As America Burns: Marco Rubio and The Death Throes of the Trump Administration

Washington has started to burn.

How much damage Trump will do to America, and to the world at large, as his presidency goes up in flames is an open issue, but as I’ve written in the past (See: Really Bad Things Are Going To Happen Now), this is going to be very, very bad, and quite possibly a very lengthy process as well.

Many disasters have impacted Trump and America this week. The utter fraud that was the Trump Foundation is being shut down. Trump is being investigated for the serious financial improprieties of the Trump inauguration committee. A Federal judge took former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn sternly to task for his betrayal of America. Trump attorney Michael Cohen has implicated Trump in multiple felonies designed to defraud America. Russian spy Maria Butina entered into a cooperation agreement with the US government. Paul Ryan spent the week living in an alternative reality while patting himself on the back for what a tremendous job he’d done the past two years helping Trump destroy America (See: The Self-Delusion of Paul Ryan). The stock market is in a free fall, with the NASDAQ today closing in its first bear market since the Great Recession, a drop of 21.9% from its peak on August 29, 2018. The Executive Branch is drowning in staff vacancies at the highest levels. But let’s just focus on some of what has happened over just the past couple of days: Continue Reading >>

The Dangers of Normalization and the Failures of the American Press

The American press often gives us bullshit. Not false news… just lacking the depth, backbone and perspective necessary to provide competent coverage. And in the process, they allow the President to normalize bad behavior.

Surrounded by the absurd and the macabre, we have permitted ourselves to seemingly accept the surreal as normal. America has crossed over into the Twilight Zone. Our politicians are broken. Our mainstream news media is broken. And our moral compass is broken. We’ve allowed Donald Trump, and the cult following him, to normalize terrible things in horrible ways and with dreadful consequences.

Over the past week, as the President has been further implicated by his own Department of Justice in serious felonies related to attempts to defraud and deceive the American people during his 2016 presidential campaign, we’ve watched respected political pundits and journalists on major TV networks and newspapers speculate on when such conduct will finally warrant consideration of impeachment. Continue Reading >>