Anchor Struck

I posted this picture of our puppy Katoo in July and said there’d be more on her soon, but Trump happens.  She is doing fine.  He is not.  She weighs about 65 pounds and is on the brink of puberty.  Jude is at the home of Katoo’s mother, introducing Katoo to her half-brother Ookami, from her mom’s current litter.  We will bring him home in a week or so.  More on them soon.  This time I promise.

On a less endearing note: Trump.  To stay current on his outrages, I would have to blog constantly.  In the past day or so, he has insulted Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, asked the attendees at the National Prayer Breakfast to pray  for higher ratings for “The Apprentice”, eased sanctions against Russia as pro-Russian forces escalate in the Ukraine, and seemed to think that 19th Century slave/abolitionist/statesman Frederick Douglass is still alive.  Not to worry.  Sean Spicer can clear all this up because he has no discernible ethics.

The Douglas gaffe was dumped by Trump at a meeting with African-American leaders to note Black History Month.  It was a receptive crowd, likely because they had worked on The Donnie’s campaign.  It looked like a dozen or so sitting at a conference table.  Trevor Noah thought it was nice that the President met all the black people who voted for him.  He barely looked up as he read his script.

In the wake of alternative facts, I’m wondering at what point the bar for The Cheeto will touch  the ground.  His approval rating is headed that way.  A Gallup poll released today shows it at 43 approve/52 disapprove, the widest negative gap I’ve seen.  Rasmussen Reports is a much more sanguine 53 approve/47 disapprove, but that outfit is widely criticized.  CNN won’t even use it.

Public Policy Polling has it almost even at 47/49, but it also reports that 40 percent of voters want Trump impeached, up from 35 a week ago.  And only 48 percent would oppose his impeachment.

The Trump camp’s disregard — nay, disrespect — for the truth reminds me of a comment GOP Senator Jon Kyl made in 2011.  He claimed that abortions accounted for 90 percent of Planned Parenthood’s budget.  When it was revealed that the actual figure is 3 percent, a Kyl aide said that the 90 percent “was not intended to be a factual statement”.

And so it goes: the steady slog to Newspeak, which George Orwell introduced in his landmark novel Nineteen Eighty-Four”.  It is the language created by a totalitarian state to, according to Orwell, “diminish the range of thought”.

As the sublime Lily Tomlin said, “no matter how cynical I get, I can’t keep up.”