Thursday, December 14, 2017

Unfit to Be President

Another MUST READ, USA Today, Will Trump's lows ever hit rock bottom?, which states in substantial part:

"With his latest tweet, clearly implying that a United States senator would trade sexual favors for campaign cash, President Trump has shown he is not fit for office. Rock bottom is no impediment for a president who can always find room for a new low. . .

A president who would all but call Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand a whore is not fit to clean the toilets in the Barack Obama Presidential Library or to shine the shoes of George W. Bush. 

This isn’t about the policy differences we have with all presidents or our disappointment in some of their decisions. Obama and Bush both failed in many ways. They broke promises and told untruths, but the basic decency of each man was never in doubt. 

Donald Trump, the man, on the other hand, is uniquely awful. His sickening behavior is corrosive to the enterprise of a shared governance based on common values and the consent of the governed.

It should surprise no one how low he went with Gillibrand. When accused during the campaign of sexually harassing or molesting women in the past, Trump’s response was to belittle the looks of his accusers. Last October, Trump suggested that he never would have groped Jessica Leeds on an airplane decades ago: 'Believe me, she would not be my first choice, that I can tell you.' Trump mocked another accuser, former People reporter Natasha Stoynoff, 'Check out her Facebook, you’ll understand.'  Other celebrities and politicians have denied accusations, but none has stooped as low as suggesting that their accusers weren’t attractive enough to be honored with their gropes.

If recent history is any guide, the unique awfulness of the Trump era in U.S. politics is only going to get worse. Trump’s utter lack of morality, ethics and simple humanity has been underscored during his 11 months in office. Let us count the ways:

    He is enthusiastically supporting Alabama's Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore, who has been accused of pursuing — and in one case molesting and in another assaulting — teenagers as young as 14 when Moore was a county prosecutor in his 30s. On Tuesday, Trump summed up his willingness to support a man accused of criminal conduct: 'Roy Moore will always vote with us.' 

    Trump apparently is going for some sort of record for lying while in office. As of mid-November, he had made 1,628 misleading or false statements in 298 days in office. That’s 5.5 false claims per day, according to a count kept by The Washington Post’s fact-checkers.

    Trump takes advantage of any occasion — even Monday’s failed terrorist attack in New York — to stir racial, religious or ethnic strife. Congress 'must end chain migration,' he said Monday, because the terror suspect 'entered our country through extended-family chain migration, which is incompatible with national security.' So because one man — 27-year-old Akayed Ullah, a lawful permanent resident of the U.S. who came from Bangladesh on a family immigrant visa in 2011 —  is accused of attacking America, all immigrants brought to this country by family are suspect? Trump might have some credibility if his criticism of immigrants was solely about terrorists. It isn’t.  It makes no difference to him if an immigrant is a terrorist or a federal judge. He once smeared an Indiana-born judge whose parents emigrated from Mexico. It’s all the same to this president.

    A man who clearly wants to put his stamp on the government, Trump hasn’t even done his job when it comes to filling key government positions that require Senate confirmation. As of last week, Trump had failed to nominate anyone for 60% of 1,200 key positions he can fill to keep the government running smoothly. 

    Trump has shown contempt for ethical strictures that have bound every president in recent memory.  He has refused to release his tax returns, with the absurd excuse that it’s because he is under audit.  He has refused to put his multibillion dollar business interests in a blind trust and peddles the fiction that putting them in the hands of his sons does the same thing.

Not to mention calling white supremacists 'very fine people,' pardoning a lawless sheriff, firing a respected FBI director, and pushing the Justice Department to investigate his political foes. . .

The nation doesn’t seek nor expect perfect presidents, and some have certainly been deeply flawed. But a president who shows such disrespect for the truth, for ethics, for the basic duties of the job and for decency toward others fails at the very essence of what has always made America great."

Friday, December 8, 2017

Trump's Big CON: Whatsoever a Man Soweth, That Shall He Also Reap, The Reckoning

Another MUST READ, the Washington Post, Who are Republicans really? Look to Alabama., which states in full:

"Just how disordered have our politics become? And how off-the-rails is the Republican Party?

The good people of Alabama will help answer these questions in next Tuesday’s special election for the U.S. Senate. The whole world will be watching them decide whether party and ideology top decency and moderation; whether there is simply no end to the extremism Republican voters are willing to tolerate in their ranks; and whether a majority in their state believe that being a credibly accused sexual predator is better than being a Democrat.

They will also be telling us what they think the word 'Christian' means.

The outcome is likely to be determined by the consciences of conservatives, and of a specific kind: those who see Mitt Romney and Republicans like him as far more reflective of their moral sense than is Judge Roy Moore, the GOP’s ethically defective nominee whose indifference to the law led him to be removed from Alabama’s Supreme Court twice .

Stephen K. Bannon, the former Trump Svengali who proudly peddles the ideological wares of the extreme right, inadvertently clarified the stakes at a Moore rally in south Alabama on Tuesday night with a malicious and spiteful attack on Romney. The former Massachusetts governor tweeted this week that having Moore in the Senate “would be a stain on the GOP and on the nation.”

 Bannon’s response? 'Judge Roy Moore has more honor and integrity in that pinkie finger than your entire family has in its whole DNA.'

Yes, he really said that.

For good measure, Bannon not only accused Romney of avoiding service in Vietnam. He also trafficked in the anti-Mormon sentiments common among some evangelical Christians.

'You hid behind your religion,' Bannon said of Romney. 'You went to France to be a missionary while guys were dying in rice paddies in Vietnam. Do not talk to me about honor and integrity.' (And never mind that 'while guys were dying in rice paddies in Vietnam,' the president whom Bannon served also avoided the war, courtesy of five draft deferments.)

Bannon is many things, but a fool he is not. It’s no accident he linked his Vietnam attack to Romney’s missionary work, which underscored the 2012 Republican nominee’s deep commitment to Mormonism.

Thanks to Bannon, we now know that this is no longer just a race between Moore and Democrat Doug Jones, a former U.S. attorney who, depending on the poll, is either slightly behind or slightly ahead. It is, in very large part, a decision by Republicans about who they are.

It is also an important choice for devoted Christians. Do they really want their faith defined by those who tried to justify Moore’s alleged relationships with young teenagers by invoking the Holy Family and saying that Joseph was older than Mary (which, besides being absurd, is biblically unfounded)? Or by arguing that an interest in young girls might be explained by a desire for 'a large family,' as a professor at Ouachita Baptist University wrote?

Do those saying such things not realize that they are helping to discredit the very tradition they claim to be defending? No atheist could inflict this much damage to the faith.

This is how haywire politics has gone in the age of Trump.

Party loyalty can, it’s true, be honorable if it is about the defense of principles, and Moore’s backers say they are sticking with him to oppose abortion and multiply conservative judges.

But these rationales ring hollow given Moore’s utterly unconservative claims as a judge that his theological predilections overrode the law and his lies about not profiting from his private charity, which suggest he is a charlatan exploiting the beliefs of his supporters for his own purposes.

Both Moore and President Trump play on the feelings of marginalization experienced by many cultural conservatives. It would be salutary for such voters to declare that there are limits to how much they will allow themselves to be used by politicians whose words and deeds are so often at odds. If Moore is not the limiting case, there are no limits.

Moore’s promoters, including Bannon, want to convince Alabama Republicans that since a Jones triumph will be taken as a rebuke to Trump, they have an obligation to fall into line. But the long-term harm to the GOP from a Moore victory will be far greater than from one lost Senate seat. Bannon is right to cast the election as being about 'honor and integrity.' When it comes to these virtues, it is not a close call."