Posters and Chants Against Depravity
June 21, 2018 at 7:37 pm | Posted in Abuse of Office, Climate change, Conceited, Crime and punishment, Disinformation, Dysfunctional Politics, Enemies of Freedom, Enemies of Planet Earth, Fairness, Global warming, Presidential election | Leave a commentTags: concentration camp, disloyalty, Fox and Friends, Fox News, human rights, inadvertant agent of a foreign government, Jeff Sessions, mistreatment of children, President Chump, Putin, Rupert Murdoch, Sean Hannity, Trump, Un-American, un-Constitutional
President Trump = President Chump
Dump President Chump
No More Concentration Camps for Kids
Trump
Made America Ashamed Again
Trump the Chump
Toxic for America
Fox News
Fux News
Murdoch of Mordor
Murders the News
Fox and Fiends
Font of Fake News
Hannity Is Insanity
Disloyal Donald
Putin’s point-man in the White House
Trump is Cruel and Unusual
Punishment for the United States
Trump is Evil
President Chump Undermines America
President Chump
Inadvertent Agent of a Hostile Government
The Soviets had a name for people like Chump:
Useful Idiot!
Rupert Murdoch
America’s Most Toxic Immigrant
These slogans were all created by thepoliblog.WordPress.com,
who hereby declares them to be in the public domain.
Canada, Mexico, and NAFTA
June 7, 2018 at 6:51 pm | Posted in Abuse of Office, Conceited, Disinformation, Fairness | Leave a commentTags: Canada, fair trade, free trade, Mexico, NAFTA, President Chump, Trump
In the San Juan de Dios Market in Guadalajara, Jalisco, MEXICO. Photo by Christian Frausto Bernal (Tepic, Nayarit, MEXICO), on 26 June 2006.
It is possible to preserve NAFTA in effect, if not in name, despite Trump’s attacks and despite his divide-and-conquer tactics.
President Chump is a more accurate terminology than President Trump, so that is what he will be called in what follows.
To preserve NAFTA in effect, the most important thing is to forestall President Chump’s divide-and-conquer tactic.
Chump prefers one-on-one negociations, because in one-on-one negociations he is better able to bully and to lie.
Canada and Mexico should agree beforehand that in all negociations on trade with the US, their positions will be coordinated, even during negociations between the US and only one of those countries.
Before any further trade negotiations with the US, Canada and Mexico should agree on an initial combined list of features that they want to have in their agreements with the US. They should jointly announce those initial goals, while stressing their understanding that the list may be revised as a result of the negotiations with the US.
They should then announce that even during any one-on-one negotiations with the US, the currently-negociating non-US negotiator will accept only what is also accepted by the not-currently-negotiating non-US negotiator. It should be explicitly announced that the two countries will always synchronize their agreements with the US, much as a person’s smart phone and computer are often kept synchronized even when each is used separately.
Let A and B be abbreviations for the two non-US negotiators.
During all trade negotiations with the US, A should insist that it will accept only changes that are also accepted in side-discussions between A and B, even if that forces a prior agreement between B and the US to be updated before A‘s negotiations with the US can continue.
Britain and the EU can similarly defeat Chump’s divide-and-conquer attempts in negotiations with with them.
At all times, keep in mind that Chump wants to bully you, that he is psychopathic liar, famous for falsely promising whatever his target wants to hear, and that divide-and-conquer helps him to get away with both bullying and with lying.
To counter a would-be-bully, remind him of his inadequacies and insecurities. Do so at every opportunity.
Practice, so that whenever you shake Chump’s hand, you have grip of steel. With his small hands, Chump won’t be able to exert as much force. The goal is to make his orange face turn red, and then white.
Ask Chump whether he admires his brother, and wants to follow in his brother’s footsteps. (On second thought, research that topic before deciding whether to ask those questions. But there are other ways of keeping him off balance.)
By limiting the damage that flea-brained Chump can do to international trade, you will be doing a great service to the US and to the world, as well as to your own country.
“Flea-brained” is a precise description in Chump’s case, because a flea hops first here, then there, and never thinks carefully before the next hop.
Trump Has Admitted His Guilt
June 1, 2018 at 2:50 pm | Posted in Crime and punishment, Enemies of Freedom, Abuse of Office, Presidential election, Disinformation | Leave a commentTags: 2016 Presidential election, Jeff Sessions, Paul Waldman, President Chump, President Trump, Putin, Washington Post
Men in Bramhall stocks, Bramhall, England, 1900, unknown photographer.
Trump has admitted his guilt, without realizing that he has done so.
This point was made recently by Paul Waldman, in an article in the Washington Post.
Quoting from that aricle, “According to a January New York Times story, when Sessions decided to recuse himself, “the president erupted in anger in front of numerous White House officials, saying he needed his attorney general to protect him.” (Emphasis added.)
There would be no need for the Attorney General to protect Trump from the investigation of Putin’s interference in the the Presidential election in 2016, if Trump had not done something illegal in connection with that election.
The Attorney General’s job is to protect the American people from crime, not to protect the President – or anyone else – from the consequences of illegal actions.
About the nature of Trump’s crime, we know only that it pertains to Putin’s interference in the Presidential election in 2016. That is the topic that always presses Trump’s buttons, and elicits his most feverishly desparate reactions.
Further evidence of Trump’s knowledge of his own guilt occured in Trump’s meeting with Sessions in March 2017. According to Paul Waldman’s article, “[Trump’s] grievance was with Mr. Sessions: The president objected to [Session’s] decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. Mr. Trump, who had told aides that he needed a loyalist overseeing the inquiry, berated Mr. Sessions and told him he should reverse his decision, an unusual and potentially inappropriate request.” Why would Trump need “a loyalist overseeing the inquiry”, if he wasn’t scared about some fact connected to this particular topic?
See also the previous post on this blog.
I know it won’t happen, but for such a hypocrite I cannot resist: “Lock him up!”
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Trump Is Guilty
May 4, 2018 at 7:38 am | Posted in Abuse of Office, Conceited, Crime and punishment, Disinformation, Dysfunctional Politics, Enemies of Freedom, Presidential election | 1 CommentTags: legitimacy of the United States government, New York Times, Putin, Robert Mueller, Trump
Old gavel and court minutes displayed at the Minnesota Judicial Center, photographed by Jonathunder, 2008-04-17.
Trump is guilty of something that causes him to frantically impede the investigation of Putin’s interference in the American election in 2016.
Trump is so guilty, that he opposes an investigation that every patriotic American would want to succeed, because the legitimacy of elections underlies the legitimacy of the American government.
Trump is so guilty, that he seeks to terminate the only activity that would exonererate him if he wasn’t guilty.
Trump is so guilty, that he seeks to terminate the only activity that would remove the cloud on his legitimacy.
For a summary of the issues, see the New York Times article on Robert Mueller’s questions to Trump.
Robert S. Mueller, III, director of the FBI from 2001 to 2013
A Fallacy About Guns
March 2, 2018 at 1:52 pm | Posted in Dysfunctional Politics | Leave a commentTags: Marc A. Thiessen, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Mark Spies, New Yorker magazine, Nikolas Cruz, Parkland school shooting, Stephen Willeford, Sutherland Springs church shooting, Washington Post
In a recent opinion piece in the Washington Post, Marc A. Thiessen recounted an incident in which a private citizen, Stephen Willeford, used his own AR-15 to interrupt Devin Patrick Kelley from continuing a mass shooting at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland, Texas, on November 15, 2017.
The AR-15 is the same type of assault rifle that Nikolas Cruz used to massacre students and teachers at the at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on February 14, 2018.
Thiessen uses the incident in Sutherland to argue that it would be perverse to conclude from the incident in Parkland – and from the many other incidents – that access to assault weapons should be restricted.
Thiessen’s argument rests upon a fallacy of omission. He does not mention that Willeford’s gun-assisted intervention would not have been necessary if Kelley had not had access to an assault weapon.
In fact, that would have been a better solution, because it would not have relied on the rare circumstance that a neighbor had an assault weapon, and was at home at the time, and was willing to engage the shooter.
Looking for the best solution to a problem is mathematically equivalent to trying to identify the tallest peak in a region that hosts many hills and mountains.
A mathematician, a scientist, or an engineer would say that Thiessen identified what was merely a local maximum, but didn’t notice the global maximum nearby.
Thiessen spotted the crest of one of several foothills, but failed to notice the mountain that towered in their midst.
To see more clearly why Thiessen’s argument is incorrect, imagine his argument being applied to cars. Someone in a car can pursue a criminal who used a car to commit a crime. Applied to cars, Thiessen’s logic would imply that driving a car should be unrestricted, and shouldn’t require a license.
In fact, the issues in gun control are closely analogous to those in automotive and aeronautical control:
As was noted in a previous blog, and as has recently been noted by others, the argument for restricting acess to assault weapons is the same as the argument for requiring a license for driving an automobile, and for requiring a more restrictive licence for driving 18-wheelers, and for requiring a still more restrictive license for piloting an aircraft.
Freedom to travel within the United States does not mean unrestricted freedom to travel by driving a car, nor by driving a truck, nor by piloting an aircraft. It also does not mean that access to particular locations cannot be restricted to only particular people.
Analogous statements should apply to guns.
A recent very enlightening article by Mike Spies in the New Yorker magazine describes how we started from a reasonable, rational approach to gun laws, that had lasted for at least a century, and how the discussion was perverted into the present frenzied, dysfunctional tug-of-war.
Gun laws today
Unpatriotic Devin Nunes, Unpatriotic Donald Trump
February 28, 2018 at 9:41 am | Posted in Abuse of Office, Disinformation, Dysfunctional Politics, Enemies of Freedom | Leave a commentTags: Devin Nunes, Donald Trump, Paul Ryan, Ruth Marcus, Vladimir Putin
Devin Nunes, U.S. Representative from California
Every loyal American would want the investigation of Putin’s interference in the 1916 election to get to the bottom of what Putin’s minions did, and how they did it. Every loyal American would want to refute Putin’s lies, and would want America to have the information it needs to craft defenses against Putin’s future attempts, both on this country and on its allies.
It is iron-clad logic, a simple syllogism: if every loyal American would want those things, then any American who obstructs those investigations and defenses is not a loyal American.
Devin Nunes is not a loyal American.
Donald Trump is not a loyal American.
Devin Nunes is not a patriotic American.
Donald Trump is not a patrotic American.
Devin Nunes is inadvertantly an agent of Vladimir Putin.
Donald Trump is inadvertantly an agent of Vladimir Putin.
Neither should ever have had access to classified information.
Neither should have future access to classified information.
Trump’s primary loyalty is to himself and to his “brand” – not to America, not to freedom, not to fairness, not to honest elections.
There are indications that the same is true of Devin Nunes.
Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution begins, “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, …”
The writers of the Constitution never anticipated a President who favored an opponent of the United States.
Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump meet at the 2017 G-20 Hamburg Summit. Photo by http://www.kremlin.ru.
What about Paul Ryan?
Donald Trump shaking hands with Speaker of the House Paul Ryan at his February 28, 2017 address to a joint session of Congress.
Surely Paul Ryan had some sense of Devin Nunes’ personality and character before appointing him to the House Intelligence Committee.
Why then did Paul Ryan appoint Nunes as Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee?
Why did Paul Ryan even allow Nunes to be on that Committee?
Paul, please explain to the American people why you appointed Nunes as Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
Paul, now that you cannot miss seeing that you introduced a worm into the apple, what are you going to do about it? Are you going to re-assign Nunes?
Paul, are you, too, not a loyal American?
Paul, are you, too, inadvertantly an agent of Putin?
Paul, where are your primary loyalties? They seem to be to the Republican Party in its current debased form, not to America, not to freedom, not to fairness, not to honest elections.
As noted by Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post:
“Real patriotism would be not to denounce the “Russia hoax” but to insist that Congress — and for that matter, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III — get to the bottom of what happened in the 2016 election and, even more imperative, that the United States strengthen its defenses to prevent future meddling.”
#hashtagDonaldTrump
July 7, 2017 at 8:08 pm | Posted in Abuse of Office, Climate change, Conceited, Disinformation, Enemies of Freedom, Enemies of Planet Earth, Presidential election | Leave a commentTags: Charles Krauthammer, Donald Trump, Eugene Robinson, George Will, Joe Scarborough, John Baron, John Barron, John Miller, John Oliver, Kathleen Parker, Michael Gerson, Mika Brzezinski, Trump pretending to be other people praising Trump, Trump's impersonations
Artwork by Charles Raymond Macauley for the 1904 edition of The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. Publisher: New York Scott-Thaw
failing
lying
corrupt
fake
ignored
These are some of the adjectives that Trump tries to attach to the names of persons and organizations that he want to disparage.
He repeats these derogatory linkages relentlessly, trying to embed them into the public’s mind. After all, the one aspect of business that Trump has mastered is marketing.
Trump’s disparaging adjectives actually name his own deepest fears and guilty feelings about himself. They list his vulnerabilities.
That is why his menu of derogatory adjectives is so well-defined.
It is also the reason – besides marketing – why he uses them so obsessively.
Since these adjectives accurately describe Trump himself, it is easy to list what could become the most popular hashtags on Twitter. Here is such a list, expanded to include additional adjectives that accurately describe Trump, even though he does not habitually try to pin them on his enemies:
#failingDonaldTrump
#lyingDonaldTrump (see here )
#TrumpTowerOfLies
#corruptDonaldTrump
#fakeDonaldTrump (see here)
#ignoredDonaldTrump
#deceitfullDonaldTrump (see here and here)
#greedyDonaldTrump
#conartistDonaldTrump
#shallowDonaldTrump (see here)
#simplisticDonaldTrump
#ignorantDonaldTrump (see here)
#incompetentDonaldTrump
#inadequateDonaldTrump
#fragileDonaldTrump
#defectiveDonaldTrump (see here and here)
#unhingedDonaldTrump (see here)
#insaneDonaldTrump
#DonaldTrumpAtMar-a-Loco
#disastrousDonaldTrump (see here)
#dangerousbuffoonDonaldTrump (see here)
#PresidentChump (see here)
#AmericasMisfortuneDonaldTrump
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Who Should Squelch Lies and Trolls on Social Media?
June 30, 2017 at 8:25 pm | Posted in Disinformation, Enemies of Freedom, Presidential election | Leave a commentTags: Elizabeth Dwoskin, Facebook, fake news, harassment, lies, President Chump, social media, trolls, Trump, Twitter
John Bauer (1882-1918), artist, in 1915: “Look at them,” troll mother said. “Look at my sons! You won’t find more beautiful trolls on this side of the moon.”
By now you have read and seen the damage caused by the flood of misleading or harassing material on social media. Vulnerable teens have committed suicide, ordinary adults have become fearful and intimidated, fools have become enraged vigilantes, racists have infected those with weak mental immune systems, and President Chump has been elected.
Elizabeth Dwoskin’s recent article in the Washington Post describes how Twitter and Facebook and Google are trying to weaken the flood.
Colin Crowell is the Vice President of Policy at Twitter. Dwoskin’s article quoted something that Crowell had written recently, and it is worth discussing here, because it states a misunderstanding that is prevalent in all of the major social media companies.
Dwoskin wrote, ““We, as a company, should not be the arbiter of truth,” Crowell wrote earlier this month. He emphasized that Twitter users — “journalists, experts, and engaged citizens” — tweet side by side to correct public discourse every day in real time.”
The fallacy in Crowell’ argument is that the corrections are not really in real time. They are never soon enough. The misleading material reaches the public before any retractions or corrections appear, and sits out there, at least briefly unopposed.
Correcting misleading material is like closing the barn door after the horse has escaped.
Only a tiny fraction of those who see the misleading material will ever see the retraction or the correction.
Even among those who do see the correction, the first-seen version often makes the deepest impression.
The timing is such that most of the simple-minded and all of the malicious will propagate the uncorrected version.
Sociopathic liar that he is, Donald Trump regularly exploits this weakness of all of the media: public appearances, TV, the print media, and the social media.
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That the misleading material is seen first, and the stickiness of first impressions – those are inconvenient truths for the social media giants. The social media giants do not want the expense that would be required to pre-disinfect the stream that flows onto their platforms, nor do they relish the potential legal battles that any gate-keeper may face.
Good technical and legal solutions are not yet known. But at least the social media should drop the self-serving illusion that they can evade at least some gate-keeping role.
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Vandalism By Squirrels With Aroused Teeth
June 20, 2017 at 12:13 pm | Posted in Humans and other animals | Leave a commentTags: animal behavior, prairie dog, squirrel
Baby American red squirrel, photographed 20 June 2010 by Dan Leveille.
Every one feels aroused and lustful at times.
Sometimes one part of your body feels aroused, and sometimes another.
But have your teeth ever felt aroused?
No?
Well, that proves that you are not a tree squirrel.
Previous posts on this blog have wondered what drives tree squirrels into a frenzy of arboreal vandalism several times each year. The most recent of those posts was here.
At last, we have an answer.
A local citizen’s association sponsored a walk through a local park, with a park ranger to show us how to identify the type of each tree, and to explain its ecological role and prospects.
The ranger provided the long-sought explanation of what drove the tree squirrels to their periodic frenzies of vandalism.
The squirrels are not teething, but are driven by something close to teething.
A squirrel’s teeth would become over-long unless the squirrel gnawed on something hard.
Wikipedia confirms and expands upon this explanation: tree squirrel’s’ “characteristic gnawing trait also aids in maintaining sharp teeth, and because their teeth grow continuously, prevents [the] over-growth [of their teeth].”
In short, tree squirrels have aroused teeth!
Vandalism by tree squirrels isn’t confined to trees. Tree squirrels occasionally chew on electrical wiring, sometimes in the attic of a house, or strung between poles outside.
Their non-arboreal vandalism probably has the same explanation as their vandalism of trees.
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The topic of this blog posting obliges me to end it on a more personal note.
As is clear from my picture, I am a prairie dog.
Prairie Dog, the poliblog, 2012-06-23 .
While researching squirrel teeth for this post, a relevant Wikipedia article contained this bombshell: “Prairie dogs … are a type of ground squirrel …”
Imagine my astonishment! This post has been about my own distant cousins!
Of course, prairie dogs differ from tree squirrels in important ways. That is why I have been careful throughout to call them tree squirrels.
Now, about those differences.
Prairie dogs hate black-footed ferrets. Not only are those sharp toothed nasty- dispositioned fiends of the right size to creep into our burrows, they do not read advice columnists, and therefore have no sense of boundaries.
Roy, a ferret, photgraphed by Alfredo Gutiérrez .
A picture of a ferret’s teeth, photographed by Erlendaakre, 26 September 2008.
A ferret in the middle of a war dance jump. Photographed in 2005 by Inkrat773.
Tree squirrels do not have nightmares about black-footed ferrets.
On the other hand, prairie dogs are much bigger than tree squirrels, because our weight is not limited by the strength of the branches of the most numerous trees. So our paws are much bigger, too, and that is what enabled me to write this blog. With a small stubby strap-on on each front paw, two-pawed typing is possible on a keyboard. It is very similar to two-fingered typing by a person. With a strap-on, I can even swipe a touch screen. (A bare paw doesn’t work on a touch screen. A bare paw produces too complicated an imprint for a computer that is looking for the simple dot-like pattern of a finger tip.)
The paw of a tree squirrel is too narrow to serve as the stable mount for a strap-on.
Those are some of the differences.
But still, they are cousins.
So I have three wishes for them:
– teeth that are sharp and not over-long,
– the discernment to distinguish an insulated electrical wire from a twig,
– and the understanding that although random changes of direction do help when escaping from a pursuing animal, they do not help when evading a car.
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President Chump, You Cannot Distract Us
June 6, 2017 at 7:59 am | Posted in Abuse of Office, Conceited, Disinformation, Enemies of Freedom | 1 CommentTags: Emmanuel Macron, leak, Leaker in Chief, Mar-a-Lago, Mar-a-Leako, President Chump, security risk, Trump
Orangutans can use objects in creative ways. Photo taken by Postdif from Wikipedia, at the Philadelphia Zoo on 8 May 2010.
To President Chump –
When others point out inconvenient facts about you, one of your favorite tactics is to change the subject. You deliberately do something attention-grabbing, to distract the public’s attention away from the inconvenient facts.
When there are questions about the connections of you and your gang to Putin’s regime, you squawk instead about how those inconvenient facts became widely known. You squawk about leaks – you, who said “I love Wikileaks” during the campaign, when leaks had been crafted to harm your opponent, just like the more recent “leaks” that were crafted to harm Emmanuel Macron‘s campaign for the Presidency of France.
That doesn’t work any more. We are on to you.
Speakers and posters at the March for Truth on June 3 said so, loud and clear.
Every morning, you will wake up to us asking again about your taxes.
You will wake up to us asking again about your conflicts of interest.
You will wake up to us asking again about your loyalty.
You will wake up to us asking again about whether you are a security risk – you, the first US President ever to have been called The Leaker in Chief. (Yes, that was one of the posters at the March for Truth.)
Perhaps Mar-a-Lago should be renamed Mar-a-Leako.
The March for Truth on June 3, 2017, in Portland, Oregon, which was one of its many cities. Photographed by ‘Another Believer’.
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