Tag: limerick

Perhaps he’s as mad as a hatter

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If Arendt is right and we are susceptible to radical evil because we cannot conceive of it, then the work of opposition must begin with learning to call it what it is. So here is a definition for our time: Radical evil is the manipulation of others’ perception of reality in order to increasingly concentrate power and wealth in the hands of the few. It is a strategy to sow chaos in order to take advantage of the fear that chaos brings. It is the twisting of facts to frighten citizens into believing that their safety requires them to turn against others. And it is the collapsing of what is good and moral into what is rich and powerful, and ruthlessly using that wealth and that power to accrue more wealth and power.

 

That is why our efforts have to be aimed not at diagnosing Trump, but at stopping Trumpism. To call it madness is to try and bring it into the realm of the familiar and to miss the real threat that Trump embodies: He thrives in turmoil, he has an uncanny ability to bend the world to his reality, he is charismatic and ruthless, hypnotic and terrifying, and we, in this country, have rarely seen his like before. To fight Trumpism, we must actively expose and combat the overpowering reality he is trying to create—and we must abandon the comforting delusion that Trump is delusional.

 

Stop Saying Donald Trump Is Mentally Ill
Slate

 

Perhaps he’s as mad as a hatter;
Perhaps he’s just mean… what’s it matter?
(Though collusion’s suspected)
the man was elected
by our sisters and brothers… what’s sadder?

Lily Beth Baker, 5/19/17

 

As Comey’s recounting a medley

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Just one of several instances of unwanted attention described in the article:

Mr. Comey has spoken privately of his concerns that the contacts from Mr. Trump and his aides were inappropriate, and how he felt compelled to resist them.

 

[…]

 

Mr. Wittes said Mr. Comey told him that he initially did not want to go to the meeting because the F.B.I. director should not have too close a relationship with the White House. But Mr. Comey went because he wanted to represent the bureau.

 

The ceremony occurred in the Blue Room of the White House, where many senior law enforcement officials — including the Secret Service director — had gathered. Mr. Comey — who is 6 feet 8 inches tall and was wearing a dark blue suit that day – told Mr. Wittes that he tried to blend in with the blue curtains in the back of the room, in the hopes that Mr. Trump would not spot him and call him out.

 

“He thought he had gotten through and not been noticed or singled out and that he was going to get away without an individual interaction,” Mr. Wittes said Mr. Comey told him.

 

But Mr. Trump spotted Mr. Comey and called him out.

 

“Oh and there’s Jim,” Mr. Trump said. “He’s become more famous than me.”

 

With an abashed look on his face, Mr. Comey walked up to Mr. Trump.

 

“Comey said that as he was walking across the room he was determined that there wasn’t going to be a hug,” Mr. Wittes said. “It was bad enough there was going to be a handshake. And Comey has long arms so Comey said he pre-emptively reached out for a handshake and grabbed the president’s hand. But Trump pulled him into an embrace and Comey didn’t reciprocate. If you look at the video, it’s one person shaking hands and another hugging.”

 

Comey, Unsettled by Trump, Is Said to Have Wanted Him Kept at a Distance
Michael Schmidt, The New York Times

 

As Comey’s recounting a medley
of efforts to get in his head, the
invasion of bubble
foreshadowing trouble
is creepy, pathetic, and deadly.

Mary Boren, 5/19/17

 

If he’s president even a year

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“I know that there are those who are talking about, ‘Well, we’re going to get ready for the next election,’” she [Representative Maxine Waters] said, mimicking her more cautious colleagues. “No, we can’t wait that long. We don’t need to wait that long. He will have destroyed this country by then.”

 

Liberals are planning a series of nationwide protests on July 2 known as “Impeachment Marches” to increase the pressure.

 

“We expect them to call for impeachment,” said Delia Brown, one of the organizers of the march in Los Angeles. “This is now the zeitgeist, it’s the demands of people we’re responding to.”

 

Democratic Leaders Try to Slow Calls to Impeach Trump
The New York Times

 

 

If he’s president even a year
and impeachment’s not kicked into gear,
if he’s still in our midst,
we’ll defy and persist
’til we’ve booted his ass outta here!

Lily Beth Baker, 5/18/17

 

How long must America wait

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Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein’s appointment of former FBI director Robert Mueller to act as special counsel investigating Russian meddling into the 2016 election is an unexpected development in the issue that’s roiled the early days of Donald Trump’s administration. While it’s also a relatively unusual step in recent history, we do know one thing about it: The odds are good that it will take a while.

 

The Fix walked through a number of times that outside investigations have been launched in American history. But before we get too far down the path of exploring how long those took, it’s worth clarifying what exactly we’re talking about.

 

Continue reading …
How long will the special counsel’s investigation of Russia take?
Possibly years.
Philip Bump, The Washington Post

 

 

How long must America wait
for the law to resolve the debate?
Will the diligent Mueller
find proof in full color
of criminal actions too late?

Mary Boren, 5/18/17

 

All the turmoil is taking a toll

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It’s not judges or senators who will save us from the worst of Trump, which is most of Trump. His undoing will come from within. Be as cynical as you want about Washington — I certainly indulge myself — but there remain insiders with consciences, and some of them actually work for the president. They’re willing to work against him if circumstances warrant it. Circumstances have been warranting it, and here we are.

 

What we’re witnessing is astonishing. I don’t mean Trump’s actions — including the infuriating reports that he divulged highly classified information to Russian visitors and had asked James Comey to lay off Michael Flynn — though those do qualify. I mean how reliably Trump’s embarrassing or outrageous behavior always reaches journalists, as government officials use the very media that he demonizes to expose his recklessness, ridicule his cluelessness, warn Americans about his intentions and head him off at the pass.

 

This much leaking this soon in an administration explodes the norms of the White House every bit as much as Trump’s own conduct does, and it’s an indication more powerful than just about any other of what kind of president we have. He is so unprepared, shows such bad judgment and has such an erratic temper that he’s not trusted by people who are paid to bolster him and who get the most intimate, unvarnished look at him. Some of them have decided that discretion isn’t always the keeping of secrets, not if it protects bad actors. They’re right. And they give me hope.

 

Blessed be the tattletales in the Trump White House
Opinion, The Seattle Times

 

 

All the turmoil is taking a toll
at the prospect there’s more than one mole
bent on bringing him down.
Will king trump lose the crown
for which he has ransomed his soul?

Lily Beth Baker, 5/17/17

Some Repubs claim the media’s stoking

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Some Republicans ― including an unnamed White House official ― maintained on Wednesday that Trump was merely joking when he told Comey to lay off of Flynn, who was fired earlier this year over his conversations with Russian officials before the president’s inauguration.

 

The president must not have thought much about the quality of his joke. According to The New York Times, which reviewed portions of Comey’s memo, Trump instructed others present in the February meeting ― including Vice President Mike Pence and Attorney General Jeff Sessions ― to leave the room so he could impart his words to Comey alone.

 

The argument that Trump merely made a casual request to Comey to drop the investigation of Flynn is also suspicious given that Trump later fired Comey.

 

Republicans Insist Donald Trump’s Request To James Comey Wasn’t Serious
Huffington Post

 

Some Repubs claim the media’s stoking
the fire, ’cause, well trump was just joking
in suggesting that Comey
should lay off his homie.
One wonders at what they’re all smoking!

Susan E. Eckenrode, 5/17/17

 

Since Wednesday is hump-day, there’s time

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Trump’s tumultuous first months have unfolded like a tape of earlier presidential crises played on fast-forward. […] New controversies routinely crash into the White House before the beleaguered staff has recovered from the previous wave. The master of the accelerated news cycle is now its victim. Democratic leaders, recognizing that dynamic, are deferring talk of impeachment while pushing for an independent investigation.

 

Events are pressing on Trump so quickly that it’s hazardous to project his current support from his party too far into the future. Congressional Republicans aren’t defending Trump because of deep personal loyalty. Instead the GOP alliance with Trump is rooted in shared political interests. […]

 

The safe prediction is that congressional Republicans will not mount any serious attempt to force Trump from office before exhausting all other possibilities, such as an imposed staff reshuffle or even embracing demands for an independent counsel as a way to temporarily push the issue off of their plate. But the lesson of Trump’s perpetual turmoil is that further developments, like compelling public testimony from Comey, may disrupt their timetable. An effort to remove him may never coalesce. But it’s no longer impossible to envision that it will—and that alone measures how much damage Trump has absorbed during these tumultuous seven (or so) days in May.

 

Trump Is Testing the GOP’s Limits
The Atlantic

 

 

Since Wednesday is hump-day, there’s time
for a couple more scandals to climb
to the top of the news
for the weekend’s reviews
to give us more limericks to rhyme.

Susan E. Eckenrode, 5/17/17

Forty-five wreaks his wrath on his aides

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The president’s appetite for chaos, coupled with his disregard for the self-protective conventions of the presidency, has left his staff confused and squabbling. And his own mood, according to two advisers who spoke on the condition of anonymity, has become sour and dark, and he has turned against most of his aides — even his son-in-law, Jared Kushner — describing them in a fury as “incompetent,” according to one of those advisers.

 

[…]

 

The stress was taking its toll. Late Monday, reporters could hear senior aides shouting from behind closed doors as they discussed how to respond after Washington Post reporters informed them of an article they were writing that first reported the news about the president’s divulging of intelligence.

 

[…]

 

There is a growing sense that Mr. Trump seems unwilling or unable to do the things necessary to keep himself out of trouble and that the presidency has done little to tame a shoot-from-the-hip-into-his-own-foot style that characterized his campaign.

 

At a Besieged White House, Tempers Flare and Confusion Swirls
The New York Times

 

 

Forty-five wreaks his wrath on his aides,
unrelenting, he tears through tirades,
while creating chaos
just to show he’s the boss
as he plots enigmatic charades.

Susan Eckenrode, 5/17/17

 

There are reasons aplenty to reach

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Even without getting to the bottom of what Trump dismissed as “this Russia thing,” impeachable offenses could theoretically have been charged from the outset of this presidency. One important example is Trump’s brazen defiance of the foreign emoluments clause, which is designed to prevent foreign powers from pressuring U.S. officials to stray from undivided loyalty to the United States. Political reality made impeachment and removal on that and other grounds seem premature.

 

No longer. To wait for the results of the multiple investigations underway is to risk tying our nation’s fate to the whims of an authoritarian leader.

 

Trump must be impeached. Here’s why.
Laurence H. Tribe, Opinion, The Washington Post

 

 

There are reasons aplenty to reach
the conclusion… it’s time to impeach
and convict DJ Trump
and proceed then to dump
every toady and scurrilous leech.

Susan E. Eckenrode, 5/14/17

 

Now McMaster is skewing the facts.

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In one fell swoop, Trump revealed his abject unfitness and exposed McMaster, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and deputy national security adviser Dina Powell — all who personally attempted to knock down the story — as dishonest hacks.

 

It is not unreasonable to ask whether McMaster, a lieutenant general who was previously seen as one of the few credible voices in the administration, can now serve the country and protect it from an unfit president only by resigning.

 

McMaster and Tillerson are complicit in Trump’s dishonesty, so must they resign?
Jennifer Rubin, Opinion, The Washington Post

 

Now McMaster is skewing the facts.
His duplicitous hornswoggling smacks
of trumpian gall
and he’s caught in the thrall
as his stellar integrity cracks.

Susan E. Eckenrode, 5/16/17