Is Donald Trump crazy or is he just Donald Trump?

I’m not a psychiatrist, but I doubt that Donald Trump is actually crazy — or any more crazy than, say, your crazy uncle who needs his hourly cable-TV-news fix. Sure, he’s unfit for the office. He’s an incompetent who surrounds himself with incompetence. He’s a race-baiting, dog-whistling, fear-mongering demagogue. He’s a megalomaniac and a narcissist who seems to have a major empathy problem. As Trump would say, he’s a sick person. But crazy?

OK, he does have a truth phobia. He began his Phoenix speech lying about the size of the protests outside the hall. That was an easily checkable lie. Everyone who watched the rally on TV had also seen the crowd of protesters. The people at the rally had walked by the protesters. In other words, everyone knew it wasn’t true. Everyone. Does that mean he’s crazy? Or has Trump spent a lifetime lying so baldly that the lie itself becomes its own kind of truth —  seen by his supporters as basically a dare to deny the Trumpian reality that they and Fox News and much of right-wing radio share?

I’m not in the three-dimensional-chess crowd of Trump rationalizers. I don’t think he’s a threat in a game of checkers. But this version of Trump is no more unhinged than any of the versions of the man who we came to know as the self-aggrandizing, tabloid-hungry, reality-TV-famous, short-fingered vulgarian. The difference is that once there was Trump, and now there is Trump in the Oval Office. The crazy, the real crazy, is that enough people in the most powerful nation on earth felt sufficiently moved by his sense of group victimization to elect him president. And if his numbers among Republicans are slipping, the great majority, somewhere around 80 percent, still support him, which is why Republican politicians still support him. Maybe you can explain why people voted for him. But how do you explain why so many stick with him?

more ......
http://www.coloradoindependent.com/166767/littwin-trump-phoenix-charlottesville-nazis-fake-media



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Well, that's new.

Answered the phone and it was one of those recorded messages (hate those!). The disembodied voice informed me, in rather sepulchral tones, that my Windows 10 registration had expired, and that I needed to immediately call . . .

That's when I hung up. Really rude of them to make it recorded. How am I supposed to mess with them when they do that?!

Sheesh.


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unLabel

Is Bannon really out?

Or has his nameplate been retitled?

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How exquisitely appropriate.

For future reference ---

You don't have to watch this right now, but please take a look at some point. My reason for asking you to do so is this: Cory Gardner is often referred to as one of the GOP's rising stars, they are grooming him for higher office; that's why he is so often seen with McConnell. Take a listen, and you have to listen fast because he's a very fast talker. He's also very adroit at slip-sliding around issues. Yes, we're pleased that he's finally decided to grace us with an appearance, but his town halls are scheduled on workdays during work hours, seriously limiting the attending demographic; and that is not accidental.

In this video, the man on stage with Gardner is Tom Norton, our thankfully term-limited Greeley mayor; as soon as he said he'd be drawing the names for people to ask questions, it was a done deal that certain people's names would not be called. Most notably in that regard, in the front row was one of the people who Gardner had arrested for protesting at his Denver office; no way that they didn't notice her in her large wheelchair, and no way were they going to give her a chance to speak or ask questions.

So like I said, take a look when you can. Familiarize yourself a bit with this guy, you're going to be seeing more of him, more's the pity. I should mention that he took the taps off his boots, but you can still see him tap dancing through deflections and distortions.

http://denver.cbslocal.com/2017/08/15/cory-gardner-health-care-town-hall/


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Is

While Trump was going on and on about "both sides"

I couldn't help wishing that one of the reporters would ask him, "Okay, so which side are YOU on?"

And then it occurred that I had no idea how he would answer, and that's scary as all hell.


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Trump spoke the truth.

He doesn't believe it, but he recited it as written for him.




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Fielding judgement

Fields, the homicidal driver in Charleston, says he can't afford an attorney.

Does anyone else wish that his victims could help select his public defender?


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