The White House has ordered all federal agencies to halt diversity training.  That’s right, folks, Trump has ordered that all training sessions about fighting systemic racism and white privilege in federal agencies, calling it “divisive” and “un-American”.  Russell Vought, the director of OMB, said, “The President has directed me to ensure that federal agencies cease and desist from using taxpayer dollars to fund these divisive, un-American propaganda training sessions.”

Of course, since the money has been appropriated and the contracts let, Trump can’t just arbitrarily cancel them.  So, what will happen is that taxpayer money will be spent and no training will occur.  Why is Trump doing this?  To whip up his last remaining base, racist pigs who hate everyone and everything, of course.  Trump has already pissed off small business owners, large business owners, doctors, nurses, scientists, , public health officials, teachers, and union workers; now he’s alienated members of the military, Blue Star families and Gold Star families.  Apparently all that’s left is Russian gangsters and bigoted mouth breathers waving Nazi and Confederate flags.

He’s finally found his base of last resort.

Trump’s approval ratings, which always hover around the low 40s, has risen in the last month as many Americans rallied around him as he thrashed around trying to make the Coronavirus pandemic go away.  He started daily briefings for the first time in over a year and his approval went up.  Now an interesting effect of his daily exposure is occurring – people (who don’t pay much attention) are figuring out that Trump actually is doing a terrible job with the crisis.  I believe they’re figuring that out because every day, Trump:

• Lies, lies, lies.  His incessant lying results in his staff having to continuously crisis manage, backtracking on his bombastic claims of everything from cures to numbers, to non-existent vaccines and tests.
• Is permanently radically partisan.  He attacks everyone who criticizes him and airs old grievances daily.
• Cuts off the experts to spout conspiracy theories and bullshit.
• Insults the international community, WHO, NATO, and many others including his usual targets, China and “shithole” countries.
• Insults the press, refuses to answer a straight question repeats “fake news” every minute.
• Holds his “briefings” at the 5 pm newshour so his ratings are higher.  He sometimes blathers for up to 2 hours, providing very little actual new information. It wrecks news programing throughout the country.

This worked for a few weeks, but Trump is wearing pretty thin with millions of Americans.  His ratings are falling in new polls, and Biden is rising against him in key states like Florida.  I can’t watch it, but Trump is inadvertently damaging his re-election prospects by putting his incompetence and cornered badger personality every day on national television.  Even most loyal Trumpists have backed away from their idiotic boasting and taunting of normal Americans who are watching this debacle slack-jawed in disbelief.

Trump’s “winning” has now erased ALL of the stock market gains since he took office.  Unemployment this morning is 13% the highest in almost 100 years.  We are struggling with a global pandemic without the benefit of a strong pandemic response team because it was dismantled.  We are struggling with confusing and often conflicting information.  Our infection rate is understated because there is virtually no testing available.  Those who had it and have recovered have no way of confirming their illness because no serum antibody test is available.  The CDC is paralyzed by politicized appointments and slashed budgets.

Trump couldn’t do a better job of destroying the US economy if he tried.  The silver lining here, though, is that he’s putting his corruption, incompetence, and hatefulness of full display for hours every day.  Doing that is actually starting to get through to Americans who normally don’t pay attention.

Apparently, the impeachment proceedings are flushing all the Trump nuts out into the light, especially on social media.  I had another one of THOSE FB conversations last night, this time with a Trumpist friend of my Never Trumper friend who described himself as a moderate.  When an obvious Trumpist describes themself as a moderate, you know the conversation is going to go bad.  This one did, and it didn’t take long for him to retreat into the normal Trumpist tropes.  He characterized himself as a moderate who supports Trump (while never actually saying that); when I talked about Trump’s many well documented felonies, he said it was inappropriate for me to say he was a criminal without him being convicted of said crimes.  He said that I should always use the word “alleged” before every act that Trump has committed.  So, to play the game, I described Trump’s “alleged” 12,000 lies documented by the Washington Post and his ten “alleged” acts of felony obstruction of justice documented in the 480 pages of the Mueller Report, as well as his “alleged” attempts to get help from the Russians in 2016 which are also well documented.  I then pointed out that Trump didn’t use “alleged” when he lied thousands of times over 6 years that Obama was not an American.  Or that no one used the word “alleged” when conspiracy nuts lied thousands of times over 10 years that Michelle Obama was actually a cross dressing gay man and their daughters were actually born in Africa (Yes, that happened; look it up).  The irony of that was lost on said Trumpist, so he told me that my “extreme fear” of Trumpists was hurting my ability to communicate with them.  I pointed out to him that it wasn’t “extreme fear” of Trumpists but complete disdain for them.  After he criticized my “reading skills” the conversation ended just as you can imagine.

I’ve never had a conversation with a Trumpist that has gone well.  It normally devolves as above.  My observation is that Trump supporters are either willfully ignorant, radically partisan, selfish, or just plain stupid.  The first two of these traits are normally linked since a radical partisan will over look all weakness of the side they support.   Now that we’re in impeachment territory, I’m giving no ground to them.

This phenomenon is hard to understand, but engraved in stone real.  AND, it’s not fun.

Last night I extricated myself from a FB conversation.  Yes, it was one of THOSE conversations, started by one of my conservative acquaintances who has become a Never Trumper.  A couple of days ago, he asked what act would turn his Trumpist friends against The Orange One.  The answer (nothing) was predictable; what was shocking was the nonsense they spewed in a continuous stream to justify that.  Intellectually, we all sense that Trumpists are unbalanced and misinformed.  When it’s laid out in plain English on social media, it makes your hair hurt.

One Trumpist would deflect all questions about Trump to Biden and his son, Hunter.  He would simply not address any of the issues about Ukraine or the thousands and thousands of easily disproven lies from Trump.  His source is Sean Hannity and he actually begged me to watch his show to “get the facts” that were going “to bury” Biden and his son.  He would only gloat about how Biden is “cooked” and would not even address the question.  Another Trumpist resorted to immediate grade school name calling and wanted to bet all comers $2,500 that Trump would not be impeached and that he would again be elected president.  He didn’t like I said I didn’t believe I wanted to bet on the level of stupidity of Trumpists.

One Trumpist kept quoting the Bible.  One even quoted Shakespeare, which I found entertaining.  One kept quoting the lies of Peter Schweizer, author of Clinton Cash, one of those fact free “investigative” books that makes people’s brains soft.  One said he would only vote against Trump if “he was convicted of a crime”.  He seemed puzzled when I said that was impossible since DOJ policy didn’t allow a sitting president to be indicted for crimes they committed.

The one who took the cake?  The QAnon Trumpist.  I have never had a social media conversation with anyone as unhinged as this one.  These folks are obsessed with pedophilia, and have this weird article of faith that the “Deep State”, whatever that is, is somehow covering up Hillary’s pedophilia ring that has “pedavores” as members.  I have no idea what a “pedavore” is, and don’t want to know.  This person was so unhinged that even the most Trumpist of Trumpists paused their ranting momentarily, one even saying, “I don’t even know what that means.”  I burst out laughing at that one, almost spilling my Jack on the rocks on my keyboard.

What I learned during this exchange was that to a person no level of corruption, criminality, or misconduct would cause a Trumpist to think again.  The really disheartening lesson was that how thoroughly these people are brainwashed with pure unadulterated bullshit.  We knew that the Hillary nonsense is encoded in the DNA – but right alongside those lies, the lies about Biden and his son have already been ingrained.  The facts have no bearing on these opinions; none.  I have finally given up even trying to talk to these people because I make no progress.  The message framing, as defined by George Lakoff, a linguist and retired professor of language at Berkeley, is perfect.  This message framing hits all the emotional buttons of fear, belonging, and Them vs. Us.  Once that kind of messaging becomes encoded, it’s almost impossible to alter it, and that’s what we’re witnessing.

These people are beyond reach of reason and critical thinking.  The only way they can be beaten is to neutralize them at the voting booth, and that requires the engagement in massive numbers of normal people who haven’t been brainwashed.  That is a huge task.

Jonathan Stickland (M-Bedford) (the M is for Moron) has announced that he’s not going to run for reelection next year.  Normally when an idiot like Stickland announces leaving, I would celebrate, but Bedford has been infested with a terminal case Teabag syndrome, and God knows who’ll run to take his place.  As one commenter said to the accompanying story about Stickland bowing out, “even if Bedford elected a potted plant, it would raise the average IQ of the Texas House by 20 points.”  That may be true, and I’m certainly will for them to test that hypothesis.

Stickland has given an assist to gun nuts who’s soul purpose in life is putting a gun into the hands of every screwball and criminal in Texas (calling it Constitutional); he’s also helped laid waste to Texas education system, healthcare system, and anything the state did to help people in need.

I say good riddance and that I hope an adult in Bedford will stand up and take this seat away from the weirdos and screwballs.

ProPublica is on the case, digging in on Trump’s personal self enrichment using his own resorts to reap millions in government money and stuff in his own pockets full of American taxpayer cash.   One textbook example of how he does it is described in detail, and it goes like this:  Trump and his merry band of criminals descend on Mara Lago for the visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping in April 2017.  Late in the evening of the state dinner (profits to Donald Trump), Steve Bannon and unknown number of his cronies take over the posh Library Bar in the resort, order the bartender out and post the Secret Service at the door.  In the ensuing hours, they consume 54 premium cocktails (self served) while the agents block the door from entry, including the bartender himself.  The bill, totaling over $1,000 (with the service charge) was later toted up and sent to the State Department which it refused to pay.  It was forwarded to the White House, which, of course approved the bill without question, writing the check, taxpayers paying the bill.

The article goes on the describe how the Trump administration has lifted the caps on hotel bills at Trump resorts, allowing trump to profit, selling rooms to the government for $500 dollars a night and more.

Trump is nothing more than a mobster, stealing money from Americans while 42% of them cheer him on in his criminality.  The corruption is jaw dropping, while his sycophants look wide-eyed saying “What?  You were serious about that?”