Freak Out Friday – June 30, 2017

Posted By: Peter DavidPosted On:

This has been an interesting week for Trump. Most of the stuff that was developing, while it was related to him, didn’t involve his actions directly but instead stuff resulting from him. Perhaps because he was bored, he then decided to step in and be an áššhølë personally so he could get our attention. Let’s start outward and work in.

1). Anyone feeling sick yet?. The vote on Health care, which Mitch McConnell was determined to ram through before the 4th of July break, isn’t happening. Apparently both public pressure and politicians’ own concerns about, I dunno, dealing with furious town hall meetings, has caused them to balk at depriving 22 million Americans of their health care, which means we are in a holding pattern. I still think if Trump is smart, he vetoes whatever they come up with and gets positive public image points for himself since he really needs to ingratiate himself with the voters right now much more than he needs to worry about the Senate. After all, senators might go away every few years, but the public is going to be staying right where it is.

2). Give us your poor, your tired, your closely related.. A win for Trump is certainly a loss for anyone who just wanted to go on vacation from one of the countries Trump banned, thanks to a recent Supreme Court ruling. Or did your adult child die a year ago and you wanted to come visit your grandchild? Forget it: you can’t come in. Not for three to four months until the Supreme Court finishes listening to arguments for the entire ban. If they wind up upholding this nonsense, it’s going to be a huge blow for a country that people have been dreaming of coming to, or fleeing to, for generations.

3). Irish eyes aren’t smiling. While Trump was on the phone with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadka, he noticed a female Irish reporter named Caitriona Perry and said that she had a nice smile. Now if that’s all he had said, I might well have shrugged it off. I know, I know, everything a president says is subject to micro-scrutiny. But in the interest of fair play, if he had just confined it to that, I would have considered it an offhand remark, an attempt to be pleasant and sociable, and I would have ignored it. I think if a grandfather just makes a casual flattering comment about a woman’s smile, screw it. But no: he then had to say to Varadka, “I bet she treats you well.” What the HÊLL was THAT about? She treats Varadka well…why? Because Varadka’s a man and so she’s probably subtly hitting on him? Right, because when you’re a female reporter, you want to socially ingratiate yourself with the gay prime minister. That’s going to work out well for everyone. Then again, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised at his attitude since Trump’s attitudes toward women are legendary. Case in point:

4). Hey, Joe, what do you know?. I have to admit that I knew absolutely nothing about the TV series, Morning Joe, which features Joe Scarborough and Mika Brezezinski, the daughter of late national security advisor Zbigniew Brezezinski. My entire exposure to it previously was through a bit they did about it on John Oliver. But Trump apparently watches it and he did another rant on Twitter, including a twisted complaint in which he claimed they both wanted to hang out with him on a New Year’s Eve (they didn’t), that he refused them (he didn’t) and that Mika had had a face lift (she hadn’t) and was bleeding from it (she wasn’t as photographs taken at the time have firmly established.). I think we are reaching the point where Trump’s syphilis is completely out of control. Let us put aside the fact that Trump has far too thin a skin to be president, a job where the ability to shrug off or ignore your attacks is part of the responsibilities. One of the simplest aspects of the way to conduct yourself is to ignore people you don’t like. If they rant about you solely to their viewers, shrug it off because their audience is confined. But the moment you shine a light on them, you get their word out to millions of additional people like, well, me, and elevate them on the national stage. This is just simple common sense, something that Trump has no claim to. He has no concept of strategy; instead he reacts entirely from his gut, an organ that has yet to do anything other than provoke him into reacting to his critics in the most showy and insulting ways possible. How in the hëll are we supposed to trust this nut job with American security when he goes off on insane diatribes without a second’s hesitation. When he fails to understand that on an international scale, his words can launch wars? I swear, I think about Mike Pence who many people claim is worse, and I’m thinking, He can’t be. He can’t be worse. Aside from maybe Steve Bannon, nobody could be worse.

Did he do anything right? No.

PAD

27 comments on “Freak Out Friday – June 30, 2017”

  1. I think whether Mike Pence would be worse depends of whether you prefer a Mad Max post-apocalyptic wasteland (Trump) or the Handmaid’s Tale Republic of Gilead (Pence).
    Regarding healthcare, Trump isn’t smart. He loves the pomp and circumstance of signing ceremonies and will sign virually anything that the GOP Congress sends him just so he can get his picture taken with it. That is why the vitually every GOP member of Congress fell in line and supported him after he got the nomination, even if they had loudly declared themselves Never-Trump just days earlier. They knew he’d rubber-stamp any piece of their agenda that they got on his desk.

  2. My friday freakout is for the “voter integrity commission” which has now requested every state to provide full voter rolls to them, including voting history for the last 10 years. The idea we’re having this commission is insane (it’s to justify Trump losing the popular vote, with his evidence-less claim of millions of illegal votes). The idea they could use it to suppress millions of non-Republican votes is just terrifying.

    1. The good news is a lot of states have already told the fake commission to go fûçk themselves.

  3. I was not surprised or freaked out over Trump attacking a talk show host. My question was, what is he distracting us from. The answer was the Wall Street Journal article uncovering new information on collaboration between Trumps campaign and the Russian hacking. So Trump went big and created a tweet storm so bizarre that people would talk about that rather than Russia. AND it worked.

    The only good thing might be that Mika and Joe seem to be indicating that the white house was ateempting to blackmail them and they have texts and emails as proof. So maybe Trump still shot himself in the foot.

    1. Yep. Nobody’s talking about Russia. That’s called winning. Even now, it’s all getting a bit fuzzy isn’t it?

  4. The worst thing at this point about Trump for me is the loss of respect for and the loss of being able to take seriously the points of view of probably 90% of the conservatives I know.

    1. Only 90% I am at 105% with my politically Republican acquaintances, and 98% with the economic Republicans. (Those who self identify as “I could care less about social issues, I just want my money, dammit!”)

  5. Lest we not forget the hypocrisy of his wife. While she claims she wants to make cyberbullying the focus of her time as first lady, it’s apparently so she can SUPPORT IT. She doesn’t see a problem with her husband pulling it constantly.

    How the HÊLL is she supposed to do anything about cyberbullying when she’s got the back of the biggest cyberbully in the country? That is SERIOUSLY messed up. It’s like Michelle Obama doing her nutrition awareness while making the girls drink French fry oil directly from the fryer.

  6. Varadkar is gay?

    I mean, obviously I didn’t know that. But then I am also not one of a very small group of fellow World Leaders, or taking calls from the man.

    On the other hand, I can only imagine that if it were public knowledge – and half-Indian to boot! – Trump would have had to have said something much worse and much more direct. To “tell it like it is”, as they say.

  7. I think the worst possible thing (which I’m surprised PAD didn’t mention) is that, in the face of a likely failure to create a health bill, Trump suggested just repealing the Affordable Care Act and replacing it later. Wow: Repeal a law, cost untold millions their healthcare (and probably devastate Medicare and Medicaid), and do so with the vague promise of putting something (currently unspecified) in place sometime (again, unspecified) later. It may be Trump’s gut reaction to all those “repeal and replace: bumper stickers, but it’s a truly scary idea just because Republicans can’t agree on a health care bill.

    1. It won’t happen. The Senate couldn’t possibly be that stupid, to take away everyone’s health care with no idea when or where a replacement would be dropped in.
      .
      God, don’t let them be that stupid.
      .
      PAD

      1. Mr. David,
        It is a very poor idea to start any chain of reasoning regarding the current Congress or Executive Branch with “They couldn’t be that stupid.” They can and many of them are. More precisely, many of them actually believe the BS talking points of GOP policy as opposed to their predecessors who cynically mouthed them as they exploited their electorate.
        Of course, not all of them are that stupid/sheltered and it’s blatantly obvious how intensely unpopular all there healthcare “reform” efforts are. They’re acting like they don’t expect they’ll have to face free and fair elections in 2018 and later. So…that brings us to the “voter integrity commission” Trump put together that’s made up of the infamous vote suppressors of the last decade. Them being that stupid is the optimistic view of what’s going on.

      3. I’m sorry, PAD, have you lived in the United States long? Every time someone says, “Congress COULDN’T be that stupid!”, their reply has almost always been “Challenge accepted.”

        Once again, it is critical for Joe America to remember that our civil servants are now our civil masters.

        They do not care how many Americans die as long as enough remain to vote them back in and pay taxes to keep them in høøkërš and caviar. Oh, sure, sometimes it’s not all of them – there must be one or two percent good people in Congress. But you can probably count ’em all on your fingers and toes.

      4. “It won’t happen. The Senate couldn’t possibly be that stupid…” – PAD

        “Challenge accepted!” – Senate Republicans

      5. PAD: “It won’t happen. The Senate couldn’t possibly be that stupid mean”
        .
        FTFY *.

        And, yes, they very much can.
        .
        .
        * (assuming the tags worked and “stupid” is crossed out to be replaced with “mean”)

      6. Two quotes from Sour Sam Clemens:

        First, God created the idiot.
         
        That was for practice.
         
        Then He Created Congress.

        and

        Suppose you were a member of Congress.
         
        Now suppose you were an idiot.
         
        But I repeat myself.

        and another that has nothing to do directly with the subject, but is seasonally appropriate

        Statistics show that we lose more fools on the Fourth of July than on all other days combined. By the number left in stock, it is apparent that the nation has grown so much that one Fourth of July per year is no longer sufficient.

    1. .
      #DontYouThinkHeLooksTired doesn’t work with men the way #DontYouThinksSheLooksTired works with women.

  9. Meanwhile, The Supreme Court imposes a “Church Tax” through Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer. ‘Cuz why NOT take public money and funnel it into a specific religion? It’s been forever since we had a good Theocracy, what’s the worst that could happen?

    And in other news, Trump is “coming to take yer guns!” in Chicago by committing federal LEOs to local crackdowns, and it’s just a few short steps from there to Martial Law. Of course, the NRA is mum on the subject (I mean, any day they shut the @#$% up is a good day, but hypocrisy) because they’re just BROWN PEOPLE, so who cares if THEY have their 2A, 5A, and 14A rights trampled. Due process is for ‘MURICANS!!

    You wanna know what Trump’s distracting from? Nothing, he’s doing this purely on impulse. But everyone ELSE is using it for cover while they pull this $#!+.

  10. And now his WH has declined to recognize LGBTQ Pride Month. Because they’re bigots.

    1. Well YAH, I mean as Missouri Republican Rick Brattin announced last month, “When you look at the tenets of religion, of the Bible, of the Qu’ran, of other religions, there is a distinction between homosexuality and just being a human being.” Because religion and government are supposed to be SO cozy, and also it’s okay to highlight and emphasize and support tenets of Islam when it suits your message.
      .
      My response to a friend was, “I mean, he’s not WRONG . . . the homosexuals are way more FABULOUS! Also less judgmental. And generally cleaner, prettier, and more polite. And tend to be ‘greener,’ have a concept of human empathy, and actually want to solve problems with intelligent, scientific, alternative solutions instead of violence. So, a distinction? Sure. They’re better than him, right? That’s what he’s saying? Homosexuals are largely superior, that’s what I’m getting here, yes?”

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