Month: April 2017

“Very powerful”. . . a Trumpian Epiphany

The Errant Armada

Sorry, it’s almost impossible to get through a day without some shard of Trump-inspired government wreckage getting lodged in your throat, to be expelled by laughter over folly so ridiculous that future generations will have to conclude that someone made it up.  They would be viewing it through the cracked lens of Fake-News-Making that has become the paradigm for information dissemination in the Age of Social Media.

The ridiculous part was Donald Trump’s announcement of an “Armada” en route to the shores of North Korea, when it was at the moment actually headed in the other direction for a training exercise in the Indian Ocean. (Hapless White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer was once again thrust into Alternative Facts Limbo, suspended between his clueless boss on one side, and on the other side a Press Corp hungry for the truth.)

Continue reading ““Very powerful”. . . a Trumpian Epiphany”

Civility on the Chopping Block: Why Democrats Lose

What Mitch McConnell’s Total War Tells Us

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had no qualms about squashing the Democrat Party’s attempt to filibuster the Gorsuch nomination to the Supreme Court, any more than he had qualms about refusing to allow Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland even to be heard in committee a year ago.  The Garland episode was abundantly unfair. Certainly Mitch McConnell in his heart of hearts knew that to be so.

But Mitch McConnell doesn’t care about fairness. Just as with his categorically obstructionist policy regarding all things Obamain, fairness was the farthest thing from his mind.  All’s fair in love and war is the axiom by which he and his fellow Republicans operate. Whatever we may think about McConnell’s ugly enough racial and personal biases against the former President, the key deciding factor that animated his obstructionism was the challenge to Business as Usual represented by the upstart senator Obama. . . and it had to be crushed at all costs.

Continue reading “Civility on the Chopping Block: Why Democrats Lose”