Avoiding Impeachment Talks Is Helping Donald Trump While Hurting Democrats And America

Concerns about Michael Flynn came early, yet Trump chose to

ignore them along with other FBI warnings about Russia.

The question of the hour is not whether Trump has done things much worse than Roseanne Barr, and surely worthy of impeachment proceedings. The question of the hour is whether or not WE should ignore Democrat lawmakers concerned that impeachment talks would give Trump the same popularity boost they gave Bill Clinton when he was impeached as president, or should we sit by silently and hope that this lying president of ours will create too many fires for himself and burn up before his branding and marketing efforts can put all the fires out?

The question of last hour was whether or not Trump could remain silent about the "Roseanne" matter, or at least say something that wasn't on Twitter and attempted to offer unity and solace towards something beyond his Trumpian base. He is trying dearly to take the cameras off of Russian collusion and the obstruction efforts to hide it by fast tracking negotiations with a dictator he castigated a few weeks ago.

As we wait to learn what is in that North Korea letter Trump is so excited to be reading soon, keep in mind the letter Trump sent and the person he sent it to. Is there a chance that Kim Jong Un didn't read it or did he not understand? Do you think North Korea doesn't realize the shady deal maker Trump is known to be? Might Kim Jong Un be oblivious to the American election cycle and the dwindling amount of time left to worry about Trump? If Trump is unable to achieve the unreasonable denuclearization dream he is chasing, is Kim Jong Un not prepared for him to send another angry letter, or worse?

Why Give Up Your Leverage?

Despite his attempts to behave otherwise, Donald J. Trump was not raised by dictators nor is he hell bent on fulfilling the legacy of dictators like Kim Jong Un is. Giving up his nuclear weapons would contradict his family legacy and compromise the only leverage that has him potentially meeting with Trump soon.

When you consider what motivates him, Trump is but a seedy, greedy Obama hater and a volatile tea kettle. He runs from hot to not and back again, and he screams all of his fears and insecurities on Twitter for North Korea and everybody else to analyze daily. The tea kettle we call Trump is quite heated over whatever he fears Special Counsel Lead Investigator, Bob Mueller will find against him, and he will likely continue howling loudly from now until Congress says enough already.

The challenge with a president who is a heated kettle full of hot water is the intensity of noise hot kettles are intended to make. For a functional reason, they are designed to be a noise that drowns out most other sounds. It's not that screaming hot kettles are necessarily dangerous, but they can easily become a hazard if ignored and left to blow steam for too long.

Donald J. Trump is a blatant liar, but kind people don't say such things to other people. Calling someone a cunt (something most are fond of despite the vulgarity of the word) or a liar (something we generally agree to despise) is not quite as disgusting as calling people animals, however, calling someone a liar assumes certain truths about a person without the benefit of being inside of their lying ass head.

Kind people have resisted the urge to be so direct and presumptuous, or to call this man a liar without equivocation. Similarly, the media and elected public servants have resisted the urge to talk about impeachment or to make leaping assumptions about provable facts in fear of calling a sitting a president a non-truth telling criminal without giving him the benefit of innocence until proven guilty and general decorum.

I haven't asked him personally, but I'm am fairly certain that Donald J. Trump considers every one of you who prescribes to the shut up about impeachment theory as branding and marketing idiots. While he might not be great at finishing taxes, selling steaks, running casinos, silencing porn stars or being a president thus far, he is obviously good at branding and marketing.

If Trump were responsible for characterizing Trump, it would look a lot like the character assassinations he did to every political opponent he has faced in route to the presidency. Yet, Nancy Pelosi's insistence on keeping the Democrats focused on politics as normal proves that she still can not understand how or why he became president and that some political norms don't apply to Trump.

Because we've attempted to ignore impeachment, we've ignored the direct conversation that would invite a more detailed discussions about all of the reasons he deserves it. In essence, we've functionally ignored the noisy tea kettle by focusing on his intentional distractions instead of simply removing him. At this point in his presidency, WE are in danger of burning ourselves down, including our trust of our own intelligence community if WE can't save ourselves from the noisy kettle that keeps crying wolf.

CAN THE FBI BE TRUSTED?

Let's be clear about the real news versus the fake since Trump has branded and marketed an FBI informant as a campaign spy. In reality, Trump and Clinton and Congress were warned of Russia's meddling, and that so-called spy was an FBI informant who was doing the exact job America paid him or her to do in conjunction with the warning.

Does that remove the need for questions of the FBI?

No.

Through a history of intentional misdeeds, the FBI has earned whatever doubt WE have of them. Add to that our general expectation of government corruption and you start to understand the methods and mechanisms (Inspector General) enacted for oversight and for internally investigating high levels of government when needed.

Congress used to be one of those methods of oversight before the tea kettle burned down the House Intelligence Committee via Chair Devin Nunes (CA) and Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan (WI), who empowered the arsonist Nunes. Ryan is set to leave Congress right after the November elections and right before non-political junkies start to discover the role he played in allowing Nunes to aid and abet Trump's efforts against the Mueller investigation into his campaign. History will remember Ryan for his role in all of this.

Meanwhile, the Senate Intelligence Committee has attempted to maintain its oversight duties, its impartial posture and the rule of law, but even they have recently been used as a political tool for a president willing to sacrifice the confidentiality of FBI informants and the future of our nation as he openly obstructs the investigation into his conspiracy to defraud America (aka., collusion).

By presidential edict, Trump hereby demanded that the FBI unmask the person assigned to confront the same Russians he was warned about during the campaign. In the court of law, that Twitter demand for unmasking that informant will someday read as textbook obstruction. In the halls of Congress, its another laughable case of Trump being Trump, nothing to see here. From the mouth of the branding marketer we call president, the FBI should have informed him he was colluding, so its their fault.

Lets call it "SpyGate"

Even House Oversight Chairman, Trey Gowdy (Ark), has debunked the claims that Donald Trump keeps making about "SpyGate", but not before the very word "SpyGate" was branded and attached to the Mueller investigation and marketed for public consumption.

Donald J. Trump, our president, is a liar and a deceiver and a despicable human who refers to other humans as animals to justify treating them inhumanely. He is also very good at branding and marketing and lying in the face of crisis with the use of marketing and branding. What politicians once called spin has become a Charlotte's web of lies and confusion through the lips of this president. Now, with his presidency struggling for legitimacy amidst an investigation that keeps uncovering colluders, liars and witches (oh my), Trump is back on the campaign trail selling the public snake oil from an ancient serpent infamous for division and strife.

When his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, announced the decision to take toddlers and infants away from migrant parents in the hopes of discouraging refugees and asylum seekers, Trump chose to market the decision as a Democrat law while painting its detractors as MS-13 supporters.

Thanks to this imploding president, lovers of the Second Amendment have taken arms against gun control and against the First Amendment which is also under fire as Trump chisels at the credibility of the press, diminishing their distinct purpose within our dying dream of a Democracy.

Meanwhile, Trump appears to be taking full advantage of whatever time he has left to put an accent on racial division while stuffing his pockets with as much legally extorted money as he can muster for he and his children who all have legal problems now. All of these things could fall under the pervue of  "high crimes and misdemeanors" if anyone on earth knew what the hell all that means or what became of our system of checks and balances?

What WE now know is that a Congress that is missing its spine can not be co-equal to anything. What WE don't know is whether or not the Founding Fathers knew that their system of checks and balances could potentially get distorted by a Congress complicit to a pay-for-play president.

Trump has yet to fire Bob Mueller from investigating his campaign and its connection to Russia before, during and after the 2016 election even though he continues to call an investigation that has rendered multiple convictions, indictments and guilty pleas, a witch hunt.

While he hasn't fired Mueller, he has successfully misbranded his efforts so that 59% of Americans think Mueller has yet to render ANY convictions, indictments or guilty pleas (aka., witches) in this witch hunt.

Because the Democrats have intentionally chosen to avoid talking about impeachment, America has no clue about the amount of confirmed witches in the Donald Trump orbit or that Trump could very well be one himself. A successful investigation that is assumed to be a failure is successful marketing and branding by the opposition anyway you look at it.

This is Alex Van Der Zwann. He is

the first witch to go to jail for his

crime in the Mueller investigation. 

Whether witch, ogre or warlock, Donald Trump rears his big ugly wart-filled face on enough occasions to make everyone of US aware of exactly who he is even if 40% (and climbing) have decided they don't care. Thus, the question remains.

Has avoiding talks of impeachment helped Donald Trump but hurt Democrats and America?

Did a Michael Avenatti Storm appear and stir up so much discovery in the collusion case that we can no longer piece together all of the things we've found?

Mid-term elections are likely to be the place in which these questions get answered, however, it is unsettling to think that the same guy who pussy grabbed and disability mocked his way to the White House could now be stealing from the Vladimir Putin playbook and running a propaganda campaign against his own intelligence community.

Aside from acting more innocent and ending the kind of nepotism that might force Congress to create better laws against it, Trump also needs to stop saving Chinese cell phone companies that harm Americans, especially days before we discover several new patents given to Ivanka Trump by the same Chinese government that asked you to save their cell phone company.

The seeds of impeachment are spread all over that previous paragraph. But, until the American public can digest it clearly enough to be enraged, the media will need to explain it more slowly by watering one topic at a time and giving it all a chance to take root.

Bob Mueller is a capable farmer and way too focused on simultaneously watering several seeds of suspicion to explain to us what to expect from just one. The harvest from his endeavor will inevitably speak for itself, nonetheless, under-watering or prematurely forcing too many under-developed seedlings of information into the light of day could jeopardize the profitability of the harvest.

Stated a bit more clearly, people won't buy it if Mueller's harvest doesn't look appealing enough to warrant the very high price WE are expending on all of this. If the American public fails to see the success that Mueller is achieving, they may fail to continue to support the pursuit. At the very least, that's what Trump wants, rule of law be damned. 

Donald J. Trump is the most important law enforcement official in the nation but the least interested in what happened to our election or in stopping it from happening again. It is becoming more and more accepted that nothing could be more destructive to the fiber of American exceptionalism than Trump, and nothing could be more important to Putin and other world dictators than the destruction of American exceptionalism.

Will the American people look back on 2018 and worry that WE just didn't realize how bad things were under Trump until it was too late to stop him? Will the anticipated Big Blue wave of Democrats in Congress save US from Trump or will 2018 represent the year Trump branded the American identity with divisiveness and marketed it alongside his commemorative coin from the North Korean nuclear negotiations? 

WE can no longer hide from the international embarrassment our constitution enabled without addressing the Constitution, the Two-party/Electoral college enablement and the disinterested voter enablers.....or a combination of all three.

Women Like Sex Too: A Simple Defense Of Facebook.

Like many of you, I have had to do my own reckoning with the Cambridge Analytica reality that Facebook has so rudely slapped us with, forcing us to reexamine the things we see and read on The Book, even to the extent of wondering how Russia used our desperate love of Facebook against us in the 2016 election....

....and then I lost my damn self on this whole conversation because I always lose me and every other progressive who thinks from time to time that Russia made somebody who was previously interested in Hillary, more interested in Trump or any other candidate that they eventually voted for. I also lose myself on this Russian bot nonsense when I think they were able to make all the people who hate getting involved in politics less interested through keenly targeted Facebook memes.

Don't misunderstand my concern with what happened. I believe Putin deserves a serious geopolitical punch in the mouth with collective actions by the world as a message and a prelude to something worse if he doesn't stop the nonsense.

What I am tired of is progressive angst in the notion that human beings would get their lazy butts off of their couches to go stand in line for any candidate by inspiration from social media when we can barely decide who is going to pick up pizza when that cheesy pickup promo peaks our interest.

I am, admittedly, the same guy who was complaining about Google telling me that standing in line at O'Reilly auto parts is somehow a (insert curse word of choice here) photo opportunity, even when I'm actually across the street at Grease Monkey and the GPS is just a little off in its tracking of my every (insert another expletive) footstep.

The truth is they ALL are trying to GPS track and content analyze us to the benefit of the public square. In their defense, THEY are typically giving us something for FREE (social media page, email, web based market site) in exchange for the right to sell who we are to a third party. It is a relationship that we are made aware of going in so that we have the option and opportunity to steer clear of the free internet if we so choose. By now, there should be a solid understanding that you still get what you pay for in this world.

But the conversation of this orange man we are enduring in our White House is not something quite as trivial as the Sunday ads we've rejected that come through the so-called free internet now. Who knew enough strategic content could be used towards gaining an Electoral advantage, and that you could actually lose an election by 3 million votes yet, somehow still win the White House just as Donald Trump did?

Al Gore, that's who knew. He already gave us that civics lesson years ago. If Hillary didn't understand the electoral challenge from the Al Gore example alone, I question if she was prepared for the challenge that would have followed primarily being the first female president against a congress of GOP wolves. When you start to analyze things that happen in our world, sex, gender and sexuality are always underlying elements of consideration.

For example, I have resolved in my mind that sex is the oldest known industry to mankind because of things much more simplistic than pimps or patriarchy. In reality, there have always been women just as interested in sex as men think they are, some even more so quietly as it's kept.

The problem is, we do keep it quiet and we don't often open up about the reality that some women enjoy sex quite a bit. Prostitution is, in part, a byproduct of the truth that women love sex too.

While pimps are probably really cool guys with really gifted vocabularies, most of them are smart enough to find the women who want to hear what they are saying. I'm not talking about the sex slave crap or trying to overdo this sex analogy any more than necessary to make a point and keep the modern day attention span long enough for that point to sink in

My point?  People know what they like and listen to what they want to hear.

Putin, pimps and advertisers are only able to target the vulnerable, not produce them out of thin air. In reality, people do what they want to do or something pretty damn close to what they were thinking about in the first place.

Friends and family didn't start to fall distant on Facebook before during and after the electing of Trump because the Russian bots incited their discord. Some folks really loved them some Donald Trump, and they didn't want to be as open and honest about it because of the same reason our teenage daughters won't talk about banging someone like our boys tend to do on the regular.

Even with the downtrend in teen pregnancy, some babies happen because women like sex too. Women like sex, some of your friends and family voted for and still like Trump (and might do it again) and advertisers need to send you a coupon for that stuff you like, want or simply need based upon their strategic compilation of your social media life. As much as we'd like to blame the world for things we'd like to change, there is no way to change anything when you can't accept it for what it is.

If you don't want to be sold a product or told to go out and vote for that person you already like anyway, shut yourself off of the internet and social media in particular. Also disconnect the data on your phone as well as your wifi-signal while you are driving and I am pretty sure you will only see targeted mail and campaign flyers every two years or so.


Of course, they are asking more details about us in the upcoming census, so it might be prudent for anyone too concerned with a world trying to decide what we want to just live off the grid and keep up with everyone you know and love on Facebook- with a fake profile- and no likes or comments of course.

Nuggets Need Next Level Coach. (Aka., Not Malone)

James Johnson?

The Clippers traded to get the
coach they wanted.
Should the Nuggets do it too?

Ain't that JJ from Good Times? His last name was Evans you say? The other J was for Junior?

Well who is this JJ that ripped the Denver Nuggets to shreds in the double overtime loss in Miami last night?

I could be considerate of the Nuggets fight on the road against an actual playoff team, including enough effort to get a couple of extra periods out of the game, but they were on game two of a seven game road trip designed to make or break a team that was in the hunt before last night. Extra periods was the last thing the Nuggets' road trip needed.

Actually, the previous loss to the struggling Memphis Grizzlies was likely the death nail to our season, but we were still stuck on the road and stuck in the midst of a western conference log jam before we started pulling ourselves from the fray with back to back losses of winnable games.

If it wasn't clear what the problem is, last night made it fairly clear. Mike Malone is not a playoff coach. He probably isn't even a head coach really, however, teams in transition need disposable coaches to get them through the process.

Or, they need an established one like the Miami Heat's Erik Spoelstra who somehow rebuilt the Heat and now has JJ a bunch of other guys I can't recall (Dwayne Wade was injured) looking like a team on the upswing of transition should look. In fact, they look quite un-Nugget like if you are asking me.

Malone seems too content with the progress to fulfill this process. He is slow to sit his youthful starting group but quick to pat them on the back for the kind of effort that professionals get paid for. The players who give the effort (please come back soon Gary Harris) are rarely the guys who get post game love while the coach either oozes over guys who get hot here and there, or complains about players he rarely sits.

Malone seems focused on building the next Golden State Warriors and not the Detroit Pistons or some other team famous for grit.

What many fans of the Warriors and of the run-and-gun style Nuggets forget is that our best teams defended and controlled the boards in moments that matter. Golden State is also fabulous on the boards in moments that matter.

Aside from a couple of backups who don't play enough, I'm hurting my head trying to recall the last second chance point the Nuggets starters have scored. No trouble at all recalling the ones we gave up.

Perhaps Malone doesn't trust his transition defense enough to crash the glass for second looks. And perhaps he is so focused on playing fast that guys leak out before the defensive rebound is secured.

Whatever the truth is, end game execution is stifled when fast break buckets are your main diet. The book on the Nuggets is to force their scorers to beat the double or triple team late in games and watch them actually try.

Jamaal Murray, Nikola Jokic and maybe even Gary Harris have bright futures as players who can carry a team and close out games as needed. Key word? Future.

That future is not now, and every attempt by coach Malone to force it into being is pushing this team further and further back in the standings while Malone falls further and further out of favor with the more experienced players who are forced to watch Murray and Will Barton piss away wins trying to score on a double team.

I am only reading body language, and the message from our only all-star, Paul Milsap, is not good. Either he will need to be like Andre Iguodala and find a team that is best able to use the last years of his career or the Nuggets will need a new coach so they can use Milsap themselves.

Under the current path, the Nuggets will be under major reconstruction again soon, or they will fire the coach and make it look like he was the problem so that terminations don't extend beyond coaching.

Is Black Panther's Message Bigger Than The Hype?

Diversity in film and television is a conversation that predates

"Black Panther" (Marvel Studios). Click here to see what

Hollywood has to say about itself relative to diversity. 

Despite "Black Panther" being a very difficult film to fully digest after one viewing, I will spit out my half chewed cud and share my feelings about a film many had to view more than once, just for digestive purposes.

Although it could take a couple more viewings to give you the cinematic evaluation of the films artistry, complete with metaphoric comparisons and fancy superlatives , I intentionally waited to watch Black Panther because I did not care about the films artistry when it came out in ads, or when I sat down to see it myself. For me, there was a strong and obvious message in the casting alone, so the artistic brilliance of the actual production was an absolute bonus.

Black Panther is extremely artistic in its fashion and form with an engaging plot and visuals to match. It is a Marvel origin film (of sorts), but it is also jam packed with scientific geeky stuff that any Marvel movie lover anticipates as a lifeblood of the genre. Although we are meeting an ancient civilization as we watch Black Panther, we are not traveling back in time to do it, which makes this film a lot more about the origin of life and all of us and less about the origin of the hero whose name is on the banner.

You could say that this was a film about a super hero, but there's an entire cast of heroes that serve a vital role in understanding and forming the central character, including a few highly relatable villains. You will probably leave this film either affirmed, or reaffirmed that women are the true super heroes in the real world just as they clearly are in this films unfettered world of humanities origin.

You could  say that this film was about gender, race, colorism, politics, religion and a few other social issues that derive from the animus of humans on this planet, but you would be narrowing the movie into a central message and there are too many messages intentionally laced within this film to bog down on one or another.

The strongest message I saw for black people and women is one of a life and a world without stigma. Despite a black cast full of powerful male and female characters, you will only make significant notice of those things if you are one of those things and unaccustomed to seeing yourself free from a world of stigma: a world like Wakanda (the fictitious land of Black Panther's origin).

In recent anthropological discoveries, women and black people are actually just people who would love for their race or gender to be ignored like it usually is with white men. For a couple of hours in the comforting movie theaters of Wakanda, stigmatized people get to take a break. I quietly suspect that some of the multiple return visits to see this movie are more about mental health and relaxation than searching to find that plot nugget you missed, because the plot isn't that deep, even if some of the messages are. For a few hours in a movie theatre, certain people in the audience will get to shed their inferiority.

From that perspective alone,  Black Panther achieves a first. It is not the first black cast or the first subject to need one, but it is a first for reasons perfectly obvious to the stigmatized- slightly unclear to "the rest".

In fact, some of "the rest" will not appreciate the degenerate stigma towards white men as thieves and colonizers on the edge of societal ruin if not for the intervention of Black Panther and the nation of Wakanda. While it's not uncommon to call white men colonizers that are ruining their own world, it is uncommon to see a nation of black people (not just Will Smith) as the hope to fix a problem that we, the original people, probably created.

This is likely where the actually stigmatized among us will depart from Black Panther, as few blacks seem willing to accept our distinction as the original people as well as being the probable cause for our wayward, melanin deficient offspring.

Black Panther goes in on this and several other aspects of the challenges of race without making any of its less-than-subtle digs bigger than the cinematic achievement. Some people will make a fuss about one touchy dig or another, but those people typically make a fuss about every touchy subject, and lies rarely bring out the fuss in us, so those people are not really a fair measuring stick.

That is my review of the film as a film, because, as a film alone, Black Panther deserves to be reviewed and evaluated on the merits. The phenomena is real mostly because this film is great.

As a statement of social impact, the phenomena makes much more sense to me because this movie is transformative.

I wasn't personally anxious to see the film for the review aspects because modern films are what they are; stuck in a space between technological ability and the long-standing demands of good film making. In reality, humans have never needed all the tricks of cinematography that filmmakers think we need. When done well, movie tricks are amazingly cool but they always require time, money and a reason for being in the film in the first damn place to not become a waste. Getting to know people, characters and why humans do the things we do has never needed technology beyond what cameras, actors and film already provide.

It will always be hard for me to have a favorite movie like "Citizen Kane" and still fully love everything about "Black Panther" or any modern movie. I didn't hurry out to see the film because I wanted to do a review without fear of spoilers, but mostly, I just don't hurry to see movies anymore.  They all come out on DVD too soon for me to wonder if I would have preferred seeing it for $25 with my wife amidst an obnoxious crowd of people instead of $4.99 plus whatever we find in the fridge. Stovetop popcorn is better anyway.

That last paragraph is important to understand because I will go back a few more times to see Black Panther before I can get it cheap and watch it at least as many times as I've seen Coming to America or all of Tyler Perry's stuff. I always knew I would watch it again and again even before it came out. I never knew I would watch Good Times over and over and over, especially when I think about how obnoxious JJ (Jimmy Walker) was at a time when I hated the stigma he seemed to perpetuate against us black boys. Nonetheless, I will watch me some Good Times every chance I get because I now embrace it for everything it stood for at the time, including being  a black first like Amos and Andy, and for being something white people needed as much as me, just like Black Panther.

Some things in this world are bigger than themselves, and Black Panther joined those ranks long before the film was even released. Fortunately, the filmmakers of Black Panther knew the gravity of this project and did their job with full recognition of what they would be adding to the social construct of society. Black Panther makes no apologies for addressing the matters of blackness while, at the same time, making blackness hardly matter somehow.

Black Panther offers the kind of pride some of my people have never seen in themselves. I specify some of us because I  left Aurora, Colorado at 18 and found myself at Morehouse College in the heart of the Atlanta University Center which encompassed Morris Brown, Clark College, Atlanta University (Clark and AU merged), Morehouse and Spelman. Watching the Morris Brown marching band or my first fashion show event on the campus of Spelman felt much like Wakanda to me. Every time I return to visit that beautiful city and campus, I see Wakandan roots through and through even though no one has shown me their secret mark yet. I thoroughly enjoyed Black Panther, but I did not view the film with my spirit in utter amazement as did my immediate family who did not attend an HBCU for college.

One of my 5 daughters did attend an HBCU. She enjoyed Black Panther enough to see it three times already simply for the connection it gave her to college life in Atlanta .  The rest of  my family left the film with salty tears dried on their face. All of us made plans to see it again even though our reasons were different.

In fact, a 7 year old white male family friend shared his review of the movie saying that "the Panther was cool and the women were really awesome". Whether he didn't notice the black part or had been taught to refrain from saying the words 'black people', he could not refrain from recognizing the elevated view depicted of women in this movie. Women will embrace this film as if it was made by them and for them, even though the central character is a man they all serve.

If I had to decide on the movies greatest achievement, it is that Black Panther truly allows you to enjoy an epic Marvel film experience and ignore the issue of race even while race is thoroughly in your face. As I reflected on this article it came to me that the entire production could be symbolic of the name of the main character.

You see, a panther is not really a thing at all. It is a description of a leopard (or jaguar) with a black (melanin rich) outer coat that hides the exact same spot pattern that you would see in their sister or brother leopards.

Whenever they cut open Black Panther in this movie, he always bleeds red.

Did U know? Two spotted leopards

can't produce a black leopard (panther)

Furthermore, the word black is used to attempt to describe a color, when in essence blackness is the absence of color. If you peel back the layers on Black Panther- and maybe even the layers of Stan Lee's vision when creating the comic hero- they are majestic,
regal and misunderstood creatures that encompass every color even as they appear to represent just one.

Normal Voters Really Want Normalcy To Return

Apparently, denying something happened
is all that matters to Donald Trump.

It used to be normal that we defend the actual victims of domestic violence.

Not the accusers! Those liars remain exactly what they were ten years before the #metoo movement decided to be. I know we would like to pretend that WE are a new America poised to give a damn when women insist we should, but this is Real Talk...For People Who Need It (SquareBiz), and I'm not convinced that enough abusers or women are ready to vote for a woman or believe her claim of abuse.

This matter of America's foremost leader being an unrepentant misogynist works because plenty of men remain just like him and plenty of women voted for this man with complete knowledge of his history with women. Those women- who shall primarily remain anonymous, for obvious reasons- are excused for their support of president Trump because the bulk of the evangelical community has also joined him and are clearly going to vote for him again if given the chance to do so.

It used to be normal that we'd fight against the efforts of the Soviet Union.

That nation is now simply called Russia because they fought the United States beyond their ability to afford the war, and it cost them an entire union. Yes, that Russia is the same Russia that is now happily fighting us in other ways, including automated bots that disseminate spoon fed information to the same list of people that I mentioned above:  my oldest brother, women who question #metoo and other women but not Trump, prominent evangelicals and the Trump base, aka, the Trumpians.

It used to be normal that certain standards of operation like having a presidential staff with security clearances or obvious obstruction efforts of an ongoing investigation would draw the ire of a Congress that most of us were raised as children to understand had an equal balance of power within the three branches of government. It used to be normal that Congress eagerly jumped upon opportunities to show the president their equal level of power like they did when overwhemingly voting in favor of sanctions against Vladimir Putin and Russia.

This Congress wont even force Trump to enact those sanctions that were voted upon with a veto proof majority, further conceding their equal level of power to a president that wants our military to give him a parade.

If you've seen this meme, maybe normal is just an illusion
Click here to compare the actual 1956 platform to this meme

It used to be normal that going through background checks, vetting, bonding or anything of the sort was considered "due process".

Now we have presidents- and supporters of the president- willingly defending a man who can't get permanent security clearance due to domestic violence issues. Instead of questioning why he remained in that job and who gave the call to keep him there every time his interim clearance lapsed over the past year (they last for 180 days with an option for another 180 days), this conversation has devolved into a question of due process with no trial under way and no reason to invoke the idea of due process unless you are confusing Rob Porter's issues with your own, Mr. President.


Even with acknowledgement for the sharing of platforms planks when politics demand, it used to be normal that Republicans behaved like Republicans and Democrats like Democrats.

Now, we have  a president that has control over both houses of Congress and is embroiled in a debate with his own party over immigration and increasing the deficit. If the signs of the death of political normalcy aren't clear enough, what more do you need?

I am personally a bit weary of those who keep seeing the obvious but continuously ask themselves the most obvious, thus rhetorical questions imagined. Yes, there are plenty of people that continue to support this man despite all the reasons "you" think they shouldn't. His issues with style, delivery, focus, empathy and a history twice as bad as his present gaffs are not enough to run off prominent preachers who either see something beyond the ability of the rest of us, or they see a puppet who they can get stuff from. Either way, they are with him and by default against you, Bob Mueller and normalcy.

They are also not against Russians because they are not dumb. What most of you people wishing for your normal back don't quite get is that smart people don't discount the fact that Donald Trump probably did benefit from the Russian intrusion into our election. They also don't automatically look at the polling numbers and tell themselves that he could win again without Russian involvement.

What you people who need your normal back also don't quite realize is that these are the same people who willingly gerrymander as well as obstruct voters for the sake of keeping their slipping grip on power, so why not Russians?

I still think exiling the spiritual understanding of forgiveness and Grace away from our schools because it offended people while letting everything else in was stupid. But that's the conservative me talking. Mostly, I am too proudly Socialist and too against the two-party hustle to care that the Democrats could be begging for a problem if they keeping frowning in disbelief over the notion that people support Trump.

Get over it and get over your wish for normalcy. If our lazy voters had a chance to do it all over again, they would have voted Bernie Sanders into office. I would be dancing, but we would all be trying to figure out how a Socialist will govern without any Socialist driven legislation coming out of either branch of Congress. While people like @RachelMaddow try to keep a calibration of what normal used to be so that we don't allow this administration to confuse us when normal finally returns, I say she and everyone else is dazed and confused and probably won't see things clearly until their concussions symptoms clear.

Our old normal only involved the participation of less than half of the country, and that was at the best of times, not mid-terms when turnout is significantly less. Several citizens have to watch, listen or actively ignore our embarrassment of a president while they rethink their previous belief that their vote didn't matter, but many citizens turn on this circus and feel more than justified of their decision to wash their hands of all of it. Whether we have an electorate more motivated to do their civic duty is still a wait and see proposition that has apathy, gerrymandering and suppression efforts it still must overcome.

Mitch McConnell looked flabbergasted as he stared into the camera and tried to explain to a section of Trump's current support how Barack Hussein Obama became our 44th president. His only recourse was to promise them that he would block Obama at every turn and make his effort to preside over this country as difficult as one human being possibly could. Now, all of that energy is being recalled and renewed against Trump, except Republicans have a political majority so the parallel isn't quite the same even if the sentiment is.

The new normal is likely being evidenced at anti-Trump protest rallies and with recent special election results. Governor Scott Walker, in Wisconsin, is refusing to hold a special election because the last one he allowed went for the Democrats. Right now, the generally motivated as well as the generally interested but hardly motivated voters are running off of the same energy, and that is a good thing. Whether it shall be an enduring thing is something to worry about when you realize that our president- who loves his freedom and Russia way more than your sense of normalcy- has decided that the best way to protect himself and Putin is to flood the waters with more press than the average person can endure and hope it makes them downright weary when it comes time to vote.

His plan seems worthwhile given the fact that the media is stuck in a paradigm of unprecedented ratings and interest in the latest news while simultaneously being disgusted by the person they are giving so much shine to each day. Trump's presidency may be saving a few dying newspapers across the country as we speak. Although his rhetoric continuously drives those he disgusts towards further hatred of him, it gets spin'd and retold by FOX news and by those Russian bots that keep generating half-truth memes to keep Trumpians motivated and fully on board.

If Russia is still as against America as it was when it was a union too, they have NOT only reignited the Cold-War that we declared victory over, they are winning the damn thing from the inside out with Donald Trump in office.

I write to you today because our president is also a Russian bot who refuses to denounce or fight back against Putin and quite possibly colluded with him to win the job. Our Congress is loathe in their responsibilities because they are unsure of how to do their job and keep their power at the same time. Meanwhile, WAY too many of you are looking for normal again while the war for our ability to still be called a union rages on.

What many of us see- including Facebook, finally- is that the necessity for nuclear war has been usurped by the simplicity of a digital one. WE are currently engaged in a war that WE don't understand so we can not be winning it. By the time we fully discover the extent of this war we will have endured internal damage that will never allow us to return to whatever normal used to be. In fact, when you think of it, old normal is probably to blame for this mess.

So please, stop looking for it.

If Oprah Winfrey Isn't President Material, Who Is?

If Oprah Winfrey isn't qualified to
be president, then no one is.

I've tried for a few days to listen objectively and understand the views of many people that I respect as it relates to the conversation of Oprah Winfrey running for president, but I simply can not bite my tongue on this topic any longer as a deep divide is building between those who say she can and those who think it's over her head.

Either too many of us are lost in the sauce and simply can't look back at history to determine the ingredients of a good president, or too many of you skeptics have grown weary of Donald Trump's act and simply haven't done the same thing.

Sure, it may seem reasonable for people that are in politics to actually aspire towards them and to chase after a Political Science or Law degree along the way despite knowing of those who arrived in the realm of politics after traversing various non-traditional pathways. Ronald Reagan is fairly famous as an actor turned president, but Reagan is also credited for several years as a Governor before taking on the bigger role.

Apparently, Governors are great options for future presidents even though the history of Governors who have done it is no more or less flattering than the history of former Senators turned president or any other professional person who pursued politics later in life. The notion that Colorado saloon owner, John Hickenlooper, is now a worthy presidential candidate begs the question of what made him worthy to be Governor?

I know, I know. Hickenlooper was the mayor of Denver before becoming the Governor of Colorado, but what exactly made that saloon owner worthy of running a city as booming as Denver was? How could a business owner truly understand the complexities of local government given the complex nature of running any city in America? Nothing we learn in civics gave us the nuances of local government that are much more complex and varying than the simple framework of our nations Constitution.

And what about my dear friend Senator Rhonda Fields, also of Colorado? She became a member of the state House of Representatives before winning her Senate seat on the back of grief and being the champion for her late son Javad Marshall-Fields and his fiance, Vivian Wolfe, who were both murdered by gang members as they prepared to testify to a gang murder they witnessed. 

What made Rhonda worthy of such a serious and important job that she had ZERO experience with?

Her heart.

In reality, the only thing that any person who has ever succeeded in the role of the president ever really brought to the table was an undying love for this beautiful country of ours.  I fashion my statement that way to clarify between those who succeeded and those who failed at being the president.

I- and apparently a whole lot of other people- am not particularly interested in what a politician offers up as his or her list of qualifications as much as I am interested in why it is they want the job. The recent firestorm over the book "Fire and Fury" makes us further question whether Trump really wanted this job, although he won it by letting us all know that he wanted this job so he could Make America Great Again. I'm not exactly sure if I know why Hillary wanted the job. It could be my clouded memory or her foggy message.

If my memory is still useful, Barack Obama was considered the totally unqualified community organizer who hadn't served as a committee chair in the Senate before being pegged as "next up" on the back of his rousing DNC convention speech in 2004.

Once again, a rousing speaker has roused the masses into looking at her and saying to themselves, "now that lady could be our president". We did it to Michelle Obama and if my now overworked memory serves me right again, we did it to a very cool and dignified Hillary Clinton who handled her husband's infidelity crap in a way that made us see her in a presidential light. Did raising Bill and Chelsea actually make her worthy of a Senate seat in New York? Of course, it didn't. In fact, the Senate and Secretary of State thing were both positions of an unqualified person who was hoping to remove that stigma en route to a return visit to the White House.  Hillary killed those jobs she was previously unqualified for, so much so that the GOP needed to tag Benghazi to her and not the sitting president just to taint her record a bit.

The unifying aspect of every leader from Mayor to President that actually does the job well- and I'm not really interested in a conversation about electing more qualified hustlers to hustle us after we elect them- is that they were probably asked to lead, just like Oprah was, and they probably said yes because they love this country and would do anything to see it thrive including taking down of an orange baffoon if America needed her to answer that call.

Why do we blame the entertainers for being more believable
then the politicians we elect to deceive us over and over?

Now! If Oprah is no longer qualified to be president based on the merits of everything that I've just said.....no one is.

No really!! 

If Trump Falls, Twitter Will Become His Nixon Tapes

Waking up the first working day of the new year to another twit-parade of comments from our Twitter-In-Chief, Donald J. Trump, has me thinking about the value of his idiocracy of a presidency.

I would love to focus my attention on the scary international tweets Trump directed to start the year towards the instability in Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan where he felt the need to tweet threat the withholding of U.S. aid instead of just withholding it with back-channel admonition like Obama and others have done, but those feel like the very distractions that he intends them to be.

Trump seems focused on a lot of things to the potential exclusion of preparing for the November elections, elections that we can now describe as this year since 2018 is no longer some distant date of future political concern. 2018 is now, and NOW is the time for Republicans to focus on fighting off the Blue Wave of Democrats who are threatening to overtake Congress and pressure Trump in ways he can't fully understand based on his current Twitter focus. In between golfing and Tweeting, he probably hasn't seen recent reports about is plummeting poll numbers in Iowa

Reince Priebus, former RNC Chair, has seen the numbers and has sounded off recently on the immense risk Trump will face if he allows the Democrats to overtake the House and the Senate. But the Christmas push to pass an unpopular tax present for rich folks while blasting the credibility of FBI Special Investigator Robert Mueller and the entire FBI is starting to make curious observers wonder if Trump is feeling the heat of the investigation too much to focus on the other things that threaten his presidency even more than Mueller.

Despite the irony of Trump potentially committing the kind of crimes that could "Lock Him Up", America is not interested in locking up presidents anymore than it is in locking up the loser from a political campaign as some countries do.  For Trump to focus his energy on attacking losing political opponents and discrediting an investigation that will never result in jail time for the president- even if it might for his subordinates- proves he doesn't understand civics enough to see the clear off-ramps of immunity our laws have made to avoid jailing deposed presidents and embarrassing an entire nation in the process.

Trump also isn't civically aware enough to realize that losing a Republican majority in 2018 elections is even more dangerous than liquored up George Papadapolous who was reported to have kick-started the investigation into collusion between the Trump campaign, a report that debunks the recent Republican counter-claim of the Steel Dossier being the sole reason for the Russian investigation. 

Trump also seems not to understand how his own Twitter initiated words paint a picture any basic smart person can follow, much less a brilliant lawyer and lifelong FBI investigator like Robert Mueller.

What former President Ricard Nixon did to counter the efforts of an investigation against him came to our knowledge in the years following his resignation. How Trump thinks he can stop Mueller from doing a job he has given his entire life to do on behalf of this great nation is a matter you can decipher while you sit on the toilet or drink your morning coffee because that's when Trump is likely to lay his cards on the Twitter table, for all the world to read.

Occasionally, Trump's Twitter type tirades have come via two old-school mediums called audio and video recording, but they are no less public and just as revealing of a man who has lived his entire life spilling his guts all over the current medium of the moment, confident that no exposure is ever bad as long as you use it in your favor.

Twitter is an expose for and of Trump, and history will probably look to a connected chain of tweets that will unravel the mentality of a mentally disturbed man who displays both his mentality and his disturbances nearly every morning via Tweet, for all the world to read.

The damage to this nation is definite even if yet to be defined. The global trust we've lost in the process of selecting a president has rendered us as untrustworthy as our process.  Stated more clearly, WE the People will need the world community to believe we preferred Bozo the Clown over our Donald Trump mistake. We have to prove him an accident of populism and of political apathy, or possibly a clownish byproduct of Communist collusion. A fair combination of each would help even more, however, that proving can only be done in the same place of the initial accident. Voting Booths.

Has The Twitter-In-Chief tweeted his cards unto
the table revealing penis insecurity while
pointing investigators to a path of his own demise?

Clowns thrive on entertaining you to get your attention. As we finished the first working day of the new year, news reporter left and right have slapped their own hands for breaking a resolution to not allow the Clown to distract them with Tweets, only to have Trump issue multiple tirades of a madman on Twitter to kick off the new year. 

Are these Tweets distractions of an attention hound or head-fakes to hide collusion? Before I could edit this piece for syntax and synchronicity, Trump Twitter bombed the world with a slew of late night tweets, the kind of stuff that usually happens when most of us are well into our second glass of our adult beverage of preference. Tweets during certain times of day are always more revealing but often terribly regrettable, like the late night comparison of nuclear button size Trump decided to have with Kim Jong Un of North Korea.

I personally am viewing his regurgitations via Tweet as his version of the Nixon Tapes being dictated before our eyes. Much like Nixon, they are the ramblings of fear and of a foolish leader who doesn't know any better but thinks he does. Nixon recorded his happenings because he became overwhelmed with distrust of the crumbling walls around him. Eventually, the presence of the tapes and the evidence they showed of his cover-up of a petty crime became much worse than the crime itself.

Trump may or may not have recordings as he threatened to have when attempting to bully former FBI Director, James Comey, into obeisance, but he has resorted to making Twitter declarations for the jailing of James Comey and several other "Deep State" political opponents.

Yep. He did that too. Via Twitter!!

Donald J. Trump needs to direct a news narrative that he can't control, he can only share how he feels about it and what he wishes he could do if he had the power to do what he wants with the DOJ. He can also accidentally expose his mental makeup by speaking on important things in frivolous ways that promise to threaten his presidency and the world at large but not Make Anything Great Again. 

In an effort to own the news, Trump literally launched the new year with a Twitter threat against Rocket Man (North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Un), Pakistan, Iran, Obama, Huma Abedin, the entire FBI and someone else that will inevitably happen just before, or soon after I publish this piece.

What happens if North Korea does not dismantle? Are WE
ready to back our words or prove them ineffective forever?
Neither of those options is good for the United States,

Donald J.Trump does all of those things, and more, via Twitter every day. As we resolve to avoid over-indulging in his clownery, we would be historical jesters to not listen to this era's Nixon tapes before they are formerly compiled, vetted and released to the public. Making New Year's resolutions to try not to give Trump's Tweets the historical significance they will have in 20-year hindsight will not change the psychological revelations they contain today.

Trump's Twitter trail will also show the destruction to the mantle of world leadership once maintained by the U.S. Granted, it is slightly presumptive to say what his overall impact will be as we stand here today, but the world could soon look back on Trump's Twitter ramblings as our most salient view into the psyche and the psychosis of president #45.