One of the (far-too-many) daily newsletters I receive is Simon Rosenberg’s Hopium Chronicles. Rosenberg is a longtime Democratic pollster, and provides nerds like yours truly with results of the latest survey research, in-depth descriptions of candidates around the country, and other “inside baseball” data. Recently, however, in the middle of an encouraging report about Trump’s dismal and declining approval ratings, he provided a summary of where this mad, intellectually-challenged, would-be king has taken our country.
Here are the two paragraphs that “tell it like it is.”
He promised no forever wars and launched a forever war. He promised lower prices and he raised them. He promised a strong economy and we are getting job loss. He promised to drain the swamp and has ushered in an age of unprecedented corruption. He promised to make us strong and respected in the world and instead he is making China and Russia great again and us a laughing stock. This week rather than fixing all the messes he has created he is creating a new one – more humiliation by the Senate’s rejection of his rancid “make sure no one can vote any more” bill. As I wrote a few weeks ago the real State of the Union is that everyone is tired of all his bullshit.
Those little cracks we’ve seen in recent months are becoming very, very big ones and today it just feels like he and the regime are cracking open and coming apart. His madness has led him and our nation to ruin and it is no longer possible to pretend otherwise. A dam is breaking. A straw is breaking the camel’s back. The curtain is being drawn from the Wizard, and yes, we are all seeing that that orange emperor isn’t wearing any clothes (sorry for that image peeps).
As Simon noted elsewhere in the newsletter, Trump’s Iran incursion was an impulsive effort intended to distract from the drip, drip, drip of Epstein disclosures–not to mention from a faltering economy, ICE’s terror campaign, and the multiple other administration FUBARS that have been producing Democratic over-performances in election after election. But impulsive is the operative word–it has become abundantly clear that the attacks were not preceded by anything remotely resembling an evidence-based evaluation of the likely pros and (considerable) cons of such an assault. That shouldn’t surprise us: anyone demonstrating competence or expertise had already departed–or been ejected from– this administration.
Instead of a quick and impressive display of American might, what we got was further evidence of Trump’s incompetence–as Simon says, instead of bragging rights, we got “a global fiasco, global humiliation, and an American economy already weakened due to his batshit crazy domestic agenda now hurdling towards recession and a new inflation spiral.”
It is really difficult to get one’s head around the amount of damage Trump has been able to inflict on this country in just over one year. The Iran fiasco is simply the most recent–and arguably the most damaging.
As Jonathan Last recently wrote in The Bulwark, in a post titled “Our Low-IQ President did an Oopsie,”
Someday military academies will teach Trump’s Glorious Iran War as a case study in armed incompetence. Every consideration—from the strategic, to the economic, to the logistical, to the political—was cocked up from the start in the most obvious and stupid ways imaginable. Your average Warhammer nerd could have managed the operation more competently.
Then again, Americans watched Trump’s handling of COVID—“if we didn’t do any testing, we would have very few cases”—and still decided to give him control of the country again. So what else did they expect?
Monocle recently published an interview with Michael Wolfe, Trump’s former ghostwriter and a current chronicler of his Presidency, who has probably followed him as closely as anyone. In this exchange, Wolfe corroborates what Simon says.
The question was: Is Donald Trump an intelligent man? Wolfe’s answer:
No. He’s a fucking moron. It’s extraordinary. He clearly has some street savvy but in terms of information and thinking about things in any coherent way, zippo. Steve Bannon once said that Trump’s whole life was a battle against information. He didn’t want to know things because that meant people would tell him things and he instinctively rebelled against that. So nobody tells him anything – not least because he never stops talking.
As I’ve previously noted–and as Simon says– elect a clown, expect a circus…..
Last part of this post is most concerning that there is a president that we have that does not taken very good amounts of information to make decisions. I still find it hard to believe that Trump decided to go to war with Iran, only by what he understood about Iran and being a threat I’m sure the military complexes have their eye on this country and its ability to carry out, continued terrorist threats, but this time with long range missiles and nuclear warheads as we all hope that this war will come to an end soon what is needed as a regime changed that most Persians want that are non-religious and simply want to land to live in where they aren’t being told where burkas. The IRGC is a horrible group of people that are systematically terrorizing our world one commentator stated that over the last 40 years they killed over 1000 US citizens throughout the world, including 400 military personnel. Regardless, I agree with the author stance on how a dam is burning and almost ready to break. The problem is I don’t think people want it to go back to the way it was with the previous administration.
“Those little cracks we’ve seen in recent months are becoming very, very big ones and today it just feels like he and the regime are cracking open and coming apart.”
I might believe the above statement if there were any signs, no matter how little, that anyone inside that administration is stopping Trump from doing anything illegal on any level. He has diverted our attention from Greenland by invading Venezuela, the brief full attention to the Epstein Files is now on his personal war on Iran which our allies and neutral nations are paying for with their lives wherever Americans are located. Cuba is next, unless that is another diversion for something bigger. The court cases against his actions against his “enemies” are slowed within his federal court system. The Republicans are all still supporting his killing domestically and globally with full support by the Supreme Court. The slightest appearance of support, such as referring to “Trump’s incursion into Iran” rather than full out WAR is taken up by the local Republicans and passed on to controlling MAGAs in the administration who are running with it. Their kill rate increases daily and it also increases the possibility/probability that those who support Iran and their oil blockade can direct their drones and bombs directly on the UNTIED STATES OF TRUMP. They attacked us from within twice on the World Trade Center; by pilots trained here, do you believe there are no more enemy agents willing to die to kill Americans again? Our own military is already in place preparing the way.
Face it; we are now a full fledged Fascist nation under a full throated Dictatorship and we are unable to plug up those little cracks with our own military on our streets controlling police and protecting ICE.
CAN SIMON SAY WE CAN EVEN SAVE OUR RIGHT TO VOTE THIS YEAR?
The White House and the Pentagon are filled with media and Internet reports containing local news and Internets along with our Social Security and personal information. During the 1980s I worked with a small group of people with two contracts with City Government running programs for local teens regarding job programs and government education. I answered the office phone one afternoon for a call directly from the White House wanting to be part of the planned trip to Washington, D.C. by providing a private tour of the White House and lunch for our busload of students. This was worked out easily. A few hours later I answered a call directly from the Pentagon who also wanted to be included but the funds only covered the D.C. trip. Due to the Internet we are getting away with nothing on this blog that isn’t going directly to Trump’s administration on some level.
Impulsive for Trump but not for Bibi. Trump just had to try to explain why it was his idea until it turned badly. I guess his Big Oil buddies will be quite happy since the gambit in Venezuela didn’t work out very well.
And, if it’s the same Michael Wolffe, who was also pen pals with Epstein, Jeffrey thought Trump was Satan, but apparently Peter Thiel was intelligent, so Trump can just be the servant of Satan. I’m thinking Bibi might be Satan with Trump being his bitch.
I saw that being even one of the wealthiest men in the world still doesn’t allow you to speak your psychotic babble near the Vatican.
I generally ignore the babble about wars from the pundits, as if there were logic to it. In this case, Bibi owned Trump, and so did his billionaire Anglo-Zionists. This was being argued over prophecy. God chose Donald to deliver some piece of sand to Israel. Oopsy!
Meanwhile, the Democratic response was not to dump AIPAC and kick them out of our country. No, our top Democrats went to deep Ohio to attack Vance’s false promises as a man of God and to restore Southwestern Ohio to the glory land.
It didn’t matter because it was time for the Men’s BB Championship Bracket.
This country is no longer a serious place. I see the genius of South Park. LOL
My hope is that enough MAGAts finally recognize the extreme damage that has been caused by the complete silence of the Republicans they they voted into office. Will the MAGAts finally realize their Republican Senators and Representatives care only about maintaining their own jobs and political power and that they only care about their corporate and wealthy campaign donors? While it is encouraging to see Dem candidates winning recent elections in other states I don’t have any hope for Dem candidates in Indiana. It would be nice to be proven wrong.
When will Congress crack? Why are the Republicans still in lock step with this idiot?
Part of the answer to this question is that the right wing echo chamber is still as strong as ever. Indianapolis has a paper called the Indianapolis Business Journal (IBJ). They still take online comments from paid subscribers, so not completely anonymous and the comments section is pretty civil. There are often decent opinions expressed. Yesterday I made a comment on article about ICE being deployed in place of TSA. It was about out of control ICE agents being the cause of the shut down and we’re now going to be put them in a very visible position at airports. I said sarcastically “that will tone things down”. In an uncharacteristic reply, I was called several names and was told the reason we have a shut down is because the Democrats won’t pass the SAVE voter act.
The Democrats won’t pass the SAVE voter act for other reasons. But right wing media has done a great job convincing people otherwise. Based on several other comments, many people were unaware why Democrats won’t fund DHS.
I suspect if you’re plugged into the right wing echo sphere things look strong and rosy as ever. It’s too sad that Indiana has two senators and six or seven congressman that haven’t picked up a newspaper or even talked or listened to people that don’t agree with their positions. You would think at some point some of this would leak through and they’ve got to start sweating a little.
i’m also sure there are a lot of people that are really proud of Trump because “he’s getting things done!“. It’s stupid things and will take decades to fix, but yeah he’s getting things done.
Apparently, there are a good chunk of people that you can still fool all the time.
Does anyone remember the competent, boring Biden administration? We can thank those people who didn’t vote for Trump 2. And there is no way out of this horror movie. The call is coming from inside the house!
The comment attributed to Bannon is so spot on!!!!!!! Dumbest student that teacher ever met? Oh, yeah!!!!!!!!!!
Calling him incompetent is being very nice to him, he’s virtually a barren shell of a human, parading his idiocy for the world to, see literally.
I see so many pundits asking how did we get here? My response is that we have a really short attention span. Nobody remembered Covid, much less the ineptitude of Orange Jesus and his “expertise”. He not only advised no testing to reduce the number of cases, he also wanted to propose alternate remedies such as bleach, ultraviolet light, and finally Ivermectin. There’s nothing like a good horse medicine to cure what ails you. I don’t know about everyone else, but I still miss the friends I lost. I also remember that the office that prepared for pandemics was shut down by the clown in the first year of his administration.
I’m gearing up for Saturday and I expect to see several of my friends from church. I hope one day that my church can be more outspoken about social justice issues than we are today. I admit to being somewhat envious of those at All Saints in Indy. They have posted information in their weekly newsletter and plan to go en masse to the No Kings rally in Indy. If you aren’t busy on March 28, find your nearest rally and be there, especially if you’re NOT an old hippy like me.
Trump has always been an ignorant, corrupt narcissist. However, now he also has obvious dementia of some type (probably Frontotemporal based on observable symptoms). This is quite clear to anyone who has professional experience treating people with dementia. It’s terrible frustrating to hear people keep discussing his actions/”policies” as though he was capable of reason, logic, or behavioral control (i.e. “normal”). The 25th Amendment should be invoked to remove him from office. He is only going to get worse.
Sadly, those who are in the cult will never acknowledge that he has lied to them repeatedly, stolen from them, not only in finances but in personal integrity and valued relationships. They will always rationalize his actions as being the fault of their opponents. It is classic abuse and gaslighting. “Look what you made me do.”
We are no longer the leader of the free world (if we ever really could claim that title) and understandably so. Why would any country ever trust the outcomes of elections in this country again? Not once, but twice, the voters have been shown to be a collection of rubes all too ready to be conned by grievance and racist, misogynist, xenophobic, homophobic rhetoric from a convicted felon.
The Epstein files may be the spark that triggers a third world war, not unlike an assassination in a presumptive monarch triggered WWI. The saddest part is that the world may be forever changed by the huge losses of human potential caused by the collective hubris and malignancy of such a small number of people.
RESIST.