Tom Toles for May 25, 2020

Bingo! Toles puts his finger exactly on the Trump strategy. Did I say Trump? I mean it is the foundation of right wing extremists who cannot win honestly.

Republicans always attack their opponent on their own weakest point. It is a pillar of strategy from the Joseph Goebbels / Karl Rove / Stephen Miller playbook.

In 2004, John Kerry was a highly-decorated Vietnam War hero who had literally gone through bullets (and taken a few) to save his men. George Bush used his Daddy’s connections to avoid Vietnam and stay stateside in a position from which he was mostly AWOL. So of course they FIBricated the Swift Boat ads to discredit John Kerry’s legitimate record as a highly-decorated war hero.

In 2008, birthers (led by Trump) tried to accuse U.S.-born Obama of being born in Kenya, as Obama ran against John McCain who had actually been born in Panama (where his military father was stationed in the nearby Canal Zone). Unlike Kerry in 2004 and Hillary in 2016, Obama was able to swat away the lies and keep control of his message.

In 2016, Trump was being promoted by the Russians, used insecure communications for his Tweets and his staff used insecure communications for electronic communications and Trump had 20+ sex abuse allegations. So naturally he drills down on Hillary’s e-mails (which, unlike the DNC, never got hacked, even though the Russians tried) and Bill’s naughty behavior (which was Bill’s bad, not Hillary, who unlike Trump “stood by her man” and preserved her marriage).

So now it’s 2020. Whoever the candidate was going to be, Trump was going to make THEM the foreign policy bad guy, accuse THEM of politicizing the Justice Department to weaponize it against political opponents, blame the Democrats for his own failure to manage the pandemic disaster and find some way to accuse THEM of the kind of sexual assault Trump himself has admitted to.

Sounds like he’s run out of NEW ideas.

Bonespurs is well off the chart to his right.

When I watched Rick Steves Fascism in Europe (on PBS), I realized that Trump embodies the egomania of both Hitler and Mussolini. At his rallies he looks, and acts, like Mussolini addressing a crowd from his window, including his pompous stance and gestures. He also “offers” simple solutions for complex problems, and directs his followers to hate and abuse those he doesn’t like while also lying about the supposed sins of his enemies.

The ☠resident seems to have staked out an outlier position that is nowhere near the range of acceptable presidential behavior. To ignore the public as a whole and to campaign continuously as though he feared to lose his base if he didn’t.

We went from No Drama Obama to Total Drama Queen Rumpy…. That’s about as far distant on the mood swing scale as two people can ever be… The Obama years passed quickly almost like we were asleep the whole time…. nothing to worry about, the Prez has got our backs and the Prez knows how to lead the world and the Prez will not allow us to fret,,,, Then came the Chinese curse – “may you live in interesting times”….. and it seems like during that past 3+ years we’ve never slept…. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to go back to sleeping peacefully again… VOTE BLUE!

The ☠ resident seems to have staked out an outlier position well beyond the acceptable range for American presidents.

Somewhere, a very relieved James Buchanan must be smiling. Lancaster, PA, was James Buchanan’s home town, and the City of Lancaster works hard to be proud of that fact. Most folks in the town (the county is a very different matter…) detest our current “pяesiduиce*.” Nevertheless they are, in one very limited respect, rather pleased by Tяцmp☠ and are quite willing to surrender to him Buchanan’s most notable “achievement” as president.

Our Loser-in-Chief is a loser. It would appear that the 2020 Tяцmp☠ campaign strategy will consist of nothing more than “Own the Libs!” What else is there?

What Bonespurs does is called Projection when one blames the other for one’s own faults.

I’ve said this before but worth repeating . . .Trump never expected he’d win. The campaign was only to promote the Trump brand to be paid for the use of his name on future hotels and other buildings around the world. He had no fireworks planned, no victory speech prepared, no choices made for potential cabinet members or advisors. It backfired on him, the GOP and worse yet the American people who believe in Democracy and the Constitution. Where is the video of Trump’s election night victory as the results came on the TV? What was the response of Mrs. Trump and Mrs. Pence? What was the reaction by Trump? The reaction by the GOP leadership in Congress and those who had run against him in the primary election had nothing good to say about him. Now he became their village idiot and they needed to say they would make him act like a real president. He’d be too busy to tweet or play golf, etc.

This old Vietnam era vet (same age as Trump) has seen enough of the damage he’s caused and the GOP with no spine to remove him. Enough already.

Trump is going to spew out as much crap as he possibly can from now until election day. Incite, divide and blame is a game he’s played all his adult life. He isn’t the most vile creature to walk the earth but he’s on the list. He is simply a miserable excuse for a human being. I continue to believe that his day of reckoning will come, some way, some how.

Trump Gate = 100,000 dead, 15% unemployment because the federal government denied the disease existed while shipping PPE to China. With American know how the disease could have been contained and eradicated but anti science Republicans decided to let the disease spread to every corner of the country which shut it down. Trump has virtually done everything to make the situation worse.

Trump never thinks that far ahead.

But, no one should forgive Trump for real scandals. Starting with, but not limited to, the complete mismanagement of the Covid-19 Pandemic.

Throw the bum out….VOTE BLUE

But, will fat-ass take the time to make up more lies BEFORE or AFTER his Golf Game???

A Yuuge Distance – {limerick}

On a scale of zero to ten,

The Donald just dudn’t fit in; -

- than zero he’s less*.

[ As prez he’s a mess

much more than the others have been. ]

… Footnote:

With a value off less than zero,

Trump isn’t much of a hero:

He’s a perp who negates

our nation’s good traits, -

- and leaves us in bigly dire straits.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Ol’ Punkinhead has taken over the “Worst U.S. President” award — he did so with his inaugural speech and he’s kept adding to the score since. He’s displaced the previous contenders, Jackson and Andy Johnson, who are tied for second place. My money is on Jackson for that one.

Worst presidents ever.

James Buchanan – Did nothing while the country drifted into civil war.

Donald Trump – Did nothing while thousands of Americans died due to a “Democratic hoax”.

Nearly every so-called positive achievement in the life of Donald Trump before and during his presidency is a purposely crafted “optical illusion” designed to trick those who view them.

He has positioned himself in a PR “Ames room” (q.v.) constructed for view with one eye through a peephole. Thus observed, people and objects within the room may appear bigger or smaller in relation to each other, depending on their positioning. Seen from above, the room’s clever distortions that help create the illusion can be understood.

The deceptive view of Trump can be compared to use of a painting method that makes a two-dimensional image on a flat surface appear three-dimensional: “trompe l’oeil.” Many famous paintings and murals employ this method. Used in stagecraft as painted backgrounds, landscapes appear to extend into the distance. Cleverly done pavement art meant to be viewed from certain angles is also an example.

If compared on a line-scale of Trump with Obama, the straight-on view is deceptive. Whereas the achievements of each can be forced to appear in-line, seen from above and sides the points of achievement are actually in oblique relation, as the stars in the Big Dipper and Orion’s Belt extend far beyond each other in three dimensions. But stars don’t intend to fool us — we fool ourselves. Some human stars do intend to fool us, and our gullibility helps make the deceptions succeed.

Not enough distance in the world to have those two in the same image.

Trump is certainly the worst, but Obama is certainly not the best.

Well, believe me, he can get further. Imagine as deep as you can imagine, he lives four levels under that.

I like asking some conservative acquaintances if they are better or worse off than they were four years ago. Oddly, a few are saying they really aren’t better off, especially now that they’re unemployed, their portfolios aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on, and there’s no vaccine or proven Covid treatment on the horizon. What’s really funny is to hear a few of those then try and explain why it’s not Mr. Trump’s fault. It’s funnier still when I ask them if “What have you got to lose” is really an effective campaign slogan.

How about the one when Obama chopped down the cherry tree ?

Nothing succeeds like pandering to the basest elements of society.

Vote blue all the way down the ballot, and, more importantly, learn key Senate races and donate to those races (Alabama, Maine, Arizona, Colorado, and Iowa just to name a few) and donate to efforts to enable minority voting like Stacy Abram’s Fair Fight 2020.

Give like you are investing in your family’s future, and the future of America. Because if we lose this one, we cede America to a minority of billionaires, and their death cult followers. We won’t get a redo.

Back to the cartoon…… Obama’s hands are enormous compared to the Orange Tasteefreez’s!!

 WINNING!

Health-care expenses per capita: USA #1

Coronavirus cases: USA #1

Coronavirus deaths: USA #1

Coronavirus death rate: USA #1

Fastest to 100,000 corpses: USA #1

{Off-topic:}

Reprieve – {limerick}

America won’t much grieve

when th’ POTUS takes his leave

{taking too

his retinue}.

We’ll welcome such a reprieve.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Noam Chomsky says Trump a ‘sociopathic megalomaniac’ who made US ‘singularly unprepared’ for pandemic

New comments from the renowned academic come after he accused Trump of wanting “to destroy the prospects for all organized human life… in the near future.”

Trump “doesn’t care what happens to the country, the world,” though he’s still reliant on “his primary constituency, which is great wealth and corporate power,” Chomsky said.

The administration has “no coordinated plan” for addressing the pandemic, meaning the nation will see “a lot more” deaths from Covid-19 on top of the nearly 100,000 confirmed fatalities that have already occurred, he added.

While Chomsky predicted a recovery from the pandemic will come eventually and “at severe cost,” the same cannot be said of the climate crisis. “There isn’t going to be any recovery from the melting of the polar ice caps and the rising of sea levels,” he warned.

Trump is taking a failing, lethal system and turning it into a monstrosity, but the roots were before him. Just think back to the reason why the pandemic occurred in the first place. Drug companies are following capitalist logic. They don’t want to do anything. The neoliberal hammer says the government can’t do anything the way it did in the past. You’re caught in a vise. Then comes along Trump and makes it incomparably worse. But the roots of the crisis are pre-Trump.

The same with the healthcare system. Like we know that—everyone knows—they should know the basic facts. It’s an international scandal: twice the costs of comparable countries, some of the worst outcomes. The costs were recently estimated by a study in The Lancet, one of the world’s leading medical journals. They estimated that the costs, the annual—annual costs to Americans are close to half a trillion dollars and 68,000 lives lost.

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/05/noam-chomsky-says-trump-a-sociopathic-megalomaniac-who-made-us-singularly-unprepared-for-pandemic/

On Monday, President Donald Trump’s economic adviser Kevin Hassett appeared on CNN to urge the economy to reopen, saying, “Our human capital stock is ready to go back to work.”

Trump adviser’s ‘repugnant’ lack of concern for human life slammed by ethics expert

I like this Tom ♥

The Gross Old Pervert Mantra: Why tell the truth when lies are so much easier and colorful? Besides we lie every time we open our mouths. /s )<:}

The Flynn scandal seems pretty real. Bad players on all sides.

Obama, maybe not the best. But the best in recent history.