Authoritarianism

No one doubts that Trump is a vengeful asshole. Aren't all authoritarians? It's in their DNA.

Trump didn't create the system, but he did game it.

Thanks to the basic map of seats up and to the gross and venal incompetence of Chuck Schumer, the Senate is a lost cause until, at least, 2020.

Schumer and Trump are both authoritarian assholes and the NY Post report Sunday claiming Trump prefers Schumer to Mitch McConnell or Paul Ryan shouldn’t surprise anyone. Schumer and Trump speak the same language and have a certain outer-borough sensibility in common. Ryan, from Wisconsin, and McConnell, from Kentucky, might as well be from Uranus.

Read all about the Kwik Konviktion-on-All-Kounts of KrispyKrony Konspirators Bridget Anne Kelly and Bill Baroni on WNYC's website.by KenThough the Big Rat Bastard Gummer of NJ has done his best to treat the Bridgegate scandal as an unwelcome inconvenience -- a made-up conspiracy of which he is the principal victim -- I think we can take it as demonst

2 rotund fascistsWhat is wrong with the Maine state legislature? Starting with Charles Robinson of Kansas in 1862, only 15 governors have ever been impeached, Rod Blogojevich (D-IL), currently serving out a prison term, being the most recent (2009). Another relatively recent impeachment and conviction was in Arizona in 1988 (far right crackpot and vile racist Evan Meacham).

It's become so passé to compare Señor Trumpanzee to Mussolini and Hitler. Now he's the American Putin. OK, I brought that up in front of a roomful of Russians at the Museum of Political History in St Petersburg a couple months ago.

Could be nerve-wracking for the former Eastern bloc countries that joined NATO in 1999-- the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland-- as well and crazy for the non-Baltic states that also joined in 2004: Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, maybe even Melania's tiny little Slovenia.

Or take the right to vote. In principle, it is a great privilege. In practice, as recent history has repeatedly shown, the right to vote, by itself, is no guarantee of liberty. Therefore, if you wish to avoid dictatorship by referendum, break up modern society’s merely functional collectives into self-governing, voluntarily co-operating groups, capable of functioning outside the bureaucratic systems of Big Business and Big Government.

There's virtually no part of Turkey I haven't visited since I was first there in 1969. I fell in love with the country, the people, the food, the history, the culture... when I was 21 and have been back over a dozen times, not just to the normal places people visit, like Istanbul, Ankara, Cappadocia, Izmir, Antalya and Bodrum, but also less-visited cities like Erdine, Trabzon, Sinop, Samsun, Kirikkale, Ezurum and Konya.