A Republican -- On Republicans

Don't take it from me, folks.

So many former Republicans. This man, David Jolly, Bill Kristol, George Will. So many.

Quote of the Day -- Insane Republican Party Edition

"From 9/11 truthers to Barack Obama birthers to 2020 Election liars to January 6th deniers. Ugh." --Bill Kristol @BillKristol Thanks, Republicans!

It's a BEE--YOO--TEE-FULL DAY!!

Great news!!  Fantastic news Friday!! Say it loud!!

Supreme Court rules against Trump and the FDA authorizes the first coronavirus vaccine in America, both on the same day.

It's like conservative columnist and writer Bill Kristol wrote on Twitter yesterday:

"December 11,2020--a date which will live in Democracy."

Good on you, America. Let's do this.

A Deepset Conservative on this President

 Yes sir and ma'am, a deepset conservative, none other than Bill Kristol, on this Republican Party President

And for proof? Look no farther.

Trump administration officials passed when Pfizer offered months ago to sell the U.S. more vaccine doses

Trump's pandemic blindness and election denial darken America's desperate winter

I can hardly believe what I read about this man sometimes.

Quotes of the Day -- Presidential Election Edition

Dan Rather  @DanRather

Dude. You lost.

Bill Kristol  @BillKristol

If only Republicans cared as much about America's well-being as about Trump's feelings.

#Concede

#Throwthebumout

The Trumpster is Pushing an Ultimatum for the Debates Now?

 This news broke today.

Trump challenges Biden to drug test before debate

This surely surprised me.

How could the Jenius possibly think Joe Biden, taking a drug test, could or possibly would be some kind of an issue?  Does he think Biden does coke or something?  Like his own kids apparently do? At least one of them. (Eric Jr).

So as long as we're throwing out ultimatums here, here's one for you, Mr. President.

No Tax Returns, No Debate

That's right.

No tax returns, no debate.

That is, if you, sir, Mr. President, don't turn in your taxes, your tax returns. AS EVERY OTHER CANDIDATE FOR THE PRESIDENCY HAS IN RECENT HISTORY--- no debate.

Hey, as long as you're throwing around ultimatums, sir, here's one back at you.

With all due respect, sir---for the office of the President, anyway--put up or shut up.

How about it?

Links:  This idea has come from a few sources, too, before now.

Peter Scotto: No tax returns, no debate

Bill Kristol: "No tax returns, no debates!" 

Joe Lockhart suggestion: No TAX RETURNS? NO DEBATES

No tax returns, no debate - NEWSRUST

Tweets of the Day: RNC Presidential Edition

Bill Kristol  @BillKristol
·Aug 22

"Mr. Trump...now plans to directly address the nation in prime-time on each of the convention’s four nights." It's not a party. It's a cult.

Bill Kristol  @BillKristol

The Republicans, in 2020, for the first time, have no platform. Instead: "RESOLVED, That the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda." It's no longer the Republican party. It's a Trump cult.

Dan Rather  @DanRather

I am confident that every other president in my lifetime would be speaking forcefully in support of the pro democracy protesters in Belarus. This is a shameful abdication of American leadership.

Dan Rather  @DanRather

I cannot remember a time when political journalists so needed backgrounds in criminal law.

And finally, what I think is probably the social media quote of the day.

Dan Rather  @DanRather

There are times I get online, see the latest news, and wonder how we are living in a world where Kafka writes for the Twilight Zone starring the Marx Brothers.

God help us, folks.

God and the heavens help us get to November 3.

And then January 20.

Vote!

VOTE BLUE!!

#BlueWave2020

Quote of the Day -- Presidential Edition

Bill Kristol  @BillKristol

We have a president who's a con man, a vice president who's a talk radio host, a White House chief of staff who for years claimed to have a B.A. but doesn't, a health secretary who's a lawyer-lobbyist, and an education secretary who's not an educator. What could go wrong?

And that's only a partial and very short, very abbreviated PART of the list.

Drain the swamp, indeed.

This President and his administration ARE the swamp.

Thanks, Republicans!

Three of This President's Best Critics

3 favorites of mine to read in this Age of Trump:

• David Frum
• George Will
• Bill Kristol

All 3 are deepset, longtime conservatives, Republicans and all 3 rightly savage him. The best critics are from the inside. Herewith, just a few quotes from each, highlighting the horribleness. First up, David Frum.

“President Donald J. Trump did not start the pandemic of course. But at every step of the way, Trump has acted as if guided by one rule: ‘How can I make this trauma worse?’”

Next, George Will, one of Donald Trump's most scathing critics:

"I believe that what this president has done to our culture, to our civic discourse ... you cannot unring these bells and you cannot unsay what he has said, and you cannot change that he has now in a very short time made it seem normal for schoolboy taunts and obvious lies to be spun out in a constant stream. I think this will do more lasting damage than Richard Nixon's surreptitious burglaries did."

So finally, Bill Kristol:

“I'm very honestly just agnostic about what the future looks like,” he says. “I do think in the short term, I think a second term of Donald Trump is very dangerous.”

Important side note---while researching this post, I found the following, too.

George Will: Republicans Will 

Forget Trump 'Fast' After 2020

I'd like to make clear here--we can never let this happen, folks. Once Donald Trump is out of the White House, we can never let the Republicans conveniently "forget" about this man and what he did and tried to do to our nation, our people, our Democracy. Heck, to Democracy itself. It's why I so frequently and repeated write "Thanks, Republicans!" on social media posts. We can never let them forget this man or what they unleashed on this nation and on the world. This will be, must always be a scourge on them and their political party. We, the nation, must never forget---so we never repeat.

Links:

David Frum Rethinks Conservatism

George Will's startling assessment of Donald Trump

Neoconservative Thinker Bill Kristol Says 2nd Term Of Trump Would Be 'Very Dangerous'

George Will calls Trump ‘sad, embarrassing wreck of a man

Conservative Icon George Will Urges November Sweep: Vote Out Trump, All GOP Enablers

Search Results

Web results

Donald Trump Is Crazy, and So Is the GOP for Embracing Him

This Trumpian Republican Party

I caught an excellent article, thanks to a friend, over the weekend on this President and what has morphed into his political party:

We Need to Speak Honestly About the GOP’s Evolution Into a Conspiracy Cult

One of the challenges in analyzing modern American politics is accurately describing the Republican Party without seeming unserious and hyperbolic. Major publications are understandably in the habit of presenting both sides of the partisan divide as being inherently worthy of respect and equal consideration, both as a way of shielding themselves from accusations of bias and as a way of maintaining their own sense of journalistic integrity.

Unfortunately, the modern Republican Party’s abdication of seriousness, good faith and reality-based communications or policy-making has stretched even the most open-minded analyst’s capacity for forced balance. Donald Trump’s own inability to string together coherent or consistent thoughts has led to a bizarre normalization of his statements in the traditional media, as journalists unconsciously try to fit his rambling, spontaneous utterances into a conventional framework. This has come at the cost of Americans seeing the full truth of the crisis of leadership in the Oval Office for what it is. For instance, it was ironically salutary for the American public to witness Donald Trump’s bizarre pandemic press conferences where he oddly attacked reporters for asking innocuous questions and recommended researching bleach and sunlight injections, because they got to see Trump raw as he truly is, without the normalization filter. Republicans have long argued that the “mainstream media filter” gives them a bad shake, but the reality is the opposite: sure, it’s not as good as being boosted by Fox News’ overt propaganda, but it does them a greater service than letting the public see them unfiltered at all...

...Being a Republican now requires believing in a jaw-dropping series of claims that, if true, would almost necessitate anti-democratic revanchism. One has to believe that 

• a cabal of evil scientists is making up climate science in exchange for grant money; 
• that there is rampant, widescale voter impersonation fraud carried out by thousands of elections officials nationwide; 
• that the “Deep State” concocted a scheme to frame Trump for Russian collusion but chose not to use it before the 2016 election; 
• that shadowy forces are driving migrant caravans and diseases across American borders in the service of destroying white Republican America; 
• that the entire news media is engaged in a conspiracy against the Republican Party; 
• that grieving victims of gun violence and their families all across America want to take away guns as a pretext for stomping the boot of “liberal fascism” on conservative faces; and so on. 

That and much more is just the vanilla Republican belief system at this point (not even touching less explosive academic fictions like “tax cuts pay for themselves” or “the poor will work harder to better themselves if you cut the safety net.”}

I personally can't recommend the complete above article enough.

Meanwhile, this happened two days ago, Saturday.

Trump retweets a message calling Hillary Clinton a 'skank' and spreads sexist insults about other prominent female Democrats

On Saturday, President Donald Trump shared a series of sexist insults and personal gibes about prominent female Democrats.

Trump has a long record of aiming sexist insults at female critics.

Who does this?

What public person, let alone government representative, let alone 74 year old, let alone Congressional representative or, I don't know, what PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES talks like that?  What adult calls another, a woman, a "skank"?  Who does that??

This President is frightening but as that first article above shows, much of the Republican Party has gotten scary, honestly, no overstatement, scary.

Fortunately, there are a few, a very few Republicans out there warning people about him and this. People like Utah's Mitt Romeny, conservative writer George Will, uber-conservative Bill Kristol and others.  It's not enough but it's something.

Then there's the fact that this President has repeatedly tried to spread an untrue and extremely irresponsible murder conspiracy theory, of all things, about Joe Scarborough.

Trump uses Twitter to push 

murder conspiracy theory 

And this was yesterday at the Memorial Day activities. As this President and again, his political party would have it, it's "sleepy Joe" Biden we have to worry about, no one else. And yet...

Trump’s struggles to stand still didn’t go unnoticed during Memorial Day visit to Arlington

Oh sway can you see.

President Trump’s struggles to stand still during a Memorial Day visit to Arlington National Cemetery lit up social media Monday, prompting users to recall past incidents in which the commander in chief, who turns 74 next month, battled to find a balance.

“Is the President having trouble standing up straight as the National Anthem begins at Arlington Cemetary (sic) or am I seeing things?” Joshua Potash from Queens asked on Twitter.

The Trump critic posted that video, along with another clearly showing the president swaying in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Between this President's ravings, his questionable health and his political party's going off a d eep end, it seems clear we don't lack for things we have to work on, let alone be concerned of.

Thanks, Republicans.

"Only the best people."
"So much winning."

Links:

Op-Ed: Let’s count the ways Donald Trump has gone where no president has gone before

Are White Working Class Folks Tiring of Trump's Act?
Trump Sabotaged America's Recovery Even Before COVID-19 Began

24 conspiracy theories Donald Trump has floated

6 months on, Trump hasn't completed his physical. The White House won't say why.

Editorial: If the pandemic-preparedness cupboard was bare, it was Trump's doing

What Republican Leaders Said--and Promised---About Iraq

Yet they blame and blamed President Obama

War, America: What is it good for?

Bill Kristol--and Senator McCain, for that matter, ironically--never met a war they didn't like.  Or want to get involved in:

Very Conservative, Republican Bill Kristol, on Mitt Romney

'nuff said.

Bill Kristol, protector of corporations

Protect those companies, Bill, you butt-kisser, you.

Shove your nose up there a little farther.

There's a towel on the chair, on your way out.

Can you say "delusional"?

Last evening, I saw this headline and article, in the Kansas City Star, by William Kristol, on now Former (thank God) President George W. Bush and his administration and tenure, saying, literally, "A Tribute to a Job Done Well and Faithfully".


Are you effin' kidding me?

Good God.

The man wrecked our Constitution, thrusted the government more into people's personal lives than any other President or government official--including J. Edgar Hoover--spent more money than any other President in the history of the country, ran up more debt than any other President in the history of the United States, took us into an unnecessary war, took us into that same, unnecessary war by misrepresenting information to us, the American people, took us into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of approximately 70 years earlier, at least in part, by not regulating business and banking and so much more and Bill Kristol gives a tribute to this clown, dolt and buffoon.

Unbelievable.

Un-freaking-believable.

The guy must be very nearly out of his mind or just simply delusional.

The above complaints are facts and matter-of-fact, they aren't opinions. All those things are what George Bush did and where he's left us.

For instance, in the article, Mr. Kristol says Mr. Bush "shouldered the burdens of office for the past 8 years."

In a word, Mr. Kristol, bullshit.

Mr. Bush himself said the last 8 years weren't a burden of any kind--at all. He said this at his last press conference, publicly.

George Walker Bush didn't have enough imagination and/or depth to take on the burdens of this country.

You want proof?

Iraq.

The war in Iraq.

Attacking Iraq.

Unilaterally attacking Iraq.

Attacking Iraq against and in spite of international law.

Misrepresenting facts, in order to attack Iraq.

Ignoring the deaths, pain and suffering that his Iraq war created, for both Americans and Iraqis.

His repsonse to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and the gulf states.

And so much more.

Mr. Kristol gave Mr. Bush credit, in the article, for staying with and behind Israel and I understand that.

But too much of everything else Mr. Bush did was against the country, against international law, against right, against decency and against the American people.

George Walker Bush was for corporations and for corporate profits and that showed clearly in decision after decision.

"A job well and faithfully done"?

Hell no.

Not unless you're rating what he did for Big Business in America.

Only then.