Aberdeen is the first South Dakota town to be named “dementia-friendly.” Maybe that explains the Trumpist dementia of folks like Al Novstrup, who has been exerting himself mightily over the last two months to prevent the city council from enacting serious conflict-of-interest ordinances that could cut into his little buddy Travis Schaunaman’s effort to use the mayor’s office for personal gain.
It takes Trumpist dementia to overlook blatant conflicts of interest, like Trump’s ridiculous and thankfully abandoned effort to force the G7 leaders to prop up his failing Doral golf resort. Dementia is the polite explanation for an occupant of the White House viewing himself as a Hotelier-in-Chief and being “surprised” that honest lawmakers would push back against such a self-enrichment scheme (the other explanation is rank avarice and mendacity).
And only the demented can dismiss Citizen for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington’s count of 2,551 conflicts of interest committed by Donald Trump during his 1,005 days in office. (That’s 2.5 conflicts per day—try catching up, Travis!)
Trump benefits materially from the publicity all those visits to his properties generate:
By frequently visiting his properties, President Trump has given the Trump Organization invaluable publicity at taxpayer expense and provided his paying customers an exclusive perk: access to the president and the 261 other top administration officials who have made appearances there. Far from trying to curb this activity, President Trump’s political allies in Congress have embraced it by frequently attending events or holding fundraisers that personally enrich the president. Similarly, foreign governments and special interest groups frequently act on the reality that spending money at Trump’s properties ingratiates them with the administration and provides them the chance to speak with powerful lawmakers and administration officials [Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, “Tracking President Trump’s Unprecedented Conflicts of Interest,” retrieved 2019.10.22].
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Scyller Borglum’s silly little rant about what a great job Trump is doing is in my morning paper. She rails against our members of Congress for not saying enough about impeachment. But the real problem is that they, like Borglum, don’t say enough about the blatant conflicts of interest committed daily by Donald Trump for his personal gain that justify his removal from office. Excusing such piracy is truly demented.
KELO reports that FU president Doug Somke is begging them to get over their dementia and really address climate change, by whatever name makes them happy. He rightly sees Thune’s weather forecasting bill as just cosmetics because forecasting is not the problem.
https://www.facebook.com/149971941694432/posts/2855386861152913/?app=fbl
No doubt, Debbo: we have all the climatic forecasting we need to know the planet is in trouble and that we need to take action. But Trump-dementia instead makes his supporters scream at 16-year-old Greta Thunberg for warning against our inaction.
Here you go, South Dakotans. Jim Hightower has some plain facts and clear, simple solutions to one of the state’s and nation’s biggest problems, money for funding education, roads, etc.
is.gd/Lmf3ce
Here’s the latest polling from 538:
Support continues to rise for impeachment of President Trump among Democrats and independents in polling analyzed by FiveThirtyEight. As of Monday, our impeachment polling tracker registered that 84.8 percent of Democrats and 46.4 percent of independents were in support of impeachment. Only 12.1 percent of Republicans were in support, but that’s up from 9.7 percent on Sept. 19, when news about the Ukraine scandal snowballed. FiveThirtyEight evaluates each poll based on the firm’s historical accuracy, its methodology, its recency and its sample size. [FiveThirtyEight]
Here’s something else for South Dakotans to consider. This story by NBC News tells of the struggles small towns in the Northern Plains are having maintaining ambulance services. In particular, the piece covers North Dakota, Wyoming and Montana.
Fetid Flunky will only make the problem worse. As the story title says, “Whst if [you] call 911 and no one comes?”
Democrats will help you with that. The GOP hasn’t lifted a finger, as we all know.
is.gd/CLLnwA
Alternet has a good article about Fetid Flunky and his supporters.
“Trump’s lies, his assault on reality, his threats of violence, his cruelty, his demand of absolute loyalty, his manipulation of willing subjects who choose to escape empirical reality, and his shared state of collective narcissism with his followers all fit the definition of a cult.”
The article includes an interview with an expert in deprogramming people who’ve escaped cults. The question is, Can trumpelstilskins be saved/deprogrammed?
is.gd/0PaBsc
Last night, after my workout, I had to share a hot tub with a mentally ill guy. The retarded views and pure hypocrisy I endured reminded me of the days I used to knock on doors, and why I will never knock on doors as a D ever again, out here.
America needs to RECOGNIZE & MEASURE the rising mental health care crisis in rural America. If we don’t talk about it, nothing can/could EVER be done about it.
We need significant Federal R&D funding to diagnose this fundamental heath crisis. I don’t enjoy the truth of it, nor talking about it, and it is the last conclusion I ever expected to draw from living out here. However, it is very real, and failure to report it to the rest of the country -thus far- is strictly the fault of rural Democrats.
Our country deserves to know the truth about what Feral American Demographics and Interests are – because it’s critical to one day saving this United States of America.