Does He Think We're Stupid?

Does Donald Trump think we're stupid? If so, for about 25% of eligible voters he'd be right.

Early in his campaign he mused about whether he'd lose any supporters if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue in New York. Over the course of the last several years, it appears as if he's out to prove himself right. If he did indeed shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, how would he handle it?

• Remind us that New York is a liberal city
• Suggest that the victim was a terrorist
• Shout "fake news!"
• Wonder aloud whether NYPD Homicide detectives will be investigating "Crooked Hillary"
• Deny that he did it
• Tweet that it was a public safety measure
• Tweet that the victim was a journalist, and therefore an enemy of the people
• Deny that he denied that he did it

This week's shit show in Helsinki, following closely on the heels of the shit show at the NATO meeting, which featured some of the same people present at the G7 shit show - and don't forget the United Kingdom shit show...was to date the most disgusting behavior by a serving president...and that's saying a lot. 

Double negatives? Really? Once upon a time I was involved in a religious group that, among other things, encouraged us to consider the context when reading the Bible. (Not that they consistently did that, but it was good advice nonetheless) In other words you can't pick a verse in isolation and assign a meaning to it that is at odds with all other nearby or otherwise related verses. This is true in real life as well. When considering a politician's position, you can't just look at one speech, one tweet, or even one vote, you have to look at their entire history of public comments, written positions and voting record. Trump's backpedaling on his "I don't see any reason why it would be" [Russia] statement, claiming that he meant to say "I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be" [Russia], ignores the context of that statement. In the immediate context it makes no sense. Trump is being very obsequious to Putin, avoiding even the appearance of criticism.  This is in vivid contrast to his behavior with our allies, whom he berates and belittles, threatening and bullying, then lying about what he said. Answering that he can't imagine how it could have been Russia that interfered in our election fits right in with his public behavior during his joint appearance with Putin. 

In the follow up the next day, when Trump was reading his "explanation" of his "mispeaking", he did what he frequently does when reading one of his walk-back prepared comments: he interrupts himself, "explaining" what he is reading as if we're not operating under the fiction that it's his own words that he's reading. (Often he'll say something like "that's so true" in the middle of his comments). In his would/wouldn't comments he interrupted his prepared words to say "Could be other people, there's lots of people out there". And of course there's the wider context. Trump has on several occasions said that he supports our intelligence agencies and believes their conclusions about Russian interference, yet  he has consistently worked to undermine anyone who was investigating that interference and expressed doubt about Russia's role. 

Trump has been insisting that his deference to Russia is simply because it is in our best interest to be on good terms with Russia and that it's good "for the world" for us to get along with Russia. Yet he doesn't feel like it's "good for the world" to get along with anyone else, including our closest allies. He hammers them for not spending more on their militaries, and on allegedly unfair trade practices, ostensibly "Putting America First". He's willing to conduct a wide-ranging trade war rather than achieving our aims through negotiation, yet with Russia, he's willing to let bygones be bygones. 

Context. 

Does he think we're stupid? I have to conclude that he thinks that we are, and in the case of his die-hard supporters, he's right. People who supposedly love the military ignore or explain away his disrespect for "the generals", individual veterans who disagree with him and Gold Star parents; people for whom morality and religion are paramount are okay with his moral stench; working people cheer when he hands billionaires and corporations huge tax cuts in exchange for a paltry cut for them; those who thought a billionaire couldn't be bought are mute while Trump and his cabinet loot the treasury...and on and on. 

Yes, you people who continue to support him are stupid. At first you were "merely" okay with his misogyny, bigotry and xenophobia; those things are stupid, but if you were misogynistic, bigoted and xenophobic, then you got what you wanted. But rationalizing and excusing everything else, including the craven subservience of the past week makes you STUPID. 

Fuck you. 

Spygate and Other Paranoid Fantasies

It seems like a day doesn't go by without Trump coming up with insulting nicknames, inaccurate descriptions of events and hyperbolic assuming of the martyr mantle. His latest focus, if the man is actually capable of focus, is what he has been calling "Spygate".  Trump has been alleging that "Obama" embedded a "spy" in the Trump campaign "long before this Russia thing". If you get all your news from Fox & Friends or your friends' Facebook statuses, then you might assume that this is true.

At the end of this blog post I will include a link to a Wikipedia page that contains a timeline - much more information that I can include in one sitting! But suffice it to say that Trump's allegations that Obama was spying on his campaign, that any attention was for political reasons, that Trump was not told of potential Russian attempts to co-opt his campaign staff, even that the Mueller investigation is a "witch hunt" are 100% false. Her are a few facts - I'll try to keep it simple.

• The FBI was investigating Russian "troll farms" as early as 2015
• The hack of the DNC server was confirmed to be by Russians
• The DNC was not the subject of an investigation, it was the victim of a crime
• The FBI did not ask for the physical server, therefore the DNC did not "refuse to hand it over"
• Documents hacked from the server, that reflected badly on Clinton & the Democrats was later released by Wikileaks
• There were a not insignificant number of Trump campaign staff that had questionable ties to Russia
• The British investigator Christopher Steele was initially hired by a Republican primary contender to investigate Trump's Russian connections through the firm Fusion GPS; when that person dropped out, the contract was picked up by the DNC
• Steele got some of his information from Russians (this is apparently the genesis of the charge the Clinton & the DNC "colluded" with the Russians)
• Some of this information implicated Trump campaign officials
• Steele reported his findings to the FBI
• Around the same time George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign foreign policy advisor, told an Australian diplomat, during a drinking session, that the Russians had "dirt" on Clinton that had been passed to the campaign
• This was the impetus for the FISA warrant to begin surveillance of some members of the Trump camapaign, the "dossier" gave additional information
• Previous to this, conversations of Trump campaign officials were picked up as part of routine surveillance of known Russian agents in the United States
• On August 17, 2016, Trump was warned in an FBI briefing that it was likely that Russian agents would attempt to compromise members of his campaign.
• Everybody and his brother apparently had illegal or questionable meetings with Russians and then lied about them
• At some point, it's unclear when, the FBI sent Stefan Halper, a foreign policy scholar, to set up meetings with various Trump campaign officials to attempt to get information about any Russian connections. He was not embedded in the campaign, was not in any way part of the campaign, but met with individuals outside of campaign offices to gather information. There was nothing political about it. 
• Obama approached Senate majority Leader McConnell with the suggestion that they make a bi-partisan announcement regarding the known Russian interference
• McConnell refused
• Obama, concerned that a unilateral announcement would look like he himself was attempting to influence the election, made no announcement
• Trump characterizes this as attempting to safeguard Clinton's assumed election win
• Obama did, however, institute several sanctions against Russian entities
• In 2017, Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, the titular head of the Russia Investigation, which by this time appeared to involve Trump, or at least his associates
• Trump then bragged to Russian diplomats that getting rid of Comey took a lot of pressure off him
• Shortly thereafter, Rod Rosenstein, Deputy Attorney General, who had oversight of any investigation since Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself, appointed Robert Mueller III, former FBI Director, as Special Counsel to head the investigation
• Trump regularly criticizes Sessions for recusing himself, stating that if he knew that he's recuse himself he would have gotten someone else for the job
• Rosenstein, new FBI Director Wray, former FBI Director Comey and Mueller are all Republicans
• Trump has started characterizing the investigation as "13 Angry Democrats"
• Trump also paints any of the investigators who were in place during the Obama administration as biased

It's pretty obvious that there's at least cause for an investigation. Whether there was knowing conspiracy, or just ignorance, there are numerous reasons to look into what happened and who was involved. Whether Trump himself is implicated is an open question, but his well-known tendency toward micro-managing, it stretches credulity to imagine that he didn't know something was going on. 

Timeline:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections

Trump's "Animals" Comment

Hey Trumpists! Congratulations! You finally caught the media in a verifiable mistake! The so-called Fake News Media said that your hero called immigrants "animals" when the context (determined by listening to the entirety of his remarks) indicates that he was specifically referring to members of the MS-13 gang.

Or does it?

Trump has consistently conflated immigrants in general, not just illegal immigrants, but all immigrants, with the  MS-13 gang (when Hispanic) or with terrorists (when Muslim). His barely articulated policy on immigration comes down to: Hispanic Refugees = Murderers & Rapists and Muslim Refugees = ISIS sympathizers; both categories are painted as hating America. It doesn't matter to him that while some people entering illegally from south of the U.S. are gang members, the majority are people fleeing gang violence, the percentage of MS-13 members who are deported is less than 1% of the total or that many MS-13 gang members are U.S. citizens. MS-13 is an American gang that has attracted many immigrants. It doesn't matter to him that the majority of potential immigrants from Muslim majority countries not only are fleeing violence in their own countries, but have been painstakingly vetted before receiving permission to emigrate to the U.S.

So, it's perhaps understandable that many news outlets jumped on the "animals" comment without providing the context, seeing how neatly it fit into Trump habits of speech. But unlike the President, who never admits his mistakes, and sticks to his misstatements and lies no matter how much video and audio evidence stacks up proving him wrong, media outlets backpedalled and corrected their earlier statements.

So even with the most unforgiving take on the media's motives, you've got one. One up against the almost daily lies that flow from the President's Twitter account, his press secretary's statements and the defenses by his lawyers and sycophants. Even though Trump regularly accuses the media of making up stories, attributing stories to nonexistent sources and having it out for him, an amazing number of stories have later (or sooner) proved true.

So, I'm not really willing to give Trump a pass on this. He's either a bigot, or feigns bigotry because he knows bigotry plays well with his most ardent supporters. Yeah, I'm willing to look at the context, the full context of two years of candidate and President Trump making bigoted and hateful statements.

And for you Trumpists - apparently bigotry and hatred aren't disqualifying characteristics.

What does that say about you?

Walking on Water

A refrain that I often hear from Trumpists is that Trump could cure cancer (or walk on water or some other far-fetched event) and liberals would find fault. I don't know if they realize that that's the flip side to Trump's own assertion that he would lose no support even if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue. Like most people who are against Trump, I do find fault with him, no matter what he does. Not because I think that everything he does is wrong, or harmful, although at the moment I'm at a loss to think of anything that he did that I agree with. No, my problem with Trump is why he does things, and with the fact that his 24/7 lying casts doubt on whether he actually accomplished what he says he accomplished. Here's a few examples:

I believe that we should secure our borders. Not because I think that people who want to come here are bad people, but I think that there should be a process for admittance to the United States. On the flip side I think that the process as it stands is burdensome, and people fleeing gang violence or poverty often have no recourse other than entering illegally. I think that once someone has been here for a number of years and has demonstrated that they are a productive, hard-working member of the community, we should allow them at least the opportunity to convince a judge that should be allowed to stay. Right now men and women who have been here for decades, even those who have served in our military, are deported without a second thought. Trump's border security positions are not based on a sincere desire to keep our country safe, as he says, but are based on a hatred and bigotry toward "the other". How do I know this? I followed his campaign. He characterized Mexicans as rapists and drug dealers and Muslims as terrorists. His cries for a "big, beautiful wall" were nothing more than an applause line in his rallies, without an actual policy or plan to implement. His demands for money to build the wall are at odds with another applause line, the assertion that Mexico would pay for it. His budget cuts funding for proven border security measures such as upgraded radar and other detection technology, surveillance aircraft that track drug shipments, canine units, and personnel at ports where smuggling takes place. ICE has been rounding up of people who have been here for decades and have faithfully checked in with ICE and arresting and deporting them, despite his pledge that he would focus on criminal aliens. Instead ICE has focussed on low-hanging fruit such as people dropping their kids off at school, or showing up in court or at work. So, while Trump claims to prioritize border security and the safety of our citizens, what he is really doing is inflaming ignorance and bigotry and appealing to the least common denominator of the electorate. Why would I believe anything he says about the border, immigration, or public safety?

I believe that out tax code was in dire need of reform before last year's tax changes were instituted. It was complicated and despite tax rates increasing as ones income rose, the multiplicity of deductions, credits and incentives caused it to favor the wealthy. Trump and his Republican allies bragged that they would pass a "massive" tax cut, benefitting ordinary Americans, and that "historic" rate cuts to corporations would inject even more life into an already booming economy. What we got did include huge tax rate cuts to corporations without the accompanying loophole closures that we were promised. A handful of companies made sure that we knew about thousand dollar bonuses that their employees received, but less attention was lavished upon the plant closures or the companies that used their tax windfall to buy back stock, raising price per share and guaranteeing that the C-suite boys and girls (mostly boys) would receive princely bonuses, surely well in excess of a paltry grand. Meanwhile, many working class Americans received a tiny increase in take-home pay, while others saw an increase in their taxes. Simple math and five minutes studying the rate charts and brackets will reveal that anyone with more than two children earning around the national median income will see a higher tax bill. Despite this, Trump continues to brag that this was a "massive, historic, tax cut". He has rewarded himself and his billionaire buddies while throwing crumbs to working Americans. Why should I believe anything that he says when he claims that he cares about the middle class and working Americans?

Another reason to be consistently against whatever Trump comes up with, even if it might sound a little reasonable at first is twofold. Trump is famously uninterested in expert opinion. Or even informed opinion at any level that does not buttress his own ignorance. In his first year he has consistently undermined and fired anyone who might disagree with him and didn't slavishly fawn over his every word. An illustrative example  was his National Security Advisor, H.R. McMaster. After ditching the lunatic loyalist Michael Flynn, Trump brought in McMaster, an active duty Army Lieutenant General who has a PhD in American history and is, by all accounts, brilliant. But his security briefings bored Trump and had to be dumbed down to hold his attention. Nuance, subtlety, shades of grey; these were all things that eluded Trump. But, despite his and his followers' wish otherwise, the world is nothing but shades of grey. The other half of this is Trump's predilection toward lying. Lying is his default position. He lies regularly and outrageously. He doesn't always lie just to cover up and obfuscate, he lies to brag, he lies because it will make him look good or his opponents look bad. He lies about lying. He acts as if there is no such thing as a tape recorder or a video camera or that everyone has cell phone cameras and recorders. Is he stupid? Deluded? Or does he just think we are? His lies are so far ranging that I can't trust anything that he says. So when he unveils a new policy, it's safe to assume that he either has no idea what he's talking about or that he's lying about it.

Finally, there's his crazed obsession with undoing everything that President Obama accomplished. Sometimes this aligns with mainstream Republican priorities, but often it's just mindless destruction. And it's personal. Let's not forget that Trump jump-started his political career by claiming, again and again, that President Obama was an illegitimate President who wasn't born in the United States. How else can you explain his antipathy to the Iran Nuclear "Deal" when he is planning on giving North Korea virtually the same "deal"? Or how he is undermining our nation's standing by pulling out of agreements negotiated in good faith?

To the Trumpists I say that if Trump is credited with curing cancer I'd have every reason to disbelieve it, or question whether he was getting kickbacks. And even if it were true, he still be an cheating, misogynistic, bigoted, xenophobic, bully.

Fuck him.

Taxes

Today is the deadline to file your 2017 federal tax return, the last where the old rates and brackets will apply. Social media is alive with pro-Republican pundits, Republican lawmakers, President Trump and his Trumpketeers and ordinary Americans who are proud that they didn't pay attention in math class because "they'd never use it". They're crowing about how this is the last filing under the old broken, failed system. They're bragging about how it's much simpler it is and how much more money we're all taking home.

Except it's not true.

It's simpler for married couples filing jointly who were itemizing deductions between $12,701 - $24,000. That the increase in the standard deduction, which will eliminate the advantage of itemizing anything under $24,000, but for the majority of Americans who didn't itemize before, there will be no change in complexity. As for tax cuts, many Americans will see a reduction in taxes, but many won't. How will the changes in the tax rates and brackets affect you? Do the math.

No, I'm not going to do the math for you. There are several web sites that list the old and new rates and brackets. Recalculate your 2017 taxes using the new numbers and see what you come up with. And don't get distracted by what your refund is, or will be; look at what your actual tax is and compare. But I'm going to bet that the chances of you doing that are negligible. Most people either believe the Trumpists and Republicans that it's a massive, historical tax cut or that it's nothing but a giveaway to the rich, without actually checking it for themselves.

I've done the math, and I know how it will affect me, and I can also calculate whether some of the claims that people are making about how much larger their paychecks are can be true. Spoiler alert: most are not.

The effect that the corporate tax cuts will have on ordinary taxpayers is less clear cut. We've seen reports of companies that have given out year-end bonuses to their employees. Of course we never hear about the vast majority of companies that aren't giving out bonuses. And we hear of hardly any who are increasing employee pay across the board. How tax rates influence corporate hiring and investment is a complex subject, and the anecdotal evidence of a few months into the new tax framework doesn't tell us much. What I do know is that businesses seldom do hings for their employees out of the goodness of their hearts. This is why I am highly suspicious of the companies who not only handed out bonuses, but made sure to publicly credit their decision to the tax  reduction, even though the tax impact won't really be known until this time next year. Wal-Mart is a good example. Much was made about their year-end $1000/employee bonuses, but it took a while for the news that only 20 year veterans got the full $1000 and that they were simultaneously closing hundreds of stores.

So, the moral of the story is to get out your calculator, or count on your fingers and figure it out for yourself.

Mueller

Following the raid on Michael Cohen's home and office (Michael Cohen - one of Trump's lawyers) President Trump has called the Mueller investigation "a disgrace"  and "an attack on our country". He has characterized the investigation as partisan, and on several occassions, "a witch hunt". But let's look at why there's an investigation in the first place, and why Robert Mueller is running it.

United States intelligence agencies, as part of routine surveillance of foreign agents, some operating within the U.S., became aware that Russian agents were in contact with members of the Trump campaign and other Trump associates and family members. This, along with the conclusion that the Russian government was engaged in actions to influence the 2016 Presidential election in favor of Trump, caused the FBI to begin investigating links between the Russian influencers and the Trump campaign. A key moment in the FBI investigation was when George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy advisor to Trump, told an Australian official that the campaign was receiving information about Secretary of State Clinton from the Russians. This was the catalyst for the FBI to seek a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant against Carter Page, a Trump associate. Later Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer, became aware of links between Russian intelligence and the Trump campaign and reported his findings to the FBI. (Steele was originally hired by a Republican group to investigate Trump, but was later funded by the Democratic National Committee [DNC]). Attorney General Jeff Sessions was also mentioned as possibly having made illegal contacts with Russians during the campaign, so he recused himself from oversight of the investigation.

Shortly thereafter Trump fired FBI Director James Comey. This was when the appointment of Mueller as Special Counsel to investigate connections between Russians and the Trump campaign happened. Rod Rosenstein, Deputy Attorney General, without apparently consulting with Sessions or Trump, announced that Mueller, a former FBI Director, would be heading up the investigation.

Despite Trump's repeated claims that it's been proved that there is "no collusion", Mueller's team continues to move forward, with a number of guilty pleas and indictments of Trump campaign officials and associates. ("Collusion" is not a legal term and has no meaning within the context of this investigation.) The investigation continues to find examples of illegal or questionable contact between Trump associates and Russians, as well as financial improprieties,  including money laundering.

Trump's continual attacks on Mueller and his investigators is also troubling. He has fired two of the top FBI officials, Comey and Andrew McCabe, who were involved in the investigation pre-Mueller. It has been leaked that he has discussed firing Rosenstein in order to put someone in place who can control Mueller, or even firing Mueller himself. He regularly excoriates Sessions for recusing himself, suggesting that if he knew about the recusal beforehand he would have nominated someone else for Attorney General. Trump criticizes Rosenstein and Mueller for conducting a partisan attack, even though they are both Republicans. The judge and US Attorney who approved the raid on Cohen are both Republicans appointed by Trump. Trump's tweets are a barrage of attacks seeking to undermine the investigation. Obstruction of justice is one of the things that Mueller is looking at. It's pretty scary when the one being investigating can fire the investigator.

Will Trump be the ultimate target?

Just The Facts Ma'am

News organizations, whether newspapers, cable networks or online providers, are made up of people, and as such bring with them the tendencies and biases of those people. It has been my experience, however, that most reporters are aware of their own biases and work hard to keep them out of their reporting. Individual reporters know that their continued employment is based on their reputation for unbiased and accurate reporting. At the corporate level, newspaper publishers and network CEOs, who are mainly concerned with profits, understand that long-term profitability is based on their readers' perception that reporting is accurate and unbiased. Publishing stories that are attention-getting yet based on unsubstantiated information, or worse, lies, may bring a short-term ratings or circulation boost, but is reputation damaging in the long term.

This is not to say that news organizations don't have a point of view. The point of view can manifest itself as being partial to one party or the other, or being pro-business or pro-labor. In a newspaper, the point of view is expressed on the editorial page, as well as in opinion pieces, where contributors give their views on various subjects. Point of view can also show up in what news is printed, since obviously you can't print everything. But in the news section of a newspaper, facts are king. Printing clearly biased information, slanting coverage, or outright lying is not in the newspaper's long-term interest.

This is not to say that one should believe without question everything that you read in the newspaper or hear on television or radio. Get your information from multiple sources. Educate yourself on the difference between the opinion or analysis that a news organization offers and the facts that they are reporting. Learn to spot signs of bias in news reporting and allow for it.

One of the things that you hear from Trump and his supporters is how the mainstream media "has it out for Trump" and that an overwhelmingly high percentage of articles are negative. Back in December 2017 a Pew Research study concluded that only 9% of articles about Trump that expressed a positive or negative tone were positive vs. 91% negative.  This does not say that 91% of articles about Trump were negative, it does not say what percentage expressed a positive or negative tone. If only 20% of articles expressed a "tone", then only 18.2% of the total were actually negative. The study also doesn't  define "negative". If an article reports that President Trump has made a statement but pointed out that what he said was factually inaccurate, is that negative? If he announces new tax law changes but the article points out how they're not cuts for most Americans or disputes his prediction of how the economy will be affected, is that negative? I don't think it's inaccurate to say that much of what Trump says betrays at least an ignorance of the subject, or that he often makes up "facts" on the spot, or not infrequently out and out lies. Pointing this out is not negative. Pointing this out is not an attack.

Newspapers and other news organizations are not constituent parts of the checks & balances system envisioned by the founders, but they are an important, independent, source of information; so important that the very first amendment to the Constitution guarantees freedom of the press.

Our current President has done more to undermine the credibility of the free press in this country than any previous chief executive. His constant cries of "fake news" whenever something is reported that he does not like has carried over to many of his supporters, who will echo his "fake news" label at all critical reporting. A large percentage of Americans believe that most of what is reported by the mainstream media is "fake news". Where does that leave us? Are we really ready to rely on one politician for our facts? Do we want a situation where only the words of one man are deemed reliable? Many Americans have no problem with this.