GARBAGE IN, GARBAGE OUT ON A FOOL’S ERRAND

Recent polls released by Bloomberg and Morning Consult indicate that Donald Trump is not immune to public disfavor should he be convicted in any of the remaining criminal trials he faces, with 53% of voters in seven key states stating a refusal to vote for him in that eventuality. And, should a prison sentence be a result, that percentage would rise by two percentage points…WHAT? Only two points…what’s wrong with a 47% spike, people? We know he’s a crook…he’s either purposely or inadvertently confessed to every wrongful action of which he’s been accused! “The preponderance of polling out there shows that there is a chunk of Republican voters who say a felony conviction would be a bridge too far,” says GOP strategist Dan Judy. “Does that mean that Trump still gets 80 to 85 percent of Republican voters, rather than 90 or 95 percent? Probably. But that could easily be the election right there.”

With the Bloomberg poll showing Trump up by six points with registered voters in the battleground states, the question is: would those figures be borne out in the general election? Some aggrieved voters typically look past any misgivings and vote for that candidate who echoes their own views. Case in point being the Access Hollywood tape where Trump disparages women, yet went on to being victorious. The four indictments with a total of 91 criminal charges only served to strengthen his hold onto the MAGAt base, rallying them with each new announcement targeting their Golden Jesus. An Economist/YouGov poll indicates a favorability of 79% within the GOP, but only 40% in the general public. While Trump asserts his innocence of all charges, the trials lie ahead, as does the onslaught of the Biden campaign and his supporters, both within the Democratic Party and its fringes.

At this juncture, it appears the lesser of the charges – the Stormy Daniels bribery case – will see the light of day before the other, more serious cases are brought to the fore, simply because the Supreme Court is wrestling with whether or not a president has immunity from prosecution…which brings up the question of whether Trump would see a boost resulting from any acquittal. Dan Judy tosses in, “As people always say, the most valuable resource you have as a candidate is time. The more time he is spending, and his people are spending, trying to keep him out of court and out of prison, the less he is spending out on the campaign trail trying to fire up his base, or persuade the few persuadable voters in this country.” Judy, known as a Trump cynic, realizes that any prediction regarding the former prez’s fate has often proven to be a fool’s errand. “As with so many things with him over the years, there is no history to fall back on here. There is nowhere to go to say, ‘This is what happened in the past in a similar situation.’ There is no way to know for sure,” he cautions.

Leaks from within Trump’s circle indicate that he believes he will be convicted of attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in his upcoming trial, as Axios reports. He fully expects a DC jury will find him guilty of conspiring to defraud the American people on four charges that carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, a verdict which would send his attempt to retake the White House into complete shambles, even as he plans to attend every proceeding of the trial to prove that a corrupt system is seeking his destruction. In the Georgia elections interference case, Trump is pointing at DA Fani Willis’s relationship with the chief lawyer in the case, Nathan Wade, as evidence of corruption, undermining the charges against him as Wade is being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in “this scam for her lover.” Willis admits to the relationship and says there are no grounds to dismiss the case or remove her from the prosecution.

Bocha Blue in a Palmer Report post says, “Trump wants to be seen as a Viking god, bold and proud in the spirit of an Achilles, never feeling fear. But that’s wrong. No Achilles’ heel for him. Donald Trump is lying. He’s lying to you, he’s lying to me. He’s lying to himself. Donald Trump is one of the most fearful little humans on the planet. He fears the unknown; he fears the known. He fears anything that will take away his pride, money or ability to win elections. And he is very scared of being found guilty in one of his criminal cases. To that, I say, of course he will be found guilty, but apparently, this is just making its way into Donald Trump’s consciousness, and it’s causing him a great deal of fear.”

It happened at the Colorado Republican primary debate, a long night under the hot lights with nine candidates, appearing before a large, attentive crowd eager to hear their spiels. All evening they had been asked to answer questions individually, but out of the crowd came a question addressed to the lot of them…“How many of you have been arrested? Let’s see a show of hands.” Six hands shot into the air…Lauren Low-Rent Boebert being one of those…six out of nine in the Wild New West! So, how did the crowd react? “Yeahhhhh!!!!,” accompanied by wild applause…their kind of folks, politicians proud of their arrests! Bocha Blue says, “Stupidity lives everywhere, even in the beauty of the sweeping mountains. These people are the party who says they ‘back the blue.’ This is the supposed party of law and order. Take a good look at ’em…you may not be able to for long, as they head for Whig territory. Six in nine! Boebert humiliated herself by not even making it into the top three in the straw poll. We should be grateful, perhaps, that it was not ALL of them with raised hands.” Reminds one of folkie Arlo Guthrie’s recording of ‘Alice’s Restaruant,’ where he tells of reporting for the military draft after being arrested earlier for dumping garbage for the restaurant. One of the sergeants asks him if he had ever been arrested and if he had gone to court, both answers being in the positive, which required him to go sit on The Group W bench, along with others who may not be moral enough to be in the Army. When the ‘meanest guy of all’ asks him, “Kid, whad’ya get?” And upon answering, “I didn’t get nothing. I had to pay $50 and pick up the garbage.” When the Group W bunch found he had been arrested for littering, they all moved away from him until he added, “And creating a nuisance,” bringing them all back to shake his hand while having a great time sitting on their bench.

Bad news for Trump in the action he filed in the UK over the ‘Steele dossier,’ which contained allegations that he took part in “perverted” sex acts and gave bribes to Russian officials – the High Court judge dismissed the case he brought against Orbis Business Intelligence, founded by MI6 officer, Christopher Steele. Steele was the author of the dossier which contained the allegations that Trump had been “compromised” by FSB, the Russian security service, at which time The Don reportedly participated in “sex parties” in St. Petersburg, and consorted with prostitutes in Moscow. In her judgement, Mrs. Justice Karen Steyn said, “In my view, there are no compelling reasons to allow the claim to proceed to trial in circumstances where, whatever the merits of the allegation that the personal data are inaccurate may be, the claim for compensation and/or damage…is bound to fail. In reality, the claimant is seeking court findings to vindicate his reputation in circumstances where he has not been able to formulate any viable remedy which he would have a real prospect of obtaining, or which would itself be of any utility; and having chosen  to allow so many years to elapse – without any attempt to vindicate his reputation in this jurisdiction – since he was first made aware of the dossier, including the memorandum, on 6 January 2017.”

Orbis produced the dozen memos in the dossier in 2016, but Trump was sworn in as president in 2017 when material was then published by BuzzFeed. During the court hearing, Antony White KC, for the consultancy, said the case had been brought to pursue a “vendetta” against Orbis and the former MI6 officer, saying,“The claimant has a deep and intense animus against Mr. Steele and Orbis, which is reflected in numerous vituperative public statements which he has made since it was made public by BuzzFeed. Mr. Trump has a long history of repeatedly bringing frivolous, meritless and vexatious claims for the purpose of vexing and harassing perceived enemies and others against whom he bears a grudge.” The charges of Trump/Russia collusion in the dossier were accorded some plausibility based on Steele’s reputation, but have been discredited over the years, with Steele himself saying the claims were unverified tips that warranted further investigation, and not for release to the public, but he stands by the work, the sources, and the professionalism applied. Back to you, Donny!

Narcissism or dementia…you decide! Trump posted a question on his Truth Social site, along with a photo of half his face spliced with a photo of Elvis Presley, with the query, “For so many years, people have been saying that Elvis and I look alike. Now that this pic has been going all over the place, what do you think?” Maybe the new Taylor Swift competition brought this on; obviously, she needs to start paying attention! His previous attempts to liken himself to Nelson Mandela, Abraham Lincoln and the Mona Lisa got him nowhere, so why not try Elvis? Or as one responder suggested, “Fat Elvis!” Close enough for you, Donnyboy? Ben Meiselas of Meidas Touch said that Trump’s recent behavior “has people finally seeing just how delusional, cognitively impaired, and utterly weird Trump’s campaign is.” President Biden remarks, “This is the weirdest campaign I’ve ever been engaged in,” and rival Nikki Haley has used the former prez’s prominent public blunders to ramp up her attacks on his cognitive abilities.

Curmudgeon, political writer and painter, Robert Harrington, who lives in England, posts on the Palmer Report that a scene in the 1987 Charles Bukowski movie, ‘Barfly,’ has the male lead hooting with laughter, as the female lead from the next room asks him, “What is it?” His answer, as he listens to a drunken couple’s brawling in the next room, “It’s hatred, the only thing that lasts.” Harrington is not so sure about that, but says it has staying power and motivating power, which drew him into political writing. He calls Eisenhower the last decent Republican president, and only had pity for Nixon, never noticing Ford. He vaguely disliked the Reagan/Bush duo, with George W’s martial rhetoric mildly repellant. But, hate for Trump is real, visceral, with abhorrent loathing as for a worst enemy, with his having transformed the mother country into a place of strife and division. As a Never-Trumper he has a core hatred. He quotes Brian Beutler of Substack’s ‘Off Message’ who says, “Never-Trumpers comprise a majority of the country. It suggests that anti-Trumpism is the most powerful force in American politics, and it husbanded well [it will make] an insurmountable obstacle to his hold on power.” Harrington believes this hate guarantees our win against Trump, a huge motivator to get voters to the polls, resulting in a crushing, unprecedented defeat. He always ends his posts with, “And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.”

Trump continues to claim that the Constitution gives him the right to do as he chooses as president, and even as not-president, it seems. But he probably is confusing Article 2 with Article 8, which says once a man is elected president he is immune from prosecution for anything he did before, during and after the term is up, as long as his name is Trump. Plus, Article 9 says that this former president, if he so chooses, has the ability to return, re-write the Constitution and make himself King of the USA. Dream on, Donnyboy! Those articles don’t exist…yet!

Musician, song-writer and poet, Patti Smith says, “In art and dream you may proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth.” So, let’s don our combat sneakers and join Robert Harrington to rid our country of this divisive enemy of democracy to restore our balance and safety! And as author Kurt Vonnegut advised, “And how should we behave during this Apocalypse? We should be unusually kind to one another, certainly. But we should stop being so serious. Jokes help a lot. And get a dog, if you don’t already have one.”