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Posts Tagged ‘IOWA CAUCUSES’

DONALD TRUMP: MY LIFE COUNTS–YOURS DOESN’T

In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on January 22, 2024 at 12:10 am

Meteorologists warned of “life-threatening” conditions in Iowa as the state prepared to cast votes in the Republican caucuses.     

Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner lusting for a second term as President, took that advice.

Scheduled for four in-person Iowa events on January 14, he canceled three of them the day before voting, due to the freezing cold and snow.

But that didn’t mean he shared the same concern for those he urged to vote for him.

With Windchill projected to be as low as -40 degrees in parts of the state on January 15, Trump had an urgent message for his legions of followers: 

“If you want to save America from crooked Joe Biden, you must go caucus tomorrow. First step, very first step. We’re gonna do it. We’re gonna do it big. You got to get out.

“You can’t sit home. If you’re sick as a dog, you say, ‘Darling, I gotta make it,’” Trump said at an Indianola rally on January 14. “Even if you vote and then pass away, it’s worth it, remember. 

“If you’re sick, if you’re just so sick, you can’t, darling, I don’t think I can. Get up. Get up. You get up, you’re gonna vote,” Trump said, imitating a woman urging her husband to vote. “Yes, darling, because ultimately, we know who calls the shots, right?”

2024 Iowa Caucus in Des Moines

Speaking to his supporters in a packed Simpson College auditorium, Trump showed no concern for the frostbite dangers they might face. They had stood in line for hours in cold that reached the mid-negative 40s:

“If this is any indication, the storm has had zero effect. You’re very hearty people, I’ve heard that.”

Trump won the Iowa caucuses on January 15 with 51% of the vote.

Such total unconcern for the lives of even his dedicated supporters isn’t new for Trump.

During 2020, Trump “attacked” the COVID-19 virus with Denial, Lies, Republican Subservience, Chaos, Extortion, Propaganda as News, Quackery as Medicine, “Re-open the Country!” and Ignoring the Danger.

When none of those proved effective, Trump settled on one more: Learn to Live With It.  

By early April, 2020, he refused to issue a national “stay-at-home” order to contain the spread of the Coronavirus. When states began issuing shutdown orders of their own, he railed against those orders and demanded that “we need to reopen the country.” 

Donald Trump

What lay behind this demand were two hidden agendas.  He wanted to:

  • Quickly revitalize—and take credit for—a once-booming economy, even though this was largely created by President Barack Obama.
  • Return to his Nuremberg-style rallies, where he could slander anyone he wanted while basking in the worship of thousands of his fanatical followers.

But, by May, more Americans were wary about “reopening the country” than about rushing to do so. 

On the May 15, 2020 edition of The PBS Newshour, New York Times columnist David Brooks noted:

“If you look at actual behavior, people locked themselves down before any politician took a move. And even in those states where the politicians are opening up, people are still locking down….”

SARS-CoV-2 without background.png

Coronavirus

By pushing his mantra—“America needs to reopen NOW!”—Trump was risking the lives of millions of Americans. But he was also risking the future of his Presidency.

If “reopening” the country proved disastrous, he had no back-up plan to offer.

Several states—such as Wisconsin and Pennsylvania—that re-opened saw swarms of people flooding into bars and restaurants. They didn’t wear masks or practice “social distancing.” Packed together like sardines, they offered themselves like a Right-wing sacrifice to Coronavirus.

The results were inevitable.

A new wave of COVID-19 erupted after America “reopened.” More employees were laid off—or refused to come to work for fear of Coronavirus.

The economy continued to tank.

As summer neared its end and millions of students faced returning to school, Trump offered his next “solution” to the Coronavirus pandemic: Send them back to school—-and not through virtual classes at home.

Trump wanted children to return to possibly COVID-19-infected classrooms. 

And he wasn’t asking parents to send their children back to school. He was ordering them to.

On July 8, he tweeted that he might withhold federal funding from schools that did not resume in-person classes that fall.   

Trump knew that before parents could return to work, their kids needed to return to class, He hoped that would boost the economy—for which he could take credit.

And that would boost his chances for re-election in November. 

Just as the ancient Canaanites sacrificed their children to the god Moloch, so Trump expected his followers—and opponents—to risk their children’s lives for him.

Molech: Then and Now

Ancient Canaanites offering their children as sacrifices to Moloch

And the sacrifices quickly started coming.  On August 10, 2020, CBS News reported:  

“Nearly 100,000 children tested positive for the Coronavirus in the last two weeks of July, a new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics finds. Just over 97,000 children tested positive for the Coronavirus from July 16 to July 30, according to the association.” 

By urging his followers at the Iowa caucuses to turn out in bitter cold to vote for him—even if it cost them their lives—he proved, once again, that the only life he cares about is his own.

“WINNING” UNDER TRUMP AND HITLER

In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 21, 2019 at 12:02 am

“We will have so much winning if I get elected [President] that you may get bored with winning.”

So boasted Donald Trump at a September, 2015 Capitol Hill rally to protest President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.

But as the 2020 Presidential race nears, President Trump is looking ever more like a loser. 

Among the victims of Trump’s “winning” streak: Several pollsters whose internal polling numbers showed him lagging behind Democratic Presidential candidates in key states.

Related image

Donald Trump

When matched against Democratic contender and former Vice President Joe Biden, Trump’s numbers came to:

                                  Trump        Biden

VIRGINIA:                     38%           53%

MAINE                          38%           55%

MINNESOTA                 40%           54%

MICHIGAN                    40%           53%

In Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida and Michigan, Trump trails Biden by double-digits. These were states Trump won against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Biden leads Trump by seven points in Iowa, by eight points in North Carolina, by 17 points in Virginia, by 14 points in Minnesota, and by 15 points in Maine.

Even worse for Trump, who cannot admit error or weakness: Some of his own pollsters dared to leak the bad news.

As a result, his Presidential campaign is cutting ties with several of his pollsters.

Predictably, Trump claimed he was doing just fine. He said his campaign had “great internal polling” and the numbers reported were from “fake polls.”

“We are winning in every single state that we’ve polled. We’re winning in Texas very big. We’re winning in Ohio very big. We’re winning in Florida very big,” he said.

Trump’s 2015 boast reflected he mindset, if not the words, of an earlier CEO whose ego carried him—and his country—to ruin: Adolf Hitler.

Among the fatal errors that led to the defeat of the Third Reich:

  • Wasting hundreds of  Luftwaffe [air force] pilots, fighters and bombers in a halfhearted attempt to conquer England.
  • Ignoring the pleas of generals like Erwin Rommel to conquer Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, which would have given Germany control of most of the world’s oil.
  • Attacking his ally, the Soviet Union, while still at war with Great Britain.
  • Turning millions of Russians into enemies rather than allies by his brutal and murderous policies.
  • Needlessly declaring war on the United States after the Japanese attacked Pearl harbor. (Had he not done so, Americans would have focused all their attention on defeating Japan.)
  • Refusing to negotiate a separate peace with Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin—thus granting Germany a large portion of captured Russian territory in exchange for letting Stalin remain in power.
  • Insisting on a “not-one-step-back” military “strategy” that led to the needless surrounding, capture and/or deaths of hundreds of thousands of German servicemen.

As the war turned increasingly against him, Hitler became ever more rigid in his thinking.

He demanded absolute control over the smallest details of his forces. This, in turn, led to astonishing and unnecessary losses among their ranks. 

On June 6, 1944, General Erwin Rommel ordered the Panzer tanks to drive the Allies from the Normandy beaches. But these could not be released except on direct orders of the Fuehrer.

Panzer tank

Hitler’s chief of staff, General Alfred Jodl, informed Rommel: The Fuhrer was asleep-–and was not to be awakened. By the time Hitler awoke and issued the order, it was too late.  

Nor could Hitler accept responsibility for the policies that were leading Germany to certain defeat. He blamed his generals, accused them of cowardice, and relieved many of the best ones from command.  

Among those sacked was Heinz Guderian, creator of the German Panzer corps—and responsible for the blitzkreig victory against France in 1940.

Heinz Guderian

Another was Erich von Manstein, designer of the strategy that defeated France in six weeks—which Germany had failed to do during four years of World War 1.

Erich von Manstein

Finally, on April 29, 1945—with the Russians only blocks from his underground Berlin bunker—Hitler dictated his “Last Political Testament.”  

Once again, he refused to accept responsibility for unleashing a war that would ultimately consume 50 million lives: 

“It is untrue that I or anyone else in Germany wanted war in 1939. It was desired and instigated exclusively by those international statesmen who either were of Jewish origin or worked for Jewish interests.” 

Hitler had launched the invasion of Poland–and World War II—with a lie: That Poland had attacked Germany.

Fittingly, he closed the war—and his life—with a final lie.   

Joachim C. Fest, author of Hitler (1973), writes of the surprise that awaited Allied soldiers occupying Nazi Germany in 1945:  “Almost without exception, virtually from one moment to the next, Nazism vanished after the death of Hitler and the surrender.

“It was as if National Socialism had been nothing but the motion, the state of intoxication and the catastrophe it had caused….

“Once again it became plain that National Socialism, like Fascism in general, was dependent to the core on superior force, arrogance, triumph, and by its nature had no resources in the moment of defeat.”

The ancient Greeks believed that “a man’s character is his destiny.” For Adolf Hitler—and the nations he ravaged—that proved fatally true.  

It remains to be seen whether the same will prove true for Donald Trump—and the United States.

LIKE FUHRER, LIKE PRESIDENT?

In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on December 28, 2018 at 12:10 am

“We will have so much winning if I get elected [President] that you may get bored with winning.”

It was vintage Donald Trump, speaking at a September, 2015 Capitol Hill rally to protest President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.

That was before:

  • Trump became President—and, since then, has been entangled in multiple investigations into contacts between Russian Intelligence agents and high-level officials of his 2016 Presidential campaign.
  • He was forced to fire retired General Mike Flynn as his national security adviser. The reason: Flynn’s close ties to Russia and its dictator, Vladimir Putin, had recently come to light in the press.
  • He fired James Comey, the FBI director who had refused to give him a pledge of personal loyalty. 
  • Secretary of Defense James Mattis resigned to protest Trump’s impromptu decision to withdraw American troops from Syria.
  • An anonymous White House source told CNN: “He now lives within himself, which is a dangerous place for Donald Trump to be. I see him emotionally withdrawing. He’s gained weight. He doesn’t have anybody whom he trusts.”

Related image

Donald Trump

Trump’s boast reflected he mindset, if not the words, of an earlier CEO whose ego carried him—and his country—to ruin: Adolf Hitler.

Literally thousands of books have been written on Hitler’s six-year stint as a self-appointed field commander. But for an overall view of Hitler’s generalship, an excellent choice is How Hitler Could have Won World War II by Bevin Alexander.

It’s essential reading—because many of the flaws in Hitler’s character can clearly be seen in Trump’s.

How Hitler Could Have Won World War II

Among the fatal errors that led to the defeat of the defeat of the Third Reich:

  • Wasting hundreds of  Luftwaffe [air force] pilots, fighters and bombers in a halfhearted attempt to conquer England.
  • Ignoring the pleas of generals like Erwin Rommel to conquer Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, which would have given Germany control of most of the world’s oil.
  • Attacking his ally, the Soviet Union, while still at war with Great Britain.
  • Turning millions of Russians into enemies rather than allies by his brutal and murderous policies.
  • Needlessly declaring war on the United States after the Japanese attacked Pearl harbor. (Had he not done so, Americans would have focused all their attention on defeating Japan.)
  • Refusing to negotiate a separate peace with Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin—thus granting Germany a large portion of captured Russian territory in exchange for letting Stalin remain in power.
  • Insisting on a “not-one-step-back” military “strategy” that led to the needless surrounding, capture and/or deaths of hundreds of thousands of German servicemen.

As the war turned increasingly against him, Hitler became ever more rigid in his thinking.

He demanded absolute control over the smallest details of his forces. This, in turn, led to astonishing and unnecessary losses among their ranks. 

On June 6, 1944, General Erwin Rommel ordered the Panzer tanks to drive the Allies from the Normandy beaches. But these could not be released except on direct orders of the Fuehrer.

 

Panzer tank

Hitler’s chief of staff, General Alfred Jodl, informed Rommel: The Fuhrer was asleep-–and was not to be awakened. By the time Hitler awoke and issued the order, it was too late.  

Nor could Hitler accept responsibility for the policies that were leading Germany to certain defeat. He blamed his generals, accused them of cowardice, and relieved many of the best ones from command.  

Among those sacked was Heinz Guderian, creator of the German Panzer corps—and responsible for the blitzkreig victory against France in 1940.

Heinz Guderian

Another was Erich von Manstein, designer of the strategy that defeated France in six weeks—which Germany had failed to do during four years of World War 1.

Erich von Manstein

Finally, on April 29, 1945—with the Russians only blocks from his underground Berlin bunker—Hitler dictated his “Last Political Testament.”  

Once again, he refused to accept responsibility for unleashing a war that would ultimately consume 50 million lives: 

“It is untrue that I or anyone else in Germany wanted war in 1939. It was desired and instigated exclusively by those international statesmen who either were of Jewish origin or worked for Jewish interests.” 

Hitler had launched the invasion of Poland–and World War II—with a lie: That Poland had attacked Germany.

Fittingly, he closed the war—and his life—with a final lie.   

Joachim C. Fest, author of Hitler (1973), writes of the surprise that awaited Allied soldiers occupying Nazi Germany in 1945:  “Almost without exception, virtually from one moment to the next, Nazism vanished after the death of Hitler and the surrender.

“It was as if National Socialism had been nothing but the motion, the state of intoxication and the catastrophe it had caused….

“Once again it became plain that National Socialism, like Fascism in general, was dependent to the core on superior force, arrogance, triumph, and by its nature had no resources in the moment of defeat.”

The ancient Greeks believed that “a man’s character is his destiny.” For Adolf Hitler—and the nations he ravaged—that proved fatally true.  

It remains to be seen whether the same will prove true for Donald Trump—and the United States.

IS THERE A HITLER IN THE WHITE HOUSE?

In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 8, 2017 at 1:11 pm

“We will have so much winning if I get elected [President] that you may get bored with winning.”

It was vintage Donald Trump, speaking at a September, 2015 Capitol Hill rally to protest President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.

That was before Trump became President–and, since then, has been entangled in multiple investigations into contacts between Russian Intelligence agents and high-level officials of his 2016 Presidential campaign.

That was before he was forced to fire retired General Mike Flynn as his national security adviser. The reason: Flynn’s close ties to Russia and its dictator, Vladimir Putin, had recently come to light in the press.

That was before he fired James Comey, the FBI director who had refused to give him a pledge of personal loyalty. 

That was before Comey testified before the United States Senate’s Intelligence Committee and publicly branded Trump a liar on nationwide television.

And that was before an anonymous White House source told CNN: “He now lives within himself, which is a dangerous place for Donald Trump to be. I see him emotionally withdrawing. He’s gained weight. He doesn’t have anybody whom he trusts.”

Related image

Donald Trump

Trump’s boast reflected he mindset–if not the words–of an earlier CEO whose ego carried him–and his country–to ruin: Adolf Hitler.

Literally thousands of books have been written on Hitler’s six-year stint as a self-appointed field commander. But for an overall view of Hitler’s generalship, an excellent choice is How Hitler Could have Won World War II by Bevin Alexander.

How Hitler Could Have Won World War II

Among the fatal errors that led to the defeat of the defeat of the Third Reich:

  • Wasting hundreds of  Luftwaffe [air force] pilots, fighters and bombers in a halfhearted attempt to conquer England.
  • Ignoring the pleas of generals like Erwin Rommel to conquer Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, thus giving Germany control of most of the world’s oil.
  • Attacking his ally, the Soviet Union, while still at war with Great Britain.
  • Turning millions of Russians into enemies rather than allies by his brutal and murderous policies.
  • Needlessly declaring war on the United States after the Japanese attacked Pearl harbor. (Had he not done so, Americans would have focused all their attention on defeating Japan.)
  • Refusing to negotiate a separate peace with Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin–thus granting Germany a large portion of captured Russian territory in exchange for letting Stalin remain in power.
  • Insisting on a “not-one-step-back” military “strategy” that led to the needless surrounding, capture and/or deaths of hundreds of thousands of German servicemen.

As the war turned increasingly against him, Hitler became ever more rigid in his thinking.

He demanded absolute control over the smallest details of his forces. This, in turn, led to astonishing and unnecessary losses among their ranks. 

One such incident was immortalized in the 1962 movie, The Longest Day, about the Allied invasion of France known as D-Day.

On June 6, 1944, General Erwin Rommel ordered the panzer tanks to drive the Allies from the Normandy beaches. But these could not be released except on direct orders of the Fuehrer.

 

Panzer tank

As Hitler’s chief of staff, General Alfred Jodl, informed Rommel: The Fuehrer was asleep–and was not to be awakened. By the time Hitler awoke and issued the order, it was too late.  

Nor could Hitler accept responsibility for the policies that were leading Germany to certain defeat. He blamed his generals, accused them of cowardice, and relieved many of the best ones from command.  

Among those sacked was Heinz Guderian, creator of the German Panzer corps–and responsible for the blitzkreig victory against France in 1940.

Heinz Guderian

Another was Erich von Manstein, designer of the strategy that defeated France in six weeks–which Germany had failed to do during four years of World War 1.

Erich von Manstein

Finally, on April 29, 1945–with the Russians only blocks from his underground Berlin bunker–Hitler dictated his “Last Political Testament.”  

Once again, he refused to accept responsibility for unleashing a war that would ultimately consume 50 million lives: 

“It is untrue that I or anyone else in Germany wanted war in 1939. It was desired and instigated exclusively by those international statesmen who either were of Jewish origin or worked for Jewish interests.” 

Hitler had launched the invasion of Poland–and World War II–with a lie: That Poland had attacked Germany. Fittingly, he closed the war–and his life–with a final lie.   

Joachim C. Fest, author of Hitler (1973), writes of the surprise that awaited Allied soldiers occupying Nazi Germany in 1945:  “Almost without exception, virtually from one moment to the next, Nazism vanished after the death of Hitler and the surrender.

“It was as if National Socialism had been nothing but the motion, the state of intoxication and the catastrophe it had caused….

“Once again it became plain that National Socialism, like Fascism in general, was dependent to the core on superior force, arrogance, triumph, and by its nature had no resources in the moment of defeat.”

The ancient Greeks believed that “a man’s character is his destiny.”  For Adolf Hitler–and the nations he ravaged–that proved fatally true.  

It remains to be seen whether the same will prove true for Donald Trump–and the United States.

A WARNING FOR TRUMP–AND AMERICA

In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on February 3, 2016 at 12:01 am

“We will have so much winning if I get elected [President] that you may get bored with winning.”

It was vintage Donald Trump, speaking at a September, 2015 Capitol Hill rally to protest President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.

(That was before February 1, 2016, when Trump learned he had been beaten by Texas U.S. Senator Eduardo Cruz in the Iowa caucuses for the Republican Presidential nomination.   

(The man who had boasted, “No one remembers who came in second” found himself in exactly that place. And tens of thousands of Twitter users gleefully retweeted the quote to celebrate a defeat that Trump had said was impossible.)

“Believe me, I agree, you’ll never get bored with winning. We never get bored. We are going to turn this country around. We are going to start winning big on trade.

“Militarily, we’re going to build up our military. We’re going to have such a strong military that nobody, nobody is going to mess with us. We’re not going to have to use it.”

Related image

Donald Trump

Trump’s boast reflected he mindset–if not the words–of an earlier CEO whose ego carried him–and his country–to ruin.  

Ever since Adolf Hitler shot himself in his underground Berlin Bunker on April 30, 1945, historians have fiercely debated: Was der Fuehrer a military genius or a disastrous imbecile?  

Literally thousands of books have been written on Hitler’s six-year stint as a field commander. But for an overall view of Hitler’s generalship, an excellent choice is How Hitler Could have Won World War II by Bevin Alexander.

How Hitler Could Have Won World War II

Among the fatal errors that led to the defeat of the defeat of the Third Reich:

  • Wasting hundreds of  Luftwaffe [air force] pilots, fighters and bombers in a halfhearted attempt to conquer England.
  • Ignoring the pleas of generals like Erwin Rommel to conquer Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, thus giving Germany control of most of the world’s oil.
  • Attacking his ally, the Soviet Union, while still at war with Great Britain.
  • Turning millions of Russians into enemies rather than allies by his brutal and murderous policies
  • Needlessly declaring war on the United States after the Japanese attacked Pearl harbor. (Had he not done so, Americans would have focused all their attention on defeating Japan.)
  • Refusing to negotiate a separate peace with Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin–thus granting Germany a large portion of captured Russian territory in exchange for letting Stalin remain in power.
  • Insisting on a “not-one-step-back” military “strategy” that led to the needless surrounding, capture and/or deaths of hundreds of thousands of German servicemen.

As the war turned increasingly against him, Hitler became ever more rigid in his thinking. He demanded absolute control over the smallest details of his forces.  

This, in turn, led to astonishing and unnecessary losses among their ranks.  

One such incident was immortalized in the 1962 movie, The Longest Day, about the Allied invasion of France known as D-Day.  

On June 6, 1944, General Erwin Rommel ordered the panzer tanks to drive the Allies from the Normandy beaches. But these could not be released except on direct orders of the Fuehrer.

As Hitler’s chief of staff, General Alfred Jodl, informed Rommel: The Fuehrer was asleep–and was not to be awakened. By the time Hitler awoke and issued the order, it was too late.  

Nor could Hitler accept responsibility for the policies that were leading Germany to certain defeat.  

He blamed his generals, accused them of cowardice, and relieved many of the best ones from command.  

Among those sacked was Heinz Guderian, creator of the German panzer corps–and responsible for the blitzkreig victory against France in 1940.

Another was Erich von Manstein, designer of the strategy that defeated France in six weeks–which Germany had failed to do during four years of World War 1.

Finally, on April 29, 1945–with the Russians only blocks from his underground Berlin bunker–Hitler dictated his “Last Political Testament.”  

Once again, he refused to accept responsibility for unleashing a war that would ultimately consume 50 million lives: 

“It is untrue that I or anyone else in Germany wanted war in 1939.  It was desired and instigated exclusively by those international statesmen who either were of Jewish origin or worked for Jewish interests.” 

Hitler had launched the invasion of Poland–and World War II–with a lie: That Poland had attacked Germany. Fittingly, he closed the war–and his life–with a final lie.   

Joachim C. Fest, author of Hitler (1973), writes of the surprise that awaited Allied soldiers occupying Nazi Germany in 1945:  

“Almost without exception, virtually from one moment to the next, Nazism vanished after the death of Hitler and the surrender.  

“It was as if National Socialism had been nothing but the motion, the state of intoxication and the catastrophe it had caused….

“Once again it became plain that National Socialism, like Fascism in general, was dependent to the core on superior force, arrogance, triumph, and by its nature had no resources in the moment of defeat.”

The ancient Greeks believed “A man’s character is his destiny.”  For Adolf Hitler–and the nations he ravaged–that proved fatally true.  

It’s to be seen whether the same will prove true for Donald Trump–and the United States.