We're In Impeachment Territory

Most right-thinking individuals (i.e., not Trump acolytes) would, I suspect, agree with David Gergen here.

Inside The Mind of Trump: A Salamander Guest Post

In response to yesterday's post, The Salamander offered the following analysis, which I am featuring as a guest post:

.. have a long background on the perimeter of 'mood disorders' ..
The Trump is easily found, though spattered within the DSM-4 & the updated DSM-5. ie he manifests comorbid or multiple symptoms. What is obvious throughout the diagnostic and treatment algorithims is that the patient cannot and will not 'heal' themselves. Will not, cannot.

One may as well suggest to a diabetic that they 'pull up their socks' or develop a new hobby, or eat more broccoli.. or 'give their head a shake'. The most common mistake of those suffering from mood disorders is - upon feeling better from therapy & medication.. they stop medication & of course cease attending therapy sessions. In other words they did not succeed in reaching full remission. Worse, they become locked in a vicious & shrinking circle. The disorder(s) & symptoms blooms faster and faster.. and is harder to ever attain full remission.

Trump is far from 'the healthiest President in American history' as he proclaims. The nation has no idea what medication(s) he is taking daily or the side effects. Leaving aside the obvious low hanging fruit of greed, vanity and deceit & likelihood of blood pressure issues & meds, we note a zero alcohol routine as well as possible scalp meds promoting hair growth. Not Good! Only then may we proceed to the somatic i.e., sleep issues, extreme narcissism & related fabrication. Then we hit ADD - Attention Deficit Disorder, ugh, as well as Possible OCD - Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. We could throw in Prostate and Erectile Dysfunction Disorder & medication such as Viagra.

Finally, we may also arrive at Mixed Anxiety with Depression, and if his vanity and anger issues preclude professional psychiatric therapy then rest assured he is managing such a comorbid mood disorder with medication alone. For many suffering from this debilitating disorder, withdrawal from medication & in the absence of therapy, the next stage is often a rapid or sudden spiral into psychotic states. It would be unkind & unwise to describe such a psychosis as 'fantasyland' or Donald in Wonderland.

Dare I mention the dreaded 'Side Effects' of any and all of these medications.. or absence of some of them? The Donald is hardwired from birth, as are all of us. Where he went or goes from there through life is mediated via environment, familial and peer events & now as he ages badly before our very eyes and he grows more and more addicted to listening to his own voice only.. and constantly, we see a bewildered, conceited, nasty and extremely ignorant megalomaniac in the White House. Land of the Free & the Home of the Brave.. right ... This loser in life, is attracting similar people.. ie., the GOP and their base, most of whom may not be at risk of growing dementia like Ronald Reagan or the Donald

This Is Explosive

Let's see Trump explain this away:

President Trump revealed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in a White House meeting last week, according to current and former U.S. officials, who said that Trump’s disclosures jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State.

The information Trump relayed had been provided by a U.S. partner through an intelligence-sharing arrangement considered so sensitive that details have been withheld from allies and tightly restricted even within the U.S. government, officials said.

For Your Consideration

Truly, Madly, Deeply

Although the above title is taken from both a song and a movie title, it seems as apt a way as any to describe the current state of the American republic under the insane leadership of Donald Trump. It is truly, madly and deeply a nation in almost unfathomable crisis.

Last night, NBC's Lester Holt conducted an interview with the Orange Ogre, one you only have to watch a few minutes of to realize that almost everything Trump says is either a lie or a manifestation of his deeply unstable mind. With no regard for keeping stories straight, he readily admitted his firing of FBI director Comey had nothing to do with a recommendation by his deputy attorney general:

And, in fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said: ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should’ve won.’”

Another bald lie was his assertion that he had been reassured by Comey three times that he was not under investigation, something that would seem extremely unlikely.

In any event, watch a few minutes and see what you think.




If you have the stomach, watch a few minutes of a racist in Florida abusing and threatening a Muslim family in the name of Trump.



Only the most ideological or insensate will be unable to understand that Trump and his ilk are a terrible, corrosive and cancerous blight on the American body politic. The only question that really seems to matter now is, "Will the republic succumb to its aggressive disease, or will it do what is necessary to return to some semblance of health and normalcy?"

We've Heard It All Before

With Conservative leadership hopeful Maxime Bernier recently resurrecting the widely discredited and tired trope of a rising tide lifting all boats, Star reader Salmon Lee of Mississauga offers all of us a timely dose of reality:

Tax cuts only help the rich

Re Maxime Bernier’s vision for Canada, May 8

Yet another politician selling the myth that the economy will grow with tax cuts. If Conservative leadership candidate Maxime Bernier’s economics are sound, we should have been experiencing strong economic growth over the past few years. With corporate tax revenues having been reduced by more than $20 billion annually, thanks to the generous tax cuts from the Harper and McGuinty governments, we should be seeing 3-per-cent growth and millions of well-paying jobs. Instead, we see bigger paycheques for CEOs, stagnant wages and more lower-paying precarious jobs. And loads of uninvested cash in corporate coffers. Canadian politicians should learn from the social democratic Scandinavian countries on how to create a society that gives people a secure future and an economy that can support it.

Climate Change And Cities

This is a time when the credibility of national governments is at an all-time low. In the United States, Donald Trump openly denies climate science. Indeed, he has declared his intention to revive the coal industry and boost fracking, two very dangerous sources of environmental disruption. He is even musing about withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement Climate.

Here at home, things are not much better. While avoiding the harsh rhetoric of a climate-change denier, Justin Trudeau, by some feat of rhetorical legerdemain, insists that developing the tarsands is not incompatible with a cleaner environment. Such may sound good to the untutored mind, but for the critical thinker demanding specifics, the prime minister offers pretty thin gruel.

So where are we to look for real leadership? Even though they are at best very junior partners, because they have the most to lose as recent events have made very clear, cities may have far more ability to exert substantial influence on the climate change file than most people might think.

The late Benjamin Barber wrote a book, recently published, called Cool Cities: Urban Sovereignty and the Fix for Global Warming arguing that cities, not national governments, hold the key to real progress on the climate change file. An excerpt in The Guardian offers some of his thinking:

The list [of what municipalities can do] includes divestment of public funds from carbon energy companies; investment to encourage renewable energy and green infrastructure; municipal carbon taxes; fracking and drilling bans; new waste incineration technologies; regulation of the use of plastic bottles and bags; policies to improve public transport and reduce car use; and recycling.

Barber cites the city of Oslo, which is pursuing a zero-emissions campaign, as an exemplar:

The city is applying the goal with particular efficiency to transportation, and electric vehicle charging stations are plentiful. The plan is to make Oslo the most electric vehicle-friendly city in the world – one in four new cars sold in Norway are electric – and a champion of green housing and architecture: its new opera house is set in a neighbourhood that gleams with green infrastructure.

And cities in Asia are embracing some surprising initiatives as well:

The greater Seoul region has a population of almost 25 million, and in 2015 it was ranked the continent’s most sustainable city. Seoul has made a massive investment in electric-powered buses. It already has the world’s third largest subway system, but its carbon fuel bus fleet of 120,000 vehicles has been a massive source of pollution. Current plans are to convert half this fleet to electric by 2020, which would be the world’s most ambitious achievement of this kind.

One of the main impediments to a wider application of municipal green projects is the constraint on the power of local government:

There are two formidable obstacles blocking a larger role for cities: a paucity of resources and the absence of autonomy and jurisdiction. The European Union favours regions over cities, and works more on agricultural subsidies than affordable urban housing. In the United States, the structure of congressional representation means a suburban and rural minority rules over the urban majority.

Here in Canada, at least in Ontario, what a local government can do, as Toronto mayor John Tory found out to his great disgruntlement, is only what the provincial government will permit it to do. Road tolls in Toronto, as had been proposed and initially approved by the Wynne government, was ultimately vetoed, given that a provincial election is pending next year, and motorists have long memories.

There is only one answer, according to Barber:

If cities are to get the power they need, they will have to demand the right of self-governance...

Because urban citizens are the planet’s majority, their natural rights are endowed with democratic urgency. They carry the noble name of “citizen”, associated with the word “city”. But the aim is not to set urban against rural: it is to restore a more judicious balance between them. Today it is cities that look forward, speaking to global common goods, while fearful nations look back.

We, as a species, have a clear choice: continue on our present heedless course to planetary destruction, or start to make the hard, painful and expensive choices in order to live to fight another day.