Archive for the Trump Category

Tearing Down The East Wing; Tearing Down Western Mores; Tearing Down MAGA.  Trump Is The Swamp.  Oh, And Happy Armistice Day! (November 10, 2025)

Posted in MAGA, Trump on November 10, 2025 by e-commentary.org

. . .

J          “Tear down the East Wing, tear down Western Mores.”

K          “As I firmly contend, the ‘Symptom’ of the ‘Problem’ has become a ‘Big Problem’ for the country and the planet.  I note to adherents and disciples of the Problem that their candidates and actual policies are the Problem that spawned our current circumstances.  They look dumbfounded because the observation finds them dumb to their predicament.”

. . .

J          “Starve the populace.  That is a nice touch going into the giving of thanks and the mass for a Big Thinker.  Without bread, the circus may not suffice.”

K          “After the election, I noted to some folks that his election delayed the revolution for perhaps four years.  Now I wonder if he will elect to trigger it within the next four weeks.”

. . .

K          “The few positive aspects of MAGA – reigning in the wars, respect for the First Amendment, regard for civil rights, responsible spending on America and Americans – have been discarded by Trump.  Trump is the Swamp.”

J          “Trump is the Swamp.  Some of the MAGAts are angry and just may manifest their restiveness in restfulness.”

. . .

J          “Here be dragons.”

. . .

[See the e-commentary at Social Security . . . In (Out of) The Hands Of The Kleptocrats (February 3, 2024) and Russia Beat The U.S.  Europe[an Union] Wants To Do The European Thing And Go To War.  Let Them.  On Their Own Dime/Euro.  Trump Wants To Blow Up The Mideast.  Oh, And Happy Saint Patrick’s Day! (March 17, 2025).]

Bumper stickers of the week:

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”  Philip K. Dick

Trump is the Swamp

Was “Flip Flop” Once A Four Letter Word? Distract, Diffuse, Demoralize, Delay, Deny And Defy (September 29, 2025)

Posted in Trump on September 29, 2025 by e-commentary.org

. . .

J          “He knows who owns him.  He is dancing accordingly.  When he is told to ‘flip,’ he flips; when he is told to ‘flop,’ he flops.”

K          “Should he really be seen as a marionette who is only responding to strings.”

. . . 

K          “Despite the smoke screens, he is committed to continuing the war in the Ukraine, to expanding the war in the Middle East and to starting a war in Venezuela over oil.”

J          “The confusion is calculated and overwhelms and enervates the opposition.”

. . .

J          “Distract, diffuse, demoralize, delay, deny and defy.”

. . .

Bumper sticker of the week:

Distract, diffuse, demoralize, delay, deny and defy

The War President Forfeits Nobel Peace Prize During Nobel Season.  Oh, And Happy Patriot Day! (September 8, 2025)

Posted in Nobel Prize, Peace Prize Nobel, Trump, War on September 8, 2025 by e-commentary.org

. . .

K          “I have been so reluctantly tolerant of and conditionally apologetic for him in a desperate move to believe that someone can do something.  The Department of War.  He could not possibly come up with a more bone-headed and regressive name and notion.”

J          “He could and will come up with more bone-headed and regressive names and notions.  That is what he does. That is all he can do.”

. . .

K          “I hope the Swedes are not sycophantic.”

J          “Why would they not be?  They too want access to power.”

. . .

[See the e-commentary at Department Of War . . . Or Defense . . . Or Offense?  Oh, And Happy Peace Day! (September 16, 2019) and Joint Base State-War (JBS-W) (April 25, 2022).]

Bumper sticker of the week:

Give war a chance

Better The Surgeon’s Scalpel Than The Meat Cleaver? (July 21, 2025)

Posted in Bureaucracy, DOGE, Trump on July 21, 2025 by e-commentary.org

. . .

K          “The meat cleaver experiment failed.”

J          “The gross medical and political malpractice committed on the body politic is ending up costing the country in money and lost opportunity far more than may have been saved.”

. . .

J          “Wielding a chain saw was always a puerile and petty stunt by a few punks.”

K          “I still maintain that we need a stout paring knife.”

. . .

[See the e-commentary at Trump:  MBA Not MPP:  Meat Cleaver Versus Surgeon’s Scalpel (March 3, 2025).]

Your One Word Mid-Year Assessment (June 30, 2025)

Posted in Trump on June 30, 2025 by e-commentary.org

. . .

K          “Abysmal.”

J          “Bleak.”

. . .

K          “Disgusting.”

J          “Criminal.”

. . .

World War III.  Oh, And Happy “I Have A Bad Feeling About This” Day!  Oh, And Happy Late Solstice! (June 23, 2025)

Posted in Trump, World War III on June 23, 2025 by e-commentary.org

. . .

K          “We are in it.”

J          “Full tilt boogie.”

. . .

Bumper stickers of the week:

“I Have A Bad Feeling About This”  Obi-wan Kenobi

MAGA is dead.  RI . . . P?

The Donny And Elon Show.  Oh, And Happy Friday The 13th! (June 9, 2025)

Posted in Politics, Trump on June 9, 2025 by e-commentary.org

. . .

K          “Think it is staged.”

J          “Somewhat.  But neither of them are capable of staying on script.”

. . .

K          “Trump dons a red Make America Great Again hat while Musk sports a black Occupy Mars t-shirt.”

J          “King Trump’s crown is an ordinary baseball hat and Minstrel Muskrat’s regal attire is a t-shirt.  They call it ‘cosplay’ because they are play acting their roles in their costumes.”

. . .

J          “All the world is a stage that is now dominated by two stooges.  One is the world’s most powerful man.  The other is the world’s richest man.  America is all about power and money.”

K          “Keep in mind the fundamental truth.  The Problem for decades was overlooked or disregarded.  There is no democracy.  Trump is not an assault on something that does not exist.  Trump is the Symptom of the staggering Problem who has metastasized into another competing Problem.  The last election was between Systemic Problem versus Trump Problem.  Both candidates were stooges in his and her own way.” 

. . .

K          “The show must go on.”

J          “It must not necessarily go on, but it is going to go on.”

. . .

Bumper stickers of the week:

“You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.”  Robert A. Heinlein

“For what else is the life of man but a kind of play in which men in various costumes perform until the director motions them off the stage.”  Erasmus, The Praise of Folly (1511).

No Kings

Trump:  MBA Not MPP:  Meat Cleaver Versus Surgeon’s Scalpel (March 3, 2025)

Posted in Bureaucracy, DOGE, Schooling, Trump on March 3, 2025 by e-commentary.org

. . .

K          “He is fundamentally a businessman not a politician.  He has never participated in the PTA or a presided as a precinct chair.  He is MBA not MPP.  That is a burden and a benefit.”

J          “He is fundamentally a showman not a statesman.  A government is not a show or a business.  There are no profit and loss statements.  There are people and lives.”

. . .

K          “You could get a Ph.D. in public policy by chanting that change must be undertaken with a scalpel not a meat cleaver.  However, there are some times when a meat cleaver may be needed.”

J          “Meat cleavers beget messes.  You need surgery not butchery.”

. . .

K          “Their manner of canning employees lacks good manners and is both brutal and brutish.”

J          “So it should end?”

. . .

K          “Trump is crass and coarse and often impolite and impolitic, yet he promised to be a disrupter and he is fulfilling his promise to disrupt.”

J          “You do not need a Ph.D. in economics to recognize that the lost consumption of all the fired employees and the additional reluctance of others to consume in a time of uncertainty will wallop the economy.  Just wait until his cherished barometer of success – the stock market – plunges precipitously.”

K          “For many compounding reasons, the stock market will drop precipitously.  The economic and social disruption is wrenching and painful, yet some disruption is necessary to disrupt the abnormal norm and reset the system.”

. . .

J          “Wielding a chain saw is puerile and petty.”

K          “How about a paring knife?  A stout paring knife?”

. . .

[See “The Turnaround” by Robert Gore in “Straight Line Logic” dated March 1, 2025.]

[See the e-commentary at “Titters” v. “Self-Unemployed” (September 1, 2014) and Government Bureaucracy 101 (September 26, 2016).]

Bumper sticker of the week:

“It is the classic fallacy of our time that a moron run through a university and decorated with a Ph.D. will thereby cease to be a moron.”  H. L. Mencken

Social Security . . . In (Out of) The Hands Of The Kleptocrats (February 3, 2024)

Posted in Social Security, Trump on February 3, 2025 by e-commentary.org

. . .

J          “Here is the secret plan.  Trump will eliminate Social Security and then keep his campaign promise and not tax Social Security payments.”

K          “That may happen.  I still say the system will implode two weeks before I file to participate.” 

. . .

K          “We as a country must select either guns or butter.  Those in power will select guns.  We the powerless need to demand butter.  I have said before that the only way to save the American Experiment is to dispense with the American Empire.”

J          “How about a fifty percent reduction in defense spending?”

K          “I am in one hundred percent agreement.”

. . .

J          “There should be a federal law that no one with a net worth of over four million dollars is allowed to opine in any way or vote on Social Security.”

K          “But for the First Amendment concerns and a conviction that we have too many federal laws already, I am in agreement.”

. . .

K          “Someone noted that of the ten states where the citizens rely exclusively or primarily on Social Security for their retirement, eight or nine are Red States.”

J          “The MAGA army is now expendable.  They will be decommissioned and disbanded and discarded.”

. . .      

K          “Trump may be serious about the no tax thing.  If the promised payments continue, I could tolerate continued taxation even though it violates the original intent of the legislation.”

J          “Stay tuned.”

. . .

[See the e-commentary at Social (In)Security And The C.P.I. (May 29, 2017), Pensions and Other Entitlements: Pt. 2 (April 28, 2008), Pensions and Other Entitlements: Pt. 1 (April 14, 2008) and Social Insecurity? (April 7, 2008).]

Bumper sticker of the week:

Social Security?

Le Big Day.  Oh, And Happy MLK Day! (January 20, 2025)

Posted in Presidency, Trump on January 20, 2025 by e-commentary.org

. . .

J          “The use of Executive Orders seems akin to a dog marking its territory.  With great consequence.”

K          “Trump marked his territory and remarked what Biden had unmarked.  Biden had marked his territory and unmarked what Trump had marked.  You can mark their words.”

J         “It is a dog-mark-dog world.”

. . .

K          “We may each hear what we want to hear.  I did hear him celebrating freedom of speech and the rule of law and the possibility of peace sprinkled among some of the other dross and red meat he announced.”

J          “He has not left the campaign trail.  His screed was a full contact frontal ‘shock and awe’ assault on the status quo.”

. . .

J          “Not much about China.  China is the challenge.  China will define his administration.”

K          “You can say that again.”

J          “Not much about China.  China is the challenge.  China will define his administration.”

. . .

J          “The DEI movement was problematic and often unfairly discriminatory in practice.  However, the wholesale attack and dismantling of the programs is too wrenching.  Public and private programs must provide for everyone’s participation in society.”

K          “His broad attacks on LGBTQ+ concerns are too sweeping.  Someone needs to find the reasonable common ground.”

J          “Americans of all stripes believe they can repudiate both physics and biology when reality is inconvenient or intrusive.  Trump and I – imagine that – and you – imagine that – accept biology and recognize that biological men and women are different when they walk out on the playing field, the pitch and the court.  However, some courts demand to repudiate this reality.”     

. . .

K          “I am pleased he kept his word and commuted and pardoned the January 6 defendants.  I have trouble with the release of those who had committed violent acts and/or destroyed property.  However, with time it is clear that the entire undertaking was a grand cynical entrapment by the Democrats.  Convictions are tossed out when the prosecution is tainted.  The pardons are in effect a repudiation and an indictment of the entire Democratic political and legal machine.  Biden’s pardon of the J6 Committee is a clear acknowledgment that the members and its henchman were involved in a dishonest and fraudulent enterprise.”

J          “Trump’s pardons are disgusting.  There is no law.  Biden’s pardons were necessary and appropriate.”

K          “Is there even one person in America who has the knowledge and the wisdom and the perspective and the maturity and the independence to chronicle the events of J6 honestly and objectively?  Future historians will write whatever is necessary to obtain tenure.”

J          “If there is tenure.”

. . .

K          “What about Biden’s pardon of the other members of the Biden crime family?  If they accept the pardon, they are admitting culpability.  Back to the books for a read of Burdick v. United States, 235 U.S. 79 (1915).”

J          “Trump has made it clear that the Biden family would have been unfairly pursued and prosecuted.”

K          “On the basis of the available public information, there is no doubt that the government could have secured criminal indictments against each one of the Bidens.”

J          “Just a political vendetta.”

K          “Someone has argued for some time that the Lawfare would circle around.”

. . .

J          “It is and will always be Denali.”

K          “Yup.”

J          “Denali, Alaska has a nice ring and subtle cadence.  As I recall, ‘Denali’ is a Koyukon Athabascan word that means ‘big’ or ‘tall’ and ‘Alaska’ means ‘Mainland’ or ‘Greatland’ in some dialects.  Big, Great.  They pair well.”

K          “Denali, Alaska is also a pleasing six-word memoir.”

. . .

J          “Here be dragons.”

. . .

[See the e-commentary at Cheney/Bush v. Trumpi:  Crime Families Battling On The Big Stage (August 22, 2022) and Let Lawfare Continue!  And Let War With Russian Escalate! (June 3, 2024).]

Bumper stickers of the week:

“We will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars that we end and, perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into. My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier.  That’s what I want to be, a peacemaker and a unifier.”  Donald Trump, Inaugural Address.

“Hope springs eternal in the human breast.”  Alexander Pope

Here be dragons