The Trump Presidency

Lot of "laziness" around I guess.

Did Trump Vow to Help a Chinese Phone Maker After China Approved Money for a Trump Project?

IS CHINA STRAIGHT-UP BRIBING DONALD TRUMP?
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In a different America, say one with Obama or Hillary as president, Congress would investigate a president's sudden flip-flop. But not this America.

 

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https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/05/there-is-only-one-trump-scandal/560825/

A condensed version of the common knowledge of my political faction. Even in its simple summary of the well-known, though, my guess is that for most people there are small reminders of the overlooked, even startling, that gurgled on by down the sewer first time around.

In my case, for example, I had somehow missed the obvious here:

Of course. Lots of other people caught that right away, and Trump made the connection himself: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/201...rders-the-post-office-to-crack-down-on-amazon .

So how could anyone who read the news of Trump's Post Office attacks, at all, have missed that? In my case I think it was because I have always underestimated Trump as a wealthy businessman in a world of other wealthy businessmen, as a genuinely powerful man in that world. I had always dismissed him as a grifter and media manipulator, playing with his daddy's money in the casino business, selling his face on TV, getting used, swindled, and/or muscled by the big dogs. I just never pictured him on the same playing field with Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates or Charles Koch or Rex Tillerson or whomever is the Dark Lord of Bechtel.

And that is partly a consequence of having unconsciously, despite knowing better in some sense, accepted a view of that world - that world of the big dogs - as having much more reality to it than it does. One of the lessons of the Trump presidency is that the corporate masters of the universe are - at their best, at the top - Rex Tillersons. They don't know what they are doing, politically - not that they are right or wrong, good or evil, but that they are incompetent, incapable, ignorant.

That should have been, even was of course, a lesson learned long ago. But having it demonstrated like this does make a difference.

 

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Molly Ivins always said: don't forget to laugh.

The family Trump, featuring the women who know him best: https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fgaO7uYn...vYc4ZDmxWK6jwCLcB/s400/Protect+Your+Pussy.jpg

 

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Using emergency powers to keep open money losing, pollution belching coal plants to help your political supporters. Isn't this how things work in banana republics? He's single-handily picking winners and losers to hell with the free market. Of course it's total bullshit to call this a national security issue. It's about rewarding his voters while the rest of us foot the bill.

President Trump on Friday ordered Energy Secretary Rick Perry to halt the shutdown of ailing coal and nuclear power plants that he said were needed to maintain the nation’s energy mix, grid resilience and national security.

“Unfortunately, impending retirements of fuel-secure power facilities are leading to a rapid depletion of a critical part of our nation’s energy mix, and impacting the resilience of our power grid,” the White House said in a statement.

The Trump administration has been preparing to invoke emergency powers granted under Cold War-era legislation to order regional grid operators to buy electricity from ailing coal and nuclear power plants. There have been meetings this week at the Cabinet deputies’ level and at the National Security Council.​

Trump orders Energy Secretary Perry to halt shutdown of coal and nuclear plants

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Will he order the reopening of video stores next because too many mom and pop stores in Trump Country are out of business?

 

#trumpswindle | #WhatTheyVotedFor​

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There are days when you want to laugh.

President Trump wants to impose a total ban on the imports of German luxury cars, according to a new report from CNBC and German magazine WirtschaftsWoche.

Several U.S. and European diplomats told the news outlets that Trump told French President Emmanuel Macron about his plans last month during a state visit.

Trump reportedly told Macron that he would maintain the ban until no Mercedes-Benz cars are seen on Fifth Avenue in New York.

(Gstalter↱)​

And there are days when laughter is unwise.

We should be able to presume that someone, somewhere, would stop a President of the United States from doing something so astonishingly stupid, but this is the #trumpswindle, and God only knows, monumental stupidity is precisely #WhatTheyVotedFor.
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Notes:

Gstalter, Morgan. "Trump to impose total ban on luxury German cars: report". The Hill. 31 May 2018. TheHill.com. 2 June 2018. http://bit.ly/2J9KuRx

 

Perhpas we may see him change his tune after this years hurricane season and summer?

 

The President of the United States has been to Quebec to meet with the other 6 of the G7. It seems to be going less than smoothly:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DfSplrRV4AAk-Pc.jpg
Apparently there's a trend to referring to the festivities in Quebec as the G6 + 1 Summit.

After this, he heads for Singapore to meet with his opposite number in North Korea. He hasn't prepared, he informs us, because the important factor is his attitude. (If he actually meets Kim Jong Un, I lose a bet).

That is less disturbing than it would be if we had less familiarity with "preparation" as it happens these days. We have, say, the recent announcement of an upcoming pardon for Muhammed Ali, which the President described as being diligently researched and carefully prepared. (Muhammed Ali's only criminal conviction was thrown out by the Supreme Court in 1971 - as a phone call to Ali's lawyer would have revealed, supposing a wealthy 25 year old social climber and scion of wealth, living in New York City, ostensibly vulnerable to the draft, racially bigoted, and with a dominant personal interest in promotion and publicity and entertainment, had missed the event.)

And for those who missed the point of all this, and everything else Trump does: https://twitter.com/esaagar/status/1005462714578362368/photo/1

 

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Nice man !
A face that could kill a million butterflies!
G6+1 2018

 

It seems The Don wants to run world trade like a protection racket.

Seriously, the GOP is going to sit back and "see what happens"?

 

The whole world will see how he treats North Korea over the next couple of days as that will mirror how he will continue to treat the whole world in future, friend or foe alike.

Lets just hope he doesn't harbour any silly notions of performing another legalistic 'checkmate' operation as this type of folly will just hasten the next world war.

 

The USA is more than just one man. It is worth remembering this. Trump seems to forget this one salient fact.

The whole of the USA especially the erudite, including all the professors, the engineers, the doctors, the governors and the rest of the leaders, specialist and educated will be watching very closely.
Whilst I may lack confidence in Trumps capacity to exercise tact and diplomacy I have faith in the USA's capacity to deal with any issues that may arise in a way that is globally productive regardless of that one man.
I am also confident that Chairman Kim is also aware of this factor and may very well play it hard ball on Trump knowing so.
The next 48 hours should prove very interesting indeed!

 

Certainly a new take on divide and conquer.Play Trump off against America?

 

His character, and the way he treats others, is transparently obvious, and the common knowledge of it cannot be changed by anything he does in Singapore.

Anything.

It's one of the flaws of the asshole approach - once adopted, it's all you've got. You don't have it, or anything else, in reserve. Like Sonny in the Godfather - it makes for a bad Don.
(Trump, being a live human, is a combination of the simplified Fredo and Sonny. One problem in NK is that he seems to think he's Michael).

The interesting aspect one would imagine to be the tactics employed by NK. Can they run him, and if so how? He can of course be bribed (Chinese) and threatened (Russian) and both (Russian, Chinese), but not all countries and interests can do that - is there another way?
(Another problem in NK is that, not being Michael, he cannot surround himself with advisors who are both competent and loyal. The man's consigliore is Sean Hannity. )

 

Trump = Republican Party = Trump. It's a third of the country and two thirds of its governments.
We're not dealing with one man, however spectacularly exemplary he may be.

As with Nixon, as with Reagan, as with W, when a cadre of fascists get the keys to power "issues" arise that one can only deal with amid the destruction. The US was and is unable to deal with its invasion of Iraq in a "globally productive" way measured from a baseline of prior to invasion, for example. The only good the US can do in the wake of that is by way of rehabilitation and amends and repair and atonement - digging out. Likewise with Reagan's Central and South American horrorshows.

 

I refuse to accept that Trump is in any way indicative of the real intellectual, moral and ethical might of the silent majority.
To use Obama's words when confronted with the possibility of a Trump administration, "I have faith in the American people"
This summit may very well be the proverbial straw that breaks the camels back and motivates that silent majority whether Republican, Democrat or other, into some serious action.
Whilst Trump was controversially elected and Obama's faith may have been dented I believe his faith will ultimately find it's expression.


Do consider that I am not a USA citizen and speak from an Australian perspective.

 

The amount of work that the next administration is going to have to do to repair the damage done by the Trump administration is truly staggering. Once trust is lost and a democratic system is globally seen as flawed it is awfully hard to win it back. The recent G7 meeting was an absolute disaster by any measure and the ramifications to global co-operation and symbiosis with the USA will be felt for many years to come.

 

It's about a third - his base. Maybe 40%. But it's a lot more than that in the governments.

 

"Son of Anarchy".

 

Remember, Republicans have been arguing for years that government does not and cannot properly work. Given a choice between governing the country and proving their thesis, the GOP has chosen, and now we know these conservatives for who and what they are.

What the rest of us learn is that the only conservative you can trust is in no condition to betray you, and thus in no condition to say anything in the first place. Republican "wisdom" is best examined posthumously.

Hatred is the key. The difference is that we might look at the argument and say, "See, this would have hurt people," and the conservative would argue with the professor and say, "You can't prove that until it does!" And we can point to history and how it happens over and over, and the conservative will argue that we either need to hurt some people in order to prove it or shut the hell up.

Hatred. Through and through. Waiting for conservatives to demonstrate otherwise gets people killed.

Sitting back and seeing what happens allows President Trump to carry forth the dysfunctional agenda Republicans have sought for years; they won't stop him because during all those years when the denunciations of inhumane GOP policy and everyone else rushed to equivocate because it's unfair to say that about people, well, that's what they were up to. Equivocation turned out to be complicity, an act of aid and comfort. And maybe it's one thing to say they didn't think it would go that far, but there are clear reasons to not believe them. Sit back? See what happens? This is the great conservative hope. This is their moment. This is what they've been working toward the whole time. This is who they've been the whole time.

As a general thesis, I occasionally suggest revolutionaries, achieving some manner of success by seizing authority, tend to roll rightward and consolidate their power just like any other institutional influence. We see this throughout the Marxist revolutions, which have failed to evolve from the dictatorship of the proletariat into anything other than tyranny. And in the case of the American Revolution, we weren't out to smash the imperial system, merely usurp it. That's why we insisted on forfeiting the Revolution straightaway, first with the Articles, and then with the Constitution, both of which betrayed the Declaration. And we've been having that argument ever since.

As for waiting to see what happens, the GOP has become something of a caricature of old stereotypes. To wit, when I was young, and my notions of history and politics and juristics began formulating, there were some old references from gangster movies, and some comedic bits about car salesmen, private-sector attorneys, and so on, describing almost stereotypically what were considered common sketchy business practices. Republicans have become caricatures of these stereotypes, and recursively, at that. Imagine fifty years of making excuses and sheltering behind pretenses that it would be rude of me to suggest this is what you're actually doing, and what could you accomplish in that time, with populist mobs cheering you on? That's basically the GOP during the period of Democratic Party crisis that seems to have been taking place since the '68 convention. The Democratic reputation since then is to prefer to not have a reputation; the Republican reputation since then is to be evil, except it would have been rude to actually say so, and now here we are.

 

Well here's me with egg on my face - underestimating the North Korean capabilities:

I not only overlooked the threat capability, in that NK doesn't need anything to happen to come out ahead (they've already got the President of the United States flying half way around the world for the privilege of speaking to Fearless Leader) and doesn't need the nukes (China's got them covered),
but the bribe resources it possesses relative to this particular President:
https://www.upi.com/Report-North-Koreas-Kim-Yong-Chol-proposed-casino-to-Trump/9481528208551/