Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[John Tonkovich]

The Biden campaign is desperately trying to avoid debates due to his cognitive issues that often include not knowing where he is or being able to recognize his own wife.  He is using the virus as an excuse to avoid public appearances and when he does so only reads prepared remarks from a teleprompter and avoids any questions.  Because the American media fully endorses him, there are few questions raised but Biden has had two brain operations and is pushing 80.  He is in clear physical and mental decline and his best chance for election is to hope the virus continues and Trump is blamed.  There are no Biden supporters.  His voters appear to be only those who dislike Trump and would vote for anyone else.  Even an elderly, white guy with clear early dementia.  He may even step down if elected.  In terms of his running mate, the left wing mob is insisting that it be a woman and preferably a minority.  Biden, however, is an establishment figure with decades in office without a single achievement.  He will pick another do nothing establishment figure like that.  Probably a woman, but definitely part of his establishment club.

Wow.
Biden had aneurysms. In 1988. He had two surgeries, and made a full recovery.
You seem desperate, Mr Smith.

[Paul May]

Shouldn't your SWAT team be up Royelll's ass by now or did I miss the announcement?

Swat team? We’re more like the vocal majority in America.

[Paul May]

The Biden campaign is desperately trying to avoid debates due to his cognitive issues that often include not knowing where he is or being able to recognize his own wife.  He is using the virus as an excuse to avoid public appearances and when he does so only reads prepared remarks from a teleprompter and avoids any questions.  Because the American media fully endorses him, there are few questions raised but Biden has had two brain operations and is pushing 80.  He is in clear physical and mental decline and his best chance for election is to hope the virus continues and Trump is blamed.  There are no Biden supporters.  His voters appear to be only those who dislike Trump and would vote for anyone else.  Even an elderly, white guy with clear early dementia.  He may even step down if elected.  In terms of his running mate, the left wing mob is insisting that it be a woman and preferably a minority.  Biden, however, is an establishment figure with decades in office without a single achievement.  He will pick another do nothing establishment figure like that.  Probably a woman, but definitely part of his establishment club.

My vote for Biden is my vote against Trump. Trump is everything America isn’t. You choose to support a draft dodging self admitted sexual predator who happens to be a pathological lying sociopath, be my guest. Says so much about you.

[Paul May]

Trump’s ‘death cult’ would rather die from COVID-19 than admit he lied to them: conservative

Matthew Chapman

On Saturday, writing for USA TODAY, conservative Naval War College Professor Tom Nichols laid into supporters of President Donald Trump who have politicized public health and refused to wear masks, calling them a “death cult.”

“We long ago became a narcissistic nation whose citizens believe they can become competent in almost any subject by watching enough television and spending enough time on the internet. But I was certain that a true national crisis — a war, a depression, or yes, a pandemic — would snap people back to reality,” wrote Nichols. “I was wrong to be so optimistic.”

“There is no one more responsible for this particular moment than President Donald Trump, but all he has done is play to a gallery whose seats were already full by the time he ran for office,” wrote Nichols. “An entire claque of enablers joined in, knowing there was plenty of money to be made feeding this self-centered, anti-social nihilism. When the pandemic arrived, these enablers in the conservative media and among the cowardly Republican political class took their cues — masks, no masks, closing, opening — from Trump, whose statements for months were a fusillade of nonsense that reflected only his own pouty anger that Mother Nature had the sheer brass to mess up his presidential grift.”

As of Saturday, the United States has topped 1,000 coronavirus cases a day for four consecutive days. And a big part of this, Nichols argued, is a right-wing culture that has dismissed experts and jumped on a warped perception of freedom.

“They see endangering others as empowerment, a way of telling people whom they believe look down on them that no one, no matter how smart or accomplished, can tell them what to do,” wrote Nichols. “For these people, our national motto is not ‘In God We Trust’ or ‘E Pluribus Unum,’ but rather: ‘You’re Not the Boss of Me.’ So committed are these Americans to assuaging their sore egos over their imagined lack of status that they are literally willing to die for it. Unfortunately, they seem all too willing to take many of us with them.”

Trump supporters, Nichols concluded, are “secure in the knowledge that scientists are quacks and that no one understands viruses like Donald Trump. They will likely still believe that even as they lie in a hospital bed and are given last rites with a ventilator down their throats. If only the rest of us did not have to risk being in the bed next to them.”

[Rick Plant]

The Biden campaign is desperately trying to avoid debates due to his cognitive issues that often include not knowing where he is or being able to recognize his own wife.  He is using the virus as an excuse to avoid public appearances and when he does so only reads prepared remarks from a teleprompter and avoids any questions.  Because the American media fully endorses him, there are few questions raised but Biden has had two brain operations and is pushing 80.  He is in clear physical and mental decline and his best chance for election is to hope the virus continues and Trump is blamed.  There are no Biden supporters.  His voters appear to be only those who dislike Trump and would vote for anyone else.  Even an elderly, white guy with clear early dementia.  He may even step down if elected.  In terms of his running mate, the left wing mob is insisting that it be a woman and preferably a minority.  Biden, however, is an establishment figure with decades in office without a single achievement.  He will pick another do nothing establishment figure like that.  Probably a woman, but definitely part of his establishment club.

The only one with cognitive decline is Donald Trump who is slipping away everyday to dementia. The more right wingers attack Biden, the more popular he becomes. 

Donald Trump's dementia and cognitive decline. Looks like he needs to be in a nursing home. 



More slurring words from this dementia case

[Rick Plant]

Trump busted for reusing his old fraud playbook to deflect criticism of his COVID-19 failures: report




On Saturday, The Washington Post drew a parallel between President Donald Trump’s failure to respond adequately to the coronavirus pandemic, and his efforts to defend the fraud scheme he set up with “Trump University.”

“The judge was out to get him, he said. So was that prosecutor in New York, whom he called a dopey loser on a witch hunt,” wrote David Fahrenthold, Joshua Partlow, and Jonathan O’Connell. “So were his critics, who he said were all liars. Even some of his own underlings had failed him — bad people, it turned out. He said he didn’t know them. Donald Trump was in trouble. Now, he was trying to attack his way out, breaking all the unwritten rules about the way a man of his position should behave. The secret to his tactic: ‘I don’t care’ about breaking the rules, Trump said at a news conference. ‘Why antagonize? Because I don’t care.'”

This response, as the media scrutinized the president’s fake university that charged people tens of thousands of dollars for worthless seminars that claimed to reveal his real estate investment secrets, is similar to Trump’s claim that “I don’t take responsibility at all” for the deaths under the coronavirus pandemic.

"I tried to warn the American people that if Donald Trump was doing this to me, he’s going to do the same thing if he’s ever elected president,” said Bob Guillo, a former Trump University student who warned people the president was a con man in interviews in 2016. “Unfortunately, people believed Trump.”

“It’s something I think about all the time,” said former New York prosecutor Tristan Snell, who worked on the Trump University case. He said that Trump University “had a fulfillment problem … Maybe that’s a good metaphor for what’s happening in America is that we have a fulfillment problem,” he said. “You’ve sold X and Y and Z and you can’t actually fulfill the order.” He added that Trump is trying to do the same thing now, but “The difference this time is the fact that he’s running his game on a virus,” Snell said. “And the virus doesn’t care.”

You can read more here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/spin-deride-attack-how-trumps-handling-of-trump-university-presaged-his-presidency/2020/07/24/7d3a327a-bfb8-11ea-9fdd-b7ac6b051dc8_story.html



Trump's new excuse for attacking protesters is a ‘rambling mess’: Ex-RNC official




In a column for the conservative Bulwark, former Republican National Committee spokesperson Tim Miller said an interview the Donald Trump took part in with the founder of Barstool Sports on Thursday showed a president whose answers were nothing less than incoherent and out of touch with reality.

Describing Barstool Sports as “a sports blog and podcast network tailored to the frat-bro demographic,” Miller explained that president was served up softball questions by Dave Portnoy and managed to whiff badly when given a chance to moderate his attacks on Black Lives Matter protesters by someone who is not exactly in their corner himself.

As Miller explained it, Portnoy getting a sit-down with Trump likely won’t please women, “given that the president’s poll numbers with women are tumbling below the Mendoza Line, maybe palling around with the guy who said that women ‘kind of deserve to be raped if they’re a size 6 and wear skinny jeans’ and ‘subtle sexual harassment is fine and dandy’ isn’t putting his tiny finger on the pulse of what women want.”

Miller explained that Portnoy went of his way in an interview “that even Portnoy’s business partner said contained ‘no hard questions,'” but that didn’t keep the president from being “stumped” by one particular query.

According to the ex-RNC official, “Portnoy prefaces the question saying that at first he was against Colin Kaepernick’s protest, but that over the years, he’s come around to the view that it’s better than violent protest and asks Trump what he would suggest as an alternative.”

Instead, the president gave the following answer:

Trump: Well, I mean, you can always say you run for office, right? You become successful. You could run for a lower office, you can do things. But there are ways. You get groups together and they can be very friendly ways of doing it. Very successful. I mean, you’re going to have rebounds, negative rebounds, if it keeps up the way it is. Like, as an example, Portland, this is crazy—51 days, you know, we sent in very powerful, uh, not military, but very strong people. Uh, the police are good, but they were told not to do anything, you know, by the radical left mayor. No, you have to go out and you have to say and speak your mind is good. I think speaking your mind is good, but you have to do it fairly. Uh, we are for justice, but we’re for law and order, it’s gotta be law and order. And there is law and order. Uh, I put something out when they were starting to rip down statues. I went out, I found an old law, an old bill. You couldn’t get it passed today. You get 10 years in jail, 10 years and no games. And we have a lot of people in jail right now. If you rip down a statue, a federal statue, because the states have to take care of their own, unfortunately, cause I’d do that too. But you rip down a federal statute, you get 10 years in jail. 10 years. No, you know, three months. And nothing’s happened since then. It was amazing. I signed it. I had a news conference. I said, if you do it, and we were supposed to have thousands of people march on Washington that day. Nobody showed up.”

As Miller wrote, Trump’s answer was pure “incoherence.”

Saying even Portnoy admitted there is a problem that needs a solution, Miller wrote, “Our stubborn, childish, grievance-lugging, cosplay president just can’t bring himself to get there. The result? The Queens Confederate finds himself in an anti-Black Lives Matter box so small that not even a toady Barstool bro fits in it.”

Miller then went to explain, “Voters aren’t asking Donald Trump to head out to Nats Park and kneel next to the players. They aren’t asking him to defund the police. They are simply looking for a president to show the bare minimum interest in their cause, in racial justice, in uniting the country. They are looking for a president who merely recognizes that in this country silent protest is welcome. That everyone, all races, all creeds get the chance to say their piece,” before adding Trump still doesn’t get it.

You can read more here.
https://thebulwark.com/the-biggest-takeaway-from-trumps-barstool-suck-up-session/



'The good ship Trump has sprung a leak': GOP lawmakers battling president as his re-election looks doomed




According to a report from the Washington Post’s Philip Rucker, Donald Trump’s continued changes in direction on what he wants to do — which changes from day to day — has some advisers upset as his re-election campaign slowly collapses.

The report notes that the president did a turnaround about wearing masks during the COVID-19 health crisis this past week, throwing aside weeks of soft-selling it to the public, and now he can’t seem to make up his mind about what should be included in the next round of coronavirus aid aimed at propping up the economy.

In particular, the president had been adamant about a payroll tax cut as a centerpiece of the package — and now he has abandoned it after getting push-back from members of his own party.

Writing, “For Trump, this has been a week of retreat,” Rucker added, “The president has been the one backing down from long-held positions in the face of resistance from fellow Republicans or popular opposition, scrambling to resurrect his reelection campaign while the coronavirus continues to ravage the nation.”

According to Stephen Moore, an economic adviser to the president, he can’t fathom why the president backed off his earlier proposal.

“I’m still trying to figure out what went wrong, how the wheels came off on the payroll tax cut,” Moore lamented “Certainly there’s been a retreat on that issue, and it’s frustrating to me because I think President Trump really wanted to do a payroll tax cut.”

The report notes that after three and a half years of smooth sailing, Trump is finally being confronted by a Republican-controlled Senate that sees a president headed to defeat in November and is looking out for their own interests.

According to presidential historian Timothy Naftali, any goodwill the president may have had with members of his party has dried up.

“The good ship Trump has sprung a leak, and it’s leaking political capital,” Naftali explained. “I don’t think the president is pivoting. I think the president is backtracking because he is facing head winds, and those are head winds from elected Republicans.”

According to the WaPo report, “Trump has since come to terms with the reality that the virus is worsening — as opposed to disappearing, as he has predicted it would — and that many Americans are apprehensive about mass gatherings and want to proceed cautiously, according to a former senior administration official briefed on Trump’s decision-making calculations.”

Historian Douglas Brinkley added “Trump is trying to do a giant reset,” to stave off defeat and that it is nothing new among embattled presidents.

“Right when you think a politician is set in stone, you can get a makeover. These are the games politicians play,” he suggested.



Trump's botching of the COVID-19 crisis will haunt Republicans for years: report




According to a report from Politico, Donald Trump’s fumbling of the coronavirus pandemic that has led to over 140,000 deaths and rising so far will not only cost him the critical suburban votes he needs in November, but the legacy of his mismanagement will also haunt Republicans for years.

With polling from Trump-friendly Fox News showing the president trailing presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden by 11 points in the suburbs, the report notes that Trump beat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton there by four points in 2016.

What has changed, Politico reports, is the president’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis and his response to Black Lives Matter protesters that have turned off college-educated women and young adults just entering the voter rolls.

As the report notes, “That polling reflects a dramatic swing from 2016, when Trump beat Hillary Clinton in the suburbs by 4 percentage points. Trump’s erosion in the suburbs is a major reason the electoral map this year has expanded for Democrats in recent weeks — with Trump in danger not only of losing, but of taking the Senate down with him. And demographic shifts are only becoming more favorable to Democrats. The suburbs are rapidly growing, and by 2018, according to Pew, people of color made up nearly a third of suburban population.”

Charles Hellwig, a former chair of the Republican Party in Wake County, N.C. painted a darker future for the GOP.

“We can’t give up more ground in the suburbs nationally without having a real problem for our party,” he explained before adding the political landscape in what was once fertile Republican territory is getting “bluer.”

“Trump’s damage in the suburbs has come primarily, as it has elsewhere, from his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. But Trump’s response to the George Floyd protests also appears to have hurt him in the suburbs — his militant reaction crashing into an electorate that is less white and insular than it was half a century ago,” the report continued. “Comparing new voter registration in 17 states from immediately before the Floyd protests began to the week after, the Democratic data firm TargetSmart found that young people and people of color were registering at higher rates than before — with years to cast ballots for Democrats still ahead of them.’

According to former Republican Rep. Ryan Costello (PA), the president blew his handling of the George Floyd protests and Republicans have been saddled with the damage he created.

“There was an opportunity in the riots and defund police-type stuff,” he explained before adding, “I just think these things happen so fast that ultimately Trump becomes the story again.”

You can read more here:

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/25/trumps-suburban-nightmare-376823

[Rick Plant]

Trump knows he's going to lose and he's scooping up as much cash as he can before he’s ousted: ex-White House official




Donald Trump is violating the U.S. Constitution with his efforts to personally enrich himself while in office, a top ethics watchdog explained on MSNBC on Saturday.

“President Trump is spending the weekend at his golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey, but it’s his golf course in Scotland raising questions about potential conflicts of interest,” MSNBC anchor Lindsey Reiser reported.

“President Trump this week denied reports that back in 2018 he pressured the U.S. ambassador to the U.K. to get the British Open golf tournament at his Turnberry property,” she explained.

Reiser explained Trump’s pattern.

“In the wake of a pandemic that has crippled the nation, this is a story you may have heard little about, though it might sound familiar, that’s because just last year, the White House chose the Trump National Doral resort in Miami as the site of a G-7 meeting. After intense criticism, the administration backed off the location,” she reminded. “Last fall, in an official visit to Ireland, Vice President Mike Pence and his entourage of Secret Service stayed at trump’s resort in Doonbeg, that despite the fact that the vice president’s meetings were 180 miles away in Ireland’s capital of Dublin. Adding to that, a New York Times count of 275 times the president has visited his family-owned golf courses since taking office.”

For analysis, Reiser interviewed Richard Painter, who was the White House chief ethics attorney in the George W. Bush administration.

“This request for the British Open, unethical, is it unconstitutional?” Reiser asked.

“It’s definitely unconstitutional, this is a violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution,” Painter replied. “The founders were very intent that no one who holds a position of trust and confidence with the United States government ought to be permitted to receive profits and benefits from foreign governments.”

Clearly unconstitutional, he has been soliciting emoluments around the globe, it’s been going on for a long time, and it needs to be shut down,” Painter explained.

“I think he knows he’s on the way out the door and he’s going to take as much as he can off the table, and as much as he can between now and January 20th,” Painter said.

Watch video in link below:

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/07/trumps-knows-he-going-to-lose-and-hes-scooping-up-as-much-cash-as-he-can-before-hes-ousted-ex-white-house-official/



'This whole house of cards is gonna collapse': GOP shutters Senate with US on verge of economic catastrophe




As Senate Republicans headed home for the weekend without extending unemployment insurance benefits or approving other economic relief programs that could help millions of Americans weather the ongoing financial catastrophe of the coronavirus pandemic, progressives and congressional Democrats warned that disaster is on the horizon.

“This whole house of cards is going to collapse,” Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.) warned during a press conference Friday afternoon.

As Common Dreams reported, the departure of the GOP-controlled Senate for the weekend without a resolution to the benefits questions earned the upper chamber’s leadership a harsh rebuke in a speech from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who called the decision by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to recess until Monday unacceptable.

“The lapse that is being forced on this country right now is because Senate Republicans would not step up,” said Wyden. “The lapse is going to lead to evictions, it’s going to lead to hunger, it’s going to lead to desperation for millions of Americans.”

House Democrats took to Twitter to decry their Senate GOP colleagues for abdicating their responsibility to the American people, noting that Republicans found time to vote for a mammoth $740 billion Pentagon budget but failed to approve anything to meet the needs of struggling workers and families.

“Senate Republicans have left Washington without passing the HEROES Act, without proposing their own Covid relief package, and without extending enhanced unemployment benefits for millions,” tweeted Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “But they were able to pass a $740 billion defense budget with no trouble.”

Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) echoed those concerns and pointed out that the Senate’s departure ensures the benefit will run out after next week’s claims.

“The cliff is here and Americans are suffering,” said Chu.

Progressive groups like Indivisible are urging members to pressure senators to have a vote on the HEROES Act, which Democrats in the House passed in May, as soon as possible.

Filmmaker Michael Moore cautioned lawmakers not to let the unemployment benefits lapse lest the country tip into a total economic mess.

“The magnitude of suffering this is about to cause is so immense,” said Moore, “they have no idea of how much spombleprofglidnoctobuns is gonna hit the fan.”

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/07/this-whole-house-of-cards-is-gonna-collapse-gop-shutters-senate-with-us-on-verge-of-economic-catastrophe/



Polling shows Trump's secret police in Portland—and GOP lawmaker complicity—could have 2020 consequences




MoveOn says voters are “fed up” with GOP senators from the battleground states of Arizona, Maine, and North Carolina “carrying water for him as he trundles toward authoritarianism.”

President Donald Trump’s brutal ongoing crackdown on protests in Portland, Oregon and his threats to send federal agents into other major U.S. cities in the coming days could have electoral consequences for not only Trump but also vulnerable Republican senators in key battleground states who are up for re-election this November, according to polling released Friday by MoveOn Political Action.

“These results show that Trump’s plan to use unidentified federal agents to suppress local protests is backfiring with the public.”
—Rahna Epting, MoveOn Political Action

Public Policy Polling (PPP) this week surveyed registered voters in Arizona, Maine, and North Carolina, and found that majorities in all three states oppose Trump’s deployment of federal agents in Portland. Some critics have charged the president’s tactics are part of a ploy to sow chaos across the country in an effort to “steal” the election in November, when he is expected to face off against former Vice President Joe Biden. Voters also want Congress to intervene.

Although many Democratic members of Congress this week have condemned Trump’s actions in Portland and his promises to deploy agents elsewhere in the country, congressional lawmakers have so far failed to take any meaningful action and few Republicans have voiced any opposition.

PPP’s polling also showed that three GOP senators facing re-election—Martha McSally of Arizona, Susan Collins of Maine, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina—are all trailing their Democratic challengers.

“These results show that Trump’s plan to use unidentified federal agents to suppress local protests is backfiring with the public. Voters oppose it, and they want their senators to act,” Rahna Epting, MoveOn Political Action’s executive director, said in a statement Friday. “Continued enabling of Trump by Senators McSally, Collins, and Tillis is likely to hurt them at the ballot box.”

Epting added that “in this case, their political interests are aligned with the public interest, and they should do the right thing and join efforts in Congress to limit these abuses. When are they going to stand up to Trump’s continued abuses of power? Voters have had enough.”

Move On: We’ve watched in horror as Trump’s agents have used violence without accountability or transparency in Portland. Many have seen this same abuse from CPB agents on the border for a long time. This is a deeply dangerous jolt against democracy and for a strongman state.

Voters don’t like what @realDonaldTrump is doing and are fed up with @MarthaMcSally, @SenSusanCollins, and @ThomTillis carrying water for him as he trundles toward authoritarianism.

Democrat Mark Kelly, a retired astronaut and co-founder of a nonprofit that advocates for stricter gun laws, now leads McSally by nine points, according to PPP. The pollsters also found that Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives Sara Gideon leads Collins by five points and former North Carolina state Sen. Cal Cunningham leads Tillis by eight points.

In Arizona, nearly two-thirds of voters say they are following the situation in Portland closely; 52% of all respondents in the state oppose the use of unidentified federal agents to suppress local protests and 51% support Congress acting to stop it. Additionally, 55% back specific actions in a bill (S. 4220) introduced this week by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) that would restrict the use of federal officers to respond to protests.

Nearly two-thirds of Mainers are also paying close attention to Portland, and 56% of voters in the state both oppose Trump’s use of federal agents in the Oregon city and want lawmakers to stop it. Even more Maine voters (58%) support elements of Merkley’s legislation.

More than two-thirds of North Carolina voters are monitoring the federal crackdown in the Pacific Northwest. A majority of respondents (54%) say they oppose the agents suppressing protests there and 52% want Congress to end it. Even more (61%) say they support key parts of S. 4220.

MoveOn pointed out on Twitter Friday that of the 42 current co-sponsors of Merkley’s bill, Collins, McSally, and Tillis are all missing. In fact, none of the Republican lawmakers in the GOP-controlled upper chamber—which adjorned for the weekend—have signed on to the legislation.

The advocacy group called the bill “a start” and urged Congress to go even further, investigating “this abuse of Trump’s power.”

In all 3 states, voters support the steps to start reining in unaccountable feds we’ve seen in Portland included in @SenJeffMerkley’s Preventing Authoritarian Policing Tactics on America’s Streets Act. 42 cosponsors on this essential bill—Collins, McSally, and Tillis missing.

That bill would be a start. We need Congress to investigate this abuse of Trump’s power (just as the DOJ’s Inspector General is). Members of Congress and local electeds should personally go monitor feds for use of violence on their constituents.

“And we all need to do our part,” the group added, “including by voting out Trump and his enablers.”

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/07/polling-shows-trumps-secret-police-in-portland-and-gop-lawmaker-complicity-could-have-2020-consequences/



Quagmire: Trump's mail order Fascism is as ineffective as his campaign against the coronavirus




If the street scenes during protests in Portland, Oregon, looked familiar this week, it’s because you’ve seen them before … in Iraq.

Heavily armed troops in camouflage garb with helmets and tactical vests moving through a community like an occupation army? Check.

Hostile civilians gathered together on the street in protest of the occupation army? Check.

Complete lack of knowledge about the civilian population on the part of the occupying army — whose members are not from the area and are there on temporary assignment? Check.

No lines of communication between the two sides? Check.

Random civilians grabbed off the street and hustled away to God-only-knows-where without probable cause or criminal charges? Check.

Stagnant situation on the ground that doesn’t get better no matter how many troops are moved in and how many civilians are grabbed off the street? Check.

Occupying army operating on orders from distant commanders far away from the action, who have limited information from the scene and no local authority? Check.

The whole thing deteriorating into a quagmire from which neither side will back down? Check.

It’s so eerily similar, the old quote from then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld comes to mind: “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time,” he told a group of soldiers who were complaining about the haphazard manner of their assignment to Iraq and their lack of proper equipment.

That’s precisely Trump’s problem, isn’t it? He hasn’t been able to “go to war” with the army he wants against Black Lives Matter protesters — because his real army has refused to take the battlefield. Remember? That happened after Trump used some National Guard troops under federal control to clear protesters out of the way near Lafayette Park for his disastrous photo-op with a borrowed Bible outside St. John’s Church on June 1. It turned out that Trump had somehow mouse-trapped the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, to accompany him.

But shortly after that, Milley and other military commanders reacted forcefully and negatively to Trump’s use of active-duty soldiers against peaceful protesters. By the end of the week, all regular Army soldiers had been sent home from their temporary assignments to Washington, and military leaders had drawn a line in the sand that they would not cross. Without threatening to disobey orders from the commander in chief, military leaders made it clear that they would not facilitate Trump’s militarization of his response to protesters around the country.

Trump wanted a show of force against protesters who had taken to the streets to show their support for Black Lives Matter. Protesters were in the streets by the thousands to protest the killing of George Floyd as well as other killings and use of force against Black Americans by police. Trump seized on the spreading unrest to launch a new push for “law and order” in an effort to boost his sagging campaign for re-election.

But where? And how? It looked at first like Trump would order the streets cleared in downtown Seattle, during the period when they were occupied by protesters, but Seattle took care of that with their own cops. So he focused his attention on the uprisings in Portland that had been going on nightly since the end of May against both the Floyd killing and the death of Jason Washington, a Portland resident killed by police in 2018.

Trump couldn’t order in the 82nd Airborne Division. He tried that in Washington and failed. So he ordered William Barr, his attorney general, and Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of homeland security, to cobble together a homemade militia using officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Transportation Security Administration and Customs and Border Protection.  These are civilian enforcement agents trained to patrol the borders with Mexico and Canada, check travelers at airports for contraband in their carry-ons, and inspect shipments of imported goods coming across our borders from foreign countries.

How do you create an intimidating army out of a bunch of civil servants whose previous experience in law enforcement has been locking up little kids and their moms along the border and frisking traveling salespersons at airports for bottles containing more than three ounces of shampoo?

Drape them in plenty of camo, of course. Give them a budget and turn them loose on the internet to visit sites like TacticalGear.com, where you can buy everything from a Condor Three-Fold Mag Recovery Pouch to High Speed Gear Taco Kydex handcuff pouches to Blackhawk Highstorm Advanced Tactical Elbow Pads V2 to a Condor Open Top M4 Mag Pouch to a Safariland Quick Release Leg Strap SLS Tactical Thigh Holster to a Hazard 4 Small ID Window Patch.

No, on second thought, forget the Hazard 4 Small ID Window Patch. You won’t be needing that particular piece of camo tactical gear because you won’t be displaying any identification at all.

The unmarked, unnamed Trumpian shock troops look like they’ve been assembled from an off-the-shelf parts bin. It’s lame-o “law and order,” done on the cheap. And that’s the problem with insta-militias like the one deployed in Portland and those planned for deployment to Chicago, Albuquerque, and other metropolitan areas around the country with mayors who happen to be Democrats. How intimidating can a pretend army be if it’s wearing patches that say  “Transportation Security Administration”? What are protesters going to do? Throw up their arms and cry out, “I give up! I forgot and packed my nail clippers!”

The camo-goofs sent out by Barr and Wolf to terrorize protesters in Portland are using tear gas, “non-lethal” riot control weapons, and paintball guns firing pepper pellets. Some photographs from the scene in Portland clearly show these government militia armed with M4 rifles and carrying 9mm handguns in leg holsters, but there have been no reports of lethal ammunition being used against protesters. Yet.

Protesters have been wearing bicycle helmets, goggles, face shields and heavy clothing, including some tactical vests probably purchased from the same outfitters the militarized government thugs use.

Recently, the protesters in Portland have had some success against the government militias by arraying a “Wall of Moms” with interlocking arms against the armed government troops. When tear gas was used against the moms, dads began showing up armed with leaf blowers to dissipate tear gas away from protesters. They are the same tactics used by the Yippies in Chicago in 1968 when they showed up at the Democratic National Convention and announced they would run a 145-pound pig named Pigasus for president.

Sometimes confronting force with humor is the best tactic. Moms in yellow T-shirts and dads with leaf-blowers are the perfect way to show up Trump as a pitiful helpless giant. His moves to bring fascism to the streets of America are working about as well as his attempts to wish away the virus that is ravaging the country in a silent riot of disease and death.

Donald Trump is a toy fascist. This time we don’t need the Yippies to run a pig for president. The Republican Party is doing that for us.

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/07/quagmire-trumps-mail-order-fascism-is-as-ineffective-as-his-campaign-against-the/

[Rick Plant]

The Biden campaign is desperately trying to avoid debates due to his cognitive issues that often include not knowing where he is or being able to recognize his own wife.  He is using the virus as an excuse to avoid public appearances and when he does so only reads prepared remarks from a teleprompter and avoids any questions.  Because the American media fully endorses him, there are few questions raised but Biden has had two brain operations and is pushing 80.  He is in clear physical and mental decline and his best chance for election is to hope the virus continues and Trump is blamed.  There are no Biden supporters.  His voters appear to be only those who dislike Trump and would vote for anyone else.  Even an elderly, white guy with clear early dementia.  He may even step down if elected.  In terms of his running mate, the left wing mob is insisting that it be a woman and preferably a minority.  Biden, however, is an establishment figure with decades in office without a single achievement.  He will pick another do nothing establishment figure like that.  Probably a woman, but definitely part of his establishment club.

Richard Smith wants to talk about dementia? What would you call this? Would a normal sane individual be behaving like this? Time for the mental institution!