Many of us older DUers remember hearing of a scurrilous story told about then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt allegedly sending a US Navy destroyer to the Aleutians to retrieve his Scottish Terrier Fala, who had somehow been separated from the presidential party. Mny right-wing polemics were bloviated and much ink spilled about this alleged incident, which FDR refuted with wit and humor, saying that Fala was outraged at the fiscal extravagance.

More recently we’ve been treated to the news that the US Navy repoisitioned the USS John McCain to salve Donnie’s ego. The alleged cost for sending the destroyer for Fala in that long-ago alleged incident was $20 million. The USS John McCain was re-positioned to prop up our “extremely stable genius”’ ego. How much did THAT set back us taxpayers?

And how do you think Fala would feel about THAT? I think he'd be outraged.

Donald Trump, the great businessman? I’m not surprised that his fortunes took a licking when his airline went bust, but how in Sheol and Gehenna can anyone think this guy is a competent businessman and administrator?

Trump the great businessman ought to be placed alongside other right-Wing BS memes like Trump the great negotiator and Trump the great Christian, and pulled out as triggers for mockery when some right-Wing doofus or other starts yakking about how great their boy is.

EDIT: Seriously, canyou imagine the howls of laughter and derision from corporate mainstream pundits as well as right-Wing propaganda organs if one of our guys made business decisions this reckless and disastrous?

Of course Donnie is a Republican so it’s IOKALAYAAR from the right-Wing propaganda organs and “both sides” from the arrogant, lazy-a$$ “lame-stream” pundits.

I don’t think so.

Donnie got into the White House in large part due to an apathetic electorate and poorly mobilized Democratic voting block.

Donnie crested over the Blue Wall in part due to both the bigots coming out of the woodwork and the hopeful marks believing that he’d bring jobs and good times back to the Rust Belt. Donnie’s still got the bigots and the Holy Joes but a lot of the people who believed his economic BS have been wised up—the same way the folks at Lordstown and Carrier have been.

Granted, his victories in places like Michigan and Wisconsin were by slivers, but he’s been losing backers by slivers since Inauguration Day 2017. There may be suckers who can be scammed multiple times, but there are other suckers who can only get conned once because they learn from experience. The death by a thousand cuts might not be as spectacular as a curb-stomp or a decapitation, but it is nevertheless fatal.

This nay-sayer might have half a point: beating Orange Julius won’t be a cake walk. But long hard slogs can bring victory too.

Deuteronomy Chapter 18, verse 22:

“When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word the Lord has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him.”

Failed to get through to to these Trump people back in 2016. It looks like pain is one of the few ways they’ll learn to wise up.

It wssn’t Wicked Hillary, it wasn’t George Soros, it wasn’t the (so-called) “liberal media,” it wasn’t the Pizza guys, it was their willful, deliberate bad choice at the polls.

Here then MAY be the getting of wisdom.

Or maybe not.



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Great-Grandpa told you not to buy a pig in the poke. Maybe you should have listened.

Great-Grandpa also said that if he lied to you once, he’ll lie to you again.

With the exception of certain issues like gay rights and environmental protection, the national Democratic Party has been pretty centrist for decades. Even those of us who thought that many of Tricky Dick Nixon’s social and economic policies weren’t all that bad have spurned Club Pachyderm and have joined Team Donkey. The “centrists” Schultz is looking for are Reaganite-lite, a crowd that was proved to be few on the ground in the 2016 elections.

I also lack much sympathy for you. Many of you, particularly you guys and gals over 50 that voted for Donnie, supposedly had enough wisdom, memory, and experience to know who was who and what was what. You supposedly had the judgement to know who was lying to you, who was telling the truth, and who was trying to scam you.

You had plenty of info about Donnie’s character and business practices—that he went bust multiple times, got married at least three times, and had been unfaithful to his partners. You knew that his businesses cheated his subcontractors multiple times, and you had inklings that he might have problems telling the truth. AND DESPITE ALL THIS YOU WENT OUT AND VOTED FOR HIM ANYWAY.

Being young and stupid is one thing. Many younger guys and gals lack judgement, caution, and critical thinking skills. It often shows up in drunk driving and jack-@$$ behavior. It’s almost expected and almost forgiveable.

You lack that excuse, and it looks like you pi$$ed away your chances to wise up from the day you hit puberty to this point forty plus years later. Gawd, guns, and abortions are no excuses, either.

Like my old man used to say: “There’s no fool like an old fool.”

It’s not just Mitch McConnell being an obstructionist reactionary; McConnell has shown signs that he could well be connected to the flow of Russian money that flowed to Agent Orange and other Republican candidates and organizations in the last couple of elections.

This is intolerable. It may not legally qualify as treason, but it’s the sort of behavior that no country guarding its sovereignty and its self-determination should tolerate, particularly those governments that aspire to be representative republican governments with elected officials chosen by its own citizens.

Successfully play me for a fool twice, shame on me

Successfully play me for a fool multiple times, and I’m either a Trumpkin or a Democratic purist progressive.

I’m a former Cold War voter who reluctantly voted for Republican presidential candidates because I sincerely believed that they’d be tougher on the Kremlin than their Democratic counterparts.

That being said, I emphatically endorse investigating and prosecuting Donald Trump either for allowing the Russian Federation to influence our elections and Individual One for being an agent of an unfriendly foreign power. Such behavior by American politicians not only shouldn’t be tolerated, but the parties involved should be prosecuted so such behavior should be deterred in the future.