RE-THINKING THE LEGACY OF GEORGE H.W. BUSH

After reading over the first draft of my essay on remembering George H.W. Bush, I paused to reflect on what I’d written. Was I painting too rosy a picture of Bush’s the man? Was I guilty of romanticizing his life like much of the media has done? After all, what kind of a “highest character” would have done the bad deeds I mentioned—like running a racist campaign against Michael Dukakis, opposing landmark civil rights legislation, and unleashing nearly 100,000 bombs on innocent Iraqi civilians and fleeing Iraqi soldiers. Don’t these actions, which I mentioned but didn’t elaborate on, speak volumes more about Bush’s character than his geniality, corny jokes and folksy ways?

REMEMBERING GEORGE H.W. BUSH IN THE TRUMP ERA

By Ronald T. Fox

I have fond memories of George H.W. Bush. This may sound surprising coming from a die-hard progressive who has had few good things to say about Republicans. I say “fond” not because I approved of the decisions he made and policies he advanced in his long career in public service, many of which were anathema to progressives, but because of features of his character and personality, features that I’ve grown to appreciate more in the era of Donald Trump. Our Cretan in the White House has set the character bar so low that all our former presidents look good in comparison. My fondness for 41 has grown in direct proportion to the rise of Trump.

Nearly everyone is singing praise of Bush 41 as a man of honor, integrity, decency and humanity. Canonization of a deceased major public figure is a familiar theme in America. This can be nauseating, especially when you know better, but in the case of George Bush his virtues that are being voiced ring true, endorsed even by many of his rivals and critics. From a personal encounter I had with Bush two decades ago, I can attest to his personality virtues now being extolled.

NOVEMBER 2018 IGNOMINIOUS ABUSRDITY OF THE MONTH: THE “TRIGGY”

I know I’ve said I would refrain from nominating President Trump for any future IGGY awards. He is a certified ignominious person, worthy of a lifetime, not just a monthly, award. With the midterm election focusing so much attention on the Trumpster, the mass media seems to have lost interest in reporting on the usual array of absurdities from others. Trump lies and absurdities on anything from tariffs, to wildfires, to international events, to alleged election fraud, and, of course, on Russia, have dominated November news cycles.  Such a record, horrific to most of us, is fuel for Trump; it plays right into his hands. He thrives on adversaries, loves the fight, and welcomes news that’s about him. In devouring everything Trump, the media has been complicit in boosting his popularity among his base, if not beyond. I’ve tried to avoid this Trump trap but have not been very successful.

I’ve decided to devote the November IGGY exclusively to Trump absurdities. This will mark the last time I will include any of his false, deceitful, racist, xenophobic, insulting pronouncements for IGGY recognition—at least I will strive to make it the last time. I wish journalists with wide followings would do the same. Why continue to make him the story? (I’d love to see CNN and other media outlets boycott the White House in protest of Jim Acosta’s banning.) Nothing would piss off Trump more than losing his megaphone.

November was a big month for Trumpian lies, misrepresentations, insults, recriminations and hair-brainers. But, really, it was no different from other months. I’m including six below, but I could have listed several more, like his comment on climate change that he trusts his non-believing gut more than the brains of scientists, his declaration of a political victory in using force against asylum seekers on the Mexican border, his assertion that he wouldn’t take a pardon for the lying, deceitful Paul Manafort “off the table,” and his insistence that the Saudi crown prince cannot, with certainty, be blamed for the death of the journalist Jamai Khashoggi, despite the contrary conclusion from his own intelligence community. With this acknowledgment, I offer the following November Trumpian ignominious absurdities. For this month, I'm calling it the TRIGGY.

1. President Donald Trump.  The outright lies continue. I’ll pass over all the false statements he made about the midterm election, and claims that he did not know Mathew Whitaker before appointing him as Attorney general, and focus here on his latest whopper on China. At a news conference, the president answered a question about healing national divides by saying that he had forced China to back down from a plan to strengthen its manufacturing industry.

After declaring that because of his tariffs China had suspended its so called “China-25” plan to bestow greater privileges on its own companies over foreign competitors in the Chinese market, and would now not “supersede the U.S. economy in two years as he falsely claimed Beijing boasted, he went on to say:

“But I have to say this: Billions of dollars will soon be pouring into our Treasury from taxes that China is paying for us.”

Of course, this is a blatant falsehood. When the U.S. places tariffs on Chinese imports, China doesn’t pay them. American importers do, and this usually means passing along the extra costs to American consumers. Things will worsen when/if the spiraling trade war leads to even higher tariffs. The only thing that appears to be "pouring" is the exodus of American jobs.  So long GM.

OCTOBER 2018 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Big Pharma Nostrum Laboratories’ Nirmal Mulye. Pharmaceutical companies use the weakest and frequently the laziest, excuses for jacking up the prices of their life-saving drugs. In the end, no matter what they say, it is about money. Their job, as they see it, is to make money. If they keep 100 people alive or 1,000 or 1,000,000,000, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that number on the bottom line on their accounting sheet. If their goal is to make $1,000,000, and they need to sell a pill for $1,000,000 apiece for the only 10 babies who need it in order to achieve that goal, then that is what they will do.

Most people, faced with that statement, would say that is immoral; that is, except Nirmal Mulye.  In an interview published in the Financial Times, he had this to say about everyone making Martin Shkreli out to be a bad guy for raising the cost of one of his own company’s drugs through the roof.

“I agree with Martin Shkreli that when he raised the price of his drug he was within his rights because he had to reward his shareholders [...] If he’s the only one selling it then he can make as much money as he can,” said Mr. Mulye. “This is a capitalist economy and if you can’t make money you can’t stay in business.”

What is Mulye defending? Well, his “Missouri-based” company, Nostrum Laboratories, just jacked up the price of their drug nitrofurantoin from $474.75 to $2,392. According to the World Health Organization, nitrofurantoin is what they classify as an “essential drug” for treating bladder and urinary tract infections. Mulye wasn’t done giving a lesson in sociopathy as he continued to defend Shkreli as being within his rights:

“We have to make money when we can. The price of iPhones goes up, the price of cars goes up, hotel rooms are very expensive.”

According to Mulye, Nostrum was working the market against Casper Pharma, which makes another version of the same drug and had recently raised its price to $2,800. So, you see, Mulye is still offering it up for less! Morality! The guy is a saint!

Sadly, this is what it’s come to in America. Corporations prioritize profits and shareholders over consumers, workers, any sense of a public good, or basic human needs. It hasn’t always been this way.  I’m old enough to remember a different time.

THOUGHTS ON HURRICANE MICHAEL

By Ronald T. Fox

Angry Hurricane Michael, one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the continental U.S., unleashed a wrath of destruction across the Florida Panhandle, peeling off roofs, leveling houses, uprooting trees, boats and cars, pushing a terrifying surge of sea water that submerged entire neighborhoods, and taking lives. After being downgraded to a tropical storm, it moved on to the Carolinas and beyond to add more destruction to states already ravaged by Hurricane Florence.

A few months earlier, California and other Western states experienced a series of horrific, record-setting wildfires that destroyed forests, homes, businesses, and human lives. Like hurricanes, such devastating wildfires are occurring with increased intensity and frequency.  They've become the new normal.

What do these natural disasters have in common? As the overwhelming majority of climate scientists tell us, their growing intensity stems from the warming of our planet caused by heat-trapping greenhouse gasses. In a warming world, hurricanes become stronger and more destructive and droughts become more lasting and severe, providing a storehouse of fuel for wildfires.

SEPTEMBER 2018 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

NOTE: I’m posting this from Salzburg, Austria on the back end of a three-week vacation in Eastern Europe. Though I only had two weeks to search for September IGGY-worthy statements and actions before leaving the U.S., as you can see below I had little trouble finding a solid representative list.

1. Education Secretary Betty DeVos. DeVos floated a couple of plans this month that so stood out in their absurdity, even amongst her many foolish proposals, that she definitely deserves an IGGY nomination.

First, she is considering using a federal grant program to let schools buy guns and pay for firearms training for faculty and staff members. If DeVos had only a modicum of knowledge about education children, she’d know that study after study has equated more guns on campuses with more injuries and death, not to mention numerous research endeavors that stress how harmful a culture of fear is for the learning process.

Sadly, DeVos is not alone in her thinking; lawmakers in 14 states have proposed laws that would use taxpayer dollars to arm educators. I’d like to say unbelievable, but nothing is unbelievable anymore in the Trump age.

Were DeVos not such a tunnel-visioned, right-wing extremist, and was even modestly interested in real solutions to school shootings, she’d realize that violence prevention experts have recommended numerous more promising, and less contentious solutions than her hair-brained plan. These include prioritizing a general level of well-being and comfort students and teachers experience on campus, providing more mental health services, and implementing proven threat-assessment programs.

Her second ignominious idea centers on her plan to replace the Obama administration’s guidelines on campus sexual assault policy with a policy that seeks to protect rapists, abusers, and harassers on college campuses. Among other things, DeVos’s regulations would allow perpetrators to cross-examine survivors during mediation and have access to survivors’ evidence obtained during the investigation. They would also narrow the definition of sexual harassment.

It’s clear that DeVos’s new policy will have a devastating impact on survivors. Just a few months after DeVos rescinded the Obama-era guidance, some colleges simply stopped responding to reports of sexual violence at all.

Now, with new barriers to reporting, survivors could feel even more unsafe to come forward than before—and schools may not provide them with support and care if they do. With these new rules, DeVos is actively endangering and harming survivors while propping up their perpetrators. This ignominious policy must be stopped immediately.

AUGUST 2018 IGNOMINIOUS ABUSRDITY AWARD: THE IGGY

1. President Trump’s Lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. As the most public member of Donald Trump’s legal team, Giuliani’s assigned role is apparently to make what seem to be “slips”—incidents in which he reveals jaw-dropping information that appear to undermine Trump’s position concerning Michael Cohen, Stormy Daniels, and Russian collusion— appear to be misstatements. But in each case, the shocking things that Giuliani lets drop quickly become the standard position for Trump. Giuliani is Trump’s ice breaker.

In an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, Giuliani appeared to be caught out in another lie, and to drop another in his series of bombshells. Asked about Trump’s request to former FBI director James Comey that he “give a break” to former national security advisor Michael Flynn, Giuliani at first claimed there had never been such a conversation.

Jake Tapper: So you’re saying that President Trump and James Comey never discussed Michael Flynn?

Giuliani: That is what [Trump] will testify to if he is asked that question.

Then, reminded that he had already discussed the conversation he was claiming never happened, Giuliani attempted to deny that conversation.

Giuliani: I never … I never told ABC that. That’s crazy. I never said that.

Which is when CNN went to the tape. However, while forced to admit—after watching himself discuss it—that he had previously accepted the reality of the conversation between Trump and Comey, Giuliani this week shifted his claim to say that was only “talking about their version of it.”

But the Rudy-man wasn’t done with his absurdities. He made waves on NBC's "Meet the Press," responding to a New York Times report that the president's outside legal team was not aware of the extent to which White House counsel Don McGahn cooperated in special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation during the 30 hours of interviews he sat for. Giuliani told "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd that the president should not sit for an interview with Mueller because he could end up trapped in a lie and charged with perjury.

Giuliani: “When you tell me that, you know, he should testify because he’s going to tell the truth and he shouldn’t worry, well that’s so silly because it’s somebody’s version of the truth. Not the truth,” Giuliani told Todd.

Todd: “Truth is truth,” Todd responded.

Giuliani: “No, no, it isn’t truth,” Giuliani said. "Truth isn't truth."

His words, taken in the vein of counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway's much-mocked "alternative facts" argument from last year, quickly caught fire online. A day later, Giuliani sought to clear the air.

"My statement was not meant as a pontification on moral theology but one referring to the situation where two people make precisely contradictory statements, the classic 'he said, she said' puzzle. Sometimes further inquiry can reveal the truth other times it doesn’t," Giuliani wrote on Twitter.

Giuliani often acts as a surrogate for the president, appearing on television in his capacity as Trump's lawyer to counter news reports about Mueller's probe. The president has long complained about the special counsel's investigation, branding it a "witch hunt" stacked with "angry Democrats," even though Mueller himself is a registered Republican.

SCRUTINIZING THE HIROSHIMA MYTH AND ITS LEGACY (A REPOSTING)

Hiroshima After the Bomb 

August 6th marks the 75th anniversary of the dropping of the “Little Boy” atomic bomb on Hiroshima. As has been the case on every anniversary of the bombing, the atomic bomb’s use will undoubtedly be commemorated by politicians, media sorts, and most Americans as being responsible for ending the war and thus negating the need for an invasion of Japan’s home islands that would have caused enormous losses on both sides. This belief has achieved numinous status in the United States; most Americans accept it as an article of faith. It has become, as historian Christian Appy put it, the most successful legitimizing narrative in American history. There’s only one thing wrong with the Hiroshima narrative: it's not factual. There is perhaps no greater myth in U.S. history than the belief that the atomic bomb was the "winning weapon" that ended World War II. It’s what I call the Hiroshima Myth.

Despite doubts about the necessity to use the bomb expressed by a number of top military and political leaders at the time (and later in their personal reflections), challenges to the traditional Hiroshima narrative by several historians, and declining overall American attraction to nuclear weapons, the Hiroshima Myth remains deeply embedded in the consciousness of the overwhelming majority of Americans. How did it get so embedded? Why didn’t the highly authoritative 1947 U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, which concluded that the Japanese would have surrendered "certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to November 1 1945--even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, the Russians had not entered the war, and no invasion had been planned or contemplated," establish a different narrative?

Were the bombings instrumental in ending the war? Did they avert an invasion of the Japanese homeland and thus save lives? There’s much at stake in the answers to these questions, for if the bomb wasn't necessary to end the war, then its use on Hiroshima and, especially Nagasaki, was wrong, militarily, politically and morally, especially when one considers that these two cities were not vital military targets.

At the risk of being called unpatriotic, un-American, or worse, because the issue still touches raw emotions (Americans don't take kindly to questioning the morality of our country's purposes), I will attempt to refute the Hiroshima Myth. Fortunately I am able to draw upon information that wasn’t available when early histories of the bombings were written. This information includes a declassified paper written by a Joint Chiefs of Staff advisory group in June 1945, the personal accounts of a number of top Japanese leaders, and various bits of documentary evidence uncovered by enterprising historians. These discoveries enable a more accurate picture of bomb’s role in ending the war.

In a previous two-part essay, posted in August of 2015, I argued that Truman’s atomic bomb-use decision was not primarily motivated by a desire to end the war quickly in order to save American lives that would have been lost in a land invasion and that the use of the bomb was not the main factor inducing Japan to surrender.  I also argued in a Part III that our enduring belief in the bomb as “the winning weapon” has had a profound impact on American culture and on how we approach national security.  These essays challenged the prevailing beliefs of the overwhelming majority of Americans.  In the hope of stimulating an ongoing dialogue on the Hiroshima Myth and its implications, I’ve decided to re-post these essays as a single post on this, the 75th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. I will re-post it every August 6.  Critical comments are encouraged.  

JULY 2018 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. President Trump. We are all used to Donald Trump being the crookedest man ever win the presidency. He lies constantly, about everything, all the time. Most of those lies are designed to prop up his own ego; he is forever telling tales about the size of his rally crowds or how he heard from an unnamed so-and-so, in private, who praised him for his brilliance. Other lies are attempts to dodge responsibility for his blunders or to hoodwink his audience about his own past acts. But then there are the lies that can only be described as dementia-like, in which Trump claims to have seen things that nobody else around him have seen and be roundly furious that nobody else will acknowledge them. Things that he may have seen in movies or had a vivid dream about, but do not comport with the reality the rest of us inhabit in any way, shape or form.

In his latest demented fiction, he said:

“The Democrats are making a strong push to abolish ICE, one of the smartest, toughest and most spirited law enforcement groups of men and women that I have ever seen. I have watched ICE liberate towns from the grasp of MS-13 & clean out the toughest of situations. They are great!

The notion that he has “watched ICE liberate towns from the grasp of MS-13” is so wrong as to not even be nonsensical. It is a flat delusion. There are no towns “under the grasp of MS-13” to begin with; despite the gang’s new status among anti-immigrant lobbyists and Republican neo-Nazis as a talking point, it is a violent but largely powerless collection of teenage schoolyard thugs targeting local victims. Their role in the drug trade is minimal, and their role in human smuggling non-existent. The goals of local gang leaders are to control schoolyards–the notion that they could seize control of a “town” is a lunatic claim.

Which brings us to the next bit; not only are there no “towns” that have been liberated, but ICE, a border agency, would not be liberating squat to begin with. That is not what they do. It is not even close to what they do, and it is not clear the sitting president even knows what they do. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency enforces border security; it does not conduct military operations to liberate cities. The region most commonly associated with MS-13 violence even in Republican minds is Long Island, New York; ICE does not conduct paramilitary town-liberation efforts on Long Island. If Trump is referring to the liberation of some non-American town, ICE does not go there. It processes immigrants, refugees, tourists, and the contents of shipping containers. It does not liberate towns!

What appears to have happened here is that Donald Trump has taken a Republican talking point–the identification of “MS-13” as the only majority-brown-skinned gang that anybody can think of, now inflated into a racist stand-in for all Latino immigrants everywhere because racism remains the only force capable of uniting Republican voters, and made up a movie in his own head in which not only had they taken over entire (United States?) towns, but were then met by border patrol and customs agents who swept in and “liberated” the town in daring raids.

This is evidence of dementia or other mental illness, including pathological fiction-inventing, malignant narcissism run amok, or something else. It goes beyond his usual egotistical polishing; the man either earnestly believes he has witnessed something nobody else in the world has seen, a story populated by figures that bear no resemblance to their real-world counterparts in the slightest, or his compulsion to lie is so extraordinary that he cannot help but invent claims. Whatever one calls it, Donald Trump is not fit for public office.

DONALD TRUMP: THE CONSUMMATE NO-DEAL MAKER

By Ronald T. Fox

“Deals are my art form. I like making deals, preferably big deals. That’s how I get my kicks.”    
-- Donald Trump

No modern president has sold himself on the promise of his negotiating skills than Donald Trump. In “his” book, The Art of the Deal, his TV show, on the campaign trail, or to anyone within earshot, he has boasted about being the consummate deal-maker. On the campaign trail, he unabashedly promoted himself as a deal-maker nonpareil who could always get the best deal in any situation. Applying the skill he learned in the business world to the world of politics, he would be a master policy-maker and diplomat,. Unlike other humans—or presidents before him—deals would be easy, clean and quick, and they would exceed all expectations. As he put it, he would make “beautiful deals that no other president could make.”

Well, how have things worked out so far for the consummate deal-maker?

JUNE 2018 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Designated Trump Liar Rudy Giuliani. The self-promoting Giuliani told CNN that the statement regarding Donald Trump’s involvement in dictating an excuse for why his campaign staff met with Russian operatives in Trump Tower was just a “mistake.”

“He wasn’t involved. He knew, but he didn’t write it. He weighed in, but he didn’t dictate it. He dictated it. "I swear to God, it was a mistake."

What Giuliani appears to be claiming is not that Trump made a mistake in dictating the letter, or that previous White House officials and Trump surrogates made a mistake in covering up Trump’s connection to the statement. What Giuliani is disavowing is a statement included in the letter sent by Trump’s legal team to special counsel Robert Mueller.

That letter, contents from which were released by the New York Times over the weekend, included an admission that Donald Trump had dictated, while on Air Force One, the excuse that Donald Trump Jr. provided when the story broke. But Giuliani didn’t just deny that Trump was involved in drafting the statement originally released by his son, Giuliani denied the letter drafted by members of Trump’s legal team—a team to which he supposedly belongs.

Giuliani also said he only agreed with "about 70, 80%" of the letter from Trump's team in January, before Giuliani was brought on.

There’s a reason why the Trump Tower meeting between the top tier of Trump’s campaign officials and a set of Russian operatives remains a focus of the Mueller investigation. And a reason why even Rudy Giuliani, whose first appearance as Donald Trump’s lawyer included an admission that Trump had “funneled” money through Michael Cohen’s shadow corporation to pay off Stormy Daniels, feels compelled to continue covering up Trump’s involvement with the Trump Tower statement.

Not only do the actions of Donald Trump Jr. Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner represent a textbook case of conspiring with a foreign power to interfere in a U.S. election (regardless of whether or not the meeting led to further action), but the letter covering up the purpose of that meeting is textbook obstruction. And as many times as Trump’s team may say he’s immune to any charge, they’re in no great hurry to fight Robert Mueller in court.

MAY 2018 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). As many media outlets have reported, John McCain does not want Donald Trump at his funeral … because … well, who the hell would? If anyone could make someone else’s funeral all about himself, Trump could. But that’s not good enough for Hatch. Proving that congressional Republicans — even the ones on their way out of Congress — will go to all possible lengths to bow and scrape before their ocher overlord, Hatch recently vomited this pabulum:

"Well, he's the president of the United States and he's a very good man. But it's up to [McCain]. I think John should have his own wishes fulfilled with regard to who attends the funeral."

When asked about McCain’s desire to keep Trump away from his memorial service, Hatch said, “I think it's ridiculous."

Look, Sen. Hatch. McCain wants to be remembered for his military heroism, his more than 30 years in the Senate, his maverick sensibility, even his defeat at the hands of Barack Obama — anything but his tenuous association with Trump.

Trump being at McCain’s funeral would be a little like playing the Benny Hill theme over the closing credits of Saving Private Ryan. McCain deserves to be honored, not sullied by the presence of Bone Spurious the Yellow.

APRIL 2018 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY AWARD: THE IGGY

1. Devin Nunes. The Trump era has brought forth a multitude of ignominities. We seem to jump from crisis to crisis. In his first year in office, President Trump has visited numerous horrors on Americans as well as citizens throughout the world.

So, what does Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of the House Select Intelligence Committee, consider to be one of the most serious hazards facing America? Well, of course, it's late night television comedy, and specifically Stephen Colbert. Nunes was interviewed on Fox News by their resident Financial Distortion Anchor, Neil Cavuto. The segment had nothing to do with the economy, but it did get to the bottom of the frightening assault on America by radical satirists. It began with this probing exchange:

Cavuto: "You mention that the media doesn't present a fair case of [Trump/Russia]. Maybe the indication of that is that you've recently become the butt of late night comic jokes. Particularly Stephen Colbert was up on Capitol Hill. I think making you the butt of some jokes. What did you think of that? Did Colbert make any effort to talk to you?"

Nunes: "Well, I think that this is the danger that we have in this country. The left controls not only the universities in this country, but they also control Hollywood in this country, and the mainstream media. So, conservatives in this country are under attack and I think this is a great example of it."

Exactly. Stephen Colbert absolutely is "the danger" that America faces. And kudos to Cavuto for bringing up this looming peril. Where else but on Fox News could this travesty be exposed? Nunes points out that the reason the nation is undergoing such unprecedented turmoil is that leftists have seized control of the most powerful institutions in the country -- universities and Hollywood -- and are using them to enslave the minds of decent citizens. However, he doesn't explain why these scurrilous lefties allowed Republicans to control the Congress, the Supreme Court, and the White House.

Also unexplained is how the special counsel, Robert Mueller, managed to get (so far) 19 indictments and five guilty pleas connected to his investigation of Trump's unsavory connections to Russia. But rest assured, somehow it's the fault of universities, Hollywood, and Colbert. And Nunes isn't taking it lying down. He doesn't intend to be the butt of anyone's joke, no matter how much he deserves it. In fact, he likes it:

Nunes: "So I hope they continue to do it. Because on the one hand you'll see the left and the media running out there saying 'OMG, this is the end of the world. The Russians attacked our democracy. And we have evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians.' However, they can't show it. They have no proof [...] they resort to going to their friends in Hollywood to make fun of people and attack people who are trying to get to the truth. I enjoy the attacks. If they want to continue to attack me, that's fine."

Well, we certainly wouldn't want to disappoint him, would we? Although it's puzzling that he says he enjoys it while simultaneously complaining that it's an unfair attack and a danger to the country. Is he an unpatriotic masochist?

Nunes' remarks were rife with allegations as to the identity of the real colluders -- naturally, Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. And when Cavuto asked him about allegations that he was "doing the President's bidding," he curiously replied "I don't know." Then quickly stammering to add "I mean, we don't get any orders from the White House." Which makes perfect sense. They are probably coming from Mar-A-Lago, where the President spends most of his time.

Nunes went on to praise his committee's work and insisted that he "follows the facts where they lead." So long as they lead to Clinton and the Democrats. He refused to allow his Democratic committee colleagues to call witnesses. And he wouldn't hold White House witnesses accountable when they refused to answer questions. Nunes falsely claimed that 'no one would know ... that Fusion GPS was paid by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party' but for his efforts. In fact, it was reported by the (fake?) media long before he ever got around to it. No surprise his committee subsequently ended its investigation of a possible connection between the Trump campaign and Russian meddling in our election.

Once again, Fox News uncovers the atrocities in Washington that are neglected by the "mainstream" media (which, for some reason doesn't include Fox News). And heroes like Devin Nunes are permitted time to inform the American people about what is really going on in this gawd-awful country. With journalism like this we will hopefully soon be rid of fake reporters like Colbert who are working tirelessly to destroy America.

PATERNO, THE MOVIE

By Charles Snow

AL PACINO AS JOE PATERNO

Recently I watched Paterno, HBO’s made-for-TV movie. I couldn’t tell for certain from the previews what this movie was going to be about. Would it focus on the child sexual abuse scandal at Penn State caused by Jerry Sandusky, Paterno’s long-time assistant coach? Would it be about Paterno the fallen hero, a legendary football coach being brought down by the Sandusky scandal and Penn State’s handling of it? Or, perhaps, would it be a standard biopic of Paterno the man – his childhood experiences, five-decade leadership of the Penn State football program, and his many accomplishments as an individual? Remember, also, I was a faculty member at Penn State during much of this period, so I could not approach the movie with any pretense of objectivity.

As movies go, I did not find Paterno to be riveting drama. In fact, I did not think the movie was emotional or moving at all. Al Pacino did a good job of imitating Paterno’s gruff voice and limping gait, but the other performances were as average as one would expect from a TV movie. The Sandusky scandal had all the makings of a very interesting movie – if a screenwriter unleashed his or her imagination and created a fictional movie using the real characters and context.

Paterno was an icon: great football coach, Catholic churchgoer, fundraising chairman of the campaign to expand the Penn State library, possible Republican gubernatorial candidate after retirement, and much more. Sandusky was a great defensive coach who many credited for Penn State’s two national football championships. He also started the Second Mile, a charitable organization that helped more than 10,000 underprivileged kids (and also served as his conduit for finding boys to groom).

The local District Attorney who decided not to press charges against Sandusky in one particular incident mysteriously disappeared and has not been heard from since. Penn State’s Board of Trustees fired Paterno without bothering to follow the norms and practices of due process. Three top Penn State administrators may or may not have covered up portions of this mess (the court decided they did not and convicted them of the lesser charge of child endangerment). And, all of this behavior occurred over a period of many years in a small Pennsylvania town where virtually everybody bleeds Blue and White.

The movie I saw seemed to be Paterno the ‘conflicted man’, apparently unaware of Sandusky’s criminal behavior until he is confronted with it by Sandusky’s indictment and, later, in some stiff and awkward conversations with his family members. If this was the movie’s intent, then it should have been tightly focused on the various conflicts that Paterno wrestled with: his own failings in helping a child in need, his relationship with Sandusky, and his role as an ambassador of Penn State University. Pacino could have portrayed the pained and struggling Paterno with the emotions needed to make this a movie truly worth watching.

PATERNO AND SANDUSKY

MARCH 2018 IGNOMINIOUS ABUSRDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. White House Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. It’s about time to list Sanders as an IGGY candidate. Multiple lying certainly constitutes ignominious behavior. Her latest whopper involves confirming the story she told after Trump’s total fabrication of why he fired James Comey.

While Trump forced Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to write him a cover excuse for dropping Comey on the incredible premise that Trump was upset over Comey being too mean to Hillary Clinton, Sanders attempted to post-justify the firing with another idea: that Comey was simply bad at his job.

MS. SANDERS: The President, over the last several months, lost confidence in Director Comey.  The DOJ lost confidence in Director Comey.  Bipartisan members of Congress made it clear that they had lost confidence in Director Comey.  And most importantly, the rank and file of the FBI had lost confidence in their director.

The idea that the FBI “rank and file” was anti-Comey and happy about his dismissal was one that Sanders returned to again and again.

When asked why she was so confident the rank and file within the Bureau lost faith in the FBI director, when an inside special agent previously wrote that “the vast majority of the Bureau is in favor of Director Comey . . .the real losers here are 20,000 front-line people in the organization because they lost the only guy working here in the past 15 years who actually cared about them,” Sanders offered this response:

“Well, I can speak to my own personal experience.  I’ve heard from countless members of the FBI that are grateful and thankful for the President’s decision.  And I think that we may have to agree to disagree.  I’m sure that there are some people that are disappointed, but I certainly heard from a large number of individuals — and that’s just myself — and I don’t even know that many people in the FBI.”

But now thousands of FBI memos from that period have been released, and Lawfare has detailed their contents. The truth is that agents at all levels were shocked and upset by Comey’s firing, and that Sarah Huckabee Sanders was pushing an enormous lie—which is the one thing about this affair that’s not shocking.

“Countless” is obviously Sarah Sanders’ term for “zero.” Because that’s how many FBI agents seemed to be in agreement with the decision as indicated by the recently released emails.

Since the Comey firing, Trump has been engaged in an ongoing effort to demean and degrade the FBI for the sole purpose of protecting himself from the continuing revelations being uncovered in the Russia investigation. And Sarah Sanders has continued to do what she’s done every day on the job—lie her ass off.

TRUMP BLOWBACK GROWS: PROGRESSIVE UPDATE

By Ronald T. Fox

In my previous post on overcoming Trump Fatigue, I argued that the multiple horrors of Trumpism have awakened American progressives, who are energizing a wide array or movements on the left. The movements, while not radically progressive, are pervasively so, as political scientists Lara Putnam and Theda Skocpol have shown. They’re more bottom up than top down and more face-to-face than virtual. The movements may not be a harbinger of transformative progressive change, but for now they are certainly shaking up American politics.

Progressive activism has reshaped our national dialogue on such issues as immigration, climate change, woman’s rights, the rule of law, and gun control. Its greatest success so far, however, has been in flipping Republican seats in oft-ignored state and local elections.

To document the many ways millions of angry Americans are successfully fighting back against Trumpism, I will henceforth periodically report on progressive political victories springing up around the United States. Heaven knows we get enough Trumpism bad news; good news needs to be noted, if for nothing else then to assuage some of our Trump Fatigue. Let this be the first installment of the Phronesis “Progressive Grassroots Update.”

FEBRUARY 2018 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY AWARD: THE IGGY

1. Devin Nunes (R-Ca). We are still struggling to understand why, specifically, California-based Rep. Devin Nunes has wagered his entire career and future place in the history books on a collaborative effort with the White House to shut down the investigation of Russia's espionage and intelligence efforts against the United States during the 2016 presidential elections.

It cannot seemingly be explained as an attempt to get Trump off the hook for, for example, the Trump Tower meeting we now know about between his top campaign staff and/or family and agents who represented themselves as being "part of" the Russian government's support for Trump's campaign. There would be no reason for Nunes to insert himself in that, at least not to the extent of himself inviting obstruction of justice charges. But he persists, and persists some more, and doubles down.

Listen to him sputter on the Sean Hannity Screaming-Shouty Hour, spouting things about his latest "memo" that even Glenn Beck's chalkboard would find too humiliating to put up with. The man isn't just chewing the scenery, he's dousing it in an expensive vinaigrette first.

“There's clear evidence of collusion—that the Democratic Party and the Hillary Clinton campaign colluded with the Russians,” Nunes said, using his appearance on prime time’s top-rated cable-news show to decry the supposed “crickets from the media” about the biggest political story of the past week.

What planet is Nunes living on? Somehow Nunes conveniently forgot that law enforcement had been alerted about possible Russian interference well before the Stele revelations. This is what landed Trump's new (and old) campaign buddies on the counterintelligence radar. The Democratic Party (in addition to, lest we forget, a passel of Trump's fellow Republicans) hired a firm to do opposition research on Trump. The opposition research included the efforts of a well-regarded British ex-spy with the sort of worldwide contacts you would expect a British ex-spy to have; it turned up such a trove of information about shady Trump ties that the researchers felt obliged to contact the FBI about what they had learned, for fear that Trump was, at the least, a potential blackmail target.

Perhaps the Hannity audience enjoys watching the Nunes circus, but to the rest of us it looks like a clown lighting himself on fire and daring us all to watch. Nunes repeatedly told Hannity that his memo had turned the tables on Democrats, saying “the counterintelligence investigation should have been opened up against the Hillary campaign when they got ahold of the dossier.” He added: “I just go by the old rule: Whatever they accuse you of doing, they’re actually doing,” Nunes said.

Nunes is quite wedded to this concept that the real crime here is not that anyone on the Trump campaign team, or transition team, or within the White House did anything wrong, but that Democrats found out. He is all-in on the notion that, after going to law enforcement with the information they had learned about Trump's potential Russian ties, not just the investigators, but the Hillary Clinton campaign itself, ought to have been treated as enemies of the state.

This is, lest we forget, batshit. It's utterly insane. It is beyond the realm of rational speech as we know it, and then some. And there's no way to interpret a sitting congressman saying these things other than as an attempt to throw a flash-bang grenade into the discourse and duck out the back before anyone notices.

There is no rational reason for Devin Nunes to be climbing so far out on this limb for the likes of bragging, bleating nobody Carter Page. There is no rational reason for Nunes to go to these rhetorical lengths to shutter an investigation into money laundering by people Trump claims to have barely known. Congress critters are deeply selfish and self-absorbed people, and do not readily torpedo their own careers for the sake of random consultants and advisers. Nunes is a piece of work.

JANUARY 2018 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY AWARD: THE IGGY

1.  Trump spokesperson Kellyann Conway.  Conway continues to be a factory for a mind-boggling combination of ridiculous nonsense and terrifying nonsense. Donald Trump’s leading non-Ivanka woman continues to assail the media for harping on her reference to blatant lies as “alternative facts”—gosh, why would that draw notice, especially when it’s such a perfect statement of how your boss plans to govern? Conway launched into a rant about how media figures who criticized Trump should be fired:

“Not one network person has been let go. Not one silly political analyst and pundit who talked smack all day long about Donald Trump has been let go. They are on panels every Sunday. They’re on cable news every day.”

Yeah, funny, being critical of a political candidate—even of the president—is not a firing offense in a country with a free press. Which the United States still technically is, though apparently not for long if the Trump team gets their way. Conway and the rest of the fabricators really think people should be fired for having insulted the man in the tackily gilded tower. She went on:

“Who’s the first editorial -- the first blogger that will be left out that embarrassed his or her outlet? We know all their names. I’m too polite to call them by name. But they know who they are, and they’re all wondering, will I be the first to go? The election was three months ago. None of them have been let go.”

There are lots of reasons to fire lots of cable pundits, but pointing out what Donald Trump is? Not one of them. Then maybe, just maybe, Conway realized she’d gone a little too far and tried to sound righteous. All of this, by the way, is part of one epic rant, not responses to a series of different questions:

“And yet we deal with him every single day. We turn the other cheek. If you are part of team Trump, you walk around with these gaping, seeping wounds every single day, and that's fine. I believe in a full and fair press.  I’m here every Sunday morning. I haven't slept in a month. I believe in a full and fair press.”

Notice she doesn’t say she believes in a free press, but a “full and fair” one, whatever that means. Fair to Trump, as Trump sees it? But mostly, here’s a statement that requires more than the world’s tiniest violin. We need the world’s tiniest symphony playing a requiem for poor Kellyanne and her gaping, seeping wounds and lack of sleep.

The amount of whining and weakness here is astonishing. If you are part of team Trump, you are participating in keeping people out of the country on the basis of their religion (and failure to come from a country where Donald Trump does business), you are working to strip health insurance from tens of millions of people, you are supporting a sick tax scam, you are pushing white supremacy and misogyny and bigotry … but let’s talk about your gaping, seeping wounds from some cable pundits saying mean things about your boss, in an election in which CNN specifically hired pro-Trump pundits to wax adulatory about everything he said and did.

This is pathetic. Except that the threat to the country that this mindset represents can’t be underestimated.

OVERCOMING TRUMP FATIGUE

By Ronald T. Fox

Are you tired of being bombarded with news about Donald Trump? About his half-truths, lies, fabrications, and contradictions, his well-documented bigotry, greed, name-calling, intimidation and vindictiveness, his hypocrisy, bullying, misogyny,  xenophobia, and disrespect for our allies and blustering threats to our enemies? What about his narcissism, boasting, false claims and blame avoidance, or his fox-in-the-hen-house administrative appointments? How about his cuts in social programs, deregulating, and looting of the nation to enhance the wealth of his one-percenter friends? Does Trump’s utter contempt for our Constitution and principles of democracy, including speech, press and religious freedom, make you want to vomit? Are you sick of all the media attention he attracts—his every utterance treated as “breaking news” (often at the expense of more important issues)? Are you terrified by what this visibly mentally disturbed man might do at home and abroad?

Has all this become overwhelming? If it has, then you could be suffering from Trump Fatigue.

DECEMBER 2017 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY AWARD: THE IGGY

1. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA). The federal estate tax applies to money over $5.49 million dollars that a person leaves behind when they die—$10.98 million for a married couple. Here’s what Republican Sen. Grassley thinks of all those bums who didn’t bother to leave $5.49 million apiece and therefore won’t benefit from an estate tax repeal:

"I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing,” Grassley (R-Iowa) told the Des Moines Register, “as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.”

Yes, if you’d just stopped spending every darn penny your $40,000-a-year job paid on booze and women and movies, you’d have the nearly $6 million that would mean your heirs would benefit from Republicans repealing the estate tax. Why, when you think about it that way, it’s not about massive generational wealth at all!

In reality, of course, the estate tax isn’t about some people who can’t lay off the booze and movies, it is about massive generational wealth transfers, with only two out of 1,000 estates paying any federal estate tax at all. Because it turns out that even if you drink no booze and watch no movies and invest pretty damn carefully, you can’t save $5.49 million in a lifetime of work, not if you’re making the average American salary-- or twice the average American salary, for that matter. To have estate tax-level money, you either have to have inherited a lot yourself, been paid an amount that only a couple percent of Americans are paid, or hit a lottery jackpot. Oh yes, you couldn’t have been a lucky early investor in Apple.

Shame on you if you don’t have $5.49 million to leave your heirs.

2. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT). More hypocrisy on the tax cut plan. During the Senate “debate” over the Tax cuts and Jobs Act, Hatch was challenged over the implications of the proposed cut for the children’s Health Insurance Program, which covers nine million children, whose funding lapsed two-months ago and has not been renewed. Hatch insisted that “the reason CHIP’s having trouble is because we don’t have money anymore.”

Hatch uttered these words just as he voted for a trillion-and-a-half tax cut that will mainly benefit the wealthiest Americans and corporations. If this wasn’t enough hypocrisy, Hatch went on to say:

“I have a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions and trillions of dollars to help people who won’t help themselves, won’t lift a finger and expect the federal government to do everything.”

To whom might Hatch be referring? Food stamps that help children, the elderly and disabled? Maybe he’s talking about Medicaid, which again mainly benefits the same groups? Ah, could it be he’s thinking about hard-working people whose jobs don’t provide for healthcare, or people who can’t make ends meet? I could go on and on. The fact is there are very few Americans who willingly “don’t lift a finger” because they can get some government subsidy.

He surely couldn’t be thinking about Americans who inherit large estates, even though most didn’t lift a finger to earn it. On second thought, maybe he is. Maybe that’s why he supports the Republican tax plan that will increase the estate tax exemption to $22.4 million. The hypocrisy is sickening: gut assistance programs for children, the elderly and disabled while padding the pockets of super-rich folks. Make no mistake about it, this is the entitlement reform the GOP has in mind.

Not that any of this bothers Hatch; quite the contrary. When asked about the GOP Christmas gift to the super-wealthy, Hatch had this to say:

“I’m going to just say to you that I … come from the poor people. And I’ve been here working my whole stickin’ career for people who don’t have a chance. And I really resent anybody saying that I’m just doing this for the rich. I think you guys overplay that all the time and it gets old. And frankly you ought to quit it.”

Hatch may claim that he came from “the poor people,” but, if so, that was many decades in the past. Because the 83-year-old Hatch is now one of the richest members of Congress. Oh how perspectives change.

3. The Mormon Church. One thing that most religions are good for is trying to control people’s morality by shaming them for their natural sexual impulses. Newsweek has published the findings of a leaked 1981 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ guidebook, provided by a group called MormonLeaks. Here’s an important bit of information to pass on to your children.

“Early masturbation experiences introduce the individual to sexual thoughts which may become habit forming and reinforcing to homosexual interests,” the guidebook claims. “Self-masturbation is almost universal among those who engage in homosexual behavior, and is a very difficult habit for most to overcome.”

The Mormon church believes homosexuality is “of grave concern” because it may involve violent or criminal behavior and is as sinful as heterosexual adultery and fornication, the guidebook says. The book also claims that homosexuality is a learned behavior influenced by unhealthy development in early childhood, and says that absentee fathers and dominant mothers are among the main culprits for these developmental problems leading to homosexuality. The guidelines also include excommunicating LGBT people from the church as well as from any Latter-day Saints’ affiliated institutions (schools, etc).

Since that time the Mormon Church has loosened up some of its more restrictive rhetoric around the issue of homosexuality—including finally coming out against conversion therapy and other barbaric homophobic practices. But it’s still a big “no-no” for the church. The tweaks to the religion’s official rhetoric, however, do not include changes in its doctrine. Being LGBT is still considered a “sin” in the Mormon Church.

4. The Republican Party. Well, they did it! In the dead of night, Republicans passed the giant giveaway to corporations and the wealthy that they like to bill a “middle-class tax cut” or “tax reform.” The Republican tax bill is the most unpopular major legislation in decades and economists say it will not help the economy in the ways Republicans keep promising, but that wasn’t going to stop them. The House voted on Tuesday afternoon, passing the bill by 227 to 203, with 12 Republicans joining every Democrat in voting no. The Senate voted after midnight, passing the bill 51 to 48 on a party-line vote (Sen. John McCain was absent).

As a good citizen, I hope the “tax cut” will work out as Republicans predict, but there is virtually no chance this will happen. In the past, gigantic tax cuts have not spurred the kind of in vestment and growth that raises wages and improves the lives of ordinary Americans. They have overwhelmingly benefited the wealthiest citizens. This one will be no different. It will predictably raise taxes for many middle-class Americans (especially after 2018), increase the cost of medical coverage for most Americans, and undoubtedly widen our already obscene inequality.

But give the GOP credit. If this is part of a larger scheme (scam!) to please wealthy donors, explode deficits which will lead to spending cuts (except for defense), and lay the groundwork for replacing social security and Medicare with market-driven schemes, then their strategy is brilliant. Republican disregard for expert analyses of the plan and their behind-the-scenes rush to passage lead me to suspect that this is exactly what they're up to. Brace yourselves.

5. President Donald Trump. I couldn’t resist one little tidbit. Commenting on the East Coast cold spell, the Donald brilliantly observed:

“In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year’s Eve on record. Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against. Bundle up!”

The moron equates weather with climate change. Maybe next he’ll bring a snowball to his golf resort New Year’s Eve party as his evidence that the planet isn’t warming.
-------------------------------
AND THE WINNER IS . . .

Grassley is undoubtedly worthy of an IGGY, but for its duplicity, hypocrisy and contempt for ordinary Americans, this month’s winner is THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.