Thoughts On Abortion, Planned Parenthood, Harvesting of Fetal Organs, and the Political Linkage...

Rational Nation USA
Purveyor of Truth

Why liberals make the case abortion is a healthcare issue for women is something that for many years has alluded me. While women certainly should have control over their own bodies and their reproductive capacity abortion is only a healthcare issue when a partial or full term pregnancy threatens the continued life of the mother. Therefore abortion should not be considered generally as a heath care issue. Only when the life of the women is endangered by pregnancy does it become a true healthcare issue.

Abortion up to the time of fetus viability should remain an option for all women. However, once a fetus is viable (able to survive outside the womb with life support) the same rules with respect to the right to life should apply exactly as it does to post birth humanoids. To not recognize and acknowledge that abortion is a life ending procedure is to be callous while denying reality in the same breath. There should be limitations on when abortions can be performed when the life of the women is not threatened.

Roe-v-Wade was a landmark decision that recognized a women's right to control her body and her reproductive rights; and, it was a right and justified decision. When an unwanted pregnancy happens, either because of failure of the chosen birth control method, the failure to use any birth control method, or rape, ending the pregnancy as soon as possible is both reasonable and rational.

If you're wondering why this topic was chosen for a post topic it's certainly understandable; especially as this writer is not a traveler in the liberal/progressive sphere and is, if you will, generally more conservative or traditional. With Planned Parenthood under attack by religious conservatives and many republicans, with the goal of defunding the organization, this topic just seemed a natural one at this time.

Planned Parenthood has served a useful purpose for nearly 100 years. For the federal government to consider defunding the organization and very likely ending the service and  good it has performed for almost a century is insanity at it's worst. Driven by blind religious conviction, political considerations, and the lust for power,  those advocating for defunding of Planed Parenthood because of recent concerns over harvesting fetal organs are, quite possibly using this issue to also make another run at overturning Roe-v-Wade.

Considering that human life has value (as well as rights), and, considering that a women's reproductive rights are also important, does it not make sense that intelligent and rationally thinking folks of all views on this issue set in place policy and law that best accomplishes the primary and major concerns of all parties? Those who are either unwilling of unable to compromise are the ones who have no place at the table as they are the ones with the inability to see life or considerations beyond their own narrow sphere of knowledge or understanding.

If the purpose of harvesting the organs of aborted fetuses is to further scientific medical knowledge it is, in this writers humble opinion, a good thing. If the harvested organs directly or indirectly results in saving a life, improving the quality of life, or prolonging the life of another then what may I ask is the problem? Having asked the question here then is the answer. When such harvesting of fetal organs becomes a pathway to financially enriching the lives of research scientists, medical doctors, or organizations that are funded by the publics money it is unethical and wrong.

As of yet there has been no convincing evidence to substantiate the defunding of Planed Parenthood based on the recent furor grip the right.

Via: Memeorandum

No Lion is an Island

Who knows how long the public's attention and always ephemeral anger will remain on Doctor Palmer, the bow hunter of infamy, or what will happen to him if and when he re-emerges.  The two accomplices who helped him lure the lion out of a protected park and who accepted money for a bogus "permit"  will certainly face punishment in Zimbabwe, ( not a pretty thing, I'm sure) but of course the lion cannot be replaced.  Yes, a lion might be found or born to the local population, but Lions, unlike simpler creatures like gazelles or lab rats, are socially unique, having earned their place in their complex social structure.

"The consequence of killing one male — whether legally or illegally — is that it weakens the male coalition he was part of, often a brotherhood. A larger, stronger coalition comes in and usurps them, often leading to the death of the surviving brothers. The incoming males will generally kill the cubs of the incumbents. A simple-minded approach might have thought one less lion is one less lion. The reality is that one less lion can lead to the deaths of many other lions, as well as a reshuffling of their local spatial organization and society."

Says David Macdonald, director of the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at the University of Oxford, in an interview in Nature whose team has been tracking Cecil and hundreds of other lions since 2008. No lion is an island.

Trophy hunting of Lions in Zimbabwe didn't begin nor will it end with Doctor Palmer.  Hunting of lions is legal in Zimbabwe and elsewhere in Africa and lions are not considered endangered at this time although their numbers have declined along with that of their prey.  Yes, like all creatures great and small they are part of  an ever-changing ecosystem and Africa is steadily moving in the same direction as the rest of the world and allowing less and less room for wildlife.

Carefully avoiding any political statements, Macdonald opines that hunting of lions is sustainable if strictly regulated and actually might be the best way of attributing value to lions that could accrue to the benefit of those who live alongside them amd perhaps to promote toleration of  these creatures among the local population who see them as dangerous to life and property.  Wildlife parks bring in tourist dollars after all.

Macdonald goes so far as to suggest that the death of  this lion may have a beneficial effect if it promotes "enthusiasm for the value of nature."

"That’s the sort of enthusiasm that I hope will influence the way that policy is formulated as human enterprise strives to live alongside biodiversity. That would be a suitable memorial for the apparently illegal death of this particular, charismatic and unusually fascinating individual lion."

Unfortunately some of this "enthusiasm" results from misinformation, oversimplification and hyperbole in the sensationalist press and such enthusiasm tends to be short lived, producing less than helpful action if any at all.

The overall goal of conservation is the maintenance of sustainable populations rather than sentimental attachments to Bambi or even Cecil and that sometimes involves direct intervention.  Hunting is sometimes necessary if sometimes sad and upsetting to squeamish people like me.  Poaching is of course the enemy of regulation and population control and  it's a far, far larger problem than the occasional  rogue trying to relive the 18th century White Hunter experience can be.  It would be good if he can be made and example of, but will the public then forget while hordes of poachers continue to hunt with machine guns, flaunting a death penalty because of huge rewards for selling animal parts in Asia?

Madonald shares my hope that the current furor will bring some further attention to what's really going on; to the bigger and long term problems of conservation and to helping African nations to see the value of wildlife and its preservation despite the cost.  Much has been done with the help of wealthier European nations. Much more needs to be done.

Lions and Tigers and Elephants, oh my.

Those of us concerned about illegal poaching driving iconic animals to extinction are certainly aware of what's happening in Africa. According to a 2014 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100,000 elephants were killed by poachers between 2010 and 2012. In 2011 one out of every 12 elephants was killed by a poacher. The future looks dim. The problem isn't a lone dentist with a single shot rifle with a.500 Nitro Express cartridge, but Africans carrying AK-47 automatic assault rifles, hired by Africans who sell ivory around the world, despite  facing a death penalty summarily enforced.  The US is the second biggest market for ivory despite some restrictive and complex laws against the ivory trade that can make it hard to sell a second hand piano.

President Obama has proposed some new, more restrictive laws restricting the sale and ownership of ivory in the US.  Can we expect more slick TV ads from shady sources telling us how terrible this is or how Obama is going to take away your soap and grandma's Steinway?  Probably, but if you're in the mood to feel protective toward these magnificent, intelligent and vanishing animals you might send a note to your duly elected representatives.  Who knows, they may be in a mood to listen.

Wimoweh (The Lion Doesn't Sleep Tonight)

Walter Palmer, a dentist from Minnesota, is now wanted in Africa for poaching. Do we have an extradition treaty with Zimbabwe? Because I'll be happy to set up a GoFundMe to ship him back there to face trial.



I don't oppose hunting. Culling the herd, eating the meat: at that point, if you also want to take a trophy? Well, it's a little creepy, but that's another part of the animal that won't go to waste, I guess.

But every time another detail come out about this story, it just gets worse and worse.

Palmer claims he was on a legal hunt, with all the proper permits. That's bullshit - pure, unadulterated bovine fecal matter. Palmer is so full of crap his eyes are brown.

At what point did anything about this hunt seem legitimate? They dragged a dead animal behind their jeep to lure an endangered animal out of the preserve. That didn't seem a little questionable to him? They let him shoot a 200 pound lion with an under-powered crossbow. When, as anybody who knew anything about hunting could have foreseen, the lion didn't immediately die, it took them almost two full days to track it down, as it slowly bled out, suffering and in pain. They tried to destroy the radio tracker around the lion's neck, but couldn't even do that right.

Nobody eats lion meat by choice. It's a predator, which means the meat is tough and stringy; it's a carnivore, which means the meat is rank. The only reason to hunt them is because you think you deserve to kill any damned animal on the planet.

Palmer isn't a hunter, he's a sadist. He's been charged for illegal hunting before, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that his basement was set up as a torture chamber for the squirrels he could trap around his home. He was probably the type of evil kid who giggled after jamming firecrackers up a cat's butt or stapling a duck's beak shut.

I've got to admit that I don't have any problem with the fact that, in the uproar, he's had to close his dental practice, and protesters are setting up a memorial to Cecil the Lion outside it. Palmer is an evil, overprivileged bastard, and he needs to learn what the inside of a Zimbabwean jail looks like.

He Who Has Seen All Things

You must know that the gods have decreed that the lot of the living is to grieve. *

"23 schoolchildren -- now that's a tragedy." She says.

Yes it is, but the question is whether it's a singular tragedy, one to be distinguished from the endless daily tragedies of the endless days since life awoke, 9 American lives in South Carolina matter. Other lives elsewhere may not as much. The loss of a million may not count as much and regardless of their ancestry if it doesn't serve a purpose to point it out.  Time on our tiny scale is measured in grief and longing and remorse and loss irrecoverable: agony beyond memory, beyond endurance.

The very presence of life that knows of death is a cruel tragedy, since not only does it all end in death and extinction and oblivion, in grief and horror and anguish and misery and pain, but all the more tragic for brevity: so short, so fleeting like the separation and annihilation of virtual particles in an empty place, so short as to rob the word fleeting of any meaning and yes, even infinity, yes, even oblivion shall die, Long gone, never was and just now - to whom does it matter?  In the end, even infinity is a point without dimension where beginning and end are the same. And we talk of tragedy, of some cosmic purpose, some cosmic good some cosmic accounting. We see meaning and there is none. We see meaning to ourselves and to what we do and think - and there is none. We see meaning to hide the truth. Do we matter, do our lives matter, do they matter to the dead and in the long run, the short run, the infinitesimal run: to the cosmic viewer, we all are.

What props, what fragments of madness do we shore against the silence and infinite meaninglessness: unimaginably endless, indescribably violent, hostile, mindlessly indifferent -- and with what false dawn to we shelter our eyes from the endless abyss, provide ourselves with meaning in the bottomless foreverness of nothing?

What transitory and fungible  gods did we imagine to say "let there be no more tragedy" when life is tragedy; by its nature tragedy, by it's limitation tragedy. Nothing is promised or given that isn't taken away along with the rememberer and the memory?  Who of all the countless generations is remembered and which of us will be remembered in a trillion, trillion years in a cold and empty universe, still expanding into itself  in its emptiness. What life is not tragedy when every tragically ineluctable finality seems like a possibility in the beginning? What will mourn or remember, what ghost, what God when all hearts are dead and forgotten. There is no "I" in the land of the dead.  Oh lost and by the wind grieved and no ghost shall return home again -- nor ever will be there a time or place to grieve.

And we talk of justice as though it meant something other than vanity and egotism.  We waste our moment being angry at what someone else thinks his moment requires -- the thousands and tens of thousands, the billions dead today and tomorrow and already forgotten or disregarded, but these 9, these 23 and all the generations long turned to dust and rubbish?  It's a tragedy we will not endure without blaming this and that and whom and we mourn and we assume significance and seek healing as we approach the teeth and maw of the blind remorseless grinder. The luckiest are those with an instant to ask "what the hell was that?" before time is done, before time has jumped to forever and the universe then as though it never were. Lucky or unlucky, blessed or wronged: what is there in the hot gas and cold stone to care or remember?

Justice! We look for it, we treasure it, we squeeze the nectar out of it in our vanity. NINE people shot dead in a Church!  And a thousand in a Mosque and a thousand in the street and a thousand blown to bits sleeping in their beds. In principio et nunc et semper et in saecula saeculorum and even that world has but a short time to live and will soon be gone forever. Can we mourn our ancestors, a million years dead?

Where was justice in our brutal history and brutal pre-history and where was there a love not lost, not eaten by death, not mourned, not debauched. Where the heart unbroken?  Where is the injustice in Ebola or the Pox or the hipster parents who won't vaccinate?  Where is the tragedy in the Diabetes, the heart disease, the cancer? Where is the outrage?  Where is the demand that something be done?  is it that we fear on command, grieve on demand, rage on request -- and then go out and make a purchase, say a prayer, slaughter a lamb?  Our birthright is death and the thief and the murderer, the conqueror and the slave, the ugly and the adorable all come to the same end.  How then do we think of justice, do we demand justice, do we define justice?  I define it as vanity.

We pretend we're above it, that our lives mean something and something more than other lives. We pretend things are different here, that "normal" is outside of  the universal suffering and death of all things living.  Our lives matter and matter more than others' and that's justice. We kill children, but kill them elsewhere where it doesn't matter and there's always a purpose that has to do with justice and freedom and all the ugly words meaning vanity.  Who will say, sitting in the ashes when we are gone "ah but they were righteous, they sought justice and closure and healing!"  "They lived in perfect safety and equality and no one of them was ever allowed to be insulted."  And even the ashes will die and the dust spread out forever in the darkness until it's gone.

______________

*The South Babylonian version of the second book of the epic Sa Nagba Imuru, "He who has seen all things,"  Commonly referred to as the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Donald Trump, Yellow Journalism, and a Contest of Madmen for the Primacy of the Sewer

By (O)CT(O)PUS

If this title caught your attention, you have come to right place. The art of headline writing is a lesson learned in Journalism 101 and a convention of ‘yellow journalism’ born in the Gilded Age. Yellow journalism is a derisive term that has become synonymous with sensationalism, pandering, and journalistic misconduct. When discussing the failings of contemporary journalism, the era of the yellow press is likely to be invoked. The criticisms are valid because the conventions of yellow journalism continue to live and thrive in the age of cable TV news.

My purpose in writing this post is to critique a column by Paul Janensch that appeared in the pages of our local newspaper: “Trump understands how to feed media to his advantage” [July 22, 2015].  Everyday we witness examples of cringe worthy headlines turned into newsworthy events.  We understand how charlatans and shameless hacks play the media; but how many journalists ask the more pertinent question:  Why does our media allow itself to be played?  In his commentary, Janensch merely scratches the surface.

Yellow Journalism.  The story of yellow journalism begins with publishing legend Joseph Pulitzer.  An ambitious and aggressive newspaper entrepreneur, Pulitzer pioneered the use provocative headlines, pictures, games, and novelties to attract readers and build circulation. Yet, his motives were not entirely self-serving. Pulitzer also believed in journalism as a civic responsibility whose mission is to improve society. In an era marked by immigration, labor unrest, abuses of power, and injustice, Pulitzer transformed his newspaper into a leading voice of reform.

In short order, yellow journalism spread to Boston, Chicago, Denver, and beyond. The staid establishment tabloids of the era denounced the excesses of the yellow press, as evidenced in this 1906 commentary by Harper’s Weekly:

”We may talk about the perils incident to the concentration of wealth, about the perils flowing from a disregard of fiduciary responsibility, about abuses of privilege, about exploiting the government for private advantage; but all these menaces, great as they are, are nothing compared with the deliberate, persistent, artful, purchased endeavor to pervert and vitiate the public judgment.”

Sound familiar? Even in a bygone era, critics called attention to the power of media to shape public opinion, a concern still voiced more than a century later. All told, yellow journalism has been described as irritating yet irresistible, imaginative yet frivolous, aggressive yet self-indulgent, and activist but arrogant. The history of ‘yellow journalism’ informs our concerns about the failings of contemporary journalism:

What has changed since the Gilded Age?

Is modern mass media serving the public interest?

Should we be concerned?

Media Consolidation.  In the Gilded Age, there were thousands of independently owned newspapers, and no tabloid had the market reach or power to influence national opinion.  By mid century after a succession of wars, the focus of public attention shifted to national and world events.  By 1975, two-thirds of all independently owned newspapers and one-third of all independently owned TV stations had vanished.  Today, less than two-dozen companies control 75% of the print market, and only five companies dominate the cable news network segment – the same ones that own the top Internet news sites.

What has changed from the Gilded Age to the present? Media consolidation has concentrated power in the hands of very few players that now have the means to “pervert and vitiate the public judgment.”  In recent times, media conglomerates – grown too big to fail -- measure success in terms of ratings and audience share (which translate into advertising revenue).

Roger Ailes, chief architect of the Fox News stratagem, openly admits: He sees himself as a producer of ratings, not journalism; audience share is his only yardstick. Roger Ailes knows the conventions of yellow journalism.  He also knows his audience better than most: Middle Americans with traditional values who dutifully practice their faith weekly in church pews and want their opinions shrink-wrapped on the nightly news.

Crosstalk.  To avoid charges of promoting a partisan bias, news networks often interview opposing stakeholders to create an appearance of balance and objectivity.  We know this formula all too well:  He claims the sky is falling; she says the sky is blue.  Which one  tells the truth; who among them is the liar?  All too often, the burden of unbundling fact from fiction is left to the viewer.

When broadcasters fail to check the veracity of competing claims (when lies are treated as newsworthy events), deceptions are legitimized upon a national stage.  Staged confrontations further antagonize an angry public already mired in partisanship.  How polarized have we become as a nation?  On any given day, read the opinion pages (and share your impressions here).

Donald Trump, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly are the ‘yellow kids’ of broadcast journalism. When we catch them in the act of dissembling, they reflexively lash out when criticized, or feign innocence by masquerading as entertainers, or defame and demonize their opponents. From the Gilded Age to the present, much has remained the same.  When sensational headlines scream for attention, nothing succeeds like excess, and Donald Trump is the most consummate troll of all.

Should we be concerned?  You betcha!  We have long known how media can be played and manipulated – by paying journalists to promote an industry viewpoint; by hiring PR firms to feed stories to the press; by faking news with maliciously edited videotape; by using smear tactics to destroy reputations; by repeating hot-button weasel words to spread suspicion and fear; by leveraging the powers of government to shape public opinion; to sell a bogus war on flimsy evidence. We understand intuitively how often our networks have failed in their mission to report honest and trustworthy news -- leading us astray.

Finally, consider the impact of the Citizens United decision that opened a new era of Super PACs and dark money from anonymous donors whose identities and motives are no longer transparent to the public.

In closing, I leave you with this thought. As Hannah Arendt once observed, a disciplined and well-funded minority of totalitarians can use the instruments of democratic government -- namely free speech and freedom of the press -- to undermine democracy itself.

This is the state of American journalism, circa 2015. We have finally come full circle when charlatans reprise the excesses of a bygone era and hold us hostage in “a contest of madmen for the primacy of the sewer”  No matter who wins or loses, everyone loses when all standards of civility and honesty sink deeper into an abyss.  Caveat emptor!

Dark Money Shines Bright

I do remember saying just the other day that the first pictures of Pluto would  immediately be followed by "proof" of  space aliens having been there.  We've only had one closeup so far and although there are tongue and cheek observations of the eponymous Walt Disney character we haven't had claims of flying saucers or pyramids or humanoid faces looking down on us from 3 billion miles away.  The Aliens Under The Bed boys haven't faded away of course. Unimaginably huge odds against interstellar travel notwithstanding, the passion for believing in cover ups persists at all levels as we see in the reaction of former senior White House advisor John Podesta, who now runs Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign to the President's comment about Pluto having its first visitor:

.@POTUS: how can you be sure this was Pluto's first visitor? #justasking https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/621133763385425920 …9:45 AM - 15 Jul 2015

Of course the word "sure" is the fulcrum of his argument.  One has to ask what it means to Podesta since the odds against interstellar travel must be added to the unlikelihood of anyone from the Great Beyond being interested in Pluto in the first place, while being careful not to leave anything behind but rumors, But the question of ancient aliens leaving little clues but no evidence doesn't seem to arise in the willful believer.  I only bring it up as an example of the inevitable reaction of that predictable species the Human Ape.  Odds of a trillion times a trillion to one seem like a real possibility while certainties are uncertain. The argument from ignorance is a powerful one on this planet of the apes.

The first thing I saw upon turning on the TV this morning was a long, image laden scare commercial by "Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran."  We aren't told just how many "citizens" corporate or otherwise are behind it, but we can assume there were a great many dollars. How many of those dollars used to belong to the Israeli Lobby, how many to GOP funded groups we don't know, but inevitable though it might be, it's still a bit shocking to see such direct appeals from anonymous sources to defame and misrepresent a presidential proposal.  It shouldn't be and after all the Republican campaign against the ACA and Planned Parenthood and Civil Rights have been unremitting. Googling Iran, nuclear, deal gives you a page full of diatribes against it, none of which address the fact that Iran has nuclear capabilities and has had all through the embargoes.  It's just another reminder of the corruption of  reason, the corruption of Democracy in the name of Democracy and the undercutting of the institutions of government of our Republic.

The stakes are perhaps higher here though. The safety of the world is at stake and the customary lying, fear mongering and appeals to the ignorant aren't as easily ignored.  Face it, the public isn't going to read the proposed agreement, the public will respond according to unexamined but passionate prejudices and a big one of those is the fondness for belligerent stances against satanic enemies. Witness the intransigent attitude toward our pathetic Cuba policies.  I am certain that this treaty will be voted upon not in terms of whether it's workable or beneficial but under the influence of the bullheaded, xenophobic blowhards and Theocrats.

You just can't trust the heathens to act in their own interests is the call.  You can't expect Congress to do that either, is my response.

Not all Donalds are Ducks

Some are just Schmucks.

The antics of Donald Trump make for good TV. That has been true for much longer than we've had to see him posing as a presidential candidate. It's hard for the tired and cynical public to get away from him but of course it's hard for the GOP to get away from him too.  It's amusing to watch the Machine try to put a gilt frame around him, because while stirring up the muck and the creatures that live in it is what they excel at, those creatures can none the less be quite offensive to some of the people the GOP would like to court:  Like Mexicans and voters who don't fear immigrants quite enough.

One of the memes that seem to bear the SKU of  Rove and Co. is that "the Left" is overly concerned and perhaps running scared of Donald.  It seems to be popping up on blogs all over the place as planted memes, buzzwords and Tea Party tropes do.  I find it puzzling since I don't know anyone who thinks Trump is a serious contender. I admit watching the coverage the Chump gets, produces a certain existential angst, a concern that such a character from a cheap, sophomoric farce could be happening in the real world,

The only thing I fear is that by distracting us from the real problems here on Planet Earth that need to be addressed, the entire campaign can continue to be a cheap, sophomoric farce concerned only with the fears of Xenophobes, Homophobes, Crusaders for God , Guns and extremists of all sorts. To be sure, I sense a sort of Newtonian opposite force as well, but it's harder to find a single Democratic clown who embodies all the neurotic and extremist views of the always embattled Left. Please pardon me Mr. Shakespeare for saying this again, but methinks the Republican Lady doth protest too much. Trump is only worrisome in as much as he distracts from the horrible recent history of the Republicans, their "leaders" and the damnation they dearly deserve.

The facts alone provide damnation enough for GOP economic policies,  They gave us massive unemployment and negative job growth for 8 years, exploding debt and deficit spending and of course their deceitful propaganda campaign, their gross lies and appeals to Chauvinism gave us the longest and most expensive war in American history and a war we quite dramatically lost and all with no attempt to pay for it.  They allowed the profiteers for the most part to avoid taxation while providing the madmen who rushed into the power vacuum sufficient cash, weapons and equipment to destabilize a sizable part of the world and continue the gruesome slaughter of innocents.

Donald Trump is there to prevent such thoughts from getting in the way of  the attempt to begin act two of Armageddon, but making him seem like a hero to those who hate Liberals isn't enough.  He needs to be his own opposite so that all bases can be covered and pay no heed to the contradiction. Republicans as it appears,  are totally blind to contradiction when it provides them with the rage-fix they crave; when it provides them the juice that makes them feel smart, superior and powerful -- when it feeds the Denialism and love of conspiracy theories.

Donald Trump, you see, is a  Democratic plant.   Perhaps it's true that he creates such loathing in non-Republicans that it would draw the notoriously non-voting single purpose Democrats to the polls, but once he fades away, and he most assuredly will, he will pass and be forgotten like the rest.  Someone like Jeb will be waiting, made more credible and trustworthy in comparison to the circus clown in the ratty wig -- someone ready to give us a more economically divided America, another economic collapse and another opportunity to revel in contempt for science, objectivity, and prosperity for those whose names don't end in INC.  Perhaps yet another opportunity to support our troops in yet another hopeless military enterprise?

Whatever happened to Trump University?

The Republican party has been trying to reach out to the Hispanic community to garner votes, and it's been a struggle for them. A struggle that Donald Trump made worse two weeks ago, saying that all illegal immigrants were drug dealers, rapists and criminals. ("And some, I assume, are good people," he grudgingly added.)

The Hispanic community was understandably outraged. And Trump, as he does, refused to back down from those statements.

Obvious anagram Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, had to call Trump to tell him to tone down the rhetoric, because it was hurting the Republican brand. That's not likely to work - whether it was negative or positive attention, he got attention for his remarks, and that's what Trump lives for.

(On a side note, who was the first person to call him "Obvious anagram Reince Priebus"? Because I'd like to shake that guy's hand.)

Donald Trump has been called "the id of the Republican party," which is accurate enough. He is the embodiment of the basic, instinctual drives of a person, the reptilian forebrain slipped into human skin. But more than that, he is also the Ego of the Republican party. By any definition. He is a self-serving, self-centered evangelical preacher of the Word of Trump. He, himself, is the center of his entire universe, and nothing is more important to him than building himself up, so that others can marvel at how important he is.

Trump feels the need to keep reminding people that he's "really, really rich." Well, of course he is: his father was a multi-millionaire real estate developer. The children of rich people tend to be rich, too.

The man who's filed for bankruptcy four times wants us to trust him with America's economy. That seems like an obviously stupid idea to anybody who thinks about it, but Trump is trusting most of America to be as stubbornly ignorant on as many subjects as he is. (And sadly, that may be a good bet.)

The man has had to close or sell off almost as many casinos as he's opened. And it's really hard to lose money with a casino. But it's easy to set up a scam, isn't it?

People, it's only been two years. Has everybody forgotten that Donald Trump got sued by the State of New York for a scam called Trump University?

The lawsuit, which seeks restitution of at least $40 million, accused Mr. Trump, the Trump Organization and others involved with the school of running it as an unlicensed educational institution from 2005 to 2011 and making false claims about its classes in what was described as “an elaborate bait-and-switch.”

In a statement, Eric T. Schneiderman, the attorney general, said Mr. Trump appeared in advertisements for the school making “false promises” to persuade more than 5,000 people around the country — including 600 New Yorkers — “to spend tens of thousands of dollars they couldn’t afford for lessons they never got.”

The advertisements claimed, for instance, that Mr. Trump had handpicked instructors to teach students “a systematic method for investing in real estate.” But according to the lawsuit, Mr. Trump had not chosen even a single instructor at the school and had not created the curriculums for any of its courses.

...

The inquiry into Trump University came to light in May 2011 after dozens of people had complained to the authorities in New York, Texas, Florida and Illinois about the institution, which attracted prospective students with the promise of a free 90-minute seminar about real estate investing that, according to the lawsuit, “served as a sales pitch for a three-day seminar costing $1,495.” This three-day seminar was itself “an upsell,” the lawsuit said, for increasingly costly “Trump Elite” packages that included so-called personal mentorship programs at $35,000 a course.

The details of this story kept getting more and more bizarre as press conferences were held and details were leaked.

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman says many of the 5,000 students who paid up to $35,000 thought they would at least meet Trump but instead all they got was their picture taken in front of a life-size picture of "The Apprentice" TV star.

...

The lawsuit says many of the wannabe moguls were unable to land even one real estate deal and were left far worse off than before the lessons, facing thousands of dollars in debt for the seminar program once billed as a top quality university with Trump's "hand-picked" instructors.

(More details can be found here and here.)

There is very little in Donald Trump's business dealings that aren't self-serving, shady, or both. This might make him the perfect Republican, but it would make him a very, very bad president.

Failure at the Bully Pulpit

On Wednesday, Medea Benjamin of Code Pink confronted Lindsey Graham at a press conference, and really didn't do a particularly good job.

Benjamin was supposed to be asking the Republican presidential candidate a question, but instead held onto the microphone for more than two minutes before security escorted her out of the room. While she still had the floor, Benjamin implored Graham to speak out against beheadings in Saudi Arabia and the Israel’s “repression” of the Palestinians, among other issues.

Graham had a chance to respond appropriately, and instead he chose to flounder.

“Is there a question?” an uncomfortable-looking Tapper asked as Graham chuckled to himself and rubbed his eyes.

“I’m going to put her down as undecided,” Graham joked after Benjamin’s mic had been taken away. While he said he respected her right to express her opinion, the senator said, “I couldn’t disagree with you more.”

“I think people like you make the world incredibly dangerous,” he continued. “I think people like you are radical Islam’s best hope.” He argued that the Iraq War did not create ISIS just as American intervention did not set the stage of 9/11. “You’re not going to fool me that somehow we brought this upon ourselves,” he said.

So, apparently, despite being a US Senator, Graham is either willfully ignorant or a liar. (I'm willing to say "both," but perhaps I'm too forgiving.)

OK, let's go through this quick: in the 80s, the CIA funneled money to train fighters in Afghanistan. One of those fighters was the son of a rich architect, a guy named Osama bin Laden who would go on later to create a little social club called Al Qaeda. So, already we see where American intervention over there didn't do us much good.

Then we went into Iraq and started blowing shit up. People lost their homes, their families and their hope. And like many hopeless people through history, they turned to religion.

On top of that, we left former Iraqi soldiers and former Al Qaeda operatives with no jobs, and since all of their training was in the area of "urban destruction," and they suddenly had plenty of time on their hands, they needed a hobby as well. So, Lindsey, that was how we helped create ISIS. Simple, right?

But both Lindsey and Benjamin held the national stage for a moment and neither one used it appropriately. Benjamin came to the Atlantic Council knowing that Graham would be there, and had plenty of time to prepare. She could have asked him a question that he could have been forced to respond to in some way.

For instance, "Senator Graham, you supported the invasion of Iraq. You consistently support our relations with Saudi Arabia, a repressive regime where most of the 9/11 terrorists came from. You have been consistently wrong in every way in dealings with the Middle East. Why do you think we should listen to you now, and especially why do you think we should put you in the White House?"

Instead she chose to do what CODE PINK does most of the time and just disrupt the proceedings with some incoherent rambling and unfocused anger.

Lindsey could have found a way to respond graciously, or could have begun discussing Middle Eastern policy. Instead, he make a lame joke and tried to dismiss with non sequiturs and lies.

“I think people like you are radical Islam’s best hope.”

How is that, Senator? Because she chose to exercise her right to free speech (even if she didn't do it well)?

Lindsey Graham showed that, at his best he would probably be an ineffective president; at his worst, he would most likely be that most dreaded of all natural disasters, a third Bush term. Medea Benjamin and Lindsey Graham met Wednesday night. But they were both prisoners of their own ideology.