Former reality star and Trump PR flack Omarosa Manigault-Newman’s book about working in the White House comes out soon. It’s called “Unhinged.”
Omarosa’s New Book
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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One of the major errors of (most of) Trump’s opposition is taking him to be a fool or a lunatic on a practical level. Underestimating your enemy is a very serious mistake.
OTOH, his friends, allies and base make the mistake of believing he’s a stable genius on a practical level. Overestimating your supposed ally is a very serious mistake as well.
Government of the billionaires, by the billionaires, and for the billionaires is a very serious problem for the great majority of us.
It’s called oligarchy.
Only a fool would waste time on a trash book.
Many people can spend a lifetime of reading. They have little experience of the world and have accomplished little. They are called liberal academics.
Trump outsmarted Hillary and 16 Republicans. He will win in 2020. I am more worried about Congress.
Trump outsmarted 62,984,825 voters.
Considering he’s not exactly a genius himself, that doesn’t say much for those who who voted for a known con man with a tenuous grasp on reality.
I find it very telling how binary responses are to the “Trump phenomenon.” It isn’t either/or though. It’s a combination of both.
Trump is completely unencumbered by the requirement of honest discourse to stick to the truth and/or admit to errors. So he’ll argue that you have to show an ID to buy groceries and double down over and over when challenged on it. In that regard, he’s a frickin’ genius. Reagan had the same gimmick going. But, also, Trump is up against an opposition that, frankly, reminds me of the Three Stooges. I’m repeating what I’ve posted previously on many occasions, so, briefly:
1. HRC, the ONLY person whose candidacy could have unified the collapsing Republican Party, ran. A huge mistake. Despite knowing that she had to cook the books to beat Sanders in the primary (and even then needing, what was it? 35 primaries to finally put in mathematically out of Sanders’ reach) she still ran. Knowing that she was going to face a Republican-majority House AND Senate, she STILL ran. AND, even with all that, the Dem leadership [sic] supported her.
2. Although Obama had eight years in office, everyone scuffs their feet and puts a hand to the back of their neck when asked to list his accomplishments. Obamacare? Really. That’s it. In eight years, a chimera of a healthcare plan that is already being torn apart (as every commentator who had’t drunk the Kool-AId said it would back when it was being hot-glued toget). He didn’t close Gitmo. He didn’t put a single banker in prison. Brown people over in the Middle East were still blown into bloody little chunks. He went after whistleblowers like it was going out of style. Etc. And during all this, what did the two oldest liberal Supreme Court justices do? I’ll tell you what those solons didn’t do: they didn’t retire so that younger justices could be installed to protect progressive/liberal policies. Now we’re all sitting a deathwatch for Breyer and Ginsberg.
3. The Dem leadership is, in many ways, just as flawed, just as venally corrupt, as the Republican side of the aisle. Gramma Pelosi mumbles something about how great she was as speaker of the house and congratulates herself for getting NOTHING done while ignoring all the people who are trying to point out how ineffective she truly was. Go on. Name a real leader in the Democratic Party. All they’ve got is double-talkers who say one thing until they change their minds due to a new poll. Hey, it almost worked for Hillary (except that she, too, has very little in the “Mission Accomplished” column — check her own website’s list of her accomplishments while asking yourself things like, “Gee. Was pushing for an increase in benefits for veterans a really hard sell? Was there a politician arguing that veterans should get fewer benefits?”)
Trump’s idiocy couldn’t succeed against a coherent, rational opposition that actually stood for something other than the blandest, most mediocre compromise-riddled “stances.” Without the weakness that is the sole inheritance of the Democratic Party after 30 years of Clintonian centrism, Trump would have been forced out of office already.
I’ve said it before. I’ll say it once more. From the entire field, the only person I’ve seen on the Leftist side of the aisle who seem to have any hope at all of actually activating the entire Democratic base is Bernie Sanders. Elizabeth Warren could be rehabilitated if she simply took a DNA test and, if it shows she isn’t American Indian, simply said, “Look, like a lot of families, mine had incorrect information. I thought I was part American Indian. I’m not,” but with Trump’s frothing at the mouth brand of showmanship? It’s too late for that.
Al Franken has been making noises about running for office again. I think he’d be a good choice for Veep. I would prefer Duckworth because she’s a woman from the Midwest with a military service record that includes combat. She will offset the whole boogeyman about Sanders being some sort of pacifist degenerate who’ll probably demand his inauguration be held at Stalin’s grave.
But, in short, I’ll agree with American Teacher. Trump’s going to win again unless the Democratic leadership has a very thorough bloodletting and gets rid of all the centrists the Clintons and their cohorts put into authority. The Dems have to shift further to the left, and they have to do it immediately.
To Alex the Tired:
Please, the Three Stooge simply do not merit the insult just levied upon them!
HRC was not running, nor still running, for a presidential nomination. She, and the Clinton party, were preparing for her coronation.
What, exactly, is wrong with having Native American ancestry? That group has been fighting terrorists for more than a half millennium.
Just to be clear on this. There’s nothing wrong with having American Indian ancestry. That wasn’t what I said. What I said was that Warren has claimed American Indian ancestry, but is unable to verify the claim. Now, having been caught in the contradiction, she refuses to resolve the issue by taking a DNA test. Much like how Hillary wouldn’t release the Goldman Sachs speeches, Warren’s refusal to simply resolve the question is being held over her (by of all people, Trump) as some sort of indicator of a deceitful nature.
Trump possesses a remarkable ability to get away with this sort of thing. He argues that Warren is lying about being an American Indian, WHILE calling her Pocahontas. He’s saying she’s not X while using a slur that would only make sense if he thought she WERE X.
But, again, Trump’s ploy wouldn’t work in the Democrats simply dealt with this sort of shit directly. Warren could have shut the whole thing down in 11 seconds flat. She could have taken the test, and if it showed she wasn’t American Indian, she could have simply said, “My family lore was incorrect. Ask a genealogist about it, this happens a lot. So I apologize. Unlike Donald Trump, when I’m wrong, I admit it. I do not consider that a weakness.”
If the Democrats move further to the left, Trump is guaranteed a landslide. From abolishing borders to allowing noncitizens to vote, the left is perceived as favoring noncitizens over citizens.
150 million Americans have private insurance and they are petrified of single payer. It’s not the taxes so much as the decline in care that is guaranteed. Baby Oliver Cameron in the U.K. was almost denied care by the NHS.
Baby Oliver had a cardiac fibroma, a benign tumor which is treatable…in the United States where the system, like it or not, encourages innovation. NHS was not going to allow Baby Oliver to be flown to the United States, but after Charlie Gard and Alfie Evan’s, they would have faced a PR disaster, perhaps revolt, in the U.K.
Baby Oliver was flown to Boston, the procedure was successful, and now American doctors are training British doctors on the procedure.
Our system, while flawed, delivers superior care. People fly here for treatment. British expats fly home when they have given up and are ready to die. Democrats will lose on single payer.
AmTea,
I’ll give you credit for it. You do identify some of the problems correctly. The Dems ARE perceived as favoring noncitizens over citizens. And it is part of the reason the Dems have to move to the truly progressive issues rather than these divisive ones that make for such terrible optics for them. My personal favorite gripe/example of this is the “Dreamers.” Who came up with that name? As those people are “Dreamers” what are the rest of us? “Layabouts?”
Border security isn’t the concern though. The issue isn’t about Mexicans crossing over the border. Nor is it drugs, terrorism or any of the rest of that. The drugs get shipped in all the time; they simply can’t be stopped. You might as well try to prevent high school kids from walking into class with cigarettes/vape sticks in their pockets. Terrorism? The terrorists don’t sneak people across the border. They do the same thing the CIA does: get clean assets with no association to terrorism, fly them in on an airplane as tourists or students and have them get busy. Most of the terrorism we’ve got here in the U.S. and Canada is (and will continue to be) from people who were either not on the radar at all or who were of minimal interest (or who radicalized in Tulsa or Vancouver because of the U.S.’s truly appalling behaviors?).
The border is the big distractor for what’s really the problem. The Mexicans who do these farm labor jobs. What percentage of the GDP are we talking? This is like the people screaming about the expense of a public library or NASA. It’s like 80 cents per person to fund NASA at current levels and people are acting like it’s bankrupting them, while no one points out that the military budget is enormous.
As for “150 million Americans have private insurance and they are petrified of single payer.” Well, yes, 150 million have private insurance but that’s because we don’t have single payer. The closest we have is Medicare. I have not heard any group of seniors saying, “Oh, I wish someone would end Medicare!” A decline in care, as you suggest, ignores the reality that many people simply do not have any level of care. When you lose your job in this country, you lose health coverage unless you happen to have several hundred dollars a month lying around to continue to fund it via a system that argues with you on every single claim (COBRA). As with every system I am aware of, national health care is not perfect. I am not saying it is perfect. I am saying that, as a citizen, as a human being, my worth should not be dependent on my W-2. I am entitled to certain cares and protections from my government because I have exchanged a number of my personal freedoms so that we can all live together in a society (Rousseau explains this).
And let’s keep in mind, Baby Oliver, had he been 28 years old and living in the U.S., would have been denied the operation and told to pay for it himself. Ditto if he’d needed dialysis (wait in line), dental work (sorry, your insurance doesn’t cover that), etc. That’s what people are objecting to: how insurance companies make a fortune while delivering minimal care (or denying doctor-ordered care) unless you stand on your head and pitch a fit.
Dems will win on single payer if (and it’s a big if) they actually demand what’s best for their constituencies: You have the right to get care when you need it without having to be put on hold until the end of time while a CEO pulls in an eight-digit salary while your deductible and co-pay goes into orbit.
What is the issue is voting demographics. Voting in this country is starting to be done by a tribal head count. Ocasio-Cortez won because of shifting demographics. De Leon in California beat Feinstein in the Senate primary. And Trump got the white vote. Whites are beginning to see themselves as a voting bloc.
But your worth is very much dependent on your W-2 unless you are independently wealthy or have married rich. Your W-2 determines your zip code, your nutrition, your vacations, entertainment, how your street gets plowed when it snows.
And with National Health, everyone will be guaranteed a minimal low level of mediocre care. If grown-up Oliver has a good insurance policy, his insurance will cover the operation minus the deductible, the same as with car, homeowners, and whatever kind of insurance policy you carry.
> “Whites are beginning to see themselves as a voting bloc.”
“Beginning”? You mean like starting in 1776?
What we’re seeing here on Earth One is white males running scared, crying their little eyes out because they might have to share the spoils they plundered with those they plundered from.
Oh, the humanity!
Saw that on Sputnik, Ted, got a kick out of it there. But to my mind, Mr Trump e consiglieri are playing you editorial cartoonists just as skilfully as he plays the corporate (and even, alas, much of the alternative) media ; most everything is about his antics and how dumb he is supposed to be. Admittedly, it must be fun to portray him as an idiot (and indeed, it’s fun for readers like myself to see him portrayed in that manner) – compensation of a sort for the fact that he’s managed to get to the position in which he find himself today – but the impression I get, looking in on the US political arena from afar, this sort of thing works in his favour, rather than to his detriment. After all, if a man is so important that his smallest foible attracts so much attention, he must really be important, n’est-ce-pas ?…
Rather than concentrating on Mr Trump’s person, how about concentrating on the current administration’s policies, such as, e g, the current trade and technology war on China, which have a real effect on real people ? Harder to satirise, perhaps, but far more significant….
Henri
Ted, from a comment below, perhaps a topic for a comic, a book, a collection of books:
the myriad, meticulously-manufactured, painstakingly promulgated and gullibly accepted, misperceptions of the American people.