Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

[Michael Scally MD]

A POOR MAN’S NIXON
https://claytoonz.com/2019/02/21/a-poor-mans-nixon/

“A poor man’s something” is an expression used to describe an item or a person as being similar to something else of a higher quality. For example; you can say an Epiphone guitar is a poor man’s Gibson. If you own an Epiphone, don’t feel bad. I own one too and it’s awesome but it’s not a Gibson. You get my point.

Yesterday, Donald Trump described former Deputy Director of the FBI, and briefly acting director, as a liar, “disgrace to his country,” and a “poor man’s J. Edgar Hoover.”

Donald Trump projects himself onto others. Naturally, he’s a liar, a disgrace to his country, and now I think he’s a cross dresser.

McCabe was fired from the FBI, mere hours before he was to qualify for his pension. Trump spent months smearing the guy at rallies, press conferences, and on Twitter before the bureau finally felt enough pressure to remove McCabe from his job and rob him of benefits earned through years of service. After the firing, Trump took a victory lap on Twitter.

Trump has worked hard to ruin lives, reputations, and careers, not just to save his own skin, but to feed his base.

McCabe is promoting his new book, “The Threat: How the FBI protects America in the age of terror and Trump.” Trump is complaining about the guy writing a book…after he stole his pension.

While Trump is claiming the book is full of lies, he’s contradicting himself by using one of the book’s claims as an example of the “Deep State” plotting a coup.

After Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, then bragged to Russians in the Oval Office that he ended the problem of being investigated over Russia, then gave those same Russians classified information, in addition to a long train of him being subversive to and defensive of Vladimir Putin, the guys at the FBI started to detect a pattern. It doesn’t take a career professional in intelligence to see that Trump is beholden to Russia and is eyeball deep in corruption. But Andrew McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein discussed options for invoking the Constitution’s 25th Amendment to oust Trump. During these conversations, according to McCabe, Rosenstein talked about wearing a wire while talking to Trump.

McCabe maintains that Rosenstein discussed it on more than one occasion. The Justice Department’s denial of this is that Rosenstein never wore a wire while in the presence of Trump. That’s not a denial it wasn’t discussed.

Two things here; these guys can’t invoke the 25th Amendment. That is a process for the president’s cabinet. The guys at Justice can cajole, prod, and attempt to influence, but they can’t enact it. The second thing is, I don’t think catching Trump admitting corrupt things on a wire would do anything. They guy yelled at campaign rallies for Putin to help him and proudly told NBC’s Lester Hold that he obstructed justice in firing James Comey.

Trump is all over this. He tweeted, “Wow, so many lies by now disgraced acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe. He was fired for lying, and now his story gets even more deranged. He and Rod Rosenstein, who was hired by Jeff Sessions (another beauty), look like they were planning a very illegal act, and got caught.”

McCabe was for making an “unauthorized disclosure” to the media, that didn’t actually violate FBI rules. He was also fired for “lack of candor.” It’s funny that these career professionals, like McCabe, Comey, and Peter Stzrok all had stellar reputations and respect until Trump discovered their “corruption.” And, how did they “get caught” if McCabe revealed it? Someone should explain to Trump “caught” is when you’re caught, like the time Michael Cohen released a tape of Trump talking about paying hush money to pornstars and Playmates, after he denied ever knowing about it. That’s an example of being “caught.”

Trump also attacked Jeff Sessions for hiring Rosenstein, even though Trump hired Sessions and…wait for it…Rod Rosenstein. As it turns out, McCabe had authorized a criminal investigation into Jeff Sessions over “whether Sessions lacked candor when testifying before Congress about contacts with Russian operatives.”

Donald Trump has done everything he can to subvert the Constitution and obstruct justice. He’s fired people investigating him. He’s pressured others to make the firings. He’s placed sycophants in high positions who swear to protect him, like interim Attorney General Matthew Whitaker who said his job was to “jump on a grenade” to protect Trump. While Whitaker was in charge at Justice, Trump reportedly called to ask him to put an ally in charge of the hush money investigation in New York.

The FBI started to investigate Trump after the Comey firing, which they handed off to the Special Counsel. The bureau was also working to preserve evidence on Trump and Russia, because people in charge of investigations kept getting fired and sycophants were replacing them.

The investigation was to determine if Trump had obstructed justice and whether he might be, wittingly or not, in league with the Russians. The goal of the backup plan was to ensure that the information collected under the investigations, which included probes of Trump associates and possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign, would survive the firings or reassignments of top law enforcement officials.

After Mueller finishes his report and hands it off the newly appointed Attorney General, we’ll find out how well those backup plans work.

I don’t think McCabe is a poor man’s J. Edgar Hoover, but Trump is the poor man’s Richard Nixon.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

The problem is not socialists. They have no place in US politics and won't. The problem is not capitalism. It worked well to make American the economic powerhouse of the world. The problem is rigged capitalism--which for 40 yrs the GOP has engineered with the help of some Dems.

Our system has been hijacked by the rich and powerful to serve them. With wages at effectively the same level as more than 4 decades ago and the minimum wage at effectively the same level as 6 decades ago, while the 1 percent get richer, everyone else is left behind.

Increases in productivity no longer translate into higher wages for workers. Companies don't use tax breaks to create jobs they use them to buy back stock and enrich top management and shareholders. Regulations are rolled back. Tax cuts help only the wealthy.

The benefits of growth accrue primarily to the top 1 percent and hardly at all to the bottom 90 percent. Trump was elected because of people's outrage with the system that made this happen and disenfranchised them (HRC was seen as part of the establishment that made it happen.)

But he has proven to be the most corrupt president ever--self-dealing & working to empower the richest and to plunder the country's assets on their behalf. He has taken advantage of campaign finance laws (and rulings like Citizens United) that have further empowered the powerful.

The GOP will say that adjusting tax laws so that the super-rich pay their share is "socialism." It is not. It is capitalism as it was practiced in the US until just the last few decades. They will say measures to rein in the power of big corporations is socialism.

But it capitalism as practices as far back as the beginning of the last century with Teddy Roosevelt and the trust-busters. They will say that trying to provide a decent retirement or a secure pension for everyone is socialism. But it is New Deal era capitalism.

They might decry efforts to give shareholders more rights--but under the Marshall Plan the US demanded shareholders have board seats in German companies at the end of World War II. Effective unions are not socialism, they are vintage U.S. capitalism.

They will decry efforts to have the government step in where the market fails, but the U.S. politician who argued that was the role and responsibility of government was not a socialist, it was Abraham Lincoln.

Providing for good education, help ensuring all Americans can find a good job at a decent wage, providing good infrastructure, good health care, secure retirements, and regulations that preserve our environment and stop the exploitation of the many by the few are not socialism.

They are the foundations of American capitalism. We have been waging a war on them since the Reagan era--attacking regulations, changing campaign finance laws, institutionalizing the power of the richest Americans, of Wall Street and of big companies while chipping away...

...at the rights of average Americans. Reagan and Bush and Bush and Trump have done it. So too, it must be acknowledged did Bill Clinton (see for one example the repeal of Glass Steagall or our active work...in which I participated...for largely unfettered free trade).

So too did Barack Obama who raised more money for his campaigns and more from Wall Street than any other candidate and who enabled big industries to cut sweetheart deals in key legislation. But Clinton and Obama also fought for the average citizen in ways the GOP did not.

And it is undeniably now the Democratic Party upon whom the responsibility of representing Main Street vs. Wall St. must fall. The GOP has embraced unprecedented,shocking corruption. The "small government" message is designed to give more power to the most powerful outside gov't.

The GOP is the party of wild excess deficit spending. It is the party dismantling the education department, the environmental agencies, the regulators. It is the party of tax cuts for the few. It is the party of political self-dealing.

In fact, the GOP is not promoting capitalism, it is promoting oligarchy, crushing the ideals of real opportunity, embracing crowding most Americans out of the market and the money...of government programs that enable the rich to get richer. Call it pluto-socialism.

They are practicing a form of socialism where the community being served is just the richest in the society, where the cooperatives are among the mega wealthy and super corporations. What the Democrats want is the anti-dote to the GOP rigged system.

The policies the Dems advocate are hardly radical and in fact draw on the thinking of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Eisenhower. Of president's who presided over America's rise to greatness and ultimately eras like the 50s and 60s in which the economy...

...worked better for the middle class. The activism of Democrats today is for restoring the ideals and energy and opportunity and fairness that were the goals of prior eras and fixing what is broken in our system to ensure that it is not only more equitable in the future...

...more inclusive, but that it also is adjusted and adapted so the country can grow in the decades ahead...the entire country...that everyone can benefit...and that the economic anxiety that burdens the lives of most Americans today can be eradicated.

That's not socialism. That's American capitalism. Ethical capitalism. Moral capitalism. Compassionate capitalism. Capitalism that is not an end in itself but a means to serve the ideal of more prosperous, more just, more stable, stronger society.

Thread by @djrothkopf: "The problem is not socialists.They have no place in US politics and won't. The problem is not capitalism. It worked well to make American th […]"

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

A judge ruled Thursday that federal prosecutors — among them, U.S. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta — broke federal law when they signed a plea agreement with a wealthy, politically connected sex trafficker and concealed it from more than 30 of his underage victims.

U.S. District Judge Kenneth A. Marra, in a 33-page opinion, said that the evidence he reviewed showed that Jeffrey Epstein had been operating an international sex operation in which he and others recruited underage girls — not only in Florida — but from overseas, in violation of federal law.

“Epstein used paid employees to find and bring minor girls to him.,’’ wrote Marra, who is based in Palm Beach County. “Epstein worked in concert with others to obtain minors not only for his own sexual gratification, but also for the sexual gratification of others.’’

Instead of prosecuting Epstein under federal sex trafficking laws, Acosta, then the U.S. attorney in Miami, helped negotiate a non-prosecution agreement that gave Epstein and his co-conspirators immunity from federal prosecution. Epstein, who lived in a Palm Beach mansion, was allowed to quietly plead guilty in state court to two prostitution charges and served just 13 months in the county jail. His accomplices, some of whom have never been identified, were never charged.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

TRUMP’S WHITE NATIONALIST
https://claytoonz.com/2019/02/22/trumps-white-nationalist/

The FBI arrested a white nationalist in Maryland, who was inspired by a Norwegian terrorist responsible for killing 77 people in 2011. Christopher Paul Hasson, a Coast Guard officer, who was inspired by Donald Trump’s rhetoric, wrote he was “dreaming of a way to kill almost every last person on the earth.” His plan included murdering Democrats like Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Elizabeth Warren, who he identified as “poca warren,” abbreviating Trump’s “Pocahontas” slur for her. He was also plotting to kill CNN and MSNBC journalists. Yesterday, actor Jussie Smollett was arrested and charged in Chicago for faking a hate crime, where he claimed to be attacked by Trump supporters. Guess which of the two Donald Trump tweeted about.

Chicago police said they were upset that Smollett hurt the city’s reputation by staging a fake hate crime. There were 61 hate crimes in Chicago in 2017 and 73 in 2016. Hate crimes faked by a celebrity in the city over the past three years is still at one. Chicago Police, whose union endorsed Trump, only want to talk about that one. You’re not going to hear much about the Coast Guard terrorist from Trump or conservatives. That’s not the narrative they want. They have to portray themselves as the victims.

Regarding Jussie Smolletet, we haven’t seen this many Chicago cops chase down a perp since the Blues Brothers.

Victimized Trump supporters is about as believable as Roger Stone’s claim that he thought the cross hair he published next to his judge’s head was actually a Celtic cross.

The White Supremacist inspired by Trump and the Norwegian terrorist had been researching his hate for a while. Starting in 2017, he regularly examined the Norwegian’s manifesto, which led him to websites advertising firearms and tactical equipment, authorities said.

Hasson conducted Web searches inquiring whether senators received Secret Service protection and whether Supreme Court justices had bodyguards. After viewing a headline describing MSNBC host Joe Scarborough’s judgment that the president was “the worst ever,” the Coast Guard lieutenant and former Marine sought information about where Morning Joe show was filmed. Great. Now the guy has made Scarborough a martyr.

Authorities seized 15 firearms, including several long guns and rifles, and more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition from his basement apartment after executing a search warrant this month. Over the past two years, he had made nearly two dozen purchases of firearms or related equipment and made thousands of visits to websites selling weapons or tactical gear. He was also stockpiling steroids and other growth hormone pills on the advice in the Norwegian’s manifesto. None of the growth hormones or opioids were prescribed.

Hanson called for “focused violence” to “establish a white homeland.” He was obsessed with neo-fascists and new-Nazis. Others on his list included Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (who Republicans can’t shut up about) “Sen blumen jew,” as written in his email draft, presumably about Senator Richard Blumenthal.

He wrote a letter to himself calling for a “white homeland” nearly two months after the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, where torch-carrying white supremacists, who chanted “Jews will not replace us” and “Blood and soil,” clashed with anti-racist protesters.

He was charged with illegally possessing weapons and drugs, but the government said those charges are the “proverbial tip of the iceberg.”

These freaks are out there and it’s hard to tell them apart from the harmless noise makers. Donald Trump yells about there being violence if he’s impeached. This guy was planning violence in the case of Trump’s impeachment. Go figure what inspired that.

Last year, a terrorist, who said he wasn’t a Trump supporter killed eleven worshipers at a Jewish synagogue after he made several postings online echoing Trump’s antisemitic rhetoric.

It hits close to home for me. Last month, someone, who wasn’t using their actual name, posted a photo on a hate message board of what he thought was my home. It was a Google map picture. Fortunately, it was an address where I lived over a decade ago. But, I know they’re trying. What was his agenda? To inspire others to merely harass me or something worse? The thing is, that doesn’t just put me in danger but also those close to me. I’m having to be more careful which means less interaction online and listing the local GOP HQ as my address.

My point is, these nuts are out there. How many white supremacists are out there plotting terrorist acts from basements, and how many gay, black actors are out there plotting to stage fake hate crimes?

The one that makes me lose sleep is the one deserving more attention. It’d help if the president of the United States would stop motivating them.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]