Trump's Illegal Fundraising

I've seen a lot of bizarre things come out of the rancid lump of protoplasm known as Donald Trump's brain but sending fundraising emails to foreign legislators is particularly peculiar. At minimum, he has sent appeals to Scotland, England, Iceland, Canada, Australia, Denmark, and Finland. Those are just the ones reporting to date.

The most generous excuse is that Trump's campaign manager Paul Manafort hired one of those sleazy Russian spam gangs he's friendly with to send out billions of messages to everyone on their list regardless of country or politics.

The second quarter ends tomorrow and the next FEC filing deadline is just three days before the start of the Republican convention. His campaign has said they've had millions of dollars in contributions in just a few days. If that money isn't there, and I suspect it isn't, then Trump is struggling to find the money somewhere to cover his empty promise. He doesn't care if the source is illegal.

And, of course, what Trump did is illegal. Previous far less pervasive cases of campaigns soliciting foreign money have been met with huge fines. If I were Hillary, on July 16 I'd demand an FEC audit of the Trump campaign to discover the extent of foreign funding of his campaign.

Veepstakes!

If I were Hillary I would wait until after the Republican Convention to announce my Veep choice on the off chance the rebels execute a coup and dump Trump and I'd need to rethink my strategy. Still, everybody else is talking about it, so...

Democrats

Liz Warren, Cory Booker, Tim Kaine

I love Elizabeth Warren and really, really like Cory Booker. Both would make excellent picks. Liz is the better campaigner, especially her ability to throw Trump off his game and make him spend an entire news cycle mumbling "Pocahontas." Booker is younger and oozes charisma. The downside for both is that they are senators from states with Republican governors meaning gaining control of the Senate would become more difficult.

Kaine is the establishment pick. He is so establishment he has "Beltway Insider" tattooed on his chest in inch high gangsta font. In a time where establishment insiders are held in contempt and Hillary already fills the insider niche, Kaine would signal to both Bernie supporters and independent voters that their voices would not be heard.

Republicans

The question for Trump is not who he will pick but who won't say "no." The list of people who've said "don't even ask" to Trump is huge. Of those left, you've got the unemployed con artists (Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry) who desperately need a job, the embarrassing sycophants (Chris Christie, Ben Carson) who have been demeaning themselves before the great Trump butt, and a small Trumpish handful of officeholders who seem willing to be Trump's fourth wife (Jeff Sessions, Mary Fallin, Bob Corker). 

At this point my best guess is Liz Warren and Sessions but I wouldn't wager a farthing on the subject.

Please Laugh

The United Kingdom is leaving Europe. Scotland, almost certainly, will now divorce from England. The same ultra-nationalist fervor could elect Donald Trump. We need to laugh.

The History of Indecorous Events At The US Congress

To hear Speaker Ryan talk, the Democratic protest against gun violence on the floor of Congress is an unprecedented breach of decorum. That's a lie. 

Republicans Did It First
On August 1, 2008, Rep. Paul Ryan was one of the Republican members of Congress to do exactly the same thing. Republican leaders occupied the well of the House to protest the then Democratic majority's refusal to bring Republicans bills to a vote. They chanted, sang songs, and cheered when Speaker Pelosi had the lights turned out. The only difference is that Republicans lacked the stamina of Democrats, they could only last five hours.

But things have gotten much more indecorous than that in American history.

Strom Thurmond's Piss Pot
In 1957, Congress was considers a rather tepid Civil Rights Act that would set up a commission to investigate minority voting and allow blacks to serve on federal juries in Southern states. But it was more than enough to rile the segregationist from the not so great state of South Carolina. Strom took the floor and, with a brief respite provided by Barry Goldwater, talked non-stop for over 24 hours.

Buck Kilgore

The interesting thing about this still record-setting filibuster was that Strom had an aide standing by with a bucket in the event that Strom needed to take a piss so he could pee while remaining on the Senate floor and still talking.

Kicking Down the Doors
In 1900, Speaker Thomas Reed was having a hard time getting a quorum. The minority, led by Southern segregationists, were trying to prevent four new African-American congressmen from being seated. They would demand a quorum call and then race for the exits. No quorum, no business can be done. Speaker Reed decided to get a quorum by locking all the doors. Some congressmen tried to hide under their desks but one, Congressman Buck Kilgore of Texas tried to run only to find the doors locked. Kilgore proceeded to kick in the door like a drunken ex-boyfriend.

Congressional Brawlers

May 22, 1856 - Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina took exception to the fact that abolitionist senator Charles Sumner was still breathing. He walked over to the floor of the Senate, approached Sumner from behind, and began beating him with a cane. Congressman Laurence Keitt also of South Carolina drew a gun and threatened to shoot anyone who tried to stop Brooks beatdown of Sumner. Sumner spent two years in a hospital recovering and was reelected to Congress while bedridden.

Later, Brooks challenged another anti-slavery congressman to a duel. When it was accepted, Brooks chickened out.

Feb. 5, 1858 - Larry Keitt was at it again. He took exception to Congressman Galusha Grow wanting Kansas to be slave free. Keitt tried to choak Grow which triggered an all out brawl on the floor of the House.

'I Feel Like a Supermodel'

I feel like a supermodel, except like times 10. It's true. I'm a supermodel. I'm on the cover of these magazines — I'm on the cover of the biggest magazines. I don't even know about it. I can't even read the story, because if I did, I wouldn't get any work done. ~ Donald Trump, June 18, 2016

Maria, West Side Story

If you listed all the crazy stuff Trump has said and printed it on paper it would sink the continent, but this egotistical preening would be on page one. In Donnie's spongified brain he is the greatest thing to ever happen to the world, ten times better than the greatest person he can possibly imagine - a supermodel like Heidi Klum.

It's beyond bizarre and I really don't know if it's dementia, Mad Cow Disease caught from a Trump Steak, or just a shitload of Nose Candy. But at least I now know what the Trump campaign song should be.

I feel pretty,
Oh, so pretty,
I feel pretty and witty and bright!
And I pity
Any girl who isn't me tonight.

I feel charming,
Oh, so charming
It's alarming how charming I feel!
And so pretty
That I hardly can believe I'm real.

By the by, last summer candidate Trump opined that Heidi Klum was no longer a ten because that is the kind of issue that requires presidential judgement. Heidi's response was a perfect 9.99.

Living In Trump's America - Part Five

Cult of Personality

The Rome headquarters of Mussolini's Fascist Party

I'm speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I've said a lot of things. I know what I'm doing, and I listen to a lot of people, I talk to a lot of people, and at the appropriate time I'll tell you who the people are. But my primary consultant is myself and I have, you know, a good instinct for this stuff. ~ Donald Trump, March 16, 2016 (responding to the question "who are you consulting with" on foreign policy)

Everyone who runs for president has an inflated ego. It's a job requirement. Trump's ego is inflated to the size of Jupiter. Whereas candidates normally speak as members of a community (us, we, our), an analysis of Trump's speeches reveal that his favorite words are self-referential (I, me, Trump).

It's "I will build a great, great wall." Not we, I. And because he will build it, it will be not just be great but "great great."

It's "I will make America great again." Not, "with your help we" just I, alone as a singular superhuman individual.

In Trump's America, Donald J. Trump is Alpha and Omega, the morning and evening star. He will accomplish mighty deeds all by himself while the rest of us must shut the Hell up and get out of his way.

And if we will our country will be full of sparkling unicorns and we'll get tired of so much winning.

Living In Trump's America - Part One
Living In Trump's America - Part Two   
Living In Trump's America - Part Three 
Living In Trump's America - Part Four 

Living In Trump's America - Part Four

Wars and Torture

A few of the 28,000 Chileans who disappeared into Augusto Pinochet's torture chambers.

I would bring back waterboarding, and I’d bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding. ~ Donald Trump, Feb. 8, 2016

Trump has been especially clear in his intention to institute torture as American policy. He has even bluntly stated that he will compel American servicemembers to commit war crimes such as the torture and murder of family members of suspected terrorists.

There's nobody bigger or better at the military than I am. ~ Trump, June 16, 2015

Trump considers himself a military genius who will bomb, encircle, and crush ISIS then go in and "take that oil." He promises to bomb Iraq and Syria with Trident nuclear missiles. Trump spokesperson Katrina Pierson justified this position by saying what's the point of having nuclear weapons if you are afraid to use them. Trump has refused to rule out dropping nuclear bombs on Europe. Trump has expressed his desire for nations like Japan and Saudi Arabia to have their own nuclear arsenals. By scrapping the Iran nuclear deal, Trump also wants Iran to own nukes.

Beyond his desire to nuke much of the globe, Trump wants to engage in trade wars with our biggest trading partners by imposing a massive 45% tariff on Chinese goods and a 35% tariff on goods produced in Mexico. Economists have analyzed his plans and predict the result will be a debilitating global recession/depression.

All this is not to suggest that Trump doesn't see potential allies abroad. While Trump foresees an adversarial relationship with Great Britain he has nothing but praise for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. He has invited North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un to the United States and praised China's violent suppression of dissent, the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989.

Since this series is getting me depressed, here is an article from the Onion. U.N. Warns Trump May Be 7 Months Away From Acquiring Nuclear Weapons.

Living In Trump's America - Part One
Living In Trump's America - Part Two   
Living In Trump's America - Part Three 

Living In Trump's America - Part Three

Political Prisoners and Censored Media

Hillary Clinton has to go to jail. Alright I said it. She has to go to jail. ~ Donald Trump, June 2, 2016

Trump has openly promised to arrest his Democratic opponent after he is sworn in as President. He has accused her long time aide, Huma Abedin, of terrorist ties and suggested that the current President also has terrorist connections.

Trump wants to expand the already massive American prison system. Trump's supporters are calling for multiple political arrests. Couple that with Trump's desire for a pervasive surveillance society where neighbors spy on neighbors and are threatened with arrest if they fail to report their neighbors to police and the prospects are that people other than Clinton, Obama, and Abedin will be arrested for their politics.

These are the media outlets Donald Trump has banned to date for being "unfair" to him:

• Washington Post
• Huffington Post
• Politico
• Univision
• Des Moines Register
• BuzzFeed
• Daily Beast

Trump has promised to change libel laws to make it illegal to criticize him. He only wants media that say nice things about him. Fail that and be blacklisted or sued.

Living In Trump's America - Part One
Living In Trump's America - Part Two

Living In Trump's America - Part Two

Mass Deportations

In 1949, Stalin deported 42,000 Latvians from their homes.

The Mexican Government is forcing their most unwanted people into the United States. They are, in many cases, criminals, drug dealers, rapists, etc. ~ Donald Trump, July 5, 2015

Trump says he will have a "deportation force" to expel eleven million immigrants from the United States within 18 months. He has said that American citizen children born of immigrants will be expelled along with their parents so as to "keep families together."

Trump believes that having foreign heritage is the same as being an alien. Hence, a 63 year-old man born in East Chicago, Indiana is a "Mexican" while a 29 year-old man born New Hyde Park, New York is an "Afghan."

Trump has written that he intends to triple the size of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) which would make Trump's deportation force the largest agency of the federal government, excluding the military, exceeding in size both the TSA and FBI. Trump's deportation force would deprive people of due process, quickly expelling people from the country without hearings to determine whether they were, in fact, American citizens.

If somebody walks in, they don't bring them to court, they send them back. ~ Trump, Nov. 21, 2015

Trump wants to ban all Muslims entering the country; he only wants to restrict Hispanic entry. Since Trump believes that Muslims are at least as dangerous as Hispanics it is difficult to believe he would not point his deportation force at the 3.3 million Muslim-Americans eventually.

To achieve Trump's plan for the complete purging of eleven million Hispanics from the United States in 18 months would require expelling over a half-million men, women, and children from the county every month for a year and a half. That is 130 cattle cars filled with humans a day using the Nazi figures of 150 deportees per rail car. Trump states these expulsions will be "humane"

One can only speculate how Trump will use his massive deportation force after he has expelled all of his undesirables

Living In Trump's America - Part One

Living In Trump's America - Part One

Every Man a Spy

People move into a house a block down the road, you know who’s going in. You can see and you report them to the local police. Most likely you’ll be wrong, but that’s OK. That’s the best way. Everybody’s their own cop in a way. ~ Donald Trump, Nov. 27, 2015

Trump has long held that people should spy on their neighbors and report everything they see to the police. On July 13, 2016, Trump upped the ante stating the people who fail to successfully spy and report on their friends and neighbors should be arrested and punished.

At its most benign, that would be a return to McCarthyism as specifically proposed by Trump sycophant Newt Gingrich. Gingrich has proposed recreating the House Un-American Activities Committee that succeeded in tormenting thousands of innocent Americans while failing to uncover any Nazi or Communist agents.

Trump's stated goal is to compel Americans to inform on their neighbors, even if those neighbors have done nothing wrong, or face arrest themselves. This would create a hyper-suspicious society where the only way to be considered a Good American is to turn in your neighbor to the police before your neighbor can turn you in.

There are historical examples of this type of society in the Stalinist countries of eastern Europe. The Soviet Union, East Germany, Romania, and Albania all required their citizens to diligently spy on their neighbors, friends, and family members. Failure to report anti-communist thoughts or behavior was punished as severely as the actual behavior. The East German secret police had dossiers on 40% of the country's population.

In Trump's America people will learn to fear their neighbors and even their closest friends will report them to the police for any slight or imagined thought or deed. Americans will be afraid if they don't report friends and neighbors to the police for something, anything, they themselves will be suspected and arrested for un-American activities.

In Trump's America every citizen will be considered a potential enemy of the state. Family get-togethers and dinner parties will be frightful affairs where any unguarded moment could lead to arrest for a thought crime, arrest under suspicion of having anti-American feelings.

Living In Trump's America - Part Two   
Living In Trump's America - Part Three 
Living In Trump's America - Part Four
Living In Trump's American - Part Five 

Confluence of Evil

Last night combined the hatreds instilled by religious zealotry with Florida's "shoot thy neighbor" policies and traditions to create a horror beyond comprehension.

American neo-fascists are orgasmic in their glee, simultaneously celebrating the violent deaths of so many homosexuals while joyfully laying the blame at the feet of a religion they wish to exterminate.

Trump supporters happily hope to turn this into a Reichstag moment that will catapult their Beloved Leader into the White House.

I awoke this morning from a mild nightmare dream to a real living nightmare infinitely more ghastly than anything my dreams could compose. The greater living nightmare is the knowledge that this has all happened before and will all happen again.

Sometimes you need a kitten pic.

Trump's Last Refuge

Religion is the last refuge of a scoundrel. Patriotism is next to last. ~ Andy Rooney

Donald Trump is such an extreme narcissist he considers himself equal if not superior to God so when he spoke to the Faith and Freedom Coalition about restoring "faith to its proper mantle" it's probable the worship he will compel out of the American people is toward himself.

After being revealed as a racist asshole and a thieving asshole from his Trump U victims it was totally predictable that he would try to rehabilitate himself by pretending to be a Bible-thumping asshole.

If elected, I am certain the president he would most closely resemble is Emperor Caligula.

I am all men as I am no man and therefore I am a God.

I don't know what else to do to revolt them. (Speaking of his Senators.)  ~ Malcolm McDowell as Caligula

Historic Firsts

Hillary Clinton is the first woman nominated for President by a major party. This is an important milestone that will only be exceeded by her being elected President. It will rank along side of the election of Barack Obama as the first person of color to be elected President.

Since I don't want to ignore Donald Trump, because we all know how whiny he can get, if Trump is elected he will be the first person with absolutely no prior experience in public service (elected office, cabinet post, victorious general) to be gifted the presidency.

Here are a few other notable firsts:
First Woman Elected To Congress: Jeannette Rankin

Elected from the state of Montana in 1916, four years before the 19th Amendment granted universal suffrage to women, Montana had granted suffrage to women in 1914. She ran again in 1940 to defeat a pro-fascist scoundrel named Jacob Thorkelson. Rankin is also notable as the only person to vote in Congress against the United States entering both World War I and II.

First Woman Elected to the Senate: Hattie Caraway

In a special election in 1932, Caraway was elected senator from the state of Arkansas, filling the seat of her recently deceased husband. She was reelected to a full term in November of that year. She was reelected again in 1938. The first woman Senator was Rebecca Felton, but she only served one day in 1922 before being replaced by a man.

First Women Elected Governors of a State: Miriam Ferguson, Nellie Ross

1924 saw two states elected women governors. In a special election, Nellie Ross ran for governor of Wyoming to complete the term of her husband who had died in office. She lost a reelection bid.

Then there was "Ma" Ferguson of Texas. In typical Texas fashion, her husband, James "Pa" Ferguson, had been governor when he was impeached and removed from office in 1917. When she ran a common campaign slogan was "Me for Ma, and I Ain't Got a Durned Thing Against Pa." She lost a reelection bid in 1926 mostly because her husband had again got caught with his hands in the public till. She ran and won again in 1932.

First Women Senator Elected on Her Own: Margaret Chase Smith

Up to 1948, every woman to become senator had been replacing her deceased husband (except Dixie Graves who was appointed by her governor husband) and none had been elected to a full term. While Margaret Smith had replaced her dead husband in his congressional seat eight years previously, she won her senate seat totally on her own merit and served for 24 years as a respected member of the upper body. Although also a Republican, in 1950, Sen. Smith publicly denounced Joseph McCarthy at the heights of his Trump-like popularity. In 1964 she also the first woman to run for the presidential nomination of a major party.

Trump and His Judges

In November 1933 in New York, Mrs. Maria Griebl refused to be questioned by a Jewish lawyer or appear before Jewish judges saying, "I am asking for a neutral district attorney or judge, preferably Christian." Mrs. Griebl was an American Nazi.

That same year in Munich, a Jewish lawyer went to the police to file a complaint over the arrest of a client. He was beaten by the police who cut off his trousers and forced him to walk the street wearing a sign reading, "I will never again complain to the police." By 1938, all Jewish judges in Germany had been removed from office and disbarred and it was illegal for Jews to practice law.

On June 3, 2016 Republican nominee for President Donald Trump declared the judge in his Trump U fraud case was prejudice specifically because of his Hispanic heritage. On June 5, Trump declared that he believed any Muslim judge was incapable of impartiality.

Trump and his acolytes suggest the judge is a disloyal American because he is a member of a Hispanic law association (La Raza Lawyers of San Diego). They also incorrectly tie him to the National Council of La Raza (NCLA).[Note: "La Raza" is Spanish for "The People." The NCLA is an advocacy group similar to the NAACP or B'nai B'rith.]

It's a weird world where if you hate Jews you get to demand a non-Jewish judge and if you hate Mexicans you can demand a non-Hispanic judge. It's a weird world but one we have seen before. The next step is mobs of loyal nationalists dragging judges from the hated group from courts to be beaten. Then disbarring them. Then comes mass deportations. Anyone who claims that the judiciary will stop Trump's mass deportations are ignoring the fact that bravery is suicide when the world has gone mad.

Trump's Golf Panic

Trump is running to promote his business enterprises and as an expression of his blind racism and white supremacy views and, specifically, his hatred of Mexicans and Mexico.

One of Mexico City's outstanding golf courses.

So the news that the PGA has pulled its World Golf Championship event from Trump's Doral course and is moving the tournament to Mexico City must have stung him to his very soul (assuming he has one). Trump is certainly squealing like a stung pig.

Cadillac pulled out and not a single major golf sponsor on the planet was willing to take over sponsorship if it meant being tied to Trump. Trump cultists over at Breitbart News are calling for a boycott of golf, a boycott of General Motors, and predicting that after he is elected Trump will force the PGA to use Trump courses.