Now she stroked his pretty skin and then she kissed and held him tight
But instead of saying thanks, that snake gave her a vicious bite.

                                                            (The Snake, by Al Wilson)

 “I do listen to people. I hire experts. I hire top, top people. And I do listen.” (Donald Trump, Greenville, South Carolina, February 13, 2016).

I’ll readily jump out in front of the parade on this one: Omarosa Nanigault Newman is an opportunist. After taking full advantage of her close association with Donald Trump to score a top-paying ($179,700) job, she is now trying to sell her tell-all book about his ugly side that was already in full view for anyone with any degree of objectivity to see.

So, am I saying there are no good guys in this little dust-up?

Exactly.

You see, no one really knows what her job duties were in pulling down almost $180,000 per year and Trump’s justification for hiring her? Try this tweet on for size:

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

Wacky Omarosa, who got fired 3 times on the Apprentice, now got fired for the last time. She never made it, never will. She begged me for a job, tears in her eyes, I said Ok. People in the White House hated her. She was vicious, but not smart. I would rarely see her but heard….

8:27 AM – Aug 13, 2018

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

…really bad things. Nasty to people & would constantly miss meetings & work. When Gen. Kelly came on board he told me she was a loser & nothing but problems. I told him to try working it out, if possible, because she only said GREAT things about me – until she got fired!

8:50 AM – Aug 13, 2018

Half-an-hour later, unable to resist his addiction to Twitter, he again tweeted:

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

While I know it’s “not presidential” to take on a lowlife like Omarosa, and while I would rather not be doing so, this is a modern day form of communication and I know the Fake News Media will be working overtime to make even Wacky Omarosa look legitimate as possible. Sorry!

9:21 AM – Aug 13, 2018

So, he paid her 179,700 U.S. taxpayer dollars per year “because she only said GREAT things about me,” only to end up calling her “a lowlife” and “wacky.”

Good God.

I’ve heard more intelligent taunts on an elementary school playground.

People, this is the so-called leader of the most powerful nation with the biggest and baddest military might on the planet reduced to exchanging insults on social media with a subordinate he hired for no other reason than she said nice things about him—and he let you pay her salary.

It just doesn’t get any more embarrassing than this.

Or does it? He has brought on board the weirdest assortment of amateurs to ever grace the West Wing, appointees whose job it is to always tell him how brilliant he is and to never tell him he’s wrong or that he should cancel his twitter account. I know this is sacrilege to those who voted for Trump, but Bill Clinton has co-authored a pretty good book with James Patterson called The President is Missing. A single sentence on page 192 caught my eye, a sentence most likely written by Clinton: “Surrounding yourself with sycophants and bootlickers is the surest route to failure.”

Without even addressing his bizarre appointments (like Wilbur Ross, Scott Pruitt, Tom Price, Steve Bannon, Ajit Pai, et al), let’s examine the record.

• Trump is opposed to CHAIN MIGRATION, yet his own mother and Melania’s parents took full advantage of chain migration to enter this country and to become citizens. This is no negative reflection on his mother, his wife, or her parents. No one can blame them for taking advantage of that law. But it does provide stark evidence of Trump’s double standard, or hypocrisy.
• While he is quick to sing the praises of Vladimir Putin, Trump was unforgivably remiss in deliberately ignoring war hero JOHN McCAIN in announcing—to a military audience, no less—the signing of the Defense Authorization Bill named after the cancer-stricken Arizona senator. That in itself is inexcusable, an insult that matches—or even exceeds—the kneeling of NFL players during the National Anthem for any perceived lack of respect. (A clue, Trump: the kneeling isn’t even about the anthem. Anyone with any perceptive skills knows it’s a silent protest of the profiling and shooting of blacks by police. Let’s at least try to stay on subject, Mr. Number-One-Putin-fan. You think you can do that? Never mind, foolish question.)
• Trump hired PAUL MANAFORT as his campaign manager in June 2016 but after Manafort ran into legal problems, Trump tried to throw him under the bus as is his wont by claiming Manafort “came into the campaign very late and was with (them) for a short period of time.” I have only one answer to that: You hired him.
• After praising personal attorney MICHAEL COHEN for his loyalty, Trump did a quick 180 and turned on his former legal counsel bigly when it was learned Cohen had taped evidence that revealed that Trump knew of the $130,000 payment to porn star STORMY DANIELS.
• Two days after he was elected, Trump was cautioned by PRESIDENT OBAMA not to hire Michael Flynn. Did Trump listen? Hell, no. He knows more than Obama, he knows more than his generals, he knows more than the Department of Justice, he knows more than all the intelligence agencies combined, so why should he listen to anyone else? He hired Flynn. He even allegedly tried to get former FBI Director Michael Comey to go easy on Flynn. Acting Attorney General Sally Yates also tried to warn Trump. Of course, Trump would end up firing both Comey and Yates and, of course, ANDREW McCABE, just two days before he was eligible for retirement. But when things went south for Flynn, Trump tried his damnedest to SHIFT THE BLAME to Obama and Yates because, as everyone knows, Trump is never wrong.
• GEORGE PAPADOPOULOS served as a foreign policy adviser and on a presidential international business advisory council but when he pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his communications with Russian nationals on behalf of Trump during the presidential campaign, Trump couldn’t run fast enough or far enough, tweeting (of course) “Few people knew the young, low level volunteer named George, who has already proven to be a liar.” Well, someone knew him well enough to trust him and to try and use him to set up meetings with a Russian oligarch.
• And then there’s Sen. Jeff Sessions who Trump was quick to recognize on election night. He was the first member of the Senate to endorse Trump and Trump made him his attorney general. But today (August 14) he had this to say about Sessions: “If we had a real attorney general,” there would be no Russia investigation. The man does not know the meaning of loyalty.
• And as for that infamous TRUMP TOWER meeting with that Russian lawyer, Donald Trump, Jr., said the discussion was about Russian adoptions. Turns out Donald Trump, Sr., dictated that response himself and he only last week acknowledged that the meeting was about getting “information on an opponent,” which he said was “totally legal.” Except it’s not. Trump Sr. says he knew nothing of the meeting. Omarosa says he did. Place your bets.

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

Fake News reporting, a complete fabrication, that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower. This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics – and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!

7:35 AM – Aug 5, 2018

Do you detect a trend here?

He’s a walkin’ contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction,

Takin’ ev’ry wrong direction on his lonely way back home.

                                    (The Pilgrim, by Kris Kristofferson)

Donald Trump’s entire 19 months in office have been marked by one CONTRADICTION after another, a character flaw he has made no apparent effort to address. Yet, those who blindly follow him in the expectation that their lives will be better under his policies (which change daily, sometimes hourly), continue to blindly follow. They demand no explanation as to why Trump feels he has to suck up to Putin while disparaging our own intelligence agencies, why he thinks he can trust Kim Jong Un when he has violated ever agreement he’s ever signed, why massive tax breaks for the very rich are supposed to benefit the very poor, why divisiveness among whites and blacks is supposed to be healthy, why caging children is a good policy, why depriving millions of people of health care is wise, why removal of policies to protect the environment, consumers, borrowers, and the economy can possibly make sense, or why he constantly—CONSTANTLY—finds himself embroiled in controversy of the crudest, crassest sort.

In their book One Nation After Trump, writers E.J. Dionne, Jr., Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann note that Alexander Hamilton warned that “Disorienting the public by blurring the line between fact and falsehood is the trick of the despot whose ‘object is to throw things into confusion that he may ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.’” (Emphasis mine)

That’s an apt description of Donald Trump if ever there was one. When it comes to disoriented the public by blurring the line between fact and fiction and throwing things into confusion, he owns franchise rights.

Oh, shut up, silly woman,” said the reptile with a grin
You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.

Take me in, oh tender woman 
Take me in, for heaven’s sake
Take me in oh tender woman, sighed the snake 

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I now have two E-books available for purchase for $5 each on Kindle, Barnes& Noble’s Nook, Sony, Apple, Kobo, and Diesel.

My first novel entitled The Mission has been joined by Macabre Vengeance in the Big Easy, a ghost story thriller set in New Orleans.

The Mission is about the election of a mentally unhinged tyrant as president of the United States who wins the most acrimonious, divisive election in American history and who, immediately upon his inauguration, sets about dividing the country—and the world—even further with his dictatorial actions. Even as he comes under investigation, he continues to insult our allies and to curry favor with our adversaries, creating a volatile atmosphere that threatens world peace and economic stability.

At the same time, NASA sends a seven-person crew on a first-of-its-kind mission into space. The crew of Sol Orbiter One, commanded by Col. Travis Whitten, discovers during its mission that the earth is doomed to nuclear annihilation and they are the only ones who can change the course of history

Upon their return to earth, they embark on The Mission that is shrouded in secrecy and if successful, they know they will save mankind but at the cost of their own lives.

It’s enough to get Alex Jones and the conspiracy-obsessed Q-Anon types to salivating over the possibilities of the black SUVs rolling up to my house in the middle of the night to whisk me away to parts unknown.

Macabre Vengeance in the Big Easy, on the other hand, is a bit more mundane. It’s only about a crooked lawyer who is in cahoots with a few corrupt judges in New Orleans as they work together in getting murderers and rapists acquitted and then, when they can’t pay their legal bills, employing them in their drug smuggling and prostitution enterprises. The scheme runs smoothly until the felonious co-conspirators begin turning up as corpses as they meet violent, unexplained fates and a law clerk named Matt Ramsey starts to get curious about it all. When he gets too close to the truth, his life is placed in danger and his discoveries leave him with legitimate questions about the probable existence of an otherworldly realm in a city where voodoo and the spirit world have a long tradition.

Enjoy.

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I’ve just published a new book but it’s available only as an E book and as of today, it’s available on Barnes& Noble’s Nook, Sony, Apple, Kobo, and Diesel. It should be available on Amazon Kindle later today.

Unlike my previous books, this is a work of fiction. It’s a novel entitled The Mission. It’s about the election of a mentally unhinged tyrant as president of the United States who wins the most acrimonious, divisive election in American history and who, immediately upon his inauguration, sets about dividing the country—and the world—even further with his dictatorial actions. Even as he comes under investigation, he continues to insult our allies and to curry favor with our adversaries, creating a volatile atmosphere that threatens world peace and economic stability.

At the same time, NASA sends a seven-person crew on a first-of-its-kind mission into space. The crew of Sol Orbiter One, commanded by Col. Travis Whitten, discovers during its mission that the earth is doomed to nuclear annihilation and they are the only ones who can change the course of history

Upon their return to earth, they embark on The Mission that is shrouded in secrecy and if successful, they know they will save mankind but at the cost of their own lives.

Click HERE to download your $5 copy of The Mission.

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If you think for one nano-second that I’m going to gloat, you’re dead wrong.

What we witnessed in Helsinki yesterday is nothing for anyone to gloat over—unless your name is Putin. Yesterday, a day when an American president turned his back on his own country in a shameless display of deference to a tyrant, a murderer, and an enemy of this country, was a day that should have infuriated all true Americans.

On the other hand, for those of us who have been subjected to names like libtards, Clintonites, Obamaites, bleeding hearts, socialists, and worse, I have to admit watching the Trump train wreck in the last few weeks has provided a measure of, if not comfort, at least redemption.

So, allow me just a moment of self-indulgence:

If being a “libtard” means that I have an aversion to locking innocent children in cages, then libtard it is.

I’m all for law and order but if criticism of over-zealous cops who get their kicks tasing and beating handcuffed prisoners (see Iberia Parish) and shooting unarmed citizens makes me a bleeding heart, then so be it. There has to be a balance between protecting the public and running roughshod over people’s rights. My grandfather had a simple rule: “Never take a man’s dignity from him.”

If being more concerned for our environment than I am for corporate profits makes me an anarchist, then you and I have vastly different ideas of what anarchy is.

If my wanting to see everyone have access to decent medical care makes me a socialist, it’s a label I accept. After all, the biggest socialist of them all was a man named Jesus. He championed this radical philosophy of love for our fellow man.

I never cared for Hillary Clinton, but yes, I voted for her because I could not stomach the idea of voting for Trump. I didn’t want her as president, but I absolutely feared Trump. I split my vote on Obama, going for McCain the first time around and for Obama the second time. If those votes make me something akin to a scumbag in your eyes, then I guess that’s the way it has to be.

I reiterate that even for those of us who have consistently warned that this man Trump is an out-of-control lunatic, a dangerous commodity, whose attacks on the press and his persecution of certain ethnic groups is reminiscent of other dictators of the 20^th century are not funny but portentous, it’s not fun being right. In fact, it’s downright frightening when you consider the prospects for what still may lie in store for the rest of his term.

Kim Jong-un took Trump for the fool he is and that “de-nuclearization agreement” turned out to be nothing of the sort. His triumphant boast that North Korea is “no longer a nuclear threat” ranks right up there with “Mission accomplished,” and “You’re doing a heckuva job, Brownie.”

Trump managed to insult Canada and the members of the G-7 summit for no good reason that I can see. He then infuriated the European Union with a barrage of insults en route to the fateful summit with Putin in Helsinki where he managed to commit nearly every blunder imaginable short of stepping on his own long red tie.

There are those, of course, who will continue to pledge loyalty to him in the mistaken belief that he “is doing what he said he would do” when in fact, he certainly is not. So far, he’s managed to convince Harley-Davidson and BMW to relocate American plants overseas. He’s overturned net neutrality. He is repealing one environmental protection regulation after another and doing the same with consumer protection laws. He’s destroying medical care while doing nothing to replace crumbling infrastructure. (Okay, he did promise to dismantle environmental and consumer protections and medical care—but are those really good things?

And let’s break down the issue of illegal immigration. Question: Why are so many Latinos trying to get into this country? Answer: To seek a better life. Question: How can they do that? Answer: They will work. Question: Why are we letting them take jobs from Americans? Answer (two parts): First, many of those jobs are jobs Americans don’t seem to want. Second, no immigrant EVER took an American’s job. American employers take those jobs and give them to illegal/undocumented immigrants who will work cheaper so they can make higher profits at the expense of your job and to the detriment of you and your family, so if you have a gripe, take it up with your former employer. It’s kind of like the drug smuggling problem. If there weren’t buyers, there would be no smugglers. Question: Why don’t they enter legally? Answer: See answer to previous question.

And even if he did accomplish what he promised, the results would, for the most part, be catastrophic for the very ones who continue to support him. That’s the cruel irony of the entire Trump experience: the ones who love him most are the ones he has promised to hurt the most.

Finally, let’s look at his support in Congress—the Republicans, a pretty shameful bunch in their own right, Louisiana’s own delegation included.

Most of you are far too young to remember and to tell the truth, I was only three when Richard Nixon first ran for Congress in 1946. As a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), Nixon plagued the Truman administration in a constant search for communists under every leaf in Washington and in every movie studio in Hollywood. Four years later, he ran for and was elected to the Senate. His entire 1950 campaign was based on red-baiting his opponent, Helen Gahagan Douglas.

Then there was the Red Scare of the 1940s and 50s, stoked by one Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, another Republican, and in 1964, one of the foremost Republican communist fighters, Barry Goldwater, was swamped by Lyndon Johnson in the presidential election. But Goldwater’s nomination laid the groundwork for what was to become a major anti-communism campaign for the Republicans, capped off by the Nixon comeback of 1968 and the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan, who carried on the anti-communism crusade with his classic line, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”

Of course, with the new millennial, came a new enemy, Islam. But the threats of communist China, Russia, and North Korea always lurked in the background.

So now, saddled with the long-standing tradition of being the party to stand up against the Red Menace, Republicans are suddenly suffering massive whiplash from the party’s sudden lurch to the left, engineered by one Donald Trump.

What to do, what to do? Talk about a quandary. On the one hand, there’s tradition to uphold. On the other, there’s this misplaced loyaty to the party which somehow has found itself beholden to a man who has, by some accident of fate, been placed in the position of leader of the GOP and whose head is in such a position now that Putin is going to need a proctologist to find it.

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