Civil Commotion

… wondering, “What’s up with Sarah Palin these days? Is she still a fantastic nutjob?”

Yes.

For one, when PE-Trump takes on corrupt lying lapdog media it is vindication and validation for those without a microphone who’ve been shot by reporters engaged in politics of personal destruction.

These “journalists” – bad characters that they are – hurt our nation tremendously; they disrespect those who fought and died to protect America’s freedom of the press; they spit upon the graves of our veterans. We deem those reporters and their publications irrelevant now.

HOPE in this arena soars upon seeing a fearless leader take on injustice.

APPRECIATION fills our heart when our new President exudes our collective red, white and blue courage in the face of purveyors of yellow journalism. Press members have worked as a herd of lost little lazy sheep. The herd is now decimated.

America’s challenges can now be tackled with seriousness.

The impossible burden of dealing with unethical mediums is off our shoulder – and that’s one less excuse leaders will have as we ask them to finally do the job we send them to do in Washington.

There you have it: Ask Trump whether or not his campaign colluded with Russia’s intelligence agencies to hack the DNC, and you kill a vet. So I’m thinking it’s probably the mean things that people like me keep saying about Trump that is the cause of Track’s legal problems. It’s another sign of my acute wickedness, I suppose, that I’m unable to feel as bad as I probably ought.

We’ve read for some time about the coming tsunami of church closures and now at least one state convention has a program and staff person whose responsibility includes “serving interested churches that are near closing and helping find creative solutions like mergers, cooperatives with other churches, or even utilization of property for church planting.” Sad to see but I’m glad there is a resource person in this area for churches to utilize. A sub-plot in this church closure/merger business is will be megachurches grabbing the assets of dying or dead churches for their real estate value.

William Thornton

This is good. All of Christian teaching rests upon Original Sin, the deranged teaching that to be born human is to be born depraved, guilty, under a just sentence of eternal torture. Good riddance.

I can clearly recall the Nixon meltdown in 1974 and, seriously, the news coverage of Donald Trump during the past few days has already begun to feel a lot like that: Every day a few more details, a new eye-roll at the brazen amorality of the man, a fierce new condemnation of the press whose revelations were nibbling him to pieces.

There is a vital difference between Nixon and Trump, though. As screwed-up as he was, Nixon could feel humiliation and, somewhere inside him, he did care about his country. Trump lacks that, or any interest in anything beyond his own aggrandizement; that makes him vastly more dangerous.

Thinking ahead, I see two different scenarios playing out. The first is a reprise of the Nixon collapse: paralyzed government as Trump disintegrates in slow-motion, occasional and then accelerating defections, a dwindling core of supporters who are simply unable to face the truth of how they were gulled or the injury they have done to their country. The second is the demonization of a public enemy — almost certainly the press — the emergence of brownshirts, and widespread vandalism against media outlets and violence against reporters. Kristallnacht.

Brace yourself. We’re in for a long and ugly ride before Trump is gone.

Kellyanne Conway does have her fans over at SBCVoices.

My generation remembers the 1978 Enjoli perfume commercial featuring an attractive career woman’s sultry opening lyric, “I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan.” Is Kellyanne Conway the mythical modern day “superwoman” who can do it all?

Kellyanne is the first woman in American history to lead a winning presidential campaign! She did this while being a wife, mother of four, operating her own business, serving as Donald Trump’s campaign manager, and always “quick on the draw” in high-profile television interviews. How did she keep all those plates spinning?

It helps being smart and Kellyanne is brilliant!

Yeah, well … ho-hum. I think of Baghdad Bob whenever Ms. Conway makes an appearance.

Ought to be a heck of a press conference today, if Trump doesn’t chicken-out. Maybe we’ll find out what is the special info that Trump knows about the hacks that is unknown to everyone else.

I’ve always thought that Barack Obama would be a good man to know in a knife-fight, so I don’t have any difficulty imagining that he may have greenlighted the humiliation of Trump, the ruin of Putin’s prize on the evening before The Donald’s first press conference, and as he was delivering his valedictory. Indeed, I think there is an almost irresistible symmetry to it; part of me hopes that’s what happened.

The difficulty with that scenario is that Trump is so egregiously a foul human being that I don’t have any difficulty believing the stories, or that things just happened to work-out as they have. And there is this:

The summary is based on memos generated by political operatives seeking to derail Mr. Trump’s candidacy. Details of the reports began circulating in the fall and were widely known among journalists and politicians in Washington.

That’s delicious: Trump complains that the press is unfair, when the truth is that the press protected him by refusing to go with salacious gossip; there was no story until CNN was able to verify that the rumors had been presented to Trump as part of the intelligence briefing.

Seriously: I won’t be a bit surprised if today’s press conference is cancelled.