POLL: Does anything scare Donald Trump more than a White House Correspondents' Dinner?

The White House just announced that Donald Trump is weaseling out of the White House Correspondents Association Dinner again this year. We all know that he's intellectually intimidated by the people in that room, but is there anything that scares him more? (This Twitter poll will be up for a week.)

POLL:
Which of these scares cowardly @RealDonaldTrump the most?

— True Blue Liberal (@TrueBlueLiberal) April 6, 2018

This Week's @TrueBlueLiberal Poll Is About Trump's Tariff Tantrum and Its Motivation

POLL:
Many people are saying that @realDonaldTrump's unexpected #TariffTantrum is nothing more than a calculated distraction from Robert Mueller's #TrumpRussia progress, which leads to this week's question:
Is Donald Trump more concerned about foreign steel or #ChristopherSteele?

— True Blue Liberal (@TrueBlueLiberal) March 5, 2018

POLL: Can the Wisdom of Crowds tell us which member of the #TrumpCrimeFamily is going to see the inside of a jail cell first?

WEEK-LONG POLL:
Will the first member of the #TrumpCrimeFamily to be indicted be Papa Don, Baby Don, Eric, or one or both of the halves of the glamorous criminal couple known as 'Javanka'?
(Retweets will help to harness the infallible #WisdomOfCrowds)

— True Blue Liberal (@TrueBlueLiberal) February 23, 2018

New Poll. Which psychiatric disorder is behind the President's compulsion to build the #GreatWallOfTrump?

POLL: You too can be an amateur presidential psychiatrist!

The unchanging and unevolving compulsion of @realDonaldTrump to build an ineffective but VERY VERY VERY GREAT #GreatWallOfTrump could best be diagnosed as symptomatic of which of the following?

— True Blue Liberal (@TrueBlueLiberal) January 19, 2018

The Easiest Possible New Year's Resolution: WWDTD?

WWDTD is, of course, a simple mnemonic for "What Would Donald Trump Do?"

My resolution for 2018 is to remember to ask myself this question, and do the opposite. On the simplest level, asking myself WWDTD will keep me from golfing; praising myself inordinately; whining for an apology every time I feel my name, appearance, or intelligence has been slighted; hanging out in meetings with crowds of sycophants in suits and ties; looking for questionable ways to cheat on my taxes or otherwise gain money for myself and my family through schemes and shortcuts; creating a fraudulent 'university'; making a profit by raising the cost of admission to my annual New Year's Eve party at my own club; belittling people of a race, gender, or nationality that differs from mine; attacking people who express their patriotism differently or worship a different god, or no god; etc.; etc.

But those are all the obvious negatives inspired by the WWDTD resolution strategy. There are positive steps I can take too, by proactively doing the opposite of what DT would do. Last night, for example, rather than hanging out with billionaires in monkey suits and being bored to death at Mar-a-Lago to celebrate New Year's Eve, I watched (at extremely high volume) all four hours of the Grateful Dead's New Year's Eve show at Winterland as 1978 became 1979 while reading the latest issue of The New York Review of Books and drinking ginger tea with turmeric. That's not something DT would do.

I woke up this morning and went directly to a New Year's Day yoga class. That's not something DT would do.

I'm working on turning my vegetarian diet into a vegan diet. That's not something DT would do.

I want to read even more books, and read more widely, than I did in 2017. I stumbled on a couple of things this morning that are geared toward that goal, the Los Angeles Times' "How to read more books in 2018" and the New York Public Library's "Read Harder in 2018! NYPL's Suggestions for Book Riot’s Annual Challenge." Personally, I have found that signing up with Goodreads and taking their Reading Challenge for the past few years has kept me reading more than 40 books a year. That's not something DT would do (I doubt if he has read 40 books in his life).

WWDTD should provide guidance throughout the year. I'm going for a long walk now even though it's 12°F outside. That's not something DT would do.

Happy New Year (from Tennyson & Harrison)

In Memoriam [CVI. Ring out, wild bells]

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
   The flying cloud, the frosty light:
   The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
   Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
   The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
   For those that here we see no more;
   Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
   And ancient forms of party strife;
   Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
   The faithless coldness of the times;
   Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
   The civic slander and the spite;
   Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
   Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
   Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
   The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
   Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

And George Harrison's 1974 variation on Tennyson's original:

Happy 2018 to all my fellow true blue liberalites.

Merry Christmas.

But I have a Christmas query:

If @realDonaldTrump had been elected mayor of Bethlehem in the year 1 B.C. on an anti-immigrant platform, would he have kept Joseph and Mary from having their #AnchorBaby in his town?

Xenophobia is the real #WarOnChristmas.

— True Blue Liberal (@TrueBlueLiberal) December 18, 2017

I have nothing to add to the "War On Christmas" question that I didn't already say when this blog was brand new in December 2004: "Put the X back in Xmas."

Another TBL Poll : Who will be Trump's most effective deconstructionist?

Here's another poll that I see as a possible 50/50 toss-up.

In the race to destroy the agency @realDonaldTrump has chosen them to dismantle, who will succeed first, Scott Pruitt at #EPA or Nick Mulvaney at #CFPB?

— True Blue Liberal (@TrueBlueLiberal) November 27, 2017

Two Gettysburg Addresses

Today is the anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Gettysburg Address, but we shouldn't let that overshadow our current White House resident's Gettysburg Address on October 22, 2016. Only a candidate at the time, Donald Trump promised a major address about his first hundred days as president at the site of Lincoln's immortal speech. The speech quickly devolved into a typical airing of grievances about the media, lies about the Clinton campaign, and gloating about his crowd sizes, but included one key specific threat that he never followed up on (and never will). With news of his history of sexual assaults and the Access Hollywood tape (below) dominating the news, candidate Trump made this promise:

"Every woman lied when they came forward to hurt my campaign. Total fabrication. The events never happened. Never. All of these liars will be sued after the election is over."

Even Donald Trump must remember what happened when Bill Clinton was forced to lie under oath about his sexual past; Donald Trump will never want to face any of his many accusers in a court room.

A True Blue Liberal POTUS & SCOTUS Poll

Here's a poll that will be up on the @TrueBlueLiberal Twitter page this week about President Trump and two of his favorite judges:

POLL:
Due to his very, very GREAT respect for the American justice system, the next judge whom @realDonaldTrump plans to elevate to a seat on the Supreme Court, if he gets the opportunity, is...

— True Blue Liberal (@TrueBlueLiberal) November 14, 2017