to look elsewhere for a new messiah.
• Donald Trump’s knowledge of history and foreign affairs is found wanting.  He regularly displays a complete lack of understanding of these areas that are so critical to the proper functioning of the so-called “leader of the free world.”  This wouldn’t be so bad if only he would, as promised, surround himself with smart people who could give sound advice.
• His criminal-like behavior is regularly on full display.  He talks in mob-code so as to avoid incrimination, but he doesn’t seem to be particularly good at this either.  His comments to the president of Ukraine that, Ambassador Yovanovitch would be “going through some things,” was a not too veiled a threat.  The Donald took his mob training from Roy Cohn, a seasoned mob lawyer.  John Gotti might say, “Do me a favor, get rid of that stone in my shoe,” when calling in a hit.  Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal lawyer, also works for a Ukrainian bagman, Lev Parnas, who gets his money from Dmytro Firtash a Russian oligarch and close personal friend of Vladimir Putin. 

Decision time:

The points above are of serious concern but I have saved the most serious concern of mine for last.  I put this here, separated from the rest, as it is an opinion and not a proven fact.  It is conjecture on my part, but I can’t seem to find another explanation.  Russia is our enemy.  Not the Russian people, almost all of them that I have met have been very nice.  It is the Russian government, in place during my entire lifetime, that is evil.  While children today have active shooter drills, I had duck and cover drills and Saturday air-raid siren tests that were getting me ready for the anticipated nuclear holocaust that would be unleashed by that government.  How Russia, our long-time rival and political enemy suddenly became our nation’s sweetheart, eludes me.

We do know that Donald Trump has financial ties to Russia.  His son, Eric Trump once bragged, “We don’t rely on American banks.  We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”  Donald Trump is guarding his financial information like a state secret.  What is he hiding?  This wouldn’t be of much concern if it were not for his “Russia can do no wrong” attitude.  Putin wants Crimea, no problem; let’s lift the sanctions for their aggression.  Putin wants a foothold in Syria, no problem; we’ll just pull out our troops so you can swoop in and save the Kurds we just abandoned.  Putin wants to counteract American intelligence findings that Russia interfered with our election, not a problem; we'll have Rudy Giuliani and Gordon Sondland get the new Ukrainian president to announce the start of an investigation into Ukrainian interference in the 2016 elections.  Putin wants to bring back corruption to Ukraine so that he and his friends can begin to make billions of rubles, no problem; we’ll recall our ambassador to Ukraine who has been fighting corruption and we will put in a Trump appointee who will cooperate.

Time to choose:

These are all points to consider when you make a decision next November.  Do you want four more years of riding the Trump rollercoaster or do you want what’s behind door number two?  Even if it is a live llama, it might be a better choice.

Your New Llama

A brief note to Senate Republicans:  Perhaps it would be in your best long-term interest to support impeachment and replace Trump with a true patriot for 2020.