Does Trump need humility? Or should we apply Earl Bush rule to the Donald?

“Power is dangerous unless you have humility” – Richard J. Daley, the mayor of Chicago from 1955-76.

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Would Mayor Daley have understood Trump perfectly?

A quotation I stumbled across Thursday while trying to find something else, and one that I thought particularly noteworthy these days in light of the fact that the one word that no one would ever associate with Republican presidential hopeful Donald J. Trump is humility.

As the New York-based real estate developer (when he’s not spending time at his gaudy Mar A Lago mansion in Florida) shows us as he repeatedly persists with his desires to do things his own way, no matter how offensive and tacky they show him to be.

IT IS A thought that perhaps we should all keep in mind as we approach Election Day and are called upon to make a decision.

We are going to have to decide the direction of our society that we allow our government to take it. Should we allow the Trump ego, which already has put its brand on a tacky-looking tower along the Chicago River, to be able to spread elsewhere?

I write this knowing there are some people who are opposed to the candidacy of Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton and keep telling themselves that the natural checks and balances of government would keep Trump from actually carrying out most of the absurd rhetoric he has made during his campaign.

But when you have a candidate who rejects the very notion of government as having a role in our society as Trump does, you wonder how much he envisions he can stretch things out.

BECAUSE HE COMES across as the ultimate example of a business executive fed up with what he thinks of as government interference with his corporate desires. So he envisions winning office so as to eliminate the middle-man of the government officials he has been forced to deal with all these years.

He can rubber-stamp his own business interests. Or at least he fantasizes he can do so.

 

Was Trump as equally incoherent as Mayor Daley?

We in Illinois have seen how the venture capitalist, Bruce Rauner, has managed to use his election as governor to try to implement his own agenda – only to have the General Assembly thwart his desires.

Unlike the Illinois Legislature, our Congress doesn’t have a veto-proof majority that would oppose itself to a “President Trump.” We do have a serious choice to make come the Nov. 8 Election Day.

DO WE REALLY vote for the guy whose vision of our society comes across as so over-the-top to satisfy his bloated ego, all because we don’t want to elect the wife of the man whose own presidency was bogged down in so much partisan political tripe?

Do we really give in to those people who have been waiting for years to vote “no” to Hillary Clinton just to appease their own politically partisan grudges?

It will be interesting to see which choice our electorate makes on the second Tuesday of November, and which person winds up freezing their keister off come January on Inauguration Day!

For those who feel tortured by reading this particular commentary, perhaps you’d feel better reading the Borowitz Report published at NewYorker.com, where author Andy Borowitz ponders a Trump who thinks it’s unethical and extremely unfair for television types to be recording his every word, just so they could air it publicly for the future.

HOW ELSE IS Trump supposed to be able to change his thoughts at a moment’s notice, depending on the crowd he happens to be facing in any given situation?

And for those who think this thought too ridiculous to be real, keep in mind that Mayor Daley had his long-time press secretary, Earl Bush, who told reporter-type people with a completely straight face that when it came to the inarticulate Richard J. they should, “don’t write what he says, write what he means.”

Only in the case of Trump, there are times when we question if even “the Donald” fully comprehends what he is articulating!

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Trump’s ‘Second Amendment people’ wisecrack totally in character

I’d like to be able to say I’m grossly offended at the thought of anyone being boorish enough like Donald Trump was earlier this week in his implying that someone could take a shot (literally) at presidential opponent Hillary Clinton.

 

Can't the people, just tell this campaign, "You're Fired!"

But that would be an exaggeration on my part, because I actually think the sentiment that Trump was hinting at is totally in character with that segment of our society that wants to impose a conservative ideological bent upon all of us with regards to all issues.

THE IDEA OF somebody taking it upon themselves to attack Clinton because they don’t agree with her politically? It’s really just the next step in the ongoing process by which the political right has a twisted view of what is, and is not, appropriate.

Let’s not forget that it was just a couple of weeks ago that the leading chant amongst Trump supporters at the Republican National Convention was “Lock her up!”

As in implying that Hillary Clinton deserved incarceration for the high crimes of not agreeing with their ideological leanings on the issues. As in it ought to be a crime for people not to be conservative.

And as for those people in our society who are just too different to ever fit in with the so-called masses, they ought to come to their senses and just get out of the country – or else face incarceration themselves.

Former Sen. Grace Mary Stern wore target on back as joke

FOR LET’S NOT forget that in the old days, the ones that the Trump-ites allude to when they repeat his nitwit slogan of “Making America Great Again,” there were some people who literally got incarcerated for being black. Or have we forgotten that sick old label of “Sundown Towns” where the police would be allegedly upholding their duty by arresting non-white people who were found within the municipal limits after dark?

In a sense, when Trump made his tacky little wisecrack on Tuesday in Wilmington, N.C., about the “Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know” he was merely playing off the same sentiment.

By the way, for those of you who can’t keep your Constitution talk straight, that amendment is the one that limits the federal government’s ability to impose laws against firearms ownership – although rightward-leaning judges have interpreted it to be an absolute right to firearms ownership!

The same people who will tell you that automobile ownership is a privilege will claim that one is entitled to pack a pistol because of the Constitution – even though anyone who bothers to read the amendment sees it refers to the fact that in past years, one who served in a local militia would have to provide their own weapon with which to fight.

HENCE, NO RESTRICTIONS on a personal firearms ownership.

But I’m not interested today in debating firearms ownership. I doubt even Trump cares much about the issue. His latest wisecrack was probably little more than evidence of just how dull is wit is. How boorish he can be.

Then again, if we want someone with a sense of humor in the White House, perhaps we should elect comedian George Lopez. Who in his routines has joked of how the first Latino president would still live in a White House – albeit one decorated with blue trim.

I’m sure there are people who are reading the stories being published now quoting CIA officials and Secret Service types talking about how close to violating the law Trump came with his wisecrack who are thinking something seriously has run amok

OF COURSE, A joke is a joke until someone decides to react upon it. Because some people have no sense of humor or irony.

Perhaps as evidenced by the people who got all offended on Facebook by a posting someone made – telling us, “Sarah Palin vows to leave America if Trump loses and move (sic) to New Mexico.”

Will Hillary's bulls-eye be real?

Which clearly was a parody of both those people who threaten to leave for a foreign country if their preferred political people lose, and also just how stupid Palin has shown herself to be by implying she’d think the Southwestern state is a part of Mexico. Which it once was!

The number of people who got outraged and think they have the “gotcha!” moment against liberal thought is frightening. Particularly since it makes me think that at least a few of them also reacted to Trump’s wisecrack with a thought along the lines of, “He’s got the right idea!”

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What you think of Blagojevich situation says more about you than him

One-time Illinois first lady Patti Blagojevich may be “dumbfounded” and “flabbergasted” at the federal court judge who on Tuesday refused to reduce the prison sentence her husband, Rod, is serving.

 

BLAGOJEVICH: Could hair dye restore that mane?

But I can’t help but think that there were many people out amongst the masses who cheered quite loudly when they learned during the lunch hour that U.S. District Judge James Zagel re-imposed the same 14-year prison term that he originally gave to the former Illinois governor.

A FEDERAL APPEALS court in Chicago may have decided last year that five of the 14 counts that Rod Blagojevich was found guilty of were improper and tossed them out.

But that still left Blagojevich guilty of nine criminal counts and prosecuting attorneys at the federal courthouse in Chicago were determined to believe that those counts were the most severe and still amounted to acts worthy of a lengthy prison sentence – and not just the usual 18-month stint at the federal correctional center in Oxford, Wis., that often jokingly is referred to as an “Oxford education.”

It may be that only Patti Blagojevich and the couples’ daughters, Amy and Annie, thought there was a serious chance that Zagel would impose a new prison sentence that would result in significantly-less time having to be served at that correctional center in Colorado, or anywhere else.

Most people were getting worked up at the prospect that the overall sentence would be reduced significantly from the 14-year term to about five or six years – which if it had happened would have basically made his time already served sufficient.

WE COULD HAVE had our former governor back in our midst some time by year’s end.

But Zagel likely made himself popular with the public when he made his own comments – the ones about how he wasn’t swayed by the good behavior of Blagojevich while in prison.

“Those people, Zagel said, “knew him from inside the prison. They don’t know him” like we do in the outside world.

And there most definitely are those in our society vengeful or petty enough to want maximum suffering to take place in this instance. Blagojevich’s case brings out a gut emotion in many of us that goes far beyond the facts of the case.

PARTICULARLY FOR THOSE people who want to believe that just about anything political has a touch of criminality involved, and fantasize for the day that Hillary Clinton, her husband Bill and Barack Obama wind up serving prison time.

And probably think that the time served by former Illinois Gov. George Ryan (just over six years) was also a worthy point to let Republican politicos know what can happen to them if they stray from the conservative ideological line.

So in the end, it didn’t matter much that Patti Blagojevich publicly pleaded for mercy, asking that her husband be set free so that he could at least be a father to the couples’ younger daughter (the elder one is off attending college).

It probably also didn’t matter much that Blagojevich himself was contrite and apologetic and said all the things that legal officials usually want to hear about an inmate feeling contrite and apologetic.

BLAGOJEVICH TOLD US he realized the suffering of his wife and daughters in recent years is his fault, and how much of his past political ambition was improper. “I had a lot of ambition before. I learned that some of that is overrated.”

A comment to which I’m sure some amongst us scoffed and sneered before we go back to thinking of the roughly eight years of time that Blagojevich will still owe to the Bureau of Prisons.

In fact, there may be one significant detail that came out of Tuesday’s hearing at the Dirksen Federal Building – the image of Blagojevich broadcast over closed-circuit television from his prison in Colorado most definitely showed that Rod’s hair has, indeed, gone grey. Which, if he had been free and continuing in politics all these years likely would have happened anyway.

Just look at Obama these days – although he can claim it as being from the stress of having Congressional Republicans thwart his every governmental desire, rather than a fear of being caught in a prison yard brawl!

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When is paranoia totally justified? Or, Get off yer lazy behind and Vote!!!

My step-mother’s sister, Betty, literally wagged her finger in my face this weekend while telling me it was absolutely crucial that I turn out and cast a ballot come Election Day this year.

 

TRUMP: He wants the presidential perks

She’s one of the people appalled by the existence of Donald Trump and has managed to get herself excited about the prospects of a “President Hillary Clinton” (although she flirted briefly with the idea of Bernie Sanders).

BUT SHE’S CONVINCED the natural apathy that afflicts people is going to cause too many to just sit on their fat behinds come Nov. 8.

Which, if it really happens, would enable the incredibly outspoken faction of our society that wants Trump in the White House (unless he decides the presidential mansion is unbecoming of him and he shifts operations to the Mar-A-Lago Club) to go out of his way to repudiate everything that has ever occurred that they disagree with.

Now I know some people are convinced that there are just too many checks and balances in place to allow Trump to do anywhere near the amount of damage he has pledged to do during his presidential campaigning. That line of logic is being spewed by those who seriously have their hang-ups about Hillary being anywhere near the political position once held by her husband, Bill.

But the paranoia about a Trump presidency persists – even though many (including myself) would argue there’s nothing “extreme” or “irrational” in their fear or “distrust” of “the Donald.” Even Hillary Clinton herself is more than willing to play off of it.

FOR I RECEIVED in my e-mail Sunday night a message from the Clinton campaign itself (and have since received two more similar notes), telling me how Trump’s fundraising is stepping up its work (supposedly $82 million raised during July), which boosts his chances of turning out the vote in parts of the country where the Electoral College favors them.

Trump is, “unqualified and unfit to lead our country – but the unfortunate reality we must confront is that he still might be able to win if he spends enough to convince voters otherwise,” was written on behalf of Hillary.

Of course, that e-mail then got to the real point – which wasn’t so much to remind us of how repulsive Donald Trump is but to tell us how we should donate more money to Clinton.

 

CLINTON: She wants campaign cash to stop him

The e-mail was set up in a way that I could “quick donate” as little as $3, figuring that a lot of petty donations from many people could add up to a significant amount. Of course, if I also feel compelled to be a more significant donor, they’re not about to refuse to accept my money.

NOT THAT IT’S going to influence me, because I generally don’t give money to political campaigns of any persuasion. In part because I’m cheap, but also because I don’t want any of these people thinking they can keep me on a list of individuals whom they come to expect for support. It's that old line of logic about a reporter-type person not wanting to create an impression of favoritism for anybody.

I may feel a twinge of guilt when I don’t make a donation to PBS or NPR (that's just because I'm cheap). But the campaigns are a different animal, and I don’t doubt that an operation as professional as the Clinton camp is capable of finding enough significant donors.

So their attempt to appeal to my sense of guilt and having a conscience isn’t going to get money from me. Besides, this particular e-mail reminded me that Trump has called women “fat pigs,” pledged to repeal the Affordable Care Act, erect that nonsensical wall along the U.S./Mexico border and boost the deportation totals from this country.

Yet nowhere did she tell us any reason why we should think she's any better.

I KNOW THE strategy of political operatives is to go nasty on the opposition until just before Election Day, at which time you bring everyone home, so to speak, by telling us how nice the candidate is.

I also don’t doubt that Trump will spend the next couple of months committing countless acts of borderline libel and slander on the Clinton reputation – and threaten to sue anyone who calls him out on his trash talk.

 

Will enough people get their sticker?

This is the time of the campaign season we’re in now, with negativity that’s only going to get worse and worse after Labor Day when political activity traditionally reaches its peak prior to Election Day.

Yet for me, the rhetoric from Clinton and Trump is something I can bear with. It may well be my “Aunt Betty” with her incessant appeals to vote (that probably won’t let up until she sees me wearing an “I voted” sticker on Nov. 8) that will be hardest to resist.

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EXTRA: 8-8 a double historic date for Chicago baseball both sides of town

Future Hall of Fame pitcher Rich Gossage once joked he'd only wear the Sox shorts if given a matching halter top. But he wound up getting a save in the victory the Chicago White Sox acheved over the Kansas City Royals. 

Aug. 8 is one of those dates we’d otherwise ignore, but ought to acknowledge for the moments of baseball trivia it produces here in Chicago.

For it was on this date in 1976 that the Chicago White Sox first wore the version of a uniform that included short pants. There was a double-header that day, and the White Sox showed off their knobby knees during the first game -- in which they beat the Kansas City Royals.

THE SECOND GAME that date gave us a ball club reverting back to their long pants and losing ways of the ‘76 season, although the Sox did dig out the shorts again later in the month, and actually managed to beat the Baltimore Orioles 11-10 in 10 innings while wearing them on Aug. 21.

The date also became significant 12 years later when the Chicago Cubs tried to get cute in their first staging of a night baseball game at Wrigley Field. The game was scheduled for the date otherwise known as 8-8-88. The only problem was it wound up raining heavily that night and the game was called before they could get in enough play to make it an official ballgame.

Hence, the first night game ever played at Wrigley was actually on Aug. 9, 1988. That’s what happens when one tries to get cutesy – the baseball “gods” wreck havoc upon your plans for silliness.

 

Then the rain came falling from the skies, ending play after merely 3 innings

Does this mean that the baseball gods, by not hitting Comiskey Park with a tornado some 12 years earlier, secretly approved of the shorts scheme? Or just that night games at Wrigley are a true abomination that I’m sure the bulk of the Lake View neighborhood would still think true!

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A-Rod won’t don pale hose during his lengthy baseball career; Chicago won’t get a last chance to “boo” him

It’s a trend that our very own Chicago White Sox like to take on – aging star ballplayers who wind up finishing their careers on the South Side of Chicago with such unmemorable stints that most fans quickly forget they ever played here.

 

He'll never wear White Sox pinstripes

To the degree that I often wondered if Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees was destined to become yet another ballplayer in this category – somebody who’d wind up finishing his career getting in a few games playing for the White Sox.

IT MAY BE the big difference in character between the Chicago White Sox and the crosstown competition, the Chicago Cubs.

For the Cubs have a history of letting young ballplayers go who later wind up with other ball clubs having careers making them worthy of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. – pitchers Bruce Sutter and Greg Maddux, just to name a couple.

While the White Sox wind up being the aging dumping ground of guys like Ken Griffey, Jr., who when he was inducted earlier this summer into the Hall of Fame and people were going on-and-on about the highlights of his professional career, no one was thinking about the 41 games he played for the White Sox in 2008.

Then again, with a .260 batting average and only 3 home runs while wearing the black and white with pinstripes of the Sox, there wasn’t much to remember.

 

Just a few ballplayers ...

JUST LIKE STEVE Carlton or Roberto Alomar – who got into the Hall of Fame despite their lack of heroics in Chicago. Or Tom Seaver, who is a Hall of Famer whom many people barely remember as a White Sox.

It would have totally been in the ball club’s character to acquire Rodriguez, whom the Yankees have been eager to dispose of because he’s NOT of the quality any more that will make him a candidate for Hall of Fame induction.

 

... whose athletic demise and  final paycheck ...

He could be just like Jose Canseco, the aging slugger from the 1980s and early 1990s who ended his playing days in the early 21^st Century by hitting the last 16 of his 462 career home runs in Chicago.

He got to end his major league playing days by finally getting to see a Comiskey Park fireworks display in celebration of his own home runs, instead of just hearing the echoing of “boos” from fans p-oed that a Sox pitcher threw another stinker of a pitch that wound up deposited into the outfield seats.

... came while wearing "white" sox

THIS HONESTLY WAS what I always expected the end of baseball would be for Alex Rodriguez – an unceremonious attempt to stretch out his career for a few more ball games. With the confused catter-calls coming from the stands – generations of Sox fans booing and heckling him for playing for the Seattle Mariners, Texas Rangers and Yankees being muted because his hits finally benefitted the White Sox.

Although the reason it won’t happen is because Rodriguez announced Sunday he won’t play anymore following the Yankees’ ballgame Friday against the Tampa Bay Rays. He’ll get to finish out this season and next in some sort of unspecified role as a consultant.

Even Jose Canseco got a final farewell in Chicago

But his horrific play (batting only .204 this season and he didn’t even play back on July 4-6 when the Yankees made their only visit to Chicago this season) meant there weren’t many hits to be had.

As it turns out, Rodriguez’ Chicago finale turned out to be the final weekend of July 2015 when the Yankees played a three-game series at U.S. Cellular Field. The crowd reaction literally was a mess of people wanting to tell dumb steroid jokes and taunts mixed with Yankees fans still wishing to celebrate him – and one girl sitting behind me in the outfield seats making a point of wishing Rodriguez a “Happy Birthday.”

IT WILL BE intriguing how Rodriguez – the guy who lost the 2013 season to a suspension because of steroid-use allegations – gets remembered. Because with 696 home runs (as of Sunday), it makes him one of the all-time greats – ahead of Willie Mays (660) and not far behind Yankees immortal Babe Rush (714).

Not everyone heckled Rodriguez in Chicago

And certainly better than legitimate White Sox Hall of Famer Frank Thomas (521) or “is he, or isn’t he, a fraud” Cubs star Sammy Sosa (609). But some are going to be too eager to taint the Rodriguez memory with steroids, just as they have done with Sosa and many other ballplayers of recent years.

It makes me reminisce of the ballplayers of my childhood era – guys such as one-time Sox slugger Dick Allen.

 

He who took a Most Valuable Player title while representing the South Side and was critical of artificial turf by saying, “If a cow can’t eat it, I won’t play on it.” You just don’t get ballplayers like that these days.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: Maybe the White Sox will wind up having Ichiro Suzuki on their roster some time in the near future. The Miami Marlins outfielder clinched his position in baseball immortality by getting his 3,000th base hit (a triple Sunday off Colorado Rockies pitcher Chris Rusin) playing in the U.S. major leagues (he has another 1,200 or so hit from playing professionally in Japan). Which means he's now an aging ballplayer whose past his prime and whose best years (with the Seattle Mariners and New York Yankees) are most definitely in the past -- perfect for a stint at 35th and Bill Veeck Drive! For what it's worth, Suzuki made his only visit to Chicago this season last week when the Marlins lost three games to the Chicago Cubs, although the White Sox will be in Miami for a weekend series beginning Friday.

Election rigged? It must be if we don't ignore Trump as ruler of our universe

The whining is getting ridiculous, although I think those Republican political operatives who seriously are speculating that they can have presidential nominee Donald Trump declared mentally unfit are just a bit absurd.

 

TRUMP: He must prevail, or else!?!

For whatever reason, your political party allowed Trump to gain the right to call himself the Republican nominee. Now live with it, and work harder in future election cycles to not have your party process usurped by an egomaniacal nut.

BECAUSE THAT’S ABOUT what I have concluded is the situation involving Trump. And I also realize there are people in our society who are totally comfortable with Trump because they think his nuttiness will work out in their favor.

Or at least it will work against those people they want to perceive as not like themselves.

So when Trump goes on rants like he has earlier this week talking about how the electoral process is “rigged” against him, it just comes across way too clear that this is someone who thinks he is entitled to an electoral victory.

Because, in his mini-mind, there’s just no way a fair and just system would allow anybody but himself to prevail.

OF COURSE, THIS is far from the first time Trump has come off as an ego run amok. Someone who seriously thinks his wealth makes him better and more important than everybody else.

One of my Facebook friends posted a link to an old story from back in February – back when Trump was talking about the need to alter the First Amendment to the Constitution.

 

Is this Trump vision of Constitution?

That’s the one that regards freedom of religion and public expression, and also includes a clause preventing abridgment freedom of the press. It is the basis of various court decisions that give news organizations some protection from rich egotists like Trump who wish they could intimidate through lawsuits.

Because as Trump said back then, he needs to have the authority to use the courts as the mechanism by which he intimidates people because, “I’m not like other people.”

JUST LIKE NOW, he thinks he’s different from other candidates whom he wants to think must kneel before him and pledge their lives to his service.

Just like actor Terrence Stamp’s “General Zod” character in the Superman II film from 1980. Remember the scene where he demanded the U.S. president pledge allegiance to him if he wanted to live?

Why do I fear that we have a presidential nominee who has watched Superman films far too often, and finds some sense of likeability in the villain character?

Then again, perhaps Trump believes the only kind of film worth watching would be one based on his own life – and one in which he would get to portray himself on the silver screen! It’s not the most absurd idea – radio talk show host Howard Stern got to play himself in the film based on his biographical book “Private Parts.”

PERSONALLY, I’D BE reluctant to watch such a film. It would just be a little too self-serving. Besides, watching the activity of this election cycle is giving us all a show that is far too absurd to take seriously.

The kind of nonsense we have seen and heard in recent months has been such a stretch. I fear future generations won’t quite believe us when we recall our memories of what has happened.

 

If Trump is Zod, does that make Hillary Superman?

Either that, or they’ll wonder how we could possibly be ridiculous enough to take such a character seriously? I’m not about to try to answer that question – that is one we will have to spend years pondering.

It also makes me wonder if the majority of society whom Trump has gone out of his way to demonize in order to entice the segment of society he wants to favor will wind up giving Hillary Clinton’s campaign the super strength that Superman himself used in that film when he crushed Zod’s body with his bare hand, and Zod’s allies were left so weak that even Lois Lane was able to cold-cock them!

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