You can’t help but think you reap what you sow here. Pecker Pickle  If you are a practicing incorrigible and surround yourself with people who are competitively unscrupulous, you are likely to get your ass in a jam.  It was just a matter of time before the shit really hit the fan.  And we have hardly had a glimpse of what Mueller is turning up.  It seems unlikely that state prosecutors won’t extract more salacious information about Trump from Pecker and what was stored in the Enquirer’s secret safe.  For one thing, one of those smarmy characters Trump palled around with is  American financier Jeffrey Epstein, recognized more as a registered sex offender than as a philanthropist.  What fertile fodder for the Enquirer.  Jeffrey Epstein

So there’s that.  Then there are all the guys with connections to Russia and its former satellites- Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Carter Page, Michael Flynn. Felix Sater.  Don’t forget all the shady fringe political figures- Roger Stone, Sebastian Gorka, Steve Bannon, and the late Roy Cohn.  And of course there’s his notorious fixer Michael Cohen, who has revealed that yes, as Donald Trump so adamantly complained, the fix was in on the 2016 presidential election, but it was Donald Trump himself who contributed to the fix.

When Trump was in the business of constructing buildings, it was common practice for him to award contracts to firms with connections to organized crime. The Russian mob is intertwined in many of his commercial developments.  And look at his cabinet.  Price and Pruitt were forced out because of ethics and corruption violations.  Commerce Secretary Ross shorted stock and used pending news of his own dubious investments as an opportunity for insider trading. A cloud of suspicion surrounds  Interior Secretary Zinke and his “foundation” that is run by his wife and is playing a key role in real estate deals whose companies stand to benefit from Interior department decisions to open public lands to oil exploration. Education Secretary DeVos is basically running a corruption racket, awarding student loan debt collection to a firm she is heavily invested in.

And of course there might not be any person on earth more corrupt than the president himself.  Just the tip of the iceberg  are egregious emoluments clause violations going on on a daily basis that congress refuses to do anything about.  I can’t imagine Pecker not having at least a few revealing stories to tell.

I understand most of the dynamics of the 2016 presidential election.  For many what they saw was choosing the lesser of two evils.  Staunch Trump supporters are presently entrenched    They will vote to protect him and his program because they believe they are protecting themselves.  But look around.  If this president is providing protection for your engrained bigotry, or you are a true believer that disruption and chaos are just the thing the country needs, no doubt your mind will not be changed.  But any single-issue voters out there, especially pro-life or second amendment supporters, please give serious thought about wiping the slate clean.  Protect your beliefs, just don’t put your faith in a despicable man who’s loyalty is only to himself and is slowly undermining the very institutions that serve to protect all of us.

Now Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, like Pecker, is providing information with immunity protection.  This is the beginning of path through the money trail, and as many have predicted, it is probably what leads to the end of this presidency.  Resigning might at least save Trump from some embarrassment, but it would definitely save the country from dysfunction and discord that is only going to get worse if he doesn’t.  if a person picks a peck of profiteering peckers for protection, that particular person will probably end up in a pickle.

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Let’s face it.  The national polarization created by Trump is something you could say we have not seen since the U.S. Civil War.  Discussions involving  opposing viewpoints are exercises in futility, and when they do occur, they very often become alarmingly incendiary.  How can one man create such a furor?  The allure of Trumpism is something that is difficult for me to get my head around. Having said that,  I like to think I am educated and empathic enough to at least listen to someone who feels differently than I do.  And  I understand how parts of Trump’s campaign messaging resonated with his voters.  I was not enthralled with any of our 2016 presidential candidates.  I could see how people were more than willing to take a chance with a left field candidate.

Yes, I get that.  But what I can’t figure out is the mind set of people attending a typical Trump political rally.  Honest to god  a Trump rally for me is the equivalent of watching a troop of squatting monkeys perform a shit-flinging show.   I don’t waste my time watching any of them on television, but it’s difficult to escape all the snippets  the national news programs present.  If you are like me you just can’t help focusing on the people lined up behind Trump at one of these things.  Admittedly there are always a few that look like they might be riding the distal point of a bad meth trip, but heck, take a photo of a large group of the people I hang out with and to a casual observer one or two of them would probably look out of sorts also.  But the majority standing there cheering on the president seem perfectly normal to me.  That is until once again something  unforgivingly stupid spills out of his mouth.  Then the normal people just vanish.  They were there, but then they’re gone.

To prove my point, I need only refer to the comment Trump made in Tampa about purchasing groceries.  He emphatically stated if you intend to leave the supermarket with all those items you have piled up in your shopping cart, you damn well better show ID.  The statement is so blatantly incorrect and shows such a complete disconnect from the very people standing behind him that you would think there would be at least a smattering of people with quizzical expressions on their faces.  If my wife and I were there what we would be doing is glancing at each other and those around us, and if not actually saying “what the fuck,” at the very least our stunned appearance would convey to the entire viewing audience that we consider what we just heard to be unconditionally moronic.

But no, what you see are normal people turning abnormal.  There is nothing about those attendees standing behind Trump that would indicate they find anything out of the ordinary in what he just said.  Just glazed looks of acceptance.  What is going on there?  Sure Trump lies all the time.  His lying during ambiguous political and social commentary that can’t be readily fact-checked is one thing.  But geezuz even the nine year old kids who were dragged to the event by moms and dads with questionably commendable parenting skills  know how to grocery shop.  I refuse to believe all those people are that stupid.

So are they brainwashed?  Is there something behind all the talk about gas-lighting?  What in the hell goes on at Fox News anyway?   Is there some kind of subliminal message Sean Hannity is surreptitiously transmitting?  Does Fox News broadcast via a secret wave length that is able to worm its way into the subconscious and gradually abduct the human mind?

I guess I don’t know what’s worse- stupidity or perverse psychological manipulation.  Whichever, it becomes even more perilous when people so afflicted are coerced into hostility.  Trump’s use of the term “fake news” has certainly  instilled vocal provocation in those attending his political gatherings.  However, calling the main stream media the “enemy of the people,” a phrase that normal people consider to be outrageous subterfuge,  somehow triggers people at a Trump rally to react in a very abnormal, extremely vitriolic manner.  For a frightfully long period of time it looked like CNN’s Jim Acosta might not get out of that arena in Tampa alive.  Trump rally attendees display their displeasure with hot dog vendor when he runs out of mustard

I know there are decent Trump supporters out there.  If you considerer yourself to be decent and normal, I encourage you to attend your local Trump rally, only please, do your best to shoulder your way through the crowd and position yourself directly in front of any television camera you happen to notice..  And then when the president of the United States says something incoherently implausible, maliciously insulting,  or blatantly incorrect, restore my faith in humanity and evoke all the normal powers within yourself and stay normal.  And for your own safety and well being, it wouldn’t hurt to wear a tin foil hat while watching Fox News.

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You know what’s really hard for me?   Reacting to the latest of Trump’s cockamamie remarks.  They are flung out there, one after another, and it is humanly impossible for one person to comment on all of them.  Practically every time he opens his mouth or tweets I scramble for my Macbook, but alas, by the time I have something in mind to transcribe he says something even more dumbfounding.  It’s all completely overwhelming, but of course that is exactly what he wants.  Creating confusion to the point where a normal person just says “fuck it I give up” is a method Trump has fine tuned and I believe something intentional that he is critically counting  on.

It’s exactly for that reason I am taking on the project that follows.  Always keeping in mind this propensity of Trump to deflect and confuse, I naturally have had to pick and choose what topic particularly disturbs me.  I have to tell you a couple recently stick out.  After the disastrous Helsinki summit (addressed in my previous blog), Trump addressed the VFW in Kansas City.  Typically enough Trump turned the event into a political rally but he made a comment that to me was particularly jarring.  “What you are seeing and what you are reading is not what’s happening,” were the Orwellian words that made my hands sweat.

Then there was this. Trump TV Tantrum  Fox News is basically “State Television.”  I know first-hand.  My mother lives in an assisted living facility in the retirement community of St. George Utah, and practically  any television set you happen to see or hear will be tuned to that channel, including my mother’s.  Everywhere you go, in rooms  up and down the hallways of hospitals, rehab facilities, and even in the faraway corners of many businesses, there is Fox News blaring away.

I know there has been resurgent sales of George Orwell’s novel “1984.”  That makes perfect sense given our current political/social environment.  I read it in high school.  But it was not till the occurrence of these two successive incidents that I was personally motivated  to revisit the novel.  So what I am about to do is mention salient points of the novel, and juxtapose related political/social events that have taken place during the Trump administration.  Sorry, this will be long.  I had forgotten how involved and forboding this work is.  I extracted my information from a great You Tube video “The Dystopian World of 1984 Explained”  If you have the time I encourage you to google it as well as read the book.

At its core the Orwellian Dystopia is totalitarianism to the extreme.  The party’s grip on the mind is so powerful what once was unquestionable fact is similar to a dream and you question if it even happened or was ever real at all.  Then, you forget about it.—- Sound familiar?  Trump is so good and persistent at lying and twisting facts we reach a point of total exasperation that progresses to numbed insouciance.  We get worn out trying to defend logic and truth- basically everything I’ve mentioned so far- believe only Trump, state TV.

INGSOC  (the PARTY).  The party controls all, sees all. INGSOC controls information to the extent that facts are not reality and reality can be changed at the whim of Big Brother and the party,  INGSOC is able to normalize aberrant social behavior and conditions- class division, censorship, a general uneducated population, even mass atrocities.  These are allowed to be commonplace because anyone who didn’t agree with it is either too unimportant or doesn’t care.—- Sorry Republicans, but by enabling Trump and all his disinformation and lies you are a 21st century INGSOC. Investigation obstructionists like  Nunes and Jordan types are especially accusable, but McConnell and Ryan are just as complicit by doing nothing.  Their behavior runs pertinently parallel to INGSOC’s Inner and Outer Parties.

Inner Party- 2% of population in 1984 and basically heads of state.  Outer Party- 13% of population and mostly bureaucratic people.  The party only has to worry about its own stability to survive.  The general population is too simple to matter.—-  Republicans are willing to put up with Trump as long as their agenda moves forward.

Proles- the general population- the easy to manipulate, uneducated, simpletons—-  Pretty much how Trump and his cronies feel about the rest of us.

Ministry of Truth- One of four main governmental sectors, the propaganda arm of the party.  The purpose of the party is to rewrite, prevent, or destroy any conflicting bit of news or history that goes against the party.  Examples in the novel are heroes who do not exist.—- Might as well go ahead and label Fox News our modern Ministry of Truth.  Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Lou Dobbs, Tucker Carlson- who better to distort the truth and promote Trump’s alternative facts.  Minister of Truth Sean Hannity

Purges- at some point in time INGSOC purged those not loyal to the party’s ideology.—- Trump’s willingness to even consider Russian interrogation of American citizens, one a former U.S ambassador to Russia, more than stands out here.

Solidify the party’s base with new, fanatical, nationalistic adults.  Obviously healthy for your ideology.  In the novel, children are likely to report their parents for “thought crimes.” —-  I could see that happening in the not too distant future. Have you seen those children going berserk  shouting “lock her up” at a Trump rally?   Who let’s their kids attend one of those things anyway?

Newspeak- The official language of the party.  It is simplistic and limited to small bits.  It makes debate controllable or refutable.  INGSOC has a monopoly on discourse because it made the words up.  This goes deeper than a weird language however.  Brainwashing is a cultural manifestation of newspeak.  Reality and history can be changed with the stroke of a bureaucratic pen—-  Trump talk is often a two or three word sound bite.  “Believe me,” “Locker her up,” “Fake news,”  “Little rocket man.” “Witch hunt.”  Trump and Fox News opinion staff repeat his favorite phrases over and over.  No doubt it has an impact at some point on a lot of people.   Simplistic and limited pretty much describe Trump’s vocabulary,  and it is obvious grammar and sentence structure were subjects he never took seriously in school.  And who can forget “Covfefe.?”

Doublethink- a Newspeak term that holds two conflicting beliefs as equal.—-  This happens all the time in Trumpworld.  Friend and foe are interchangeable.  U.S. intelligence agencies are to be believed one day, disbelieved the next.

2018, welcome to 1984.

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As it was with his meeting with Kim Jong Un, the one certain take away from the disastrous Helsinki Summit is this:  When it comes to direct confrontation with demagogues, the “tough guy” image Trump would like us to believe he portrays is pretty much nothing but vaporous prattling.  The entire world was left wondering WTF was this?  Whatever was or was not accomplished, we are left with one of two stark conclusions about the man running our country.  Is the president of the United States an out of control narcissist, or does Putin have something egregiously compromising on him?  The most defensible explanation for his bazaar performance is the first- that he is absolutely obsessed with the idea that nothing must taint his questionable election, to the point of  embarrassing himself and the country in order to put his mind at  ease.

At the summit press conference however, President Putin was asked a question by Reuters reporter Jeff Mason that is puzzlingly contradictory, but was answered in such a way Trump must have felt he was kicked in the balls.  Mason asked if he directed any of his officials to help Trump get elected.  Putin replied yes, he did, because he felt Trump could more normalize relations between the two countries.  In fairness, before Putin thus responded, there was a lengthy discussion where both Putin and Trump interjected remarks.  But still, after repeatedly denying any involvement, Putin gave that answer to that question.  Slip of the tongue?

Putin also “offered” to allow the Mueller team to come to Russia to conduct investigations, but of course only after Russia reciprocated with their own investigations.  During that discussion, Putin suggested the U.S. extradite Bill Browder, the financier who was the driving force behind the Magnitsky Act. There is probably no one else on the entire planet that Putin would rather get his hands on.   And astonishingly, Trump thought the whole concept of Russian involvement in a U.S. investigation about Russia was a perfectly peachy idea.

Trump’s conduct during the entire conference was mind-boggling.  Perhaps feeling that the international community would be just as likely to appreciate his campaign rhetoric as those attending one of his political rallies in a red midwestern state, he took the opportunity once again to expound on his smashing electoral college victory and interject comments about Hillary’s e-mails. One wonders if he felt crushed when neither uproarious applause nor raucous cheering were forthcoming.

Trump’s performance in Helsinki convinced me more than ever that at some point in time our nation will be confronted by that second explanation, that underneath Trump’s hyper protestations about any connection he has with Russia, there is something  lurking that must be  exceedingly  distressing to the president.  We have seen this man’s attempts to undermine our democratic norms and institutions since his inauguration, and what we saw in Helsinki was an even more sinister extension of that behavior.  This is a president who threatens the free press,  and stakes a claim to patriotism by using the American flag to provoke national dissension and deny first amendment rights.  Even more  hypocritical and unpatriotic is a president who won’t defend the citizens* or intelligence agencies of his own country, but does the bidding of the adversarial president of another.

*Besides Bill Browder, we later learned in the mix of U.S. citizens  Trump is considering offering up to Putin is former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul.  The fact that I am sitting here typing the previous sentence should scare the shit out of all of us.

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Virginia coal miner Jacob Funkhowser, who was recently diagnosed with Black Lung disease, says he is confident he’ll be fine in a few days since the coal dust he has been inhaling is the new clean kind and not the old dirty type that killed his father.  “My dad just happened to be a miner at the wrong time, before there was all this clean coal we are mining now,” Funkhowser said.  Asked if this is information that he received from his physician, Mr. Funkhowser said he couldn’t recall  what his doctor told him, but he is adamantly confident President Trump knows what he is talking about.  Between coughing fits Mr. Funkhowser did his best to clarify his statement, but the interview was cut short after he noticed his portable oxygen tank was nearing empty.

Resurgence of Black Lung Disease

In an apparent effort to broaden the base of the Democratic party, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi announced yesterday that she will organize a cordial get together with her local chapter of MS-13 when the House of Representatives adjourns for the summer recess in August.  As reported only by Fox News, the event is part of her plan to welcome the group and make sure they all feel right at home in their new country.  Commenting on this morning’s Fox and Friends program,  former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee gave his analysis and  proper perspective of the breaking story.   Of particular interest, he stated that his sources advised him that one of the primary reasons for the gathering is to keep the leaders of MS-13 informed of the progress the Democrats are having advancing  their infrastructure bill.

The governor pointed out that the Democrat’s version of the bill includes a specific demand for a high speed rail system that will run from Guatemala and terminate in the minority leader’s home state of California.  The train will be designed  for the exclusive transportation and comfort of Mexican and Central American gang members.   It is his belief Ms. Pelosi wants to find out what travel accommodations gang members typically prefer.  After a short discussion about crime statistics and the marginal nutritional value of tacos, the governor went on to list a number of dire warnings, none more chilling than the following: “I want to make clear I am not singling out gang members.  I’m talking about all of them, all the different-looking, foreign speaking non-Christians- they all pose an imminent danger to the United States.  If we don’t stop letting them into our country, believe me we risk being completely overrun by roving packs of lawless democrats.”

ABOVE: Prototype of Bullet Train that Democrats Hope to Feature on Their Proposed Gang Member Transportation Line

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Yesterday the Bureau of Labored Statistics (BLdS)  issued its annual report, and  there were some  interesting  conclusions included that had never before surfaced during any previous study.  One of the figures that has caught the attention of political observers is the “obfuscation” number, or “Oh!” number, as it is commonly called.  As it relates to current politics, the study included only those people who adamantly support the president, and the “Oh!” number is simply the average number of times it takes President Trump to say something before a typical supporter of his believes it.  Somewhat surprisingly that figure turned out to be 3.5.

Until this recent report was issued, most political pundits were under the impression that the president only had to mention something once and his core followers would accept it as dogma.  That the report concludes the official number is over three times  what had previously been assumed is something that caught the White House by surprise.  When asked about the anomaly at a press conference, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders noted that the number 3.5 was an average of the results.  “Believe me the minute the president says something, the really smart people pick it up right away,” said the press secretary.  “Look, I’m not saying all the other people are dumb or anything. There are a number of reasons someone might not catch on as quickly as others.   A lot of folks are old and maybe they might not hear too well.  Maybe they like to check with Sean Hannity before they draw a conclusion.  Look, 3.5 seems like a ridiculously high number to me but the important thing is in the end people know the mainstream media is always lying, and most important of all is that once you become one of the president’s believers you will always be able to understand the truths he speaks of, and the miseries of your life will completely vanish, and when you die you will go straight to heaven.”

BLdS administrator Stanley Grossman did point out that during the survey there was a very consistent finding that tended to skewer the outcome towards the large number.  He called it the “Giulliani Factor.” Grossman stated that when  the survey participants were shown  various pictures of prominent administration spokespersons, those of Rudy Giuliani elicited  a perplexingly  wide range of responses.  Grossman attributes that to the confusion Mr. Guilliani created with some of his statements that completely contradicted the president’s positions.   48% of the survey remarks about Mr. Guilliani were along the lines of “Doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground.”  (Interestingly, that was the exact phrase used by 31% of those surveyed).  However, 37 % said something to the effect of “Huh? I’m not sure but I think the president said he always went to Lake Tahoe for a religious retreat, not to meet porn stars, so I’ll check with Fox News for the real story.” The remaining 15% generally asserted that Mr. Giulliani should seriously consider having some dental work done.

Mr. Grossman admitted  that much of the survey was probably taken before Mr. Guilliani had a full grasp of  President Trump’s creative methods  of explaining facts. “It takes courage and someone with a strong stomach to go on national television and claim to believe a typical Trump truth.” Grossman stated.  “But it looks like Mr. Guilliani is finally getting the hang of it, and  it’s  my opinion that by the time our survey is taken next year, the Guilliani factor will be immaterial.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Oh! number pretty close to a perfect 1.Oh!.”

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