Is it possible Jeff Sessions is a bigger liar than Trump?

In the Senate hearings to confirm Jeff Sessions for Attorney general under the new Donald Trump administration, Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn) asked him a simple question of had he had contacts with the Russians. Sessions reply...

“I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I didn't have — did not have communications with the Russians, and I'm unable to comment on it."

Not only was he in contact with a Russian, he met with the Russian ambassador. And more than once. Nancy Pelosi, the House's minority leader, says that Sessions lied to Congress and must resign. Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader also called for Sessions to resign. When Sessions did everything he could think of to change his story and rearrange the facts, all of which still didn't work, he recused himself...

"...from any and all investigations into the 2016 campaign by the Justice Department, a clear attempt to throw a bone to the howling pack in hopes that the controversy would die down."

It didn't, has only gotten worse, and Donald John was reportedly furious for his action, enough to start the maniac on another tirade accusing Barack Obama of ordering the wiretapping of the Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign. Completely unsubstantiated...nada...zip to back it up. But then, that's Donald Trump, a part of his formula to spread misinformation about anyone who crosses him or disagrees with him. The other part of his formula is outright lies, a technique he has employed from the first day of his presidential campaign, perhaps all his business life.

One can understand why Trump would be frantic over Jeff Sessions recusing himself since it is no doubt his Attorney General would have overseen an investigation of the Russian impact on Donald Trump's winning the election. And we all know from experience that Sessions is simply another of Donald John's yes men, ready to do his bidding no matter what. So, what's next? According to CNN...

"Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Thursday that Sessions' acting deputy attorney general, Dana Boente, should appoint a special prosecutor to oversee the investigation."

If they drag their feet...

"We will then urge (Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell) and (House Speaker Paul Ryan) to work with Democrats and create a new and improved version of the independent counsel law, which would give a three-judge panel the authority to appoint an independent counsel," Schumer said.

Yeah, lots of luck on that. Here's what PoliticusUSA had to say about a McConnell reaction...

"Given his support for Trump, expect Majority Leader McConnell to resist calls for an investigation, but when even he has to admit that there are unanswered questions, the President has big problems."

With trump's luck so far, his star will rise even higher because his numb nuts followers will scream their fried President is being persecuted. So, if Congress isn't going to do anything and his supporters will only glory in their man's "maltreatment," what's left? Well, it comes down to an anemic left that has been so disjointed in the past that they can't even help themselves, much less try to bring charges against the President. I want you to understand that I do not take pleasure in the fact that, the dozing Democrats under Debbie Wasserman Schultz were grossly outsmarted by the Republicans. Pathetic!

Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi calls for Jeff Sessions to resign have fallen on deaf ears in the Republican Congress and in the White House. The Washington Post's take on this says that, even as the democrats mount their opposition against Sessions, his own Party is faltering with some trying to dump him altogether, and others avoiding him in the cloak room. In politics, everyone knows the laws of survival and when you lie, especially in front of a Senate committee, your supporters have a tendency to shun any relationship with you. WP comments...

"If Sessions's response on Thursday morning was the best that he can offer to defend himself, you can expect that the few people sticking up for him right now will dwindle to his immediate family sometime very soon. And when you lose your friends while under heavy fire from your opponents in political Washington, it's almost always curtains."

Jeff Sessions and his spokeswoman have repeatedly tried to explain the whole thing away as a routine act of the Senator as a member of the Armed Services Committee. Sarah Isgur Flores, Sessions’s spokeswoman, said...

"Sessions last year had more than 25 conversations with foreign ambassadors as a senior member of the Armed Services Committee, including the British, Korean, Japanese, Polish, Indian, Chinese, Canadian, Australian and German ambassadors, in addition to Kislyak [the Russian ambassador]."

Neither the Russian ambassador, nor his spokesperson were available for comment but...

"The Washington Post contacted all 26 members of the 2016 Senate Armed Services Committee to see whether any lawmakers besides Sessions met with Kislyak in 2016. Of the 20 lawmakers who responded, every senator, including Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.), said they did not meet with the Russian ambassador last year."

Chuck Schumer said in the Daily Beast...

"...Sessions had tried to 'dramatically mislead' Congress. He stopped an inch or two short of calling his former Senate colleague a liar, but made it clear he thought Sessions had concealed the full truth from the Judiciary Committee at his confirmation hearing. “If there was nothing wrong” with meeting Ambassador Kislyak, Schumer asked, why didn’t he just come clean and tell the truth?'”

Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak with Jeff Sessions

Schumer talks about a special counsel to investigate Jeff Sessions and the Beast thinks that idea willIn 1999 he was a key proponent of prosecuting then-President Bill Clinton for allegedly lying under oath when Clinton was accused of perjury over statements he made regarding his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Shoe on the other foot.
"avalanche" now, even with Senators that aren't in deep Red states. The downside of all this starts with Donald Trump who nominated this second-rate politician who is an avowed racist, and who has a past that should haunt him in this issue.

Lindsay Graham said in a tweet, "If Jeff Sessions spoke with Russian diplomat, then for sure you need a special prosecutor." Another republican Senator, Rob Portman, from Ohio joined in the call for a prosecutor. Here's a kick. Some thirty years ago, Sessions was too much of a racist to be a federal judge but now all of a sudden he has become Attorney General of the United States, which is on a higher level than the judgeship he wasn't qualified for. Just what happened in those thirty years to better  certify him for this job? I think nothing.

Have we been conditioned to accept T-rump's stupidity?

Without even having read Radley Balko's opinion in the Washington Post, I have hinted at the fact in my blog posts that the American public has become accustomed to the rantings of a psychopathic liar that has somehow taken over the White House. Here's what Balko had to say...

"...Tuesday night’s fit of demagoguery masquerading as a presidential address is a frightening demonstration of how his first month in office has left those of who are supposed to hold him accountable timid and shell-shocked."

Demagoguery, let's examine it historically along with the prevailing example. Salon was profiling Donald Trump as a modern-day demagogue back in June of 2016, five months before the election that made history and put America on a track to a sure eventual collapse. In an elaborate use of adjectives and adverbs, the website talked of the "virus infecting our politics," which had its contemporary kickoff during the George W. Bush/Karl Rove era. There are other bad actors and the whole conglomeration worked tediously together to give us what's known today as President Donald Trump.

Here's how Salon describes it...

"There have been stretches of history when this virus lay dormant. Sometimes it would flare up here and there, then fade away after a brief but fierce burst of fever. At other moments, it has spread with the speed of a firestorm, a pandemic consuming everything in its path, sucking away the oxygen of democracy and freedom."

 There were others early-on who developed a formula and format for those to use in later years. Men like ...

“'Pitchfork Ben' Tillman, the South Carolina governor and senator who led vigilante terror attacks with a gang called the Red Shirts and praised the efficiency of lynch mobs."

"Mississippi’s Theodore Bilbo, a member of the Ku Klux Klan who vilified ethnic minorities and deplored the 'mongrelization' of the white race."

"Louisiana’s corrupt and dictatorial Huey Long, who promised to make 'Every Man a King.'"

"George Wallace, the governor of Alabama and four-time presidential candidate who vowed, 'Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.'"

The demagogue that stands out in U.S. history is Joseph McCarthy, US senator from Wisconsin, that Salon describes, "...until now perhaps our most destructive demagogue." Until now. McCarthyism was another psychopathic lunatic's way of drawing attention to himself by terrorizing the country into believing there was a Communist under every rock. There weren't, and several lives were ruined in the process. I had a close friend in Los Angeles who was a movie screenwriter who knew a few fellow writers whose lives were affected. And tailgunner Joe didn't even have a bully pulpit.

Remember Roy Cohn, he was chief counsel to McCarthy’s Senate Permanent Subcommittee and wouldn't you know it, the bad seed is back. As Salon put it, "Cohn was McCarthy’s henchman, a master of dark deeds and dirty tricks. "Cohn didn't go down with McCarthy when Edward R. Murrow exposed him on his CBS show, "See it Now." But not Cohn, who continued his operations in New York where he ended up working for mob bosses and, yes, Donald Trump's father, Fred, until later years when he made his McCarthy-like methods of strong-arm manipulation available to Donald.

Bernie Sanders on what Donald Trump did not say in his speech to Congress:

Cohn also introduced Trump to the man who was his campaign chair, Paul Manafort, someone who made a fortune representing dictators. Salon has an interesting analogy between Joseph McCarthy and Donald Trump...

"So the ghost of Joseph McCarthy lives on in Donald Trump as he accuses President Obama of treason, slanders women, mocks people with disabilities and impugns every politician or journalist who dares call him out for the liar and bamboozler he is. The ghosts of all the past American demagogues live on in him as well, although none of them have ever been so dangerous."

Returning to the present and Balko's charge that Donald John has conditioned us to just accept him the way he is and go on with our business, letting him run the country in the ground. Balko says, "We need to be better than that." And we should. The writer comments...

"We’ve been conditioned to accept behavior from the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth that we’d never have accepted from his predecessors (and I have pretty low expectations of presidents) — that we’d never accept from a friend, relative, pastor or community leader — as long as he spares us and our group from his attacks."

Trump's speech to Congress included the same lies that we have heard over and over, except that this time he delivered them in a toned-down rhetoric that is as much like the normal Trump as Scotch is like bourbon. Where it came from I do not know, but I suspect it is another of his underhanded tactics to appease a few concerned Republicans along the way who get their skivvies in a dither when he's too much the bad boy. Balko is really up in arms over the bi-partisan praise when this wasn't the man talking who has been ranting and raving such absurdities for his first month in office.

Balko disparages Trump's speech grammar, saying it was "terribly written," and "full of his typical doom-and-gloom pronouncements about America," quoting one of his most egregious passages...

"Recent threats targeting Jewish community centers and vandalism of Jewish cemeteries, as well as last week’s shooting in Kansas City, remind us that while we may be a nation divided on policies, we are a country that stands united in condemning hate and evil in all its forms."

Just hours before the speech Donald John had indicated that some of the attacks, above, had been perpetrated by Jews themselves. More extreme exaggeration almost to the point of lying...

"We’ve defended the borders of other nations, while leaving our own borders wide open, for anyone to cross — and for drugs to pour in at a now unprecedented rate."

At best, this statement is borderline bogus. More on drugs...

"I have further ordered the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice, along with the Department of State and the Director of National Intelligence, to coordinate an aggressive strategy to dismantle the criminal cartels that have spread across our nation."

Balko documents that when George W. Bush attempted the same thing, by coercing the Mexican

Mexican drug casualties

government into militarizing its drug war, the country’s homicide rate jumped by nearly 250 percent. Regarding Trump's "banned" list...

"It is not compassionate, but reckless, to allow uncontrolled entry from places where proper vetting cannot occur. Those given the high honor of admission to the United States should support this country and love its people and its values. We cannot allow a beachhead of terrorism to form inside America — we cannot allow our nation to become a sanctuary for extremists."

Now here's a refuting fact, "The odds of your average American being killed by a terrorist attack committed by a refugee are astronomical, about one in 3.6 billion."

There is more and Radley Balko's opinion is chock full of solid facts and a good reasoning where the United States stands after only a month of the reign of Donald Trump you can read here. It's up to us where we go from there.

Trump Congress speech doesn't fact check-What's new?

Donald Trump at his best

Donald Trump in a more presidential mode talked to Congress last Tuesday and while Presidents in the past have realized the importance of such a speech and refrained from "stretching the truth," as The Washington Post put it, Donald John performed his usual feat of slaughtering it. Here they are...

Harking back to boasting of forcing Ford's hand on Mexico, T-rump takes responsibility for Fiat Chrysler, General Motors, Sprint, SoftBank, Lockheed, Intel, Walmart and many others have announced that they will invest billions of dollars in the United States and will create tens of thousands of new American jobs.”

Turns out all these plans had been made long before his election. 

T-rump takes credit for the lowered cost of the F-35 program.

The Pentagon had earlier announced budget cuts for this very same project which covered what he was taking credit for, but at times in his rantings Donald John not even sure if "he" saved $600 or $700 million.

T-rump makes the statement, “Ninety-four million Americans are out of the labor force.”

The Washington Post gives this 4 Pinocchios for absurdity. There are only 7.6 million people actively looking for a job that cannot find one, an unemployment rate of 4.8%, inherited from Barack Obama.

Claims we spent $6 trillion in the Middle-East, when we should be spending it at home. 

The truth is we spent $1.6 trillion. 

There's much more that deserves more serious reading to understand just how the President of the United States can stand before a group of people, the U.S. Congress, no less, and lie to them and the American public. Read it here.

At least there was an upside; however, for Republicans only. Politico reports the GOP was "...relieved there were no embarrassing moments." How does it look before the entire world for the American party in power in both Houses of Congress, and also in control of the White House, to feign relief just because their President didn't embarrass them and the rest of the country? And I question whether anyone is in control at the White House. The general consensus is among Democrats and Republicans that the speech was less vitriolic but full of the same generalities that is T-rump' boilerplate message.

But suck up Newt Gingrich had to put in his two cents, worth not anywhere near that, saying, “It would have been very ineffective had you been involved in some kind of long, detailed step-by-step laundry list.” Interpreted: Donald Trump hasn't the slightest idea what he is doing, which translates into the fact that he has no plan where to lead this country. And there was yet even more comfort taken by a senior Republican aide, “He didn’t alienate anybody." We have already seen the damage this man can do offending the heads of Mexico and Australia. Who is next?

Donald Trump-Jeff Sessions share history of racism

How many times has Donald Trump said, "[I'm] the least racist person that you’ve ever encountered?" However, history tells us that is not the case, an example of which is during Trumps' presidential campaign when he...

"...repeatedly made explicitly racist and otherwise bigoted remarks — from calling Mexican immigrants criminals and rapists to proposing a ban on all Muslims entering the US to suggesting that a judge should recuse himself from a case solely because of the judge’s Mexican heritage."

Vox tracks it back to the 1970s when Donald John was sued by the feds for racial discrimination because he would not rent apartments in one of his developments to African-Americans. It goes even further...

"It would be one thing if Trump simply misspoke one or two times. But when you take all of Trump’s actions and comments together, a clear pattern emerges — one that suggests that bigotry is not just political opportunism on Trump’s part but a real element of Trump’s personality, character, and career."

This white supremacist attitude has stayed with the man for all of his career, ushering in a spate of appointments in his administration that are racists and white nationalists. Like Steve Bannon, White House chief strategist and Jeff Sessions, the new attorney general. After the 1973 incident, it was in the 1980s when a black teenager accused the Trump Castle Casino of forcing him and other black employees off the floor when Donald John and Ivana visited. It was 1991 in a book written by a former employee quoting Trump on the handling of his money...

"Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day. … I think that the guy is lazy. And it’s probably not his fault, because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that. It’s not anything they can control."

Here's a real loser, The Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in 1992, paid a $200,000 fine for moving black and women dealers off a particular table to accommodate a gambler's prejudices. There's much more and you can see it here at Vox.

Jeff Sessions was the US attorney in Mobile, Alabama, in the 1980s, talking about a case with colleagues about a young black man who had been kidnapped and brutally murdered by two members of the Ku Klux Klan. His throat had been cut and they hung his body from a tree. This was Sessions reaction...

"As Sessions learned that some members of the Klan had smoked marijuana on the evening of the slaying, he said aloud that he thought the KKK was: 'OK until I found out they smoked pot.'"

That should say it all but there's more. David Duke, former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, is a supporter of Sessions, as well as Trump. Sessions became infamous in Alabama for calling a black attorney, "boy," at the same time prosecuting three of Martin Luther King Jr.'s rights organizers for bogus voter fraud. It was done to, "...discourage voting rights for poor and elderly people in several "black belt" Alabama counties." After Sessions testimony Tuesday, the New York Times in an editorial...

"[Sessions'] defense against charges of racism that caused the Senate to reject him for a federal judgeship in 1986 was largely to say it hurt his feelings to be called a racist, but his two decades in the Senate provide little hope that he has changed."

Sessions calls the Voting Rights Act "intrusive," and is a strong supporter of voter ID laws that disenfranchise blacks, Hispanics and the poor. He has voted against every comprehensive immigration reform bill, and back in 2016 called Islam a "toxic ideology." A firm opponent of Roe v. Wade, Jeff Sessions also opposed the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell and hate crimes protections for LGBTQ people and he voted to ban same-sex marriage. You can read additional critique on this man who is now the attorney general for the United States.

It was the 1964 Civil Rights Act that outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. When Lyndon Johnson sighed this Act into law, he had no idea that the U.S. would still be this racist in 2017, fifty-four years later. It's almost as if the paper he signed was meaningless. To Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions, it was.

Is Charlie Manson's "Helter Skelter" lurking in the White House?

Steve Bannon, Donald Trump's chief strategist and top adviser, has already established his credentials as a white nationalist, racist and anti-Semitic. As an avid reader, he espouses to "The Fourth Turning, a book by William Strauss and Neil Howe, that history unfolds in cycles of 80 to 100 years. At the end of the cycle, the old order is destroyed and replaced." It would appear that Stevo plans to be there at the end of the cycle and implant the Trump/Bannon, perhaps the other way around, vision of common national purpose Trump announced in his first address to Congress on Monday.

As far as the speech goes, it was well received by Republicans as one would suspect but Sen. Chuck Schumer's comment was that, "Trump's speeches and the realities are very, very far apart. Until his reality catches up with his speeches, he's got big trouble," Others said he even looked a bit presidential, hoping he might maintain that and not revert to the crude behavior he has exhibited on Twitter and otherwise since entering office. But these hopes were born and played out before and it only took one news cycle to send Donald John romping down the crass road to vulgarity again.

Here are some comments by Lacy MacAuley, an activist and member of the Washington DC Antifascist Coalition...

"I absolutely think Steve Bannon is connected to a network of white nationalists. Just in the last few years there have been contractual obligations between white supremacist James O’Keefe at Project Veritas and Breitbart."

"Mr O'Keefe was known, she said, for taking down institutions and organisations via fake news."

"I would say that Steve Bannon is the advocate for white nationalism in the White House and there’s no doubt in my mind on that. It’s not just through Breitbart, it’s through his entire line of work."

There is the indication that Steve Bannon, when recruiting to fill out the National Security Council position, added himself to the NSC without Donald John knowing. Grounds for dismissal by most anyone, except someone with a hidden agenda. He was able to do this since he was the one writing the Executive Order, not Trump. The President was pissed but the fact that Bannon stays put is evidence of just how powerful the man is. Daryle Lamont Jenkins, executive director of the anti-racist organisation One People's Project exclaims...

"We've been dealing with a cluster of white supremacists within the beltway of the Washington DC area who do just that (using theories and academia to justify their racism): they try to back up their racism and justify why they should have a separation of the races, and justify a more strident attack on African Americans in the name of 'fighting crime'."

That's about as scary as it gets. Beginning to sound like Charlie Manson's Helter Skelter, starting a war between blacks and whites. Charlie was a confirmed white supremacist who went to the extreme of carving a swastika into his forehead with a knife. He had a following he mesmerized by convincing them that he was Jesus Christ, turning them into killers that would do his bidding. I'm not saying Steve Bannon is another Charlie Manson, but I am saying that Donald Trump, normally a man who seems to need no one, is definitely enthralled by Stevo's philosophies. That's what's scary.

The UK Independent reports that last July Breitbart had "...become the 'platform for the alt-right'. Now his platform has become the government." Well, that's even scarier. Donald John has been guilty of racially insensitive remarks in the past, and during his campaign refused to condemn the white supremacists who advocated for him, like David Duke and Richard Spencer. Here are some examples during his drive for the presidency...

• He attacked Muslim Gold Star parents
• He claimed a judge was biased because “he’s a Mexican”
• He questioned whether President Obama was born in the United States
• He even trashed Native Americans
• He stereotyped Jews and shared an anti-Semitic image created by white supremacists

Just a few, but you can see more here. Huff Post says in a blazing headline, "President Trump’s VOICE Is About Justifying White Supremacy." VOICE means, Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement. So far it sounds like... 

"...the program will be limited simply to undocumented immigrants, but will also include crimes committed by legitimate VISA holders, Green Card holders and possibly even permanent residents who are not naturalized citizens.

But then HP blasts, "Let’s call this what it is: VOICE is racist government propaganda." And isn't it interesting that Steve Bannon, formerly of Breitbart, had a section called Black Crime, which documented the crimes of immigrant communities, when it is known that immigrants are actually less likely to commit a crime than non-immigrants. Brian Stone of Huff Post adds...

"Creating this hate-list will do nothing except provide official government sanction to the opinions of white supremacist groups and the alt-right."

Remember Pat Buchanan, a presidential wanna-be from 1992, 1996 and 2000, who ran on a platform of right-wing populism and who also was a white supremacist? As far back as 2015, he was backing Trump along with other white supremacists, including David Duke. Buchanan regretted what he called the end of white America "...due to immigration and increasing rights for people of color." This is a statement that is hard to believe coming from someone who is supposedly educated and worldly. It can only be attributed to someone who is a true racist and white supremacist.

Most of this crowd doesn't believe in violence, a fact that is not true of Trump’s rank-and-file supporters. One such Donald John follower was Dionisio Garza III, 25, also a Muslim hater, who went on a shooting spree back in early 2016 in Houston, leaving one dead and six injured. In another instance...

"Jim Sherota, 53, [who]works for a landscaping company and attended Trump’s rally in Mobile, Alabama, on Friday, [August 2015] told The New York Times before Trump’s arrival that he hoped Trump would announce a plan to issue licenses for hunting undocumented immigrants and offer $50 for 'every confirmed kill.'”

Couldn't stand the heat

A bounty? Now that's interesting because back in 2015 just escaped El Chapo placed a $100 million
bounty on Donald Trump's head when the then candidate accused the Mexican government of letting him go tweeting...

"El Chapo and the Mexican drug cartels use the border unimpeded like it was a vacuum cleaner, sucking drugs and death right into the U.S."

Jake Tapper of CNN pushed Trump to disavow David Duke and rebuke any vote from him or any other white supremacists. It was a typical brainless meandering by the candidate...

"Trump claimed that he didn’t know anything about white supremacists or about Duke himself. When Tapper pressed him twice more, Trump said he couldn’t condemn a group he hadn’t yet researched."

A Virginia leader of the Ku Klux Klan told a TV reporter, “The reason a lot of Klan members like Donald Trump is because a lot of what he believes, we believe in.” And that's the scariest yet. In closing, here is a list of his "white supremacist fan club" compiled by Huff Post reporters...

"The Daily Stormer, a leading neo-Nazi news site; Richard Spencer, director of the National Policy Institute, which aims to promote the “heritage, identity, and future of European people”; Jared Taylor, editor of American Renaissance, a Virginia-based white nationalist magazine; Michael Hill, head of the League of the South, an Alabama-based white supremacist secessionist group; and Brad Griffin, a member of Hill’s League of the South and author of the popular white supremacist blog Hunter Wallace."

Even the white nationalists are turning on Trump

Iowa has always been the come-to state for Presidents and 2016 was no different for Donald Trump. He took the state 51.1% to win against Hillary Clinton's 41.7, garnering the 6 electoral votes. Des Moines, where I spent several years, went for Clinton as did another major metro area, Cedar Rapids. Iowans are considered good, down to earth, stable people with common sense. That's pretty much true as I can attest to after spending several years in the capital city, but also having experienced a hard-line cliquishness there that forbids outsiders in until proven. I never made it.

I left in the late sixties, never sorry for my decision, and have never looked back. I tell you this to qualify the fact that I am a maverick, always have been, and always will be. Mavericks don't do well in the state, although there is a basketball team there by that name who are apparently winners. But it is people like Tom Godat, a union electrician from Clinton, Iowa, that represents a state that has been a combination of Democrat and Republican in the past, but recently has been attacked by the Tea Party. It elected Joni Ernst to the Senate, something many in the state still can't believe.

But back to Mr. Godat, who has always voted for Democrats, decided to cast his vote for Donald Trump in 2016, not that he particularly thought Trump was best, but because he thought Hillary Clinton was worse. An excellent case in point to shore up the fact that Bernie Sanders should have been the Democrats nominee, not Clinton. Tom now says he is "embarrassed" over his vote. I would suspect that a lot of good people out there are also coming to the same conclusion. What I don't understand is, after viewing Trump's campaign, why wasn't Tom Godat horrified with what he saw?

There were Donald John's comments about Mexican immigrants, about women, about veterans, the disarming of Clinton's bodyguards, saying Obama was the founder of ISIS, sicking the gun nuts on Hillary, encouraging Russia to hack Clinton's campaign, more racism calling for a ban on Muslims in the U.S., saying people in New Jersey were cheering on 9/11, suggesting one of his protesters should be roughed up, referring to his daughter in a sexual way, his bizarre comments about Megyn Kelly's menstrual period, I could go on forever but you get the idea. Why didn't Tom Godat?

Washington Post reporter, Jenna Johnson, and her photographer, Michael S. Williamson, ran into "...more than 100 Iowans [who]explained why so many of them are already disappointed in the new president." It only took four days which means they encountered 25 a day. That's an impressive number of people when you consider that Iowans aren't that open and easy to get to talk to by people they don't know. And then there's Lost Nation, Iowa, where the president received 66 percent of the vote. After Trump's election, the Iowa legislature voted to dramatically scale back the collective bargaining rights of the state’s public workers, distressing my Lost Nation residents.

The Huff Post reports that "thousands" of people across the country are unhappy with their vote for Donald John, and they are tweeting it in response to the "head tweeter's" barrage of lies and misinformation. Here's an example...

“I’m starting to feel like the biggest mistake of my young 23 years of life has been voting for [Trump],” Joseph Richardson tweeted on Nov. 21.

And that's less than two weeks after the November 8, election day. Richardson said it was a bitTrump’s Cabinet picks or the 'very childish' behavior he exhibited at a press conference last week. And he does regret his vote. Sort of." Even if he did it over, Richardson says he still couldn't vote for Clinton continuing with, “I still think Trump would be the better candidate. I’d still regret it. I’d vote for him again but I’d still regret it.” Go figure. But it is this exact kind of reasoning that political pundits were clamoring over during the 2016 election.
unsettling and added, "He doesn’t like

Now here's a guy you just have to shake your head over. Not sure if he is misinformed, full of indecision or just not too bright...

"Bill said he would like Trump to act more like President Barack Obama, who he voted against twice but considers 'an extremely honorable man who served the country fantastically.'”

I could understand a statement that said, served the country "well," or "fine," or even "right." But how can you call Obama "extremely honorable" and a man "who served the country fantastically" but still have voted against him twice? Makes no sense unless there is an ulterior motive. And that's what is wrong with our political system, people voting who haven't the slightest idea what they are doing. There were some that lashed out at Donald John for not following up on his promise to investigate Clinton’s handling of sensitive emails, a decision that also puzzles some of the pundits.

Others voiced their reason to vote for Trump was his promise for change, to drain the swamp. Many of this group think the swamp is fuller than ever, but others believe Trump is following through on his promises. Even the alt-right and its white nationalists are down on Donald Trump. Remember Richard Spencer? The guy "who stood at a podium shortly after Donald Trump's election and, in a video that went viral, shouted 'Hail Trump!' while several in the crowd celebrated the victory with a Nazi salute." He's not sure now his President will be racial enough.

From what I have read, a large number of Trump voters have combined to strongly object over the fact that Donald John did not investigate, subsequently prosecute Hillary Clinton over the email issue. This is a major campaign promise that he broke, and the fact that this is one of the primary annoyances of those who voted for the man, it is yet just one more instance that reflects the amount of animosity toward Hillary Clinton. This was clear from the early 2016 campaigning right through the November election. A leading reason Democrats are in the hole they are now in.

Donald Trump's top adviser and chief White House strategist, Steve Bannon, described Richard Spencer as one of the leading intellectuals of the alt-right movement. CNN reported that...

"Spencer is a white nationalist who believes that there should be a 'peaceful ethnic cleansing,' where people who are not of European descent voluntarily leave the United States."

Not that it is important since this deranged kind of thinking probably has no chance of ever being initiated in this country, but what if they don't leave voluntarily? But just maybe the thought of ethnic cleansing isn't so far out when you consider Trump has already provided the model in his latest Muslim ban of now six countries just announced in Monday's address to Congress. More from Slate on Bannon/Spencer connection...

"In August, [2016] Bannon proudly described his site as 'the platform for the alt-right,' a movement with Spencer as one of its intellectual leaders, again, according to Bannon’s own site."

It is said the Vice President is only a heartbeat away from the presidency. In the case of Steve Bannon, this is a heart beat that could change the direction of the greatest free nation of all time.

What is the real reason that Trump hates the media?

Donald Trump recently banned Journalists from CNN, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, the BBC, BuzzFeed, and Politico from a news conference. It was an informal question-and-answer session between a press secretary, Sean Spicer, and journalists, adding Breitbart, The Washington Times and One America News Network. The Daily Beast reports White House spokeswoman Sarah H. Sanders said: “We invited the pool so everyone was represented. We decided to add a couple of additional people beyond the pool for an expanded pool. Nothing more than that.”  

She failed to add that in the addition there was also a subtraction, three of the largest media outlets in the country. Time and the Associated Press boycotted what was called a “gaggle,” with the AP commenting… 

“AP believes the public should have as much access to the president as possible.”

CNN, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, the BBC, BuzzFeed, and Politico deemed the move “a troubling development” and “an affront to freedom of the press.” CNN commented further that it was their assumption if you report true facts, it is something the White House cannot handle. Considering Donald John’s first month in the Oval Office where there were 33 lies and misinformation spewing from his mouth on a daily basis, it’s surprising they continue to hold news conferences. It would be my guess the new president of distortion will set a record for untruths.

Here are a couple of comments...

"The New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet said 'nothing like this has ever happened at the White House in our long history of covering multiple administrations of different parties,' adding: 'Free media access to a transparent government is obviously of crucial national interest.'”

"Ari Fleischer, a Trump backer who served as White House press secretary for President George W. Bush, reacted on CNN by conceding that the decision to block certain reporters from the gaggle was 'unwise and counterproductive,' but added: 'There is nothing unusual about presidents meeting with self-selected reporters… and White House staffs do it all the time.' Fleischer echoed some conservatives who said the press largely overreacted to the way Friday’s briefing was handled, and defended Trump’s overall accessibility to the media."

Come on Fleischer, this wasn't just a meeting with "self-selected reporters." It was a meeting with self-selected reporters that barred reporters from three of the country's leading media outlets. But what do we expect from another Republican, even though he was put out to pasture. Fleischer added...

“He [Donald John] is making journalism interesting and great again. It’s a fascinating time to be a journalist because he’s such a fascinating story. And he’s giving the press so much access.”

Can you believe that? Thought you had to have better than a double-digit IQ to be a press secretary. And it would appear Sean Spicer is following in Fleischer's footsteps. Bret Baier of Fox News surprisingly excluded himself from the gaggle, standing with those boycotted. The Wall Street Journal, although attending, said it would not participate in future press events if the administration did this again. The Daily Beast reported other instances...

"During the campaign, multiple news organizations including The Daily Beast, Politico and The Washington Post were blacklisted by the Trump team—barred from attending any campaign rallies, press conferences or other events."

Donald Trump's oligarchy is turning America into the likeness of countries like China, North Korea and Venezuela, with the outlook that he may try and push his power into that of an autocracy. And while the new White House despot attempts to turn our country into a dictatorship, his press secretary, Sean Spicer, is up for the worst of his kind to come along in the history of western civilization. When you consider that Spicer is the middle-man between the most powerful person in the world and the free voice of America; now, that's scary.

Spicer has been a favorite of "Saturday Night Live" recently and is beginning to look a lot like Kellyanne Conway in terms of the amount of misinformation he has thrown at the press. Conway has been chastised and virtually cut off by the media for her consistency of lies on the air, but reporters have nowhere else to go without Spicer. Unless they just stand around and wait on the leaks from the press secretary's office that apparently are frequent. So much so that Spicer had to call a special meeting recently to check staff electronics, including their phones, for evidence of leaks.

According to Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post, Sean Spicer is ""...disliked and disrespected by superiors, peers and subordinates alike." Further, "He is so lacking in credibility as to diminish, if not eliminate, his utility in conveying the views of the White House or basic facts about what is going on." This all coming from a reporter from a major U.S. paper located in the nation's capital. Think about this for just a minute. There is a new President that continually hurls lies and misinformation, with his spokesman guilty of the same deeds. Where does that leave the American public?

Especially when they have been told by the Oval Office ogre that the media is the enemy of the people, and some, meaning Donald John supporters, either don't have the intelligence to or simply refuse to realize that this man is a lunatic and shouldn't be believed. In making this unpatriotic saying to the Conservative Political Action Committee for the umteenth time, the President castigated reporters for using anonymous sources and said we are going to do "something" about it. He did not indicate what "something" was, all as if the man is completely oblivious of the 1st Amendment.

If the dictator is planning to do something about dealing with anonymous sources, he'll have to clean his own House first. It was only two hours before Trump criticized anonymous sources at CPAC, exclaiming all sources should be named when, "... an administration official provided a briefing on condition he not be identified," according to USA Today. And here's another quote...

"William McRaven, the retired admiral who planned the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden, said this week that Trump's attacks on the media may also be undermining democracy itself."

Now let's be honest, there are times the media overdoes a story; as a matter of fact, this was true in
the coverage of Donald John in the 2016 primaries and election. As I recall, there was one evaluation of Trump coverage vs. Bernie Sanders and it was something like 200+ impressions for Trump, about 7 for Sanders. Hillary Clinton suffered as well but not as much as the Bern. Apparently, the old phrase applies, "Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em. In any event, we are experiencing a first with an American President who hates the media and is making himself invisible to it.

Here's a comment from Matthew Miller, a spokesman for President Barack Obama's Justice Department...

The sustained attacks show "how worried he is about the repeated reports of chaos, incompetence, and potential wrongdoing inside his administration. His problem, though, is with the facts, not the media, and he’s only making his problem worse the more he runs away from it."

How does one say it? The country is going to hell in a handbasket, an expression I have heard since I was a kid, but have no idea what it means. But in the case of Donald Trump it could very well mean Armageddon.