March 2017
OBAMA’S GHOST
It must gall an egotist like Donald Trump that, though he is richer and whiter that his predecessor with the African African father, the white American mother and the African name, is still more popular than he is. Trump and his army of handkerchief heads huffed and puffed, but ultimately failed to blow apart the healthcare plan for America that Barack Obama built.
How embarrassing for a man who fancies himself to the John Wayne of politics, to be foiled by Barack Obama, whose presidency Trump sought to de-legitimize.
Trump has had his bluff called by the president of Mexico who has said emphatically that his country isn’t going to pay to build any damned wall. And given Trump’s love affair with the Russian dictator Putin, some Americans have wondered aloud whether Trump’s great wall is intended to keep Mexicans out or to keep Americans in.
Trump’s bluff has also been called by the judges who determined that his thinly veiled Muslim immigration bans don’t pass constitutional muster. And now members of the President’s own party, the so-called “Freedom Caucus, called the President’s bluff on a proposed bill to repeal Obama care. Fearing certain defeat, the bill was withdrawn before being put for a full vote by the House of Representatives.
The President strikes me as a 70-year old going on 13. He has adolescent outbursts, and when it comes to details, seems to have the attention span of a gnat. He speaks and sounds, not hooked on phonics, but hooked on telling bigassed lies. Could be that Trump pecks out bizarre tweets in the middle of the night and early in the morning because he’s he’s being chased around the White House by the ghost of Barack Obama.
Oh how he despises Barack Obama.
Less than 100 days into Trump presidency and the state of U.S. politics is a hot-damned mess. The drip, drip, drip of Russia-gate and the nonsense propagated by Trump surrogates that there are “alternative facts” is sowing confusion chaos throughout the land. The editors of Time magazine asked on a recent cover “Is Truth Dead?”
In less than 100 days, Trump’s presidency has ripped the scabs off old sores related to race, class and religion. The Trump presidency challenges the notion that America is exceptional among all the nations of the world. You may not agree, and I could be wrong, but I’m Just Saying
Trump Loves the Poorly Educated
President Trump, who claims great affection for the “poorly educated,” brought his act to Louisville Monday. Seeing the thousands lined up to see their President reminded me of a quote often, and mistakenly some say, attributed to P.T. Barnum, “There’s a Sucker Born Every Minute.”
The President delivered a familiar rant. He’s going to “drain” the political swamp in Washington. He’s going to build a “great wall” between the U.S. and Mexico. He’s going to bring coal jobs back to Appalachia and repeal “Obamacare.” The Kentucky crowd cheered, stomped and whistled when their President renewed his pledge to “make America great again,” and to do so apparently whether or not his proposals violate common decency and the Constitution, which I doubt that he’s ever read.
Whilst Trump was burning gas aboard the Presidential jet flying to Kentucky, intelligence officials were up on Capitol Hill testifying they’d found nothing to corroborate the President’s tweet alleging that his predecessor illegally ordered wiretaps of Trump’s New York offices during the campaign. But they are, and have been since last summer, investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election.
For all his trash talking tweets attacking U.S. allies, U.S. intelligence agencies, U.S. judges who rule against his immigration policies, rappers, actors, “Saturday Night Live” skits and members of the media and Congress who aren’t buying his bull, the President persists in his bromance with Russian President Putin. No horrible tweets about Putin.
Trump will be impeached, say some. Others are praying for impeachment, but in the meantime 45 can do plenty of damage. He’s proposed a federal budget, for example, that would eviscerate many of the nutrition, educational, health, arts and social programs that I suspect benefit many of the very people, the poor people, who piled into Freedom Hall Monday. “He’s doing what he said he would,” one woman gushed after listening to Trump Monday. My suggestion to that lady and others who’ve embraced Trump as their messiah is that you rush out and stock up on K-Y gel, the intense kind, because you’re being hoodwinked, bamboozled and royally screwed.
I’m Back
Can hardly believe it’s been almost six years since I disappeared from the pages of The Courier-Journal. Some of you have said that you miss my “voice.” Well be it known that I have missed you and my precious platform as a columnist and member of The CJ’s editorial board. But my involuntary separation from the job that I loved, and the job that brought me to Louisville in the first place, turned out to be exquisite timing. Away from the grind, I had freedom to travel and to thoroughly enjoy David Rivera, my childhood sweetheart from back home in East Harlem. Away from deadlines, I was able to be a full time caregiver for David as he journeyed to his death in 2015.