NUTS AND DOLTS

MAY DAY, MAY DAY!!!  We have a nut case in the White House who is a danger to society.  And we have dolts in the Base who are providing him asylum.  Here's the latest about, and from, the nuts and the dolts.

David Brooks, conservative columnist for The New York Times, about the nut case:

Trump is an unprecedented threat to democratic institutions. Over the past few years, I’ve thought the progressive fears of incipient American fascism were vastly overblown. But, especially over the past month, Trump has worked overtime to validate those fears and to raise the horrifying specter of what he’ll be like if he is given a second term and is vindicated, unhinged and unwell.

In their book “How Democracies Die,” Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt argue that authoritarians undermine democracy in several ways. They reject the democratic rules of the game, the unwritten norms we rely upon to make the political system work. They deny the legitimacy of their political opponents, using extreme language to deny them standing as co-citizens. They tolerate or even encourage violence, threatening to take legal action against critics in rival parties.

Trump has been guilty of all three sins, and given a second term he will feel free to stomp where up until now he has merely tread.

Cardi B, rapper, about the dolts:

Every single time he always talk about how he wants to take away Medicare and shit like that.  A poor white man that’s getting Medicare is not even caring that he’s saying that—he just cares that he hates Mexicans and he wants to get rid of them.  “I don’t care if Donald Trump take away the things I need, I just hate Mexicans and I want them gone.  So I’m going to keep on voting for them.”  A lot of people vote with feelings in America and a lot of their feelings is racism and religion.

George Conway in The Atlantic, on the President's mental instability:

And NBC News last week quoted someone familiar with current discussions in the White House warning that there is “increasing wariness that, as this impeachment inquiry drags out, the likelihood increases that the president could respond erratically and become ‘unmanageable.’” In September, a former White House official offered a similar assessment to a Business Insider reporter: “No one knows what to expect from him anymore,” because “his mood changes from one minute to the next based on some headline or tweet, and the next thing you know his entire schedule gets tossed out the window. He’s losing his shit.”

Even a major investment bank has gotten into the mix, albeit in a roundabout way: JPMorgan Chase has created a “Volfefe Index”—named after Trump’s bizarre May 2017 “covfefe” tweet—designed to quantify the effect that Trump’s impulsive tweets have on interest-rate volatility. The bank’s press release understatedly observed that its “volatility fair value model” shows that “the president’s remarks on this social media platform [have] played a statistically significant role in elevating implied volatility.”

@auntemma, psychiatrist and co-author of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, had this to say in December 2016:

 

 

Pass the Kool-Aid around the Base Camp:

• "I think it's a witch hunt," agrees Tyler Ganley, 29. "There was nothing wrong with their conversation. I think the phone call has been taken out of context. They're making it sound like he was trying to take down a political rival.”

•  "It's a joke," says Eric Radziej, of impeachment. "It really is. It's not an official inquiry. They produced the transcript. That's the whole story."

• “We know what they're investigating,” says Veronica Diaz. “But we know what we know. I've read the transcript and I didn't find anything illegal in it. And the Ukrainian prime minister didn't show any sense of alarm, didn't say, 'Oh, let me investigate this further'. We believe him [Trump]."

• Mike Mullen says, "It's not impeachment - it's been proven. All these channels except Fox - it's the only one that speaks the truth - they're trying to come up with whistle blowers that don't exist. They try to change people's minds with misinformation."

Ambassador Namik Tan, former Turkish ambassador to the US, tweeted a New Yorker cartoon satirizing the President's letter to Erdogan :

 

Donald Trump’s “perfect” letter to Santa (from The New Yorker)

 

An unnamed Republican source inside yesterday's White House meeting on Syria commented on the First Inmate:

A Republican source inside the Trump-Pelosi meeting described attendees as “shaken” and “shell-shocked” by the President’s demeanor. “He is not in control of himself. It is all yelling and screaming.”

Michael Beschloss, presidential historian and author, is losing sleep:

What keeps me literally awake at night is the prospect of Donald Trump is going to push us towards an unnecessary major war for his own political reasons.

James Mattis, former Secretary of Defense, skewered by Trump as an overrated general, forks it right on back:

I’m not just an overrated general. I’m the most overrated general," Mattis says. "I'm honored to be considered that by Donald Trump because he also called Meryl Streep an overrated actress. So I guess I'm the Meryl Streep of generals, and frankly that sounds pretty good to me.

Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah) finds Trump's foreign policy foreign:

The decision to abandon the Kurds violates one of our most sacred duties.  It strikes at American honor. What we have done to the Kurds will stand as a bloodstain in the annals of American history.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President of Turkey, to the Dotard-in-Chief:

#Erdogan tells news conference the letter sent by @realDonaldTrump telling him not to be a ‘tough guy’ wasn’t in line with diplomatic or political customs. He said they wouldn’t forget the lack of respect. “When the time comes necessary steps will be taken.”

An unnamed GOP official in California said Trump's craziness is hair-raising:

The needle on the Batsh*t Crazy Meter may have gone past the red zone today.

And the Nut Case himself, in a classic example of Freudian projection by a Stable Genius, identifies with his oppressor, Ms. Pelosi:

Nancy Pelosi needs help fast! There is either something wrong with her “upstairs,” or she just plain doesn’t like our great Country. She had a total meltdown in the White House today. It was very sad to watch. Pray for her, she is a very sick person!

To which I would retort, "It takes one to know one, Herr President."

Keep it real!

Marilyn