The Trump Presidency

[paddoboy]

I asked these questions in another thread 0n Donald Duck.....

A few questions re the great American clown and his proposed agenda......
[1] If he abolishes the laws of compulsory vaccinations, are the individual states obliged to follow?....Or can they tell him to go jump, and carry on with protecting their children and population, sensibly and scientifically.

[2] If the answer to the above is yes, how will the states that want to maintain compulsory vaccinations, handle inter-state traffic and border control, to maintain full protection?

[3] How will the possibility of citizens who do get their kids vaccinated, react if the obvious increase in non vaccinations, see an increase in diseases as will be likely?

[4] How will all this interact with the "not so well off" and the dismantling of ObamaCare?

[5] Could a citizen whose child falls seriously ill or dies, sue "Donald Duck" if the above scenarios take place?

[6] So in summing if we see [a] The withdrawal of compulsory vaccinations, the abolishment of ObamaCare, and [c] a withdrawal of any sort of pollution control and pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, will the USA sink to third world country status?

[7] On what grounds can any POTUS be impeached?
[8] Are there any other grounds for removing any President from Office? eg: Can his own party express dissatisfaction with him and have him removed?
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In Australia our Pollies are extremely nervous of adverse polling figures, particularly three or four in a row that get progressivley worse.
Our PM needs to be on his toes, otherwise his own cabinet and elected members will throw him out.
We have had something like 5 PM's in six years!

 

[Bells]

Obama greased up the military machine , now Trump have a long project ; build the great wall in the USA along Mexico a historical repeat as the great wall in China

After he takes some time off after inauguration...?

DONALD Trump has caused bemusement with the revelation he will take the weekend off after his inauguration on Friday.

The President-elect says he plans to do absolutely nothing for his first two days in office and that his “day one is gonna be Monday”.

Mr Trump explained this was because he doesn’t want his signing of orders to clash with the celebrations.​

Because it's so hard to tell the difference between signing orders and a celebration...

So much for:

The news comes as a surprise after Mr Trump previously promised to spend his very first day signing papers to begin the process of erasing President Barack Obama’s legacy.

“On Day One, I am going to begin swiftly removing criminal illegal immigrants from this country,” he said during a speech in Des Moines back in August. “It’s going to happen within one hour after I take office.”

He also promised to begin plans to build his wall on the Mexican border, talk to manufacturers about keeping jobs in the US and remove gun-free zones within his first 24 hours. “My first day, it gets signed, OK?” he said.​

Does he mean "on day one" being a few days later? Because he gets confused between signing orders and a celebration? "Within the hour after he takes office" means a few days later?

The Trump presidency is going to start "bigly", because Trump does not want to the celebrations to clash with his running the country.

 

[joepistole]

I asked these questions in another thread 0n Donald Duck.....

A few questions re the great American clown and his proposed agenda......
[1] If he abolishes the laws of compulsory vaccinations, are the individual states obliged to follow?....Or can they tell him to go jump, and carry on with protecting their children and population, sensibly and scientifically.

He cannot abolish any laws. Vaccination administration is a state function and not a federal function. So vaccination administration will not be affected by Trump.

[2] If the answer to the above is yes, how will the states that want to maintain compulsory vaccinations, handle inter-state traffic and border control, to maintain full protection?

The answer to your first question was no.

[3] How will the possibility of citizens who do get their kids vaccinated, react if the obvious increase in non vaccinations, see an increase in diseases as will be likely?

It's a state issue and not a federal issue.

[4] How will all this interact with the "not so well off" and the dismantling of ObamaCare?

That's one of the great unknowns. No one knows, not even Congress.

[5] Could a citizen whose child falls seriously ill or dies, sue "Donald Duck" if the above scenarios take place?

You can't sue the government unless the government allows it. The sovereign has immunity.

[6] So in summing if we see [a] The withdrawal of compulsory vaccinations, the abolishment of ObamaCare, and [c] a withdrawal of any sort of pollution control and pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, will the USA sink to third world country status?

It will take much more than that to drive the US into 3rd world status.

[7] On what grounds can any POTUS be impeached?

The president can be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors. Congress determines what high crimes and misdemeanors are. It's pretty subjective. In the history of the nation only two presidents have been impeached, but no POTUS has been removed from office. Although removal from office is a possibility.

[8] Are there any other grounds for removing any President from Office? eg: Can his own party express dissatisfaction with him and have him removed?

Yes, the 25th Amendment to the Constitution allows for the removal of a sitting POTUS. It has never been exercised. But, if a majority of Trump's cabinet and his vice president determine he is incapacitated and cannot fulfill his obligations as POTUS, he can be removed from office.

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In Australia our Pollies are extremely nervous of adverse polling figures, particularly three or four in a row that get progressivley worse.
Our PM needs to be on his toes, otherwise his own cabinet and elected members will throw him out.
We have had something like 5 PM's in six years!

US government has been very stable. In the nation's 241 year history, a POTUS has never been thrown out of office. Even during our civil war the Union POTUS wasn't thrown out of office. The South created their own government and their own POTUS, but the US POTUS was not thrown out of office.

 

[Tiassa]

​

[1] If he abolishes the laws of compulsory vaccinations, are the individual states obliged to follow?....Or can they tell him to go jump, and carry on with protecting their children and population, sensibly and scientifically.

The big danger is that herd immunity will collapse. The states will be left to fend for themselves against any number of lawsuits; in some places science will hold the line. In others, that is to say those communities for whom mere participation is too much to ask, so their carrot is a stick―they need to hurt people in order to participate in civilized society―shit will go very, very wrong, eventually, and they will just blame the vaccines everyone else got for not working.

[2] If the answer to the above is yes, how will the states that want to maintain compulsory vaccinations, handle inter-state traffic and border control, to maintain full protection?

Expect several years worth of stupid in the courts while worrying statistics break out here and there around the country.

[3] How will the possibility of citizens who do get their kids vaccinated, react if the obvious increase in non vaccinations, see an increase in diseases as will be likely?

The eternal question in our civilized society is when the civilized people throw down and fight in admittedly uncivilized ways instead of poke and prod and chicken-slappy on the pretense that they have no choice. And we all know that will be an ugly day; it's why we keep putting it off. If we're lucky, people will stick to fighting with lawyers, and simply sue the conscientiously irresponsible into the ground.

[4] How will all this interact with the "not so well off" and the dismantling of ObamaCare?

About as well as the question implies.

[5] Could a citizen whose child falls seriously ill or dies, sue "Donald Duck" if the above scenarios take place?

No. This part would be covered under executive privilege. But we can take it out on each other. You'll notice that American society often comes down to a fight between those who want to wreck the place, and those who know that those who want to wreck the place will win if everyone else throws down because that will wreck the place. Civilized society is not a suicide pact, except for those portions of our American society in which it apparently is.

[6] So in summing if we see [a] The withdrawal of compulsory vaccinations, the abolishment of ObamaCare, and [c] a withdrawal of any sort of pollution control and pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, will the USA sink to third world country status?

We'll go to war long before that.

[7] On what grounds can any POTUS be impeached?

It's a matter of how Congress feels. Pretty much any reason under the sun, or not for any reason at all.

Consider: Bill Clinton was impeached for playing word games under oath in a deposition he should not have been sitting for except the Supreme Court went out of its way to do one of its one-time, conservative, we're not overturning anything, or setting any precedent, we just don't want to follow established case law rulings.

Consider: George W. Bush was not impeached for lying to the nation in order to foster a war under false pretenses, nor for deliberately short-sheeting the war in such a manner as to aid and abet our enemy and cause detriment to our own troops, nor for dereliction of duties under the Geneva Conventions, and that, technically, covers everything up to and including the Fall of Baghdad. Sure, the war only went downhill from there, but if you can't impeach a president for the Bush administration's address of the Iraqi Redux, what the hell can you impeach a president for?

Fellatio? An email server?

Procedurally: Articles of Impeachment are drafted and resolved by the House of Representatives. As long as Republicans hold the House, there is an open whether they would be willing to impeach Donald Trump before he did however much damage.

Also, consider the Special Prosecutor authorization. After using the authorization to hound Bill Clinton, setting a pissed-off tobacco industry lawyer against a Democratic president in a wide-ranging investigation starting with a real estate deal and basically catering to a newspaper publisher's political attack project over the course of years, leading to impeachment for lying about sexual intercourse, Republicans held Congress when the law came up for reauthorization. As Americans clamored for answers about how we got into the Iraq War, Republicans decided that after so many years of muckraking investigations, Americans were tired of all that scandalmongering, and thus the Special Prosecutor reauthorization died.

Naturally, Congress handled its own investigations throughout the Obama administration.

Just how tired of muckraking Congressional investigations do we expect Republicans to tell us the American people are?

If you go back to the Cold War and juxtapose American conservative Machiavellian-capitalistic articles of faith versus the more communal and socialized outlooks of liberals oft-denounced as Communist, I would simply remind that not every profit of value is minted in coin. Just what is the hedge fund manager willing to do in order to get that dollar? Just what is a Republican willing to do to win that vote? Just what are Republicans willing to do to manufacture and install their idyllic permanent governing majority?

There are plenty of conservatives who will stand with their country, but compared to the way things go we can only wonder if it will be enough.

[8] Are there any other grounds for removing any President from Office? eg: Can his own party express dissatisfaction with him and have him removed?
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

In Australia our Pollies are extremely nervous of adverse polling figures, particularly three or four in a row that get progressivley worse.
Our PM needs to be on his toes, otherwise his own cabinet and elected members will throw him out.
We have had something like 5 PM's in six years!

We have no equivalent for what's been going on in your corner.

 

[paddoboy]

Thanks for previous answers....

US government has been very stable. In the nation's 241 year history, a POTUS has never been thrown out of office. Even during our civil war the Union POTUS wasn't thrown out of office. The South created their own government and their own POTUS, but the US POTUS was not thrown out of office.

Sometimes it has been shown that a government may become more stable on a change of leadership.

 

[iceaura]

Side point: one of the underestimated aspects of the US setup is that the President is more restricted in setting domestic policies - the Speaker of the House controls the budget - than foreign ones. The President's power predominates in foreign policy - treaties, etc. He's Commander in Chief of the military. His most direct domestic power is in his agency appointments (boring part of the job) and veto; both can be overridden. Granted he can do a lot of internal damage, but he can't otherwise run the show on his own.

So domestically the big worries other than the Trump Court he's going to leave us (aside from the President bringing his control of the military to bear on domestic matters) are in the Crazyass takeover of Congress, and the prospect that Trump will not veto much of whatever it does. Paul Ryan, more than Trump, is the domestic threat.

The trouble now is that Trump is going to be attracted to venues in which he can give orders and run things - and that's overseas, economic and military. And there he is most corrupt and most ignorant both.

 

[sculptor]

I don't. The people around Trump are as bad as he is, with a horrible agenda and no greater visible competence at governing, and no benefit can derive from their being effective.

Personally, I feel that the people around Trump are worse than Trump.

We are in the midst of a massive change in this country. Shopping malls are being valued at less than 10% of their previous valuations as retail suffers from on-line shopping. Many of the old jobs are now done by computers and robots. No till farming practices are being recognized as detrimental to the environment. etc...etc.

I have no idea where in hell this damned train is headed, but she is surely off the tracks.

 

[joepistole]

Thanks for previous answers....


Sometimes it has been shown that a government may become more stable on a change of leadership.

Personally, I feel that the people around Trump are worse than Trump.

We are in the midst of a massive change in this country. Shopping malls are being valued at less than 10% of their previous valuations as retail suffers from on-line shopping. Many of the old jobs are now done by computers and robots. No till farming practices are being recognized as detrimental to the environment. etc...etc.

I have no idea where in hell this damned train is headed, but she is surely off the tracks.

How do you know shopping malls are undervalued, and why is that important? Why is online shopping a bad thing? And where is your evidence no till farming is detrimental to the environment, and if it exists, why is that a bad thing?

Why is automation a bad thing? It reduces costs and makes lower prices a possibility. No doubt we are being transformed by our technology and we will need to make social changes.

 

[Tiassa]

Was It At Least Worth the lulz?

Personally, I feel that the people around Trump are worse than Trump.

We are in the midst of a massive change in this country. Shopping malls are being valued at less than 10% of their previous valuations as retail suffers from on-line shopping. Many of the old jobs are now done by computers and robots. No till farming practices are being recognized as detrimental to the environment. etc...etc.

I have no idea where in hell this damned train is headed, but she is surely off the tracks.

Hey, Sculptor, remember how before the election you were trolling for Trump and against Hillary Clinton?

Personally, I feel that the people who supported Trump are worse than Trump.

That includes you.

And while you might have no idea where the hell this damn train is headed, you might also owe your neighbors some manner of explanation of why you bought a ticket and hopped on.

We could have had a decent train on a good track, but that prospect seemed to offend you and plenty of others.

So we're doing something else, it seems. And it's kind of striking how many people around me who advocated for the president elect now want the people around them to know they didn't vote for Trump. And in all those cases I tell people they've already done their part so stop trying to con me.

And you, Sculptor: Take a look around Sciforums. Your name is going to be on every day of what Trump does. You're one of the people who specifically wanted on this train instead of another.

Good job.

 

[geordief]

What to make of Obama's sang froid as to the prospects for the future under Trump? (in his final speech)

I genuinely took comfort from what seemed to be his genuine gut feeling that everything would be alright...

Does he know something he has not told us or is he just being optimistic ?

Strange that the USA should have 2 presidents to be embarassed by sandwiching another who did them proud ( for all his mistakes).

 

[ElectricFetus]

Strange that the USA should have 2 presidents to be embarassed by sandwiching another who did them proud ( for all his mistakes).

One president there was an embarrassment, the new one is not: he is sanity depleting horror!

 

[sculptor]

...

Hey, Sculptor, ...

Good job.

Thanx Tiassa


....................................

 

[joepistole]

One president there was an embarrassment, the new one is not: he is sanity depleting horror!

It took the world 8 years to recover from the last POTUS the Electoral College gave us. How long will it take us to recover from a Trump presidency? The Electoral College has a horrible track record when it goes rogue as it did in 2000 and again in 2016 and overrides the popular vote. I think there is a lesson in there.

 

[sculptor]

How do you know shopping malls are undervalued, and why is that important?

I read financial news.
Wells Fargo just took a huge hit(well over \$100,000,000.00) on a foreclosed half empty mall. Many other malls which cost over \$100 million are now vacant.
Buildings are essentially shells. They could be repurposed if sound.

None of this, nor the rest of your post are "bad things".
Long ago, catalogue stores replaced a lot of local retailers, then malls and walmart, etc did it again, and now, sears, malls and, most likely soon, walmart will be fighting for survival.
It's just evolution.
(get on the bus, or join the luddites and take a hike)

It took me almost 70 years to realize that I do not know where this thing is going.
One wonders: Who is driving?

Edited to fix LaTeX formatting issue - Kittamaru

 

[Tiassa]

A Fifth of Columns

Click to boogie down.​

Does he know something he has not told us or is he just being optimistic ?

A little from Column A, a little from Column B.

He knows what we know: Republicans won ... according to the rules. And the rules are the rules; pointing to them isn't to make some point about a technical victory in lieu of something else. Republicans won the presidential election. But Democrats won ... according to the numbers.

And from there we have a certain generally reliable expectation―albeit one that is presently unsettled by the fact of Mr. Trump's election―and a generally apparent reality.

The expectation is that the American people only fall apart so much before pride compels us to get our shit together. This point is rattled by the fact of Donald Trump's looming inauguration―the prior threshold was the expectation that we wouldn't put so terrible a president in office, and maybe we should have taken closer notice in 2013 when the presumed GOP frontrunners started flaming out and the dark horse whisper was for a guy who wasn't much smarter a politician than George W. Bush, and who happened to be named Mike Pence―and now looks toward some undefined standard. Watching Senate Democrats trying to get their feet under themselves as they sit in committee hearings is a bit worrisome, but the last few days are kindling some hope that they haven't forgotten how to do this sort of basic governance stuff.

Plantation theory only works if, say, you're Britain in Ireland. In the U.S., it would be really, really transparent because everyone would tweet and insta their move to North Dakota. Or Yooper Michigan―(because, really, what, are a bunch of petit-bourgeois liberals dumb enough to plantation Michigan actually going to go the fuck to Detroit?)―or, God help us all, why not just start a social media campaign to #ColonizeUtah?

More to the point: Basic sanity has the numbers; it just didn't work out this time under the rules; President Obama has various ritual reasons to express his faith in the American people, but also some pretty good practical reasons to feel genuine confidence.

 

[joepistole]

I read financial news.
Wells Fargo just took a huge hit(well over \$100,000,000.00) on a foreclosed half empty mall. Many other malls which cost over \$100 million are now vacant.
Buildings are essentially shells. They could be repurposed if sound.

I assume you're referring to the Galleria at Pittsburgh Mills. Wells Fargo didn't take a $100,000,000 hit on the loan. Wells Fargo reported results about a week ago. It's entire loan loss provision was 805 million dollars which is down 3%. Wells Fargo's loan loss provisions are pretty good.

The mall was once valued at 190 million dollars. One mall doesn't mean all malls have or will suffer a similar fate. Mall failure isn't something new. Malls have failed for many decades. Twenty years ago I lived in Ohio. The economy was doing well. Nearby there was a newly constructed mall which never blossomed. The developers were never able to get more than 30% occupancy. Mall failure isn't a new phenomena. It happens all the time.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4136684/Foreclosed-Pennsylvania-mall-sells-100-auction.html

There are some good commercial REITS which specialize in malls and outlet stores and they are doing very well.

None of this, nor the rest of your post are "bad things".
Long ago, catalogue stores replaced a lot of local retailers, then malls and walmart, etc did it again, and now, sears, malls and, most likely soon, walmart will be fighting for survival.
It's just evolution.
(get on the bus, or join the luddites and take a hike)

It took me almost 70 years to realize that I do not know where this thing is going.
One wonders: Who is driving?

Edited to fix LaTeX formatting issue - Kittamaru

Yeah, things are a changing. But that was true a decade ago, two decades ago, a century ago, and eons ago.

 

[origin]

The Trump presidency is going to start "bigly", because Trump does not want to the celebrations to clash with his running the country.

I think I see a spelling error, didn't you mean ruining the country?

 

[paddoboy]

https://www.wired.com/2017/01/rogue-scientists-race-save-climate-data-trump/


AT 10 AM the Saturday before inauguration day, on the sixth floor of the Van Pelt Library at the University of Pennsylvania, roughly 60 hackers, scientists, archivists, and librarians were hunched over laptops, drawing flow charts on whiteboards, and shouting opinions on computer scripts across the room. They had hundreds of government web pages and data sets to get through before the end of the day—all strategically chosen from the pages of the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—any of which, they felt, might be deleted, altered, or removed from the public domain by the incoming Trump administration.

Their undertaking, at the time, was purely speculative, based on travails of Canadian government scientists under the Stephen Harper administration, which muzzled them from speaking about climate change. Researchers watched as Harper officials threw thousands of books of aquatic data into dumpsters as federal environmental research libraries closed.

But three days later, speculation became reality as news broke that the incoming Trump administration’s EPA transition team does indeed intend to remove some climate data from the agency’s website. That will include references to President Barack Obama’s June 2013 Climate Action Plan and the strategies for 2014 and 2015 to cut methane, according to an unnamed source who spoke with Inside EPA. “It’s entirely unsurprising,” said Bethany Wiggin, director of the environmental humanities program at Penn and one of the organizers of the data-rescuing event.

more at link..................

 

[Kittamaru]

*facepalm*

 

[karenmansker]

P-s-s-s-s-t . . . . Isn't this what everyone is afraid our new President Trump is going to do?

Link: http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/comp...e-property-sales-to-him/ar-AAm1TvX?li=BBnb7Kz

and, Wasn't Zuckerburg a big Obama/Hillary fan?