Line in the Sand

 Like I said in my post from June 29, I will never understand the unfaltering support from most US citizens of the nation's armed forces, in particular when it comes to personal communication. Anyone posting a comment in an online forum and stating that they are a current or former member of the US armed forces, several people pile on with nothing more to say than "thank you for your service". They do not know anything about what that person did, or how well they did their job, it's just a reflex action to say it. Veterans are close to untouchable, and to disrespect American troops is a carreer ending move for any politician from either party.

So, of course, this is what asshat crazypants Trump does. He has been quoted as saying that a cemetery-full of people who died in service during WWI were "losers" and "suckers", and bragging about how he cheated his way out of being drafted for Vietnam. Several sources have confirmed this, but the White House is panicking to kill the story. Their reaction means two things: it's true, and they know how damaging it is.

I can't understand why this would be the straw that finally broke the camel's back, but sure, I'll welcome anything that can make the average American wake up, realize what a truly horrible person they have elected and get off their ass and vote him out in November.

Reckoning

The train wreck that is Donald Trump's presidency gets ever more horrific with each passing day, and what little remains of his support is dwindling by the hour. Mainstream media outlets are now finally starting to report on the obvious criminal and corrupt behavior from Trump and his minions, and we even see his lies being correctly called out as such, instead of being described as merely "contested statements", or the cowardly euphemism "non-factual statements".

It is now, finally, looking like truth and compassion will prevail, and that intelligence and skill will once again be merits for serving in either of the three branches of US government.

It is no longer a distant dream that Trump and his evil cabal of grifters, cheaters, fascists and thugs will be brought to justice. Several of them have in fact already been convicted, more are facing charges, and still more are being investigated - among them Donald Trump himself.

However, now that the day of reckoning is coming for the Trump administration, rhe United States must reflect on the sad fact that President Trump was even allowed to happen. It was blindingly obvious even four years ago that Trump was a liar, a cheater, a racist, a sexual predator with a sickening taste for underage girls, a malignant narcissist and an absolute moron. It is very disturbing that the political system was unable to prevent a person so obviously unfit for the presidency, and so unworthy of it, from getting all the way to the top and making a huge mess of everything.

The United States will not survive another mistake like this, and the world is facing other, real problems that need our full attention. Having an evil clown in the White House, throwing a childish tantrum at every perceived enemy, never even trying to do his job, makes it hard to focus on important matters. Donald Trump must go, his entire gang of thugs must go, and people like them must never again be allowed to take the country hostage.

The United States has quite a lot of self reflection to do before it can show its face in the international arena again.

"Person, woman, man, camera, TV"

Donald Trump does not understand that a Montreal Cognitive Assessment is only ever administered to a patient when doctors have reason to suspect cognitive impairment for some reason, be it dementia, stroke or head trauma. He also fails to understand that the test is designed to be very easy for someone with normal brain function, and that any wrong answers count towards a confirmation of a problem and warrants further testing. Bragging about that he "aced the test" and did "amazingly well" is preposterous, as a perfect score is the norm for an entirely average person without brain damage.

Instructions for the person administering the test is also to provide positive feedback regardless of how the patient is actually performing ("good, this is going well"), and not to reveal the score to the subject ("you did great"). He obviously thinks the test was difficult, and he says that he doubts that his opponent Joe Biden would do well on the test. Given Trump's well known propensity for obvious projection, this tells us that he did not, in fact, do so well himself.

A telling sign that he does not even understand what the test is all about is his story about "one very tough question" where you are given five random words and are asked to repeat them. This is an extremely easy task, but the process of repeating them makes them enter the mid-term memory, which means that a normal person should be able to remember the words well enough to repeat them a few minutes later, after having answered some other easy questions. Donald Trump speaks of this as a Herculean feat requiring superhuman intelligence and focus, while in actuality it is a simple and straightforward thing to do for a person with a normal brain putting some effort and focus into the task.

Last, but not least, his mind failed to register that the words he were given were a deliberately unrelated mix, in order not to make the task trivial. One version of the test has the words "face, velvet, church, daisy, red". Donald Trump's addled and slow mind exemplified the question by naming strongly related and very concrete nouns he could spot in his surroundings: "person, woman, man, camera, TV". Still, even when he picked the words himself, he could repeat them five seconds later, but clearly stumbled and struggled with repeating them thirty seconds later.

Donald Trump was never intelligent, but now his mind is leaving him. He is not only stupid, evil and compromised by a number of serious psychological disorders rooted in his broken childhood and pampered life, he is now also suffering from dementia. A person in that condition absolutely cannot meet the requirements for serving as the President of the United States of America, and should be removed by invoking the procedures described in the 25th Amendment to the Constitution.

Lolwut?

Today's feeble and failed attempt at holding a "press conference" by the President-in-name-only was a full frontal display of Donald Trump's total inability to perform even the most basic cognitive tasks, like reading from a script, forming at least somewhat complete sentences, and appearing alive. Nobody with any brain at all could have watched that and thought "yeah, that's the guy I want in charge".

As a special bonus treat in the Q&A section at the end, he said about Ghislaine Maxwell that he "wishes her well". The woman is arrested on charges of trafficking of underage girls for Jeffrey Epstein. The charges are serious and credible, she is kept in custody with no bail, about to spend the rest of her life in prison for acts so heinous that normal people are revolted by even hearing about them, and the supposed President of the United states... wishes her well?

A serial rapist of underage girls is illegitimately holding the office of the President of the United States. He needs to go. Now.

Pooping His Pants

I am not going to claim that Donald Trump literally has lost control of his body to the point where he needs to wear diapers. There are some indications that this might be the case, but I am not going there, because it really doesn't matter other than as a possible secondary sign that his decline is partly due to dementia and not just psychosis and outright stupidity. No, the headline is figurative. Let me explain.

Today, Donald Trump tweeted a photo of himself wearing a mask, after months of refusing to wear one, and tried in a pathetic manner to claim this as proof that "your favorite President" is more patriotic than anyone. Sorry, Donald Trump, you get zero points for coming this late to the party. In fact, we think you should have a few points deducted, but you are already at zero, so we'll award you nothing and call it even.

Lindsey Graham, one of the most sleazy of the Republican scum in the Senate, tweeted "Well done, Mr. President", as if praising a toddler for finally pooping in the toilet. However, the picture was from Trump's previous visit to the Walter Reed hospital, where he was required to wear a mask to gain entry. What's more, minutes after the tweet he went ahead and held a meeting where nobody had a mask on. Therefore, Graham's tweet was more akin to congratulating a nine year old for finally having been forced to use the toilet once a few days ago, but now continuing to poop his pants just like before.

Whether Donald Trump actually poops his pants is largely irrelevant, but metaphorically speaking, he does nothing but soil himself in public these days. There is absolutely no reason for anyone to praise anything he does.

We Can't Breathe

Joe Biden made a public appearance today, and managed to say more comforting and reassuring things in 50 minutes than Trump has done in his entire time in office. When Joe Biden wins the election, we can all breathe esier. He is smart, kind, humble, well informed and well prepared, and he is determined to change the tone from sowing discord to unifying people.
I usually don't link to videos, but this one is worth your time. I was breathing easier after watching it.

Joe Biden has a plan, while Trump shows dereliction of duty

The Nerve

What does it take for a very demonstrably incompetent, corrupt, criminal, hateful and traitorous president to be forcibly removed from office?
Is it enough that he openly breaks several laws regulating the appropriate conduct of a US president, and even brags about it? Apparently not. Does it matter to his enablers that he tells childish, transparent lies every time he speaks? No. Is it a problem that the supposedly "Christian" president is a sexual predator who has had numerous extramarital affairs during all of his marriages, and has been accused of rape by several credible witnesses, including minors? Sadly, no. Is he in trouble because he separates children from their asylum-seeking parents at the Mexican border, places them in concentration camps under inhumane conditions and "loses" track of who their parents are? Apparently not.
Do people care that he tanked the US economy by overspending on tax reliefs for those who dont need it, and that he is trying to dismantle the best attempt the country has ever seen to create some kind of universal health care insurance? Not by the look of it.
Is it bothering his voters that he is a racist? No. That he sucks up to foreign dictators and compares domestic political opponents to terrorists? Again, no. Is there any sign of Republicans maybe not wanting a president who is an illiterate complete idiot, one who believes his own "hunches" over expert advice based on scientific evidence? No. They seem to be just fine with that.
Do people want him out of office for his catastrophic and lethal mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic? It doesn't seem that way.
How about if it becomes known that Russia has offered a bounty on US troops in Afghanistan, that Trump and his administration knew about it since March but kept silent about it, and that he then still decided to try to convince other countries to once again include Russia in the G7 meetings?
For some reason, that appears to have struck a nerve.
I will never quite understand what makes Republican-voting Americans tick, and why this particular story may be what swings the opinion irrevocably in Trump's opponents' favor. It's weird that this kind of situation could even occur, but I won't look a a given horse in the mouth. Keep up the work, Donald Trump, and you will be out of office soon! I'd rather have you thrown out forcibly by impeachment or by an invocation of the 25th amendment to the Constitution, landing in utter humiliation on your ass on the way out, but I can wait a few months to see you voted into oblivion. Let's just hope that the United States will survive the blows until you are gone. This is a gauntlet for democracy, and even though it now finally seems like the good guys are winning, every good person in the United States needs to stay vigilant, oppose all the stupidity, and vote.

Running on Half Empty

The rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma that was supposed to lift Donald Trump's mood and make him put his head back in the game will probably have the opposite effect. In a state that is deeply red, in a city of almost one million people, in an arena that seats 19,000 people, he drew a smallish crowd of 6,200 spectators, according to the official Fire Department head count. The lower sections of the arena were reasonably full, but most of the balcony seats were empty. As an ironic reminder of where the polls are pointing, all those empty seats were blue.
The organisers had prepared a large overflow area outside, with a stage that had scheduled speeches from both Trump and Pence, but it was never used, and it ended up being dismantled even before the event was over.
The Donald Trump reelection campaign blamed the poor attendance on protestors blocking people from entry, but there were no protestors to speak of, police stopped what few there were from interfering with those seeking to enter, and it appears that nobody was turned away or prevented from attending.
Donald Trump threw a rally, and nobody cared. Now we just have to wait and see how many new cases of Covid-19 that will result from 6,200 supposedly adoring Trump fans gathering without masks or proper distancing for several hours. Attendees even had to sign a waiver and promise not to sue if they get sick.
Add to this that Trump managed to sound completely incoherent and out of touch with reality during his speech, and you have a disaster. This will drive his approval rating even lower, making him the most unpopular US president in history.
This is all a big farce, of the kind that isn't funny but just leaves you with a bitter taste in your mouth. I prefer not to watch those, but this is real, and I can't look away.

Stochastic Terrorism

These horrible & politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court are shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans or Conservatives. We need more Justices or we will lose our 2nd. Amendment & everything else. Vote Trump 2020!

This ia an authentic tweet from @realdonaldtrump, the account belonging to the person who pretends to be the president of the United States. It is disgraceful and appalling on so many levels that it stands out even among his many other idiotic and shameful tweets.
The unbelievably violent graphic language is in response to a decision on immigrants rights, and it is a thinly veiled encouragement for right wing gun nuts to murder a "liberal" judge on the Supreme Court.
This has to end. November is too late.

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Both Hands

A small but potentially significant detail: at his recent West Point commencement address, a totally pointless stunt where we saw Donald Trump stumble through a lethargic speech, we also saw him using both hands to grab a glass of water. He has done it before, with glasses as well as bottles. Who does that? A person who has considerable motor problems, that's who. His increasingly weird body posture, his constant fidgeting, his strange gait and his bad balance tell a story of a person who is losing control of his body. But considering that he is also rapidly losing his mind, perhaps it's not surprising.

Last Legs

It's becoming increasingly clear even to Donald Trump's handlers that he is now more or less mentally incapacitated. The "campaign rally" now scheduled for June 20 in Tulsa, Oklahoma is nothing but a desperate attempt to inject some energy into his failing mind. We can only hope that his cognitive decline has gone far enough for the event to be a total embarrassment even to his mouth-breathing base of faux-Christian racists. The rats are already starting to leave the ship, and we are getting closer to the tipping point.

Fool Me Twice

There are a number of reasons why you would have voted for Donald Trump in the 2015 election. Perhaps you voted along party lines and cast your vote for a political party that no longer deserves your loyalty. Perhaps you were too busy or too lazy to get the facts in the matter and was fooled by the blunt, bludgenoning rhetorics and the bald-faced lies. Perhaps you wanted to "stick it to the man" and "shake things up a little". Perhaps you are just stupid. I get it. A democracy runs the risk of being taken to the wrong place by unscrupulous candidates, and we are seeing it happen all over the world. I won't say I like it, but a democracy is the best we have come up with so far when it comes to systems of government, and the risk of sometimes having a bad candidate win comes with the package.

However, the madness, senility, malevolence, hatefulness, dishonesty, ignorance, incompetence, laziness, greed and general stupidity of Donald Trump are now prominently on display for everyone to see, and there is only one reason why anyone would vote for him again. If you vote for Trump to have a second term, you are evil. Plain and simple, there is absolutely no reason to vote for him other than being evil.

There is a way out of this shit-show, and it is to vote the turd out of the White House and replace him with someone, anyone, who is even remotely competent and intent on actually doing the job. If you fail to do the right thing this time, there are no excuses.

Wasting

At a time when the United States would be very much helped by having a competent president to lead the way through a global crisis, the Trump who is currently squatting in the White House is wasting his time with petty vindictive feuds on Twitter, wasting essential resources on unimportant distractions, wasting lives both by not taking appropriate action and by taking grossly inappropriate action, wasting whatever goodwill and reputation the US might still have on the international scene, wasting what little remains of his so-called presidency, and apparently wasting away as a person. If he ever had a brain, it's all gone now.

This is both pathetic and frightening at the same time.

No good people

Contrary to what Donald Trump likes to claim in every case where his side fucked up, and there are certainly a lot of those cases, the two sides are not equally credible, equally competent, equally good or equally worthy of respect. While there are countless good people lining up on the Democrats' side for the upcoming US election, and seemingly no bad people, the Republican camp is filled ro the brim with nincompoops, morons, incompetent nitwits with less than half a brain to share between them. They are also cynical, calculating and outright evil, lying with every breath and trying to spread fear and confusion in a time of desperation for the entire world.

The Trump cult is the opposite of good in every way. These are fundamentally not good people, they are not good at what they do, they are not doing any good, what they are doing is not good. There are two sides to this, but only one of them is the good side. It is extremely important that we make sure the good side wins. If we fail, the world is in for a dark age.

Slur

The person currently illegitimately occupying the presidential office of the United States has always been keen on using slurs, in the sense of racial slurs, sexist slurs and religion slurs, to get his "message" across to his adoring fan base of inbred nitwits who require simple and sweeping answers to complex questions, or you lose them to their incredibly short attention span and low intellectual capacity. After his hastily scheduled "early annual physical", however, he has been speaking in slurs in the literal meaning of the word. His speech pattern has changed, and radically so.

Donald Trump has never been a great speaker, and his vocabulary and reading skills have been at a 5th grade level at best, but now he is suddenly having problems pronouncing simple everyday words, forming complete sentences and showing even a semblance of coherence and rational thought.

Donald Trump is not only sick, he is ill. He is rapidly becoming even less right in the head than he used to be, and I find it very strange that this is not being discussed more. A person who does not have a fully functioning brain has no business being the President of the United States.

Unraveling

Unraveling: being revealed or coming apart.

In both meanings of the word, this is what we are witnessing right now. The truth is far, far uglier than we ever suspected, and the danger is not over yet. However, the most evil machinations do seem to have been thwarted, and the most serious threats against democracy, against decency, against honesty, do seem to have been stopped in their tracks by people who refused to bow down to tyranny, refused to be bought, refused to stand idle and refused to keep silent. Now, we must make sure those forces of evil never regain enough traction to ever get up to speed again. Never. Ever. Again.

Every dark secret, every demented conspiracy born out of bottomless greed, every dirty deed from the pseudo-religious extremists with their doomsday agenda against everything we have been taking for granted, everything must be brought into the open, and none of the self-proclaimed dark lords and their willing followers must get away with this attack on everything that is good about the world.

The days of reckoning are ahead. They will rob many of their innocence, and show things we might not want to see, but we must never again be caught unaware. Never. Ever. Again.