Aquarian Weekly
10/5/16

REALITY CHECK

James Campion

THE JOKE’S OVER
Donald J. Trump – Myth Buster Busted

The concept of the Donald J. Trump run for presidency remains the same today as it did the day before his epic fail during the first of the scheduled three presidential debates this past week: He is still the political grenade that has been celebrated in this space since last September when it became almost certain that he would have an impact on the 2016 race. His candidacy is still very much needed to shake the foundation of an irritatingly stagnant, systemically biased, and mostly broken political landscape that allows for creatures like Trump to emerge. But after what I witnessed for over 90 minutes on September 26, the idea that somehow this outsider business mogul cum reality TV star could actually be a viable chief executive of the largest economy and most powerful military on planet earth is kaput.

I am writing this for my well-informed, educated, and politically savvy friends, family and colleagues, who are Trump supporters, who have made salient arguments for his candidacy for months now. Those who are not the deplorable; you know, racist goobers, who think the Chinese, Mexicans and Muslims are stealing their jobs and their country is ruined by darkies and think pinching women’s asses and calling someone a Negro is their God-given right and that gays are going to hell and that the gun is a proper substitute for their penises can stop reading now – if, in fact, you do read.

Those 90 minutes in front of a record 84 million viewers has eradicated any and all plausible reasons why Trump could govern anything at any time with even the remotest efficiency, never mind be president. And this does not mean he is disqualified. Not as long as our list of presidents include Andrew Jackson or James Buchanan or Richard Nixon, but as debates will do, and should do, the veil as been lifted on this particular canard.

This was the political equivalent of Milli Vanilli.

Anyone under 40 please Google that.

The emperor was stark naked.

There was no beef.

Al Capone’s vault was empty.

Remember when Trump said he had proof Barack Obama was not an American citizen, and then he didn’t have anything? This was that. Remember when Trump said his casino would change the economic landscape of Atlantic City, and it didn’t, and then he closed it? This was that. Remember when Trump said the USFL would be the prominent professional football sports league in America and it was soooo not? This was…you get it.

Trump not only shat all over that stage that night, he illustrated in every possible way everything the well-informed and politically savvy opponents of his candidacy have argued against him. He could not have been more ill-prepared, unhinged and clueless. Worst still, he showed no signs of being able to defend himself or launch a cogent or even coherent argument against a vulnerable opponent. To wit: When accused of not paying taxes, he agreed with this sentiment, and then said he was smart to do so, pretty much mocking the rest of the tax-paying nation and in turn dismissing the most fundamental aspect of our democracy; you know, the taxation/representation bit.

But perhaps his greatest crime, besides being woefully unaware of the activity and assignment that he was presented months ago, he failed to broach many of his most ardent points for his being there in the first place; building a wall at the southern border of the nation, for one glaring example.

There were moments when Trump looked and sounded like he was either drugged or had just woken from a grandpa nap. And although there were reports for weeks that he was arrogantly unmotivated to prepare for the thing (his campaign said he was “the Babe Ruth of debaters”, that is if it is the ten hot dogs and sixteen beers before the first inning Ruth we’re talking about) and had never actually debated anyone (fourteen people speaking for two minutes and standing around for fifteen minutes while other people talk is a showcase, not a debate), this was as if he was shocked to be there and asked questions.

Sure, everyone expected Trump to blurt out the most blatant misinformation possible, like ISIS being in 30 countries, and the crime rate in NYC being up, or not admitting to his own quotes about climate change or supporting the war in Iraq. And, of course, he would insult women, misunderstand the plight of inner city black youth, break records for non sequiturs, do the pout thing, and exhale “Wrong!” at every turn. But his repeated defense of unconstitutional laws, excusing Russia (AGAIN, what’s the deal with that?) against evidence that the country has been hacking into his opponent’s servers, and an alarming confusion on how the nation’s nuclear triad works is beyond inexcusable.

The great negotiator and winner of all mano-a-mano tests got schooled. Badly.

But none of that really matters for those of us who see Trump as a symbol and not a legitimate candidate. Who didn’t think Hillary Clinton wasn’t going to beat him in a debate; a woman who over prepares for everything and has the minutest detail of every morsel of minutia that passes her desk? However, with her penchant for condescension and unable to connect to non-politicos and the usual creepy Clintonian stuff that gets in the way, this observer was sure it would be a beating, but not the annihilation we witnessed.

Here is where the joke is truly over for Donald Trump; your candidate is supposed to be tough (he was steamrolled) excellent at one-and-one negations wherein he dominates and makes people pay for walls and restructure trade deals and cower from his mighty presence (he lost every tussle that night save for four minutes on trades deals and that was a layup). Trump was so utterly subjugated by his opponent there were times I felt sorry for him. Then he got angry and started referencing Rosie O’Donnell, his 10 year-old kid, and a 400 pound hacker. The great negotiator and winner of all mano-a-mano tests got schooled. Badly.

The entire “Believe me” and “I got this” and “I’m the only one who can fix this” shtick was turned into a gooey mess of nonsense.

This was the most important chance yet in this election season for your candidate to at least display the very tenets of his purpose for running as “a movement” – he “wins”, “all the time”, and “big league”. He lost, severely and embarrassingly; looking petty, and stupid and overwhelmed. He became the caricature of his worst personality traits and proved the fears people who do not like him and are afraid of him have; a guy who woke up six days ago – not fourteen months ago – and decided he’ll try this president thing.

It would be as if Clinton showed up that night with a phone in her hand told people to give her a minute while she checks her private server for classified info she can send to her friends, who helped her cover-up the Benghazi attacks and then shifted their money over to a secret slush fund through the Clinton Foundation.

Trump may be an effective tool to mock the system, show Obama and Clinton and the progressive left that this country is not changing for the worse, and he may say things you think and appear like he could be an entirely new and effective president in an age when trust in politicians and their institutions are at a new low, but Donald J. Trump as a serious candidate for president is a joke and that particular joke is over.

Aquarian Weekly
9/28/16

TIME FOR CHRIS CHRISTIE TO GO TO JAIL
Obstruction of Justice, Perjury, Abuse of Power

Time for our governor to go to jail.

He won’t.
But he should.

It is apparent now, as the so-called “Bridgegate” trial begins, that for whatever the motives, or who may have been directly responsible for, and what eventually resulted from the fallout of the illegal George Washington Bridge closing of September 9 through September 13, 2013, the governor of New Jersey knew about it. Whether he cultivated it through a general atmosphere of tactical, systemic bullying or a direct edict, or whether he heard a joke about it in his Trenton offices or maybe knew the next day or even two weeks afterwards, Chris Christie, in fact, knew.

This is the complete opposite of what Christie has told investigators and the public for two years over several press conferences, TV appearances, and ass-kissing Trump-fests. We call this in the biz “obstruction of justice” with a possible dollop of perjury thrown in for good measure. It also implicates him for the first time in a court of law for what the Port Authority deemed a “threat to public safety”.

Seems as if Christie’s own quote of “abject stupidity” by his staff now falls squarely in his ample lap – where it rests nestled next to his boyhood friend, a squirrely little shit named David Wildstein, one of the most notorious political attack dogs on the always rancid Jersey circuit. Wildstein has sung his song to the prosecution and will soon drive the stake in Christie’s back and bury the governor of New Jersey.

Of course, Wildstein, who has already pled guilty to federal crimes, is fingering everyone in sight for immunity from his years of malfeasance in service to Christie’s political fortunes. The investigation has revealed that the governor routinely referred to his personal Igor (a man he told reporters he “barely knew”) as “The Cleaner”, or “Winston Wolf”, the mob cover-master played by Harvey Keitel in Quentin Tarantino’s masterwork, Pulp Fiction. Michael Baldassare, the lawyer for defendants Bill Baroni and Bridget Kelly, who are also taking the fall for these half-assed shenanigans to allegedly punish Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich for failing to endorse Christie in the 2013 gubernatorial election, called Wildstein “a miserable prick” in court in a torrent of abuse aimed at throwing the blame upwards.

And the only further up the prick you can go is Christ Christie.

Now, like the recent pass the FBI gave Hillary Clinton’s national security clusterfuck, the prosecution has left Christie out of legal harm’s way for now, concentrating on his surrogates, Baroni and Kelly, and using Wildstein to lay the hammer down. No one in Christie’s administration thought his old high school buddy would sell them out, but once “a miserable prick” always a “a miserable prick”, and now the boot-kicking shoe is on the other foot and it is aimed at the Sunday spread over at Drumthwacket, where the noose tightens.

Amid prosecutor Vikas Khanna’s opening argument this past week was the following; “The evidence will show that Baroni and Wildstein were so committed to their plan to punish Mayor Sokolich that during those precious moments they had alone with the governor, they bragged about the fact that there were traffic problems in Fort Lee, and Mayor Sokolich was not getting his calls returned.”

A video from this moment exists; showing Christie and his boys laughing and whooping it up like something out of The Sopranos. Good times.

And here we are only a couple of years later, and one is likely going to jail, and other may send the governor into impeachment hearings.

Now the boot-kicking shoe is on the other foot and it is aimed at the Sunday spread over at Drumthwacket

According to Middlesex Assemblyman John Wisniewski, the leader of the N.J. Legislature’s 2014 investigation of the bridge scandal, there has already been “serious discussions” on proceeding on such a measure due to “a confluence of individuals who are all saying the governor wasn’t telling the truth.”

Of course this is unlikely to happen for one clear political motivation; Chris Christie is a doomed man, anyway. His approval ratings hover around George W. Bush-like 26 percent and his lapdog obedience to the Trump campaign (the GOP presidential candidate is far below his national average in this state and some 15 points behind Clinton) has made him look desperate and silly. Moreover, Lieutenant Governor of New Jersey Kim Guadagno is far more popular and would give the Republicans the only chance to retain the seat of executive power in next year’s election.

In other words, business as usual in the Garden State, where politics is akin to blood sport played by bottom-feeders.

The chief bottom-feeder is the governor and he should go to jail for it.

But he will not.

And he will not be impeached.

And if by some miracle Donald J. Trump should find himself president, Christie will likely become Attorney General of the United States.

And judging from the rogue’s gallery that has held that position over the past forty years, it is fitting.

Aquarian Weekly
9/14/16

THE GARY JOHNSON FACTOR
Libertarian Candidate’s Mighty Wrench

Full disclosure: I voted for Gary Johnson, 2016 libertarian presidential candidate, in 2012, and I will likely do it again. This is not stirring news for those familiar with this space, as stated before, since 1980, my first year of voting at 18, I have only cast a ballot for a major party candidate twice; 2000, for George W. Bush, as an anti-Gore vote, and 2008 for President Obama, because of generational affinity. But this is not a column about why anyone else should vote for Johnson or to endorse him. This is to point out that he is affecting the landscape of this election unlike anyone since Ross Perot in 1992 and again in 1996.

This has less to do with Gary Johnson than his two national party candidates.

Famously, or infamously, if you happen to be a fan of George H. W. Bush or Bob Dole, Perot unquestionably skewed the numbers that eventually elected William Jefferson Clinton twice with less than 50 percent of the national vote. The independent candidate in ’92 received nearly 19 percent of the popular vote, an unprecedented number, which was a reflection of his polling 39 percent that summer before he ceremoniously quit the race under some cloud of paranoia and fear of the Clinton Machine. In 1996, as a Green Party candidate, he garnered a still impressive 8.4 percent of the vote. In neither election did Perot, a fiscally conservative, anti-government business man, (sound familiar?) nab a single electoral vote, but he certainly pulled enough from the Republican candidate to usher in two Clinton administrations.

Gary Johnson is not playing on that kind of lofty pedestal… yet. Right now, depending on the poll, the libertarian is hovering around eight to nine percent of the popular vote. In some states, however, much more important than this popular vote nonsense (ask Al Gore about that), he is gobbling up 12 to 15 to even 18 percent. Most of that, it appears, is Bernie Sanders cast-offs and some conservatives either in the brushed-aside Ted Cruz camp or those distrustful of a Republican candidate who a mere two years ago was giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to his opponent and the foundation he now gratuitously attacks as corrupt.

What is not up for debate is Johnson’s effect on a pretty sizable percentage of normally Democratic voters; young people to be exact. While Clinton has cornered the market on minorities and women, she is woefully behind in a key demographic of the famed Obama Coalition that helped elect him twice in overwhelming electoral victories. This youth voting block potentially makes up 31 percent of the electorate, but historically, including in 2012, only 46 percent manage to actually vote. Millennials are the worst culprits of this. They have voted less than any previous generation; however a huge portion of them voted for Bernie Sanders and are showing no signs of voting for either major party candidate.

Although a July poll (before either candidate’s conventions goofed up the polling) showed Madam Shoo-In ahead among under-30 voters by 35 points, she is now around 20 percent. But the same polling indicated that Gary Johnson was pulling in a third of the youth vote, mostly under 20 – the “legalize pot, stay out of stupid wars I might have to fight in, and what’s with all the gay bashing and anti-pro choice shit?” vote). This is slightly less now, but still impressive. It should be pointed out – and to be fair there was no viable third-party candidate either time – Obama dominated the youth vote by twice as much as his Democratic successor.

Any way you slice it, Gary Johnson is a factor in 2016, which is why he should be allowed to debate on September 26, something, not ironically or coincidentally Bernie Sanders has fully endorsed.

This is important because this is the only voting block Clinton has left to exploit. The Never Trump Republican movement, many of whom, as mentioned above, are either trying to run a Mormon third-party guy, escaping to Johnson, or writing in Wendell Willkie, has peaked. The fact that Trump is only holding three-quarters of his own party, where the last GOP nominee, (who you might have heard, did not win) had 96 percent is as alarming as it will get.

What is not up for debate is Johnson’s effect on a pretty sizable percentage of normally Democratic voters; young people to be exact.

Polls that have tightened in late August/early September have mostly done so in a wave of anti-Clinton sentiment, as discussed last week, due to new evidence of shenanigans over at the Clinton Foundation, the State Department, Big Bill’s secret hideaway bungalow, and other unexplained phenomenon, while Trump’s immovable ceiling has remained between 42 and 44 percent at its peak and in the high 30s when he has Twitter wars with celebrities and says U.S. generals suck and for some interesting reason begins hinting at things he “feels” during highly classified pre-election briefings.

Speaking of faux pas, and a rather enormous one, this week Gary Johnson did not know what the hell, never mind where, Aleppo, Syria was. This is in the wake, mind you, of the usual media deluge of coverage of a refugee crisis that has been plastered all over the news and the Internet for months, and more recently this week. For informed voters and news-nuts and the media brethren, this glaring fuck-up far outweighs an obviously overwhelmed simpleton vice president in 2008, who knew less about anything than probably anyone running for elected office, trying to name something she reads. And that is saying quite a bit.

But you know what? This is not going to matter to most of Johnson’s libertarian voters, namely me, who wish they didn’t know what Aleppo or any festering boil in the Middle East was. In fact, this is the final charm of Gary Johnson, who, now that Trump has announced he wants annex Iraq in perpetuity to pillage oil from a sovereign nation that we’ve pummeled into ally status, is not interested in the least in what is going on anywhere but here.

Although, Jill Stein is looking awfully good right now.

Wait, goddamn it! Did she just get arrested?

Screw it.

Kanye West 2020!

Wait…

Aquarian Weekly
9/6/16

MADAM SHOO-IN: DAILY CRISIS
Hillary Clinton on Defense

It was pretty much expected, even by his supporters, that Donald Trump would have little to no idea what he was doing on a campaign trail – having never considered such a thing until mid-summer of 2015. This has been on glaring display now for months. Hillary Clinton is another story. She has been campaigning for some three decades. She has been trolling around Washington since Nixon was in the White House, lived in the place throughout the 1990s, ran and won a senate seat twice in New York, and was Secretary of State for the first Obama term. Yet, it appears by every indication (beyond the cadre of ridiculous cash and a ground machine that would rival Sherman’s obliteration of the South) that she is lost in this game.

How is this possible?

First off, Clinton stinks at this. She is a wonk. She is a “figure stuff out/get in the weeds” candidate. She also hates this. Hates it. At the time of this writing, she has not held a formal press conference since December 5, 2015 – 270 days or so, and none in the calendar year; a year, by the way, that she is running for fucking president. Now, the Clinton Campaign will rightly claim that she’s had press events and taken questions from organizations, spoken to voters, and made herself available for impromptu discussions on press planes and hotel lobbies, and she goes on cable news shows occasionally, but to not hold a single traditional press conference is not only nuts but it tells you quite a bit what the campaign thinks about having its candidate standing in front of a microphone for any length of time.

Next up, she has zero-to-negative personality. Who knows what she thinks about anything, really. When she does get to “expressing herself”, it sounds eerily as if she works on the thin line between condescension and aloofness. There is very little she says, when she does say anything, which resembles the actual subject she is ostensibly addressing. This leads to charges of her being “crooked” or the Clinton staple – flat out lying. She and her multi-million dollar team knew this was already baked into the Clinton brand, but she has done absolutely nothing to correct it. If anything she has enhanced it by spastically bumbling through the delicate art of deflection.

More crucially, on a daily basis, there is something akin to blatant scandal (State emails/private server), weird political whitewashing (Benghazi), or a quasi-icky and wholly inappropriate masquerade (Clinton Foundation/State Department connections). It is truly astounding how much the current Clinton presidential campaign mirrors the first one; Big Bill, in 1992, wherein there were new and improved shenanigans rolled out every week, as if a circus tent – draft-dodging, pot-smoking, serial philandering, shady land deals, odd associations. All the while, Clinton fobbed it off as scurrilous rumor or the work of the infamous “Right Wing Conspiracy”. And because his opponent underestimated him and Ross Perot sucked up 16 percent of the vote, he became president. Hillary will too, of course. Because, it appears, the white noise that is Clinton scandals just don’t matter anymore.

Yet, it appears by every indication … that she is lost in this game.

Well, that’s not entirely true. If we are going to live in the cold world of numbers, then things have begun to plateau in Clinton-land. The latest mid-August revelation that major donors to the Clinton Foundation had gotten an audience with the Secretary of State – according to the AP report, 85 of 154 meetings were with donors – was the beginning of this latest crack in the façade. Although the story was later criticized by other news organizations for conveniently or sloppily leaving the full 1,700 meetings during the same period, which changes the startling figure from over 50 percent to five, the Clinton team seemed to think a viable defense was that the Clinton Foundation “does good work” and is the “world’s leading charity”. Then it released statements that both she and Mr. Clinton would cease relations with the foundation once she is president.

So, “not good” if she’s president, but “okay” when she is Secretary of State? This is as preposterous a response to a major accusation as possible. Nobody bought it, not even her constituents, who began back-tracking within minutes of hearing this nonsense. This neatly explains why the polls have tightened and why what looked like a total annihilation of her Republican opponent will now merely be a comfortable victory.

But as continually stated here, unless she is indicted for an actual crime, Hillary Rodham Clinton will be president. We’ve been on this for a couple of years now, so we see no reason to waver, but this does not excuse the above issues. Madam Shoo-In cannot shake all of this crap the Clintons seem to wade in as a matter of principle. It has actually further tanked her already historical low approval rating and strengthened the notion that she cannot and should not be trusted. Her only salvation is that this number is bested by Trump, who appears daily as less corrupt than mad.

His hour-long “Immigration Plan” roll-out this week was so factually inaccurate it is probably fair to call it fiction, which underlines his completely made-up excuse for not releasing his tax returns because of an audit – a man whose only claim to doing the job he seeks is his business record not releasing financials is like if I tried to get a book deal without presenting a manuscript.

So when people ask me how a woman whose approval ratings blow, who is a shitty candidate, and has a daily crisis hanging over her head could become president, look no further than her opponent and the party for which he stands – antiquated, racially insulated, unrealistic and tone deaf.

The question should be how does a candidate with an iron-clad coalition that twice elected her predecessor, overwhelming dominance in voting demographics, flush with four times the money, and twice the campaign infrastructure only hold a modest lead?

Aquarian Weekly
8/31/16

ISIS – THE END IS NIGH
Out of Money, Losing Ground and Soon Mosul

What appeared as a rather aggressive prediction in this space sometime this past winter is now all-but a reality. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria will soon have to remove Iraq from its fancy acronym by Christmas. Renewed Iraqi Forces backed by an infusion of additional U.S. Special Forces, bolstered by relentless U.S. airstrikes, and the two-front war being waged by Iran, before and after its historic nuclear deal with the west, and a heroic effort by Kurdish militants, has pushed the severely weakened terrorist organization into end game.

The operative word there is “end”.

It is all but over in Iraq for ISIS. It is dead broke; unable to pay its “military”, which began defecting in droves once the money dried up. In large part this is thanks to the international banking freeze-out on financial institutions heretofore laundering its cash flow. The dramatic reduction of its dwindling brain trust – many of whom were assassinated in the Pentagon’s ongoing mob-like drone hits for months on end – has been reduced to burning oil fields and abandoning the airports that were crucial to its operations there.

The increased and random terror attacks on the sieve-like borders and flimsy security measures in Europe and the highly misguided hits in Turkey, along with the flow of unarmed and wounded ISIS defectors into Syria and Libya, have not only provided glaring signs of its implosion in Iraq, but proves what anyone who has studied the history of not only the Middle East but civilization at large has learned; building a “state” on spastically conceived murders crudely promoted as religious insurrection is a doomed wager. Always has been, always will be.

The operative word there is “doomed”.

A report this week from CNN on a secret underground terrorist anti-ISIS fighting force within the key city of Mosul, which ISIS captured and has used as its capital since June, 2014, has sped up the timetable for the death rattle. Using the ISIS model of hit-and-run propaganda, daylight mortar attacks, and ingenious social media meets smart phone network of picking off ISIS intelligence stalwarts and skillfully planting of landmines on main roads in and out of town, with coded messages to frightened citizens to steer clear of planned attacks, is beginning to spook what is left of this mess.

Moreover, this incredibly effective shadow insurrection has been arming the city’s citizens for weeks now with hidden Iraqi Army weapons left over from the chaos following the initial U.S. invasion to rise up once the country’s new forces break through into the outskirts of Mosul, which could be any day now.

The operative words to focus on there are “any day”.

Soon, this gutless turn-tail-and-run into Syria maneuver will go belly up. According to an August 11 report in the Independent, ISIS has been “decimated” in Syria, where it is predictably beginning to turn on itself, another absolute in the history of civilization when stupid lunatics claim to forge a “new world order’ but are really brainless religious-fanatic thugs whose mission statement to break shit is misinterpreted by the dolt class as revolution. A senior U.S. Commander there, Lieutenant General Sean MacFarland estimates that the number of ISIS fighters now stands between a paltry 15,000 and 20,000, down from 45,000 six months ago.

“The enemy is in retreat on all fronts,” MacFarland told the Associated Press two days later.

Admittedly, the Pentagon’s history, whether more recent (Afghanistan/Iraq/Libya) or classic (Korea/Viet Nam/Lebanon) of predicting sunshine right before midnight is dubious, but widespread reporting from Al Jazeera, hardly a cheerleading media outlet for U.S. military operations, has been describing this ass-kicking since mid-February when towns that ISIS was supposed to have locked up until Muhammad comes back, began tanking. In June, the State Department estimates 120 ISIS leaders, many of them mindlessly ran their images all over the Internet for more than a year, have been cut down by either U.S. strikes or its ground forces in the past twelve months.

The operative word there is “doomed”.

Does this mean that the west is free of terrorism? Of course not. If anything, the last vestiges of a movement can be expected to lash out in the most radical subterranean fashion. We have seen this already. As stated, the ramp-up of ISIS random attacks (many if not all of them copycat rogue loons with mommy issues trying to impress girls) began once the failure of its jihad was evident. But make no mistake, this caliphate is over. For all intents of purposes, its very existence, based on the bully edict of fear, intimidation and the ruse of its indestructibility, is gone. Long, long gone.

And the operative word here kids is “gone”.

It is actually miraculous it lasted this long. Underestimated, sure. Hatched from a text-book cultural and economic vacuum, absolutely. Flush with funds and an abnormal recruitment in a perfect storm of religious brain washing meets squalor, bingo. But it always had a shelf life, especially when the killing of Americans began and the Turks were dragged into this, and it has reached it. Yet, for militant crazies with no real plan but YouTube beheadings and wrecking shit, it was quite a run. People around here were pretty scared. And that is something.

But the ISIS we have grown to despise and fear is really a shell of itself, and now it will be relegated to that ever-packed ash heap of history. A sad reminder of humanity’s darkest spirit, always ready to appear from nowhere, but really, it was there all the time.

And before long, sadly, there will be another one.

But for now…caliphate out!

Aquarian Weekly
8/24/16

THE LAST GASP FOR CITIZEN TRUMP
The Lunatic Fringe Just Got A Whole Lot Loonier

There are few people remaining with any idea of what is happening in the real world which operate under the delusion that Donald Trump is not doomed, and he just grabbed two of them. The most entrenched political zealots Trump could find will now be running this imploding media circus he calls a campaign; head honcho for Breitbart, an ultra right-wing conspiracy web site that is currently reporting that the scientific research behind climate change is voodoo cooked up by the NY Times and Hillary Clinton killed Jesus, Steve Bannon, and Ann Coulter wanna-be pollster, Kellyanne Conway, whose previous hatred for Trump while working with his vanquished foe, the embattled idiot, Lyin’ Ted Cruz, has been pushed aside for a gig as bailer on a sinking skiff.

Things have just begun to get fun around here.

Man, if you don’t enjoy the splendor of Trump’s (what’s this fourth or fifth) campaign shake-up, you just don’t get why I spend any amount of time doing this weekly. Trump couldn’t have picked a better pair of the most vicious political Rottweilers operating on a fringe/fantasy archipelago of dogmatic rhetoric mixed with jabbering non sequiturs if he fused them in a lab. It is as if they are his evil siblings, no, his clones.

This means, of course, that this stunning tumble in the polls Trump has been experiencing for weeks has convinced him that any person, let that read veteran political strategist, Paul Manafort, who was trying in vain to keep the Trumpster “on message and off Twitter”, is now relegated to the trash heap. It will now be Trump Unhinged backed by a Trekkie-meets-Flat-Earth web site that has spent the past 14 months bolstering his ego against high odds through a grueling primary and a woman who knows where all the bodies are buried.

Beyond the poetic beauty of all this is some down and dirty strategy: Trump knows no one wants the damaged and antiquated crap Republicans have been selling for decades. This is why he deigned to come down that fancy escalator last summer in the first place, and for all intents and purposes began dismantling his “good” name and any scintilla of self respect he might have harbored in the process. Talking points about “smaller government and tax cuts and acting like the answer-man for everything” is all well and good, but so far it has been a monumental bust. These moves are Trump’s way of telling us that this had better be about how much everyone kind of doesn’t really like or want to vote for Hillary Clinton and nothing about him, because the Bannon/Conway connection has made a living eviscerating the other side and less trying to “sell the same old crap Republicans have been selling for the past decades”. In fact, Bannon, no fan of “establishment” Republicans, has openly accused Speaker of the House Paul Ryan of being a con artist and dubbed Republicanism “a failed brand.”

These are the perfect Trump tacticians; a man for whom nothing is beneath him and a woman who did heavy lifting for a snake-oil hack.

And I applaud it.

As stated, and I believe I shall do it again here; Trump never had a real chance at ever being president, just like Bernie Sanders. It took Trump a while to get it, but he is obviously on board with this now, despite his protestations to donors on a conference call this week explaining away flat-lining poll numbers with large crowds at rallies. The Bannon/Conway hail-Mary-last-ditch-grasp-for-straws begins the classic Trump exit strategy. It’s not unlike his moves towards bankruptcy or bailing on a failing venture. He starts by separating himself from the reality of a faltering project, then builds a case against those who he believes (anyone but himself) is to blame, and then scorches the earth with the force of his personality and relentless bombast. If you have lived around New York for any amount of time, especially since the 1980s, you could see this move coming a mile away.

Trump’s “shake-up” is about blowing this thing up, which was always my wish from the second he started polling in the mid-30s around late September last year against a field of same-old-shit. If a Republican is going to lose a national election, which will be the case for at least a generation, then making a mockery of the system is the whole point. And now it will be duly mocked, in the most heinous, sub-mental way. Bannon/Conway will make this a food fight and the way things are going that is good mojo. Go down swinging and cause harm and foul along the way.

These are the perfect Trump tacticians; a man for whom nothing is beneath him and a woman who did heavy lifting for a snake-oil hack.

Part of this new “strategy” will be for Bannon to devise an escape-route out of the debates for his candidate. It has been my contention, drawing from glaring evidence during the primaries, that Trump has no intention of showing up to all of the scheduled debates and has already begun bitching about television formatting, choice of moderators and other paranoid falderal to lay the groundwork for this. It will be Bannon’s job, for which he is well-trained and uniquely equipped, to claim all-sorts of made-up stuff to accommodate this maneuver and make it look heroic.

Another interesting development in the side-show of Bannon’s tutelage is once Trump goes back to real estate and media whoring this November, the collection of hardliners like FOX’s Sean Hannity (who likely brokered this deal since he has been pushing the Breitbart canard about Clinton being mentally ill for weeks on his Howard Sternesque newsy show) will make a good living keeping their candidate’s 35 or so percent of the party’s base alive and well.

This goofy dream the GOP establishment has of blaming another presidential drubbing on its latest “outsider” candidate for its shortcomings and thus sweeping clean any remnants of this dalliance with celebrity is in for a serious reality check. Bannon, who has worked in tandem for plenty of right-wing efforts to jolt the system in foreign elections through his attack dog web site, is in for the long haul.

A fox is not only in the hen house, it is now running it.

Aquarian Weekly
8/17/16

NEW YAWK, NEW YAWK
All Empire State Presidential Election & Its National Referendum

Don’t you see the rest of the country looks upon New York like we’re left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers? I think of us that way sometimes and I live here.
– Woody Allen as Alvy Singer, Annie Hall

For only the fourth time in American history, two presidential candidates will hail from the same state; not necessarily as natives, as Hillary Rodham Clinton is from Illinois while Donald Trump is from Queens, but nonetheless they share both the sheen and stank of the Empire State, specifically New York City. Both have their base of campaign operations in the big town, Clinton in Brooklyn and Trump in Manhattan. Coincidently both are the most untrustworthy and disliked duo of candidates in American polling history. After all, when considering their nearly one-hundred percent name recognition – both a blessing and a curse of our culture’s ongoing obsession with celebrity – it is quite obvious what the rest of the nation feels about the world’s largest, richest, most exciting and, quite frankly best city.

They hate it.

But make no mistake; the hate is misguided, as is the case with most “hates”. First there is complete puzzlement. Those who do not like cities hate city-dwellers, because they cannot understand how someone could live in one for a myriad of reasons, but even those who live in other cities like Chicago, Houston, L.A. and Boston hate New York. This, of course, is simple “penis envy” of the highest most Freudian order, but hate nonetheless.

Having grown up in the Bronx, which should read as “barely survived with all of my teeth” and nurturing a life-long, preternatural, unworldly romance with Manhattan, it is both vexing and interesting to me the reaction most people have to it. I enjoy regaling fellow New Yorkers with the discussion I repeatedly had with the good citizens of Jerusalem when I visited Israel in 1996. It seems every conversation would inevitably turn to the question of my origin. When I would tell them New York (remember these are people living in a perpetual six-thousand year old war zone), they would say, “Wow, it’s pretty dangerous there, huh?”

For those who do not or have never lived in or around NYC, it is hard to fathom Donald Trump. Clinton is weird, because although she was a senator here for eight years and thus has lived here for sixteen years now, she is a carpetbagger, the way, say, Mick Jagger was in the late 1970s; all those songs about New Yawk from the jet-set British perspective; both envy and fear and titillation and finally condemnation. To wit: “Love and hope and sex and dreams/Are still surviving on the street/Look at me, I’m in tatters/I’m a shattered.”

However Trump is silly with New Yawk. There isn’t five seconds of anything Trump says whether in interviews, rallies or on the stump that doesn’t reek of it. The main reason that Trump survives what other candidates have never survived is his deep-seeded New Yawk-ese. If Trump unleashed half his crazy shit with a southern accent it would be horrifying, like listening to William Jennings Bryant after six whiskies. But coming from a Baby Boomer with that hair and those suits and that accent, it is defiance. And because Trump has attached his hyperbole to this New Yawk attitude and shifted all this nonsense to the nifty excuse of not being “politically correct”, what is normally seen as hickish now appears ballsy.

In essence, Trump is saying what New Yawk says, “I am bigger and better and make all the money and have all the history and everything worth a shit begins here, so suck it if you don’t like it..”

Also, Trump represents everything people assume they hate about New Yawk; he is a boisterous braggart, shoot-from-the-hip ball-buster, who would as soon as spend sixty seconds berating you in the crudest way than spend another thirty seconds actually considering your right to exist. He is a know-it-all, who likely knows next to nothing, but never gets called on it, because he has cash and fame and builds big things bigger than your things and so go fuck yourself. In essence, Trump is saying what New Yawk says, “I am bigger and better and make all the money and have all the history and everything worth a shit begins here, so suck it if you don’t like it, because this is a country filled with broke famers and religious idiots without us.”

This is how Hillary Clinton becomes New Yawk with her “gets to make her own rules” thing, which is true, or used to be true about New Yorkers. In the late 1980s into the early 1990s I could do anything I wanted in NYC; especially in a car. Throughout every borough, I broke about 250 laws, most of it in front of cops, and even had my car stolen, broken into, jacked, and suffered all manner of street crimes and felt it somehow came out in the wash. Here’s where most columnists would say they were not proud of this achievement. You see, I am. Nowadays the town is in more of a lock-down mode, which has resulted in far less street crime than any city on the planet, but you would never know this, especially when the secretary of state has been accused of everything plus murder by her opponents, and really, the FBI.

Donald Trump, of course, runs roughshod over everything decent Americans hold dear; which is another underappreciated New Yawk trait. You see, while other cities around the globe there is a reverence for the past. New York, as columnist/novelist/New Yawker, Pete Hamill once mused, “…buries its past with a detached and cruel apathy”. If it is not moving forward or “worth” anything to the “now”, it goes, fast. When you live around here and you live with that concussive, almost shocking realization that everything is expendable and nothing is sacred, you get Donald Trump and you certainly get Hillary Clinton.

It’s just seems like the rest of the country doesn’t. Big time.

Six out of ten Americans think these New Yawkers are shit. And this makes sense to me. And since neither has any intention of curbing this abhorrence, I should think it will continue until January, 2017,when one of these New Yawkers, carpetbagger or born-and-bred, will be moving to D.C.

Aquarian Weekly
8/3/16

Democratic National Convention 2016
REVENGE OF THE POLITICIANS
The System Punches Back “Old School” In Philadelphia

In 1988, with his party facing long odds in keeping the White House for a dozen years, outgoing President Ronald Reagan told his party’s convention that there was no need for change. “We are the change,” he boldly stated. The Gipper said there was no need to stop the machine, it was doing just fine. This is the theme for current outgoing President Barack Obama, who has embodied the unflinching spirit of a man who never questioned the motives of his government or America as the shining promise to humanity. George H. W. Bush followed the eight years of a deified right wing administration, thus beginning a Bush dynasty that would seek the presidency through four elections in eight of the next twelve years, as now Hillary Rodham Clinton becomes the legacy of a left wing pillar, perhaps putting a capper on a Clinton political dynasty that would have a stake in four of the last six presidential elections.

This is the third-term of Barack Obama on trial; just as Bush would be Reagan’s, and like the Great Communicator, the Grand Orator is betting on above-water approval ratings, a stable economy and a sense among his faithful that the transformative eight years of his presidency is embraced by not only Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, but a majority of the American electorate. By being the first sitting president to show up at his party’s convention since Reagan (both the toxicity of late-second-term Clinton and Bush were told to stay away), Obama made it clear that although ushering in a business man with zero political experience is as change as change could be, “We are the change.”

This is all ye need know about what went down for four days in late July in Philadelphia at the Democratic National Convention. The president’s point was driven home by a classic “Morning in America” speech and a phalanx of professional politicians, all of them winners; William Jefferson Clinton, Joe Biden, even Jimmy Carter via video hook-up; nary a John Kerry, Michael Dukakis, Walter Mondale or Al Gore to be found mucking up the works. Winners of elections and debates; professionals, lifers making the case that a wild-card TV star becoming president is not only crazy, but dangerous, irresponsible and downright unpatriotic. They sold stability, status quo, strength and experience.

What the hell happened?

I grew up in the 1970s and lived through the 1980s into the ‘90s and then began writing regularly about politics then and into the era of 9/11, wherein Republicans embodied all of those things, while Democrats came with the outsider, long-shot that was likely to be pasted by someone waving flags, rolling out military personnel and entrenched establishment types. Now suddenly it’s the Democrats who are pitching more of the same-ol’ and appealing to our pragmatic core.

For four days, the Democrats filled the stage with preachers and gospel choirs evoking God wherever possible, pulled in military leaders and disgruntled moderate Republicans frightened by the prospect of a loose-cannon with his finger on the button, and selling this “Rise Up” American “exceptionalism” that was once owned by a Republican Party that has decided to blow it up and gather all of its chips into a singular cult-of-personality candidate. In other words, Trump’s convention was about Trump (and a whole lot of Hillary bashing), while Clinton’s was some kind of Kumbaya collective of flag-wrapping, goose-bump inducing tribute to all-things positive and sunny (with a whole lot of Trump bashing).

Ronald Reagan proved that myths can be powerful. His party embraced myths for decades, and now.. the battle for twenty-first century patriotism is on.

Poor Bernie Sanders, 74 year-old, socialist Vermont senator and recent presidential candidate, bested by the system that put on this show in his presence. He ranted for months about a revolution in front of millions of rabid, almost religious followers, many of them young and new to this whole shebang. They believed him and they were not buying any of his newly minted “solidarity/unity” jag. The first day of the convention he found himself angrily confronted by a humiliated California delegation of supporters who booed him like A-Rod at Fenway.

Then, later that day – the opening of the Hillary Show – nearly 1,900 of his delegates brought a bellowing voice of anti-establishment fervor that tried to raise its ugly head in Cleveland the week before but was crushed under the steel boot of the Trump Campaign. One delegate from Iowa told a reporter on MSNBC, “Bernie has been making us drink Mountain Dew for months, and now he wants us to go to bed.”

Throughout the next couple of days, entertained by Alicia Keys, Lenny Kravitz, a host of Broadway stars and Katy Perry they roused chants of “No TPP!” and “No more wars!” and used every mention of or any wave from Sanders to erupt in cheers.

None of that mattered. Sanders put it to bed by evoking the name Trump. This was the medicine to his thwarted revolution, which had been ignored by party chairman, Debbie Wasserman-Shultz, who was booted before her own convention when the Russians or WikiLeaks or a combination of the Ring Wing Conspiracy and the Blue Meanies hacked into and leaked emails proving she had and used her bias for Madam Shoo-In throughout a process Sanders kept calling rigged right up until he gave this “unify” speech.

It wasn’t until First Lady Michelle Obama gave the speech of the convention that first night, filled with a sober, sensitive and endearing rhetoric, did the Sandersnistas quell, but only proportionally. They were still out there even when Madam Shoo-in accepted the nomination of her party the final day; waving “No-TPP” signs and shouting “Fix!” and “Rigged!” when given the opportunity.

And so Clinton’s acceptance speech, an historic moment in American politics (nearly a century after women received the right to vote, a woman finally represents a major political party), became a rallying cry to forget much of what irks the electorate (seven out of ten Americans think the country is on the wrong track, compared to four out of ten in 1988) and a defense of Obama’s America as the “real” America.

Ronald Reagan proved that myths can be powerful. His party embraced myths for decades, and now, it seems, due in part to the incredible negatives heaped upon both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton that the battle for twenty-first century patriotism is on.

Again.

Aquarian Weekly
7/27/16

Republican National Convention 2016
THE TRUMP SHOW
Plagiarism, Insurrection and High Theater in Cleveland

The most dramatic, chaotic, and in every possible way historic national party convention of my lifetime has ended, and with it what you know of the Republican Party.

Citizen Donald J. Trump accepted the nomination to run for the most powerful post on the planet; sit as arbiter of its largest economy and its enormous military might. During the four-day proceedings, which is normally a political infomercial with funny hats, bad music and occasionally Clint Eastwood talking to a chair, there was the blatant plagiarizing of a less than decade’s-old speech, an alarmingly spastic tirade by Rudy Giuliani, a dozen people who painted America as a dystopian horror-scape of apocalyptic genocide, ten-thousand calls to jail the Democratic opponent, a parade of Trump children telling us they love daddy, the last time Chris Christie will be nationally relevant, and for some reason, Scott Baio.

The star of the proceedings was Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who played his unflinching I-Me-Mine character to the hilt and unleashed an exhaustive Clinton-like 28-minute aria on the blessed tenets of conservatism with not the slightest nod to the party’s candidate. In fact, Cruz went as far as coaxing the TV audience to “vote their conscience” which is lawyerly political-speak for “don’t vote for this asshole” and left the stage to a torrent of boos and catcalls. Proving with sports-car precision how amazingly focused on all-things Ted Cruz he remains, he has now shifted his “Me or the Highway” approach from the Republican establishment to the party’s grassroots and with it likely his political career.

Cruz, of course, is betting against Trump stock like Trump bet on the housing market collapse in ’08 by assuming this is a black swan candidacy in which he will emerge as the “Told Ya So” candidate in four years. This of course only works if the party and its base doesn’t lay on him part of the blame for the candidate’s eventual defeat, which if you listened to the donor class and party loyalists’ evisceration of his gambit, he may well be.

Oh, and as the raucous GOP crowd turned on the sore-loser lament, Trump, in a wildly unconventional move, emerged from the dark wings of the arena to start interacting with the apoplectic audience.

Pure theater.

The Trump Show had begun.

In fact, Trump not only ignored the traditional theatrics of keeping the nominee from sight until the final day’s acceptance speech, he showed up every day, including introducing his wife before things got underway early Thursday.

During this whole wonderfully free-formed fiasco, Chairman and CEO of FOX News Roger Ailes was sacked amid lawsuits and a lengthy investigation surrounding his groping of the myriad of blonde-bombshell studio hosts he hired over the past two decades of rolling out some of the lowest forms of carnival-like programming masked as journalism. Ailes was famously mocked and discarded as a piker by Trump a few months ago when the Republican nominee refused to kiss his sagging ass and defied party rules to show up for a highly promoted network debate.

In 24 short hours, Trump vanquished his two most ardent enemies, one run from the arena under a cloak of security and the other an unemployed sexual deviant.

This set the stage for the man himself, who changed the silver-and-black podium the plebeians were forced to use and replaced it with an Elvis-in-Vegas black-and-gold one to better unfurl an excruciatingly ponderous one hour and fifteen minutes (longest acceptance speech in nearly half a century) harangue on every possible subject pertinent to modern society.

Strangely enough Trump was the least interesting part of the week in Cleveland, which began when hundreds of delegates across eleven states tried to halt proceedings to re-write party rules. The long-shot plan was to free delegates to “vote their conscience” (“don’t vote for this asshole”) and throw the entire convention into turmoil. Trump crushed this too.

The most dramatic, chaotic, and in every possible way historic national party convention of my lifetime has ended, and with it what you know of the Republican Party.

One curious but predictable aspect of this convention was the campaign’s opportunistic bandwagon jump on the Nixionian “Law & Order” trope, preying on the fears heightened by over-saturated media coverage of the violence home and abroad; specifically the shooting of unarmed black men by white cops and angry lunatics enacting vengeance for these crimes by mowing down police. Trump’s and by association now the Republican Party’s gamble here is to embrace the “state” over citizen safety and civil rights and align completely with law enforcement, regardless of the frightening number of incidents of unprovoked killings by armed civil servants. The dangerous and quite frankly, considering Trump’s constant ringing of the “politically incorrect” bell, silencing of criticism against deadly injustice by tax-funded protectors of our communities and couching it as something akin to un-American damages his general election prospects.

But make no mistake, Donald Trump has done something remarkable here, something that has not been done by a presidential candidate since Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932; he has fundamentally changed the entire structure and outlook of a major political party. Where open and unfettered free trade reigned for half a century, there is nationalism. Where colonialism and international intervention and annexation exploded across the globe since the 1890s and expanded in the mid-twentieth century with the NATO alliance, now becomes America-first isolationism. Hell, the fact that a Republican candidate stood on a convention stage and uttered the words, “corporate greed and rigged Wall Street influence” is as stunning as it was to hear a CEO being cheered for stating, “I am proud to be gay.”

And yet the Trump Show did nothing, and I mean nothing, to expand the candidate’s appeal to independent voters, Millennials, single women, African Americans, Hispanics, Latinos, or Asians, all demographics that he and his party have all-but alienated. This was the last, best time for Trump to remake at least part of the image he trotted out in a very aggressive primary campaign, wherein he hurled unprecedented insults at everyone and everything. This was the week to pull it back, pivot, become a viable national candidate; and he did not. Perhaps to his credit, or his political naiveté, he vociferously doubled down on all of it. This is Trump’s biggest gamble. It has always been his gamble and it has worked all the way to accepting this most unlikely nomination.

He promised a show in Cleveland, and he gave us one. He now promises to be elected president of the United States. That one will be much more difficult.

Win or lose, however, it is even more difficult still to imagine the Republican Party ever being the same.