'Toontime: Psycho-Drama at the Border

credit: Dave Grunlund
Wackdoodle sez, I'ma gittin my tin hat too!

US Person will not allow himself to be diverted by the psycho-drama at the border.  Dear reader, just ask yourself this: is it a symptom of mounting national schizophrenia that a nation can hail a historic monument to immigrants and their contributions to our society at the entrance to New York's harbor, and at the same time build a grotesque monstrosity, symbolic of oppression and racial hatred on its southern boarder, or is it merely gross mismanagement? The delusional nabob occupying the White House with the help of a foreign power [see below] claims that his folly will help suppress drug trafficking. That assertion flies in the face of facts. Any honest drug enforcement official will tell you that most drug trafficking takes place at ports of entry, not in the deserted borderlands where he insists on erecting a monument to his own ego. Repugnants know the wall is ridiculous; they only refer to the project it in public by the rational sounding euphemism of "border security". Border insecurity is more accurate.

The real news developments this week are in the Russian Connection investigation, and they are significant.  Thanks to the efforts of the Center for American Progress, that analyzed court documents in the investigation, Trump officials had over 100 contacts with Russian officials, some whom have ties to Russian intelligence and Vladimir Putin. Paul Manafort and and aide shared polling data with Konstantin Kilimnik, his Ukrainian business partner and Putin supporter. Those within Trump's team who had contacts with Russian-linked officials include Trump's former attorney Michael Cohen, former Trump adviser Roger Stone, the president's son, Donald Trump Jr., former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, Trump's former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, and Trump's daughter, Ivanka Trump.  So much for the repeated claims of the investigation being labeled a "witch-hunt".  One more example of his continuous mendacity ("Mexico will pay for the Wall") which he intends as a substitute for reality*

credit: Damien Giez
Profile in Fascism: Donito Trumpillini

*Hannah Arendt, political theorist and emigre from Nazi Germany, told us in her classic, The Origins of Totalitarianism, “The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth and truth be defamed as a lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world—and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end—is being destroyed.” 1984 has arrived--just twenty-five years late. As predicted in a previous post, Hair Further is threatening to use extraordinary "emergency powers" to end a pseudo-crisis he created in part to divert media, and thereby the public's short attention, from the daily story of his corruption and collusion. Think martial law in the United States is a fantasy? Think again. Lincoln used it when the country actually faced a real existential crisis--the Civil War.  But the Insurrection Act of 1807 is still on the books, and in 2006 Congress broaden the Executive's authority to use federal troops to "restore order" . And Individual I is just demented enough to attempt to use it to preserve his his term of office. Another ace up his sleve--he now has a conservative majority on the Supreme Court thanks to his appointment of right-winger Brett Kavanaugh. It is absoultely chilling to remember that both Mussolini and Hitler used emergency pqwers granted to them under their respective laws to rise to absolute power.