Prognostications I’m going to call it early: Trump will be re-elected in 2020. And if he is, very likely Pence will follow in 2024. It doesn’t matter if the Democrats re-take the House and Senate – either or both – in the midterms in November. In fact, even if they do, we can expect nothing from them. Their efforts at investigations will come to little or nothing. If they persue impeachment of Trump and Kavanaugh, it will come to nothing. There are too many Democrats who don’t vote with their party or who would fear a Trump-aligned challenge in the next election cycle. They might protect the Affordable Care Act, what’s left of it, but they’ll never get through the reforms it needs to bring about universal health care. They’ll never get through gun control. They’ll be treading water for two years and with the re-election of Trump will be back in the outer darkness. The Republicans have broken the country. The appointment of Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court seals their grip on power for a generation. Worse, Ruth Bader Ginsberg will soon retire, and that’s going to leave Trump another seat and a 6-3 majority in the Court. Breyer’s 80, so he’ll go, too, and that’s 7-2. Forget dissent. There won’t be anything meaningful. What brought this about? Is it the state of the nation, the income inequality, the institutional racism, the backlash movements these and toxic masculinity have brought, leading to knee-jerk reactions? Is it purely political? If it’s just politics, when did it start? Maybe you could say it started with Nixon, and the resignation of a President before he could be impeached, and the Republican revenge enacted against Clinton that didn’t see his downfall. (Yes, he was bad, in many ways, including his sexual abuse of his power, his financial “reforms” that gave us 2008, chief among them.) Maybe it only started with Obama, and the Republican leaderships’ distaste at having an African American lead the nation. What are the Democrats going to do about 2020? Put up Cory Booker, another black man? Kristin Gillibrand or Elizabeth Warren, another woman? Doesn’t matter. The fact is that Trump goes from strength to strength, whether he accomplishes anything or not. North Korea? Doesn’t matter, his base love the noise he brings. Same with the destruction of civil liberties the Supreme Court will oversee. More black lives lost? Trumpets are fine with it, even Kanye West. More families destroyed in detentions and deportations. You know they want the wall, right? Climate change? That’s not real. LGBTI rights stripped away just when things were looking up? They weren’t, they won’t be, get back in the closet. Abortion? You know that’s gone. Welcome to the Handmaid’s Tale. I miss Howard Dean’s 50-State strategy. The only way America can ever hope to return to any measure of progressivism is to work its way back up all the way from the bottom. States have to turn blue, not just purple. Court-based activism is going to be a long struggle, so gerrymandering has to be eliminated as an option, voter registration is going to have to be opened up, and the greater care in each of these is going to be required that the current state governments will need for where they’ll be going on abortion, LGBTI rights, etc., because the court challenges will mount up and they will reach the Supreme Court and they will get knocked back. America, you’re fucked. Sorry, but you did it to yourselves, as usual, and now you’re going to live with it for a very long time.

Shame We went to see BlacKkKlansman on the weekend. There were other choices, but this did seem to be the movie of the moment, one not to be missed. It is surely one of the best things Spike Lee has done and a superior movie overall. I sat through nearly every minute of it rigid with shame. Sure, it's 1979, nearly forty years ago, but as Lee's coda shows, we haven't gotten very far from then. I found it impossible not to cringe throughout, especially sprinkled through as it was with nearly tossed-off references to the present day. America has a long history, much longer than the last forty years, the last fifty, sixty years. The country was built on two hundred years of slave labor and another hundred plus of keeping their descendants from accessing the same privileges as the rest of the country, let alone offering any redress. Yes, Civil Rights Act, etc., but making the equal status official does nothing unless it's properly enforced, unless reparations are made, and unless the fundamental attitudes and prejudices are dealt with. I look at the young people I know and have hope. But I look at the young people I don't, when they appear in the news, and despair. How long, O Lord, how long? (But don't think America is alone. Look at Australia's treatment of its indigenous population and the dog-whistling regarding refugees, let alone the internment camps we send those asylum seekers we capture to. Look at the Windrush generation in Britain. Look at the treatment of refugees throughout Eastern Europe. Look at the Rohingya, the Uyghurs . . . . We all have a lot to answer for in how we treat our fellow humans and how we have treated them for so very long.)

Guns In 1996, following the mass shooting at Port Arthur, Tasmania, John Howard, the Prime Minister, was successful in forcing the states to adopt new gun restrictions and in running a buy-back program in which individuals turned in their weapons during a year-long process. There have been no mass shootings as at Port Arthur since. In fact, murders and suicides using guns have also fallen overall. Australia is often looked to following mass shootings in the US as a model for what could be accomplished to reduce such incidents. It is the single most universally acclaimed accomplishment in Australia attributed to Howard. So now, with all that’s happening in the US and receiving global news coverage, is Liberal Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton seeking changes to permit gun manufacturers and distributors input to the government’s policies on gun regulation? Is it anything to do with the fact that he’s an ex-cop? And don’t pretend the police aren’t a problem when it comes to gun violence, in Australia or anywhere else. Is it because he’s an authoritarian and front-bench far-right faction leader? Is it because he formerly had oversight of the immigration portfolio and continues to demonise immigrants? Is it because, down in Tasmania, at the recent state election, the Liberal government that got back into office did so in spite of only revealing their intention to soften gun restrictions after the polls closed? In Tasmania, where Port Arthur is, the flashpoint for Liberal government coming to its senses on the issue of gun violence! It’s got to stop. Hunting continues. Farmers continue to control pests. Guns remain in use. But semi-automatic weapons do not belong in the hands of civilians and handguns exist only for murder. Dutton needs to be slapped down. Malcolm Turnbull needs to be the one who does it. But Turnbull is a coward in the face of the far right of his party and will do nothing.

Omnibus Obamacare repeal down again, but don’t be fooled. The Senate Republicans will keep trying, because if they can’t undo everything Obama ever did, their donors will reckon them as failures and give the money to someone else. Until then, the House will continue to prioritize legislating against women’s health, because they’re already proven what losers they are, notably in regard to over 200 failed votes to repeal the ACA. Trump’s bankrupt golf course in Puerto Rico leads him to revenge himself on the island by pretending it’s so remote as to make even the US Navy helpless, plus of course he would: Puerto Ricans aren’t white enough are they even part of America? Build a wall! Watch for a Ten Commandments monument on the Washington Mall, now that we have one more crazed religious zealot in the Senate. Seriously, how does this man keep going? Fuelled on hate like Trump, but couldn’t even get Comrade Oompa-Loompa’s endorsement. Just because you don’t like what someone says, Jeff, doesn’t mean it isn’t legitimate or anything less than the same free speech you’d be applauding if you agreed with it. And if you really want to stand up for freedom of speech, you might want to try facing up to it, instead of hiding in your own echo chamber. Animal cruelty isn’t art. You want to comment on animal cruelty, o.k., or whatever your statement is intended to be, but being cruel yourself just makes you a monster, not an artist. If no prosecutions arise from the actions of Equifax executives in the lead-up to the revelation they’d been massively hacked, the system isn’t working. Yes, Comrade President, your fight with the NFL is over race alone. Australians will bet on anything. We are a gambling-crazy nation. Meanwhile, there is no valid argument against allowing same-sex couples to marry. Freedom of speech? No, shut up. I mean, no, you can say what you want, but you cannot deny someone the same rights you have because you don’t have the same sexual preference. Family and children? What about older couples, infertile couples, couples who choose not to have children, or to adopt? Would you legislate against them marrying? Then you can’t legislate against same-sex couples marrying. “God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve”? That’s not an argument; it’s a slogan. Tradition? Tradition used to involve marrying children. We’re not doing that anymore. Tradition changes. But their sex is yucky? All sex is yucky. Grow up. Enough. Whew.\

The American Oligarchy I’ve just finished an article about Putin’s oligarchs, and I’ve got to say the correlation to Trump is patently obvious. Reading this article explained why Trump wanted to be President and his admiration of Putin. Sure, he’s a cheeto-faced fascist, as corrupt as the day is long, but being President gives him everything he needs to enrich himself in ways he’s never been able to use before. Whereas in the past Trump’s various businesses were subject to lawsuits and bankruptcy and profitable on the basis of stiffing his contractors and reneging on debts, now he makes money hand over fist, profiting from everyone who wants to do business with the US. Putin’s oligarchs operate outside of government, it’s true, but profit from it, and if Putin isn’t salting away his dictator’s portion of the proceeds, it would only be with the expectation of the payoff when he has to step aside. Trump is his own oligarch, along with many of his Cabinet of conmen, and the Republicans in Congress are more than happy to have it that way. They and their friends benefit, too, if less directly. Even if the current lawsuit against Trump based on the emoluments clause is successful, he is likely to continue his self-enrichment, but more in line with the Putin oligarchic model. Unless at some point even the Republicans have to acknowledge his corruption, based on some final act so egregious it cannot be ignored – like shooting someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue – he will serve his full term, possibly – even probably – be re-elected, and drag the US into an unethical morass it may not be able to recover from, all to benefit himself and the monstrous children he’s engendered.

Emoluments Trump has been here before (and failed) and may try again, through Joo Kim Tiah, a Malaysia developer, with two hotels in Australia already – neither of which is planned to be branded with the Cheeto-faced fascist’s name in the immediate future. But if Mr Tiah wants to “know the sentiment of the Australian people or their mood”, I’d say there are no small number of them who would gleefully welcome the Pumpkin Fuhrer having a larger orange profile here, and many more who would take the opportunity to protest, boycott, and otherwise ensure it became an opportunity to deride and denigrate the Swamp Thing currently occupying the White House. In regard to whether pressuring foreign leaders to open their countries to Trump businesses constitutes corruption or not, yes, it very well may be, as it amounts to Trump being enriched and open then to influence by those same foreign governments, whether they hire prostitutes to urinate on him or not. And now that I know Trump and his fellow swamp-dweller Rex Tillerson are involved in BHP Billiton, I’m out, and hope others follow. Their pledges “to divest” aren’t worth the noxious fumes expelled from their lungs to make the statement.

More Elliott Richardson's Congratulations Sally Yates, Acting Attorney General of the United States, for standing against Donald Trump's white supremacy, anti-establishment clause executive order.

Death and Disability Of course Monster-in-Chief-elect Donald Trump wants a review of vaccination, he doesn’t believe in vaccines. But there’s more to it: who will go unvaccinated? Children of the rich who can afford to keep their children away from those of the dirty poor as well as the increased cost of health care if they do fall ill, and the children of the poor and ill-informed sufficiently frightened away from vaccination as a result of the lies people like Trump peddle – and these latter are the ones most likely to end up most adversely affected, disabled or dead. Never forget: Donald Trump and the Republicans think being poor, sick, or elderly is a moral failing, deserving only the wrath of God, never any compassion from fellow humans. Vaccinations, especially anything paid for or subsidised by the government, is not something poor people should have, and Trump and his GOP majority flunkies will do everything they can to legitimise taking it away.

Time for Change Time magazine has continued it’s “person of the year tradition”, a practice that may need review, given the selection this year - yes, an obvious choice, as was their selection in 1938.

Trumped Up It's going to be a long four years, but I don't think it'll be eight. The danger in 2020 is Pence, a man who believes you can "pray away the gay" and has nothing but contempt for women and minorities. Unlike his boss, Pence can give the appearance of being reasonable, and a lot of people will fall for it. We'll face that hurdle when it comes, however, and I hope we'll have a better candidate then. Meanwhile, farewell Obamacare, it was nice for millions while it lasted, but now you're uninsured again. Time to buy stock in health insurance companies, as their revenues will skyrocket on the increased premiums they'll charge. Farewell any chance of a left-leaning Supreme Court. There's one vacancy already, and Kennedy, Bader Ginsburg, and Breyer are over 80 or getting there. That's going to be a problem for equal rights, voting rights, and campaign funding reform. The House and Senate have, effectively, a rubber stamp in the White House, so we can expect them to try on many bad plans, including tax cuts to increase income and wealth disparity, defunding Planned Parenthood, cutting welfare, gutting Social Security and Medicare, and generally driving the economy into the ground. Would we have done better with Sanders? I doubt it. We might have done better at getting out the vote if the Democrats had put up someone other than Clinton, but her candidacy was pretty much inevitable after 2008. Any who stayed home or went third party because Clinton beat Sanders were foolish, and while you can say that Johnson took votes from Trump, that ignores a lot of one of the things wrong with many liberal voters: they think "libertarian" candidates are more liberal than they actually are. Look at the support Rand Paul gets. A competitive third party wouldn't be a bad thing, but they aren't. They siphon votes and voters we need. I won't be putting my American passport into the post to the State Department. I sure as hell will be supporting the Democrats still in Congress and in the mid-terms in 2018. This fight's just getting started.

President Ryan I think I know why Paul Ryan won't say Trump's name, even though he'll confirm he will vote for him: He's hoping it goes to a tie, and he gets to be President by default. Say it goes 269-269 Clinton-Trump. Say then it goes to the House for a vote on the candidates. Given that the Republicans control the House, but most of them don't actually want Trump in the White House, regardless of their actual behavior at the polls, which is driven solely by party loyalty), and given that the Freedom Caucus madmen want to control the House agenda regardless of the leadership and in opposition to anything resembling reasonable, it's possible for there to be no decision. Assume Pence is Vice President-elect, by virtue of the Senate being in Republican control and having that decision, instead of sticking with the Oompa-Loompa, he goes for Ryan. Or, if the Senate can't work it out, given the original tie starting point, Ryan just gets the job. Yea! In your face, Mitt Romney!

You Break It, You Bought It Should the Republican Party stop funding Trump's campaign? Why? They made him, they own him. The Republicans have spent decades on increasing wealth and income disparity, increasing racial tension, and increasing the size and scope of the police militarisation the outcomes of which we see play out nearly daily in our news. They are the party of Trump. Besides, it's not as if they have to spend all that much, as the compliant media give him all the free air he needs to bury himself and his party at the general election, or to gain the White House, for that matter, the latter being an outcome I suspect many in the media would welcome, as it would ensure lots of click-bait and airtime teasers to capture eyeballs.

No Shame How Republicans - and some recalcitrant Democrats - can continue their inaction on even minor improvements in gun controls, let alone actively vote them down when they even do have an opportunity to act, defies explanation. Don't give me Second Amendment (or Fourth, for that matter), especially when we're talking about reasonable measures to keep weapons of mass destruction (yes, semi-automatic rifles count, when they can kill dozens in moments) out of the hands of persons who have already been deemed suspicious to law enforcement. And weapons like the AR-15 have no place in any citizens "arsenel": they are not hunting tools, unless you are hunting people. The Democrats sitting on the floor of the House of Representatives are showing up the Republican Congressional leadership for what they are: cowards in the pay of unconscionable weapons manufacturer lobbyists. Every Republican who voted in the Senate against the amendments - their own included - should be voted out of office at the first opportunity, and every member of the House leadership, Paul Ryan in particular, should suffer the same. They have sold out the American public for a few filthy coins towards re-election. Show them what that means.

Mouth Agape So it’s Trump. Wow. Just how batshit crazy are the Republicans? Well, their 17 candidates were a pretty crazy slate to begin with. Another Bush? Sure, why not. Just because the first one was a nonentity voted out after one term and the next was a disaster of economic destruction and illegal war, that doesn’t mean the next one won’t be the good one. “Oops” Perry, “Can’t-Google-Him” Santorum, “Pyramids” Carson, “College-Boy-Ignorance” Paul, “Lucifer” Cruz . . . name one of the candidates for the Republican nomination that wasn’t, at best, a hold-your-nose-and-choose choice. I never thought he’d last past the initial paperwork filing, let alone go the distance. Even though, as of today, it’s still possible the convention could be contested, it’s increasingly unlikely. At this point, all the candidates who haven’t actually withdrawn can still keep garnering delegates and deny Trump the outright majority he needs, but it’s more likely that GOP voters will shrug and pull the lever for The Donald, and he’ll roll into Cleveland unopposed. I never thought enough people could be that stupid, but forgot just how easy it can be for hucksters – political or not – to run their cons. And regardless of how serious Trump takes himself and how gullibly the public takes up his policy proposals, they are cons. Mexico isn’t going to pay for Trump’s wall and he isn’t going to build one. A Republican majority in the House and Senate will present a bill to repeal Obamacare and he will sign it, but the disaster of health care that will precipitate will quickly cause such damage to the economy that the US has only the comfort of knowing Trump’s Presidency will be one-term-only. I certainly thought the Republican Party would pull out all the stops to put an end to his candidacy, but that presumed that they hadn’t created this golum to begin with, which they did, pandering to all the worst impulses of their base. There is some media complicity in Trump’s success. They gave him a lot of free air time. Why not? It was considered endlessly entertaining for such a buffoon to be showing up the mainstream candidates, let alone the behaviour of the buffoons among his supporters (is that all of them? Or only most?). So the only question left is: Does Trump stand a chance against the Democrats in the general election? Everybody said he didn’t stand a chance to go this far, at every stage of the campaign. Everybody says he’ll lose to Clinton or to Sanders in November, and they’ve been saying it, louder and louder, at every stage of the campaign. They say the Electoral College math won’t add up his way, but that’s on the basis that everything’s pretty much the same as it’s been these last few Presidential elections. Trump’s success suggests it may not be so simple anymore. We have to hope the people Trump has marginalised come out strong and the people he frightens – Republicans as well as Democrats and independents or swing voters – do, too, along with the committed Democrats, or we’ll see what happens when America is forced to accept the Trump branding. It won’t be pretty.

Partnerships It's probably smart for Cruz to go early, announcing Fiorina as his VP, because it solidifies his candidacy as a ticket, cuts out anyone else (cough, Kasich, cough) from making that choice, and puts up a more viable woman VP than Trump would have with Palin (which is an unlikely selection - he might put her in the cabinet somewhere, but that's about it). It also iproves his standing against Clinton: see? no woman problem here. Except that Fiorina is as extremely anti-woman as Cruz himself. You'd think intelligent women wouldn't have that problem, but they do. Privilege does weird things to your head, sometimes. Too bad it won't really help him, in the end, with the delegate count.

Memo to Mitch Obama has nominated his replacement for the execreable Scalia, and, if nothing else, Merrick Garland has a classic Supreme Court name, right? Also, it isn't possible to "politicise" a process that someone else has already decided to play partisan politics with, in total abrogation of their duties. I'm looking at you, Mr. Turtle. (What is it with this generation of Republicans? Are they so embarrassed by W. that they have to go to extreme lengths to prove they aren't? Are they flat-out racists that cannot abide an African American President? It's too late to fulfill the promise to make Obama a one-term President, by about four years, so well-past time to get over it. Whatever, this is the reason we have Trump. Thanks.)

Trump Trump The BBC has an outline of how Trump can still be beaten, mainly by the other remaining candidates suddenly performing better. My favourite? ”Some Democrats appear to be openly cheering for Trump to burn the Republican Party to the ground, figuring he will be easily defeated in the general election. Besides, the Bernie Sanders v Hillary Clinton battle is still going strong, and they might be more concerned with actually picking their party's nominee.” One option they don’t reckon on is that Trump, having secured the required delegates, at the convention announces he’s a Democrat, Bwa-ha-ha, and announces he’s open to being nominated by both parties. Everyone wakes up to the incredible stupidity chosing him as their candidate has been and the crowds quietly leave the convention hall, head to the airport and expect to vote Democratic come November. Why it doesn’t happen? Even Trump isn’t that much of an ego maniac. Although it’s a close call.

1-2-3 Big Bad Trump has his hat handed to him by Cruz, but the bigger story is that tyro Rubio managed to pull into third place, with a credible percentage well beyond what the rest of the remaining contenders could manage. Cruz, an “establishment candidate”, insofar as he has a seat in the Senate, where everybody hates him like the poison he is, is only a couple of points ahead of Trump, leaving the man wearing a fake-tan marmoset on his head as still viable in New Hampshire, managed to get enough Republicans to hold their noses long enough to make him the front runner, for now. He had been leading in Iowa polls a bit ahead of the caucuses, but Trump looked to be the lead contender in the more recent polls, so it’s a bit of an upset. I’m sure it is from Trump’s perspective, as “nobody remembers who came in second”. It’s more upsetting to those of us who think that Cruz the Destroyer would be a bad choice for the US in general, since anything that makes such an ass a leader in the race is just embarrassing. Better than Cruz? Not Rubio, who hasn’t even managed to do his job as a Senator for more than a few days at a time before deciding to become the next one-term Senator to attain the Presidency, the GOP answer to Obama, with maybe a bit more State House experience, but no clue and no capacity for actual leadership. Trump makes Rubio look like a schoolboy, even taking into account the fascist bullying and childish Twitter taunts that characterize The Donald’s campaign (and adult life in general). Trust the media pundits to continue their dismissals and denigrations of Trump, pushing Cruz or Rubio, but don’t “misunderestimate” the American people’s capacity to nominate a demagogue or a buffoon. Reagan and G W Bush both served two terms. Clinton and Sanders remain neck-and-neck, and that’s all to the good for the Democrats, as it keeps Clinton honest, and a bit more left than we might have otherwise been able to hope for. New Hampshire ain’t nothin’, but it will be the March primaries that turn the tide.

Criminal Anyone who goes into Malheur National Wildlife Refugee and provides supplies of any kind to the Y'all Qaeda terrorists is an accessory and should be arrested. Just because the terrorists of Vanilla ISIS are old white men doesn't mean they're patriots. They're criminals. Aiding and abetting is also criminal. Why are is Federal law enforcement treating them any differently than they do other armed and dangerous criminals?

Why Are Republicans So Extreme These Days That’s the question the Sydney Morning Herald asks, and correspondent Chris Zappone answers. He tells us that: 1. The demographics are changing and the Republicans are losing their core constituency to age and increasing inequality. 2. This has led to a loss of direction and floundering leadership. 3. As a consequence, the Republicans are using increasingly strident and hectoring tactics, relying on fear rather than substance, but this is actually driving what’s left of their constituency away. 4. Donald Trump. How true is this? Well, Trump used to be registered as a Democrat, but since Trump is Trump, political affiliation isn’t any reflection of core principles. He’s an opportunist, entirely self-serving. There’s only one reason he’s running for President, and it has nothing to do with immigration, terrorism, or “making America great”. It’s about him. Unlike other immensely wealthy people, like Bill Gates or even, more lately, Mark Zuckerberg, Trump’s status as wealthy is all he cares about. His wealth serves him and he serves it. Running for President is like a perk. He does it because he can, and because it increases his personal brand penetration. The Republicans shouldn’t be running away from Trump. They have to bear the responsibility for having created Trump the Presidential Candidate, even if not Trump himself. They’ve ginned up the hysteria, left the power vacuum, and abandoned any attempt at running the government. So instead of running away, they should be rolling up their sleeves to get down to business, and meanwhile roundly and loudly condemning every word that comes out of their monstrous creation’s mouth, including, but not limited to “and”, “the”, or “an”. They won’t, of course, because if Trump is right about one thing, it’s that the Republicans are stupid. Yes, he also says that about the Democrats, and a lot of them are, too. The Democrats, even when they had the Congressional majority, spent an inordinate amount of time being proud of themselves rather than working, and then let the Republicans steal the majority. But the Republicans have built a trap for themselves, a tar baby named Donald whom they now can’t escape. The Republicans, if they tried, could find their way back to a reasonable right-of-middle position, one that would allow them to address immigration, accept Obamacare, but since the days of Ronald Reagan have so thoroughly aligned themselves with the extremists on every issue that that’s all they’re left with. The Religious Right has a lot to answer for, but by pursuing that demographic, the Republicans have ended up with the Nativists, as well, and increasingly pursuing law-and-order into something more resembling fascism than any other political philosophy, amply demonstrated by their current campaign leader for 2016. Americans have long held their exceptionalism in an incestuously close embrace, to the point where any perspective on themselves than their own becomes impossible. “O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us! It wad frae mony a blunder free us, An' foolish notion: What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us, An' ev'n devotion!” The louse is out there, for everyone to see, if they would.