The Trump Presidency

uncomfortable?
Nah
more like predictable entertainment
.............................
lest you think i am disparaging "predictable"
Bill Clinton used predictability as a keystone of his rhetoric.
(and I enjoyed the heck out of it)

 

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Being entertained by what one has oneself inflicted is predictable, of course. It's a common thing - arsonists are said to enjoy watching the commotion, the attempts to deal with what they set in motion.

And there is also entertainment to be had, for those who did try to prevent Republican ascendancy, from the consequent miseries of the core Republican voter - we can all get a chuckle from the high frequency of brain damage suffered in Iraq by the soldiers who voted for W (a large majority), for example, and make jokes about how they and their kin weren't using those brains for much anyway.

If that's the kind of humor that appeals to you.

 

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Nah, you want funny?
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/rick-pe...-the-ukrainian-prime-minister-for-22-minutes/

The fact that, apparently, the department in charge of safeguarding and account for our nuclear stockpiles cannot, apparently, accurately identify who they are talking to for over 22 minutes...

 

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Republicans have lied about Obamacare for the last 8 years, and they got by with it, because they could count on Democrats to stop them. Now the Democrats can't stop them. It's a whole "nother" story now. Now those Republican Obamacare lies have very real and very adverse consequences no matter what Republicans do. Republicans are finally paying the price for 8 years of lying about Obamacare. If Republicans do nothing; it's a tacit admission of those lies. If Republicans enact what they have been selling for the last 8 years, they screw their base. And has braindead as Jonny Sixpack maybe, I’m pretty damn certain he will notice when the Republican healthcare plan screws his financial well-being. I think congressional Republicans know that too, hence their reluctance to do anything.

 

Trump's war on sessions continues, and Trump is getting no backing from Senate Republicans or right-wing talk radio. This rift between Trump and his base continues to grow. This is serious shit. Where it ends no one knows. Sessions is one of the few Trump appointees who is actually implementing his agenda. So it's odd Trump would repeatedly attack sessions. Sessions has been a key Trump supporter from the very beginning. Trump's turning on Sessions is odd, and the timing is odd. Sessions recused himself several months ago, and Sessions did so based on the recommendations of the DOJ ethics office. Trump's often repeated stated reason for his anger with Sessions is because Sessions acted ethically. Only after Mueller was appointed as a special prosecutor did Trump decide to wage war on Sessions. Trump wants Sessions replaced in order to end the special prosecutor and his investigation.

Trump is losing his base, and he is losing influence in Congress. Several senators have spoken up on behalf of Sessions. I don't think Trump will win this battle. Trump may ultimately dismiss Sessions and attempt to replace him with a person who will fire Mueller, but there will be adverse consequences.

 

The Pentagon is apparently following Trump's Twitter feed to keep up to date on US military policy changes - with the occasional glitch:
https://www.balloon-juice.com/2017/07/26/this-is-not-normal/

btw: Trump is still carrying, and discussing policy on, and keeping beside him at all times, an unsecured phone of the easily hacked variety.

 

Trump needs Sessions gone in order to save his "But" from Mueller... but Sessions realy wants to keep his job... an Sessions an Trump prolly both have incriminatin information on each other... an ther playin a game of chicken bettin that nether will spill ther beans sinse both woud likely wind up havin hell to pay... but Sessions dont hold the trump-card to pardon hisself like Trump does... but its gettin closer an closer to the Sht hittin the fan cause if Trump dont get Mueller fired the incriminatin info. will likely come out anyway so Trump might as well throw Sessions under the bus.!!!

Concluson:::
Trump an Sessions deserve each other.!!!

 

Amongst the daily [dis]information and total sensory overload arising from Trump's antics there are a few truly disturbing reports. I found this Vanity Fair article to be one such bone-chilling piece. It's easy for everyone to freakout over the daily twit but there is an underlying rot in this administration that will not be known to the average Joe for years - perhaps only after it's too late. It's lengthy, but click the link if you want yet another bit of evidence as to just how far over his head Trump really is:

WHY THE SCARIEST NUCLEAR THREAT MAY BE COMING FROM INSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE​

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/07/department-of-energy-risks-michael-lewis​

On the morning after the election, November 9, 2016, the people who ran the U.S. Department of Energy turned up in their offices and waited. They had cleared 30 desks and freed up 30 parking spaces. They didn’t know exactly how many people they’d host that day, but whoever won the election would surely be sending a small army into the Department of Energy, and every other federal agency. The morning after he was elected president, eight years earlier, Obama had sent between 30 and 40 people into the Department of Energy. The Department of Energy staff planned to deliver the same talks from the same five-inch-thick three-ring binders, with the Department of Energy seal on them, to the Trump people as they would have given to the Clinton people. “Nothing had to be changed,” said one former Department of Energy staffer. “They’d be done always with the intention that, either party wins, nothing changes.”

By afternoon the silence was deafening. “Day 1, we’re ready to go,” says a former senior White House official. “Day 2 it was ‘Maybe they’ll call us?’ ”

“Teams were going around, ‘Have you heard from them?’ ” recalls another staffer who had prepared for the transition. “ ‘Have you gotten anything? I haven’t got anything.’ ”

“The election happened,” remembers Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, then deputy secretary of the D.O.E. “And he won. And then there was radio silence. We were prepared for the next day. And nothing happened.” Across the federal government the Trump people weren’t anywhere to be found.

Allegedly, between the election and the inauguration not a single Trump representative set foot inside the Department of Agriculture, for example. The Department of Agriculture has employees or contractors in every county in the United States, and the Trump people seemed simply to be ignoring the place. Where they did turn up inside the federal government, they appeared confused and unprepared. A small group attended a briefing at the State Department, for instance, only to learn that the briefings they needed to hear were classified. None of the Trump people had security clearance—or, for that matter, any experience in foreign policy—and so they weren't allowed to receive an education. On his visits to the White House soon after the election, Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, expressed surprise that so much of its staff seemed to be leaving. “It was like he thought it was a corporate acquisition or something,” says an Obama White House staffer. “He thought everyone just stayed.”​

bold emphasis mine
​

The depth of the arrogance and stupidity all in the same package is absolutely mind boggling ...

 

This... is not really surprising in my opinion. I mean, what did those who supported Trump expect - he has zero political experience, zero governing experience, zero law training, and has spent zero time in the "real world" without large sums of money (most of which did not originate with him anyway) and dozens of "yes men" ensuring that his whims were carried out without question...

Now, in a position where that simply cannot happen, he is lost, dazed, confused, angry, and utterly unprepared.

Why would that be surprising? It'd be a bit like taking a twelve year old that showed some understanding of basic exothermic chemical reactions, putting them in charge of the Large Hadron Collider, and then being surprised when the poor kid didn't even know what the thing did.

 

You don't have to be a politician or have governing experience or legal knowledge to know those things. Any reasonably well-informed American should know those things. Let's face it. Trump is a dumb ass. He is extraordinarily ignorant. In addition, he has a staff of professionals including the RNC chairman who should know those things. There is no good excuse for Trump's ignorance.

 

Reading some of the tweets from Trump representatives, it is beginning to sound like we're dealing with a street gang.
A modern version of the Godfather. Are we watching a movie or is this our current reality of expressed US moral values?
Can a Trump opponent expect to find his murdered cat on the doorstep or an envelope with fishes inside?

 

so he has said:
"Reince is a f*****g paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac," Mr Scaramucci told Lizza."
"...telling a journalist that US President Donald Trump's chief strategist Steve Bannon is trying to build his personal brand "off the f*****g strength of the President."
"I'm not Steve Bannon, I'm not trying to suck my own c**k," he is said to have told Ryan Lizza, the New Yorker's Washington correspondent."

And saying that:

"Mr Scaramucci said everything he was saying was done so after first speaking directly with Mr Trump."


So uhm ...trump has authorized all this?

omg this is going to get real interesting pretty fast IMO...

 

And very, very scary. An entire class of people have already been declared unequal, contrary to our Bill of Rights.

 

Oddly, by removing these people from being in harm's way, we are practicing the concept of "life is sacred".

Riddle me that one. We are truly beginning to experience a virtual reality.

We're all becoming "spods"

 

#cowardice | #WhatTheyVotedFor​

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Clicking the picture is the option that has nothing to do with Anthony Scaramucci or Donald Trump.​

So ... it turns out Scaramucci crossed my radar↱ last year; the general gist of it is that he went on FOX News as a Trump surrogate and member of the campaign's national finance committee, and argued that Trump should not release his tax returns because the opposition would cause a "whole nightmare situation" trying to "pick holes through" them.

Yes, really.

Then again, never mind the link; it's a rambling blog post, and it turns out the only thing in it I didn't blow was the two-sentence bit about Donald Trump being afraid and knowing exactly why he should be.

 

You've probably seen this one, but:

Scaramucci . . .
Scaramucci,
Will you do the fandango?

 

No, but a horse's head in their beds is a real possibility.

 

What happened to the "Great Negotiator"? What happened to the "one man" who could accomplish things in Washington? Thus far he hasn't been able to accomplish any of his much promised legislative agenda. In a Congress controlled by the party he leads, the "Great Leader", the "Great Negotiator", hasn’t one legislative success. Six months into his presidency with his administration mired in scandals, Trump's great promise of better, cheaper, healthcare goes down in defeat yet again.

So now for the umpteenth time Trump is giving up on healthcare and moving onto tax reform and the budget or so he says, but here is the problem, Trump needed healthcare reform in order to fund his tax cuts. Without healthcare reform, he has no money to fund his tax cuts. That's a problem for Trump and his Republican cohorts. Without the money they anticipated decimating Obamacare would provide, they have no money to fund their tax cuts (i.e. tax reforms). They could of course do real tax reform, e.g. simplify the tax code, but that would be too difficult. Republicans have talked themselves into a sticky wicket.

Trump's biggest problem is reality. You cannot do better cheaper as Trump promised while gutting the funding and without productivity improvements in the healthcare system. The laws of gravity still apply. Common sense still applies.

Trump is already an eighth of the way through is administration. When does Trump give up on healthcare reform? He could spend his entire presidency trying to reform Obamacare.

 

Wow, Priebus is out and Kelly is in. They need to put a revolving door in the White House. Trump's turnover is unprecedented.
is out. http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/28/politics/john-kelly-chief-of-staff/index.html

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-admin-sees-high-rate-of-staff-turnover-918426691507

Kelly is kind of a strange choice. A Marine general, that's not the first person I would think of to be chief of staff. Kelly has no political experience. I'd think that is something you would want in a chief of staff. Trump has a well-know fascination and love of dictators and generals, but that fascination and love will not help him with Congress.

I don't see how this ends well. How long will Kelly survive in the Trump administration. Kelly is an honorable and organized man. Trump is not. Kelly cannot change Trump, and Trump is the problem. From what I hear, Kelly has drunk the Trump Kool-Aid, and if that's true, it doesn't bode well for the nation.

 

Create a statue of Donald Trump. I guarantee, he'll buy it (with someone else's money of course)