Almost Paranoia (Horseshoe Destroy’a)

#DimensionTrump | #WhatTheyVotedFor

“You cannot make this up,” writes columnist and podcaster C.J. Werleman, and he would seem to have a point. The text of a recent fundraising missive from Team Trump:

Jose,

The President emailed you to take the urgent Mainstream Media Accountability Survey.

Since then, mainstream media outlets have viciously attacked it … and thousands of Democrats have taken it to try to sabotage the results.

Which is why we need your IMMEDIATE Help as one of President Trump’s Biggest Supporters.

Please take the Mainstream Media Accountability Survey now. >>

Thanks,

Team TRUMP

Inexplicable (Duke Bashar al Putin)

So … right. Nobody knows quite what to think. Willa Frej tries to explain for HuffPo―

Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke was busy on Twitter this weekend, showing his support for Syrian President Bashar Assad in a string of tweets after weighing in favorably on Iowa Rep. Steve King’s latest xenophobic remarks.

―but as ledes go, it seems significant that anyone should have cause to attempt such a sentence.

What They Voted For: Clash of Incivility

#antiAmerican | #WhatTheyVotedFor

Joe Conason asks the obvious question:

What if the purpose of the Trump administration’s travel ban is not to protect America from terrorist infiltration, as the president and his top advisers insist? What if the true aim of their anti-Muslim rhetoric, articulated over and over again, is actually to offend Muslims—and intensify their alienation from the West?

The big variable here is why. That part makes no sense.

A Canonical Quote: Goldman on Patriotism

#trumpswindle | #resist

“For surely it is not the rich who contribute to patriotism. They are cosmopolitans, perfectly at home in every land. We in America know well the truth of this. Are not our rich Americans Frenchmen in France, Germans in Germany, or Englishmen in England? And do they not squander with cosmopolitan grace fortunes coined by American factory children and cotton slaves? Yes, theirs is the patriotism that will make it possible to send messages of condolence to a despot like the Russian Tsar, when any mishap befalls him.”

―Emma Goldman

____________________

Goldman, Emma. “Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty”. Anarchism and Other Essays. New York & London: Mother Earth Publishing Association. 1911.

A Point Most Obvious (Far More Serious)

#resist | #WhatTheyVotedFor

Steve Benen brings the Monday morning update―

The fact that Donald Trump relied on a foreign agent as a top campaign adviser—and a trusted member of his inner circle—during the presidential campaign looks bad. Not necessarily stop-the-presses bad, but the fact that the Republican was paying Michael Flynn while Flynn was also paid by Turkey is a tough controversy to simply explain away.

What’s becoming a far more serious story is Team Trump lying about all of this now.

―and perhaps a sense of fatigue we feel should not be ignored.

The Price of Belief (#TrumpCare)

#TrumpCare | #WhatTheyVotedFor

Every once in a while, it occurs to wonder if perhaps they are doing it on purpose.

President Donald Trump’s administration made a bold guarantee Sunday morning, telling Americans that health insurance won’t cost more if Republicans repeal the Affordable Care Act.

“I firmly believe that nobody will be worse off financially in the process that we’re going through, understanding that they’ll have choices that they can select the kind of coverage that they want for themselves and for their family, not the government forces them to buy,” Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

This line could become Price’s “If you like your plan, you can keep it” moment ― a sweeping sound bite that ends up being not true. (President Barack Obama eventually had to apologize for his promise in 2013.)

(Terkel; boldface accent added)

No, really. He actually went and said that.