I think we can safely assume that Trump did not, as a New Year’s resolution, resolve to cut back on tweeting. From the moment he returned to the actual White House, he has been on a twitter binge that is filled with his usual ranting and insults, and continues to make every thinking person worry about World War III. It is nuts that we have to count on Kim Jong-un to have more common sense than the ostensible leader of the free world.
1). Whose is bigger? Kim Jong un has come to realize just how easily Trump can be baited. Most recently, he declared that he had a nuclear button on his desk and wasn’t afraid to use it. Did Trump realize that Kim did that specifically to get him to respond and consequently look like an idiot? Of course not. Trump declared that he also has a nuclear button on HIS desk was bigger and more powerful “and worked!”
A number of politicians have cited this tweet as legitimate reason for removing him via the 25th Amendment. Any reasonable, rational individual knows that pushing a nuclear showdown with an unhinged dictator is just madness. That this is the most crystal clear proof that Trump is not playing with a full deck. I have to say, that makes sense to me, but we all know that the GOP won’t do it. Their concern for holding on to power overwhelms every other aspect. Plus far too many of them are afraid to cross Trump because he holds everyone hostage to his twitter feed. No one wants to be the next person that dûmbášš attaches a nickname to. After all, this is someone who does not hesitate to go after friends if they criticize or cross him in any way. He tweeted congratulations to Orrin Hatch on his retirement. If next week Hatch said Trump should be forced out, does anyone doubt that he would suddenly be Borin’ Orrin who was never of any use. Case in point:
2). Sloppy Steven. Once upon a time, Bannon was a treasured White House asset. Then he got fired. Now Bannon has declared war on the GOP, putting forward the notion of “Trumpism without Trump.” If Trump were smart, he’d ignore him now. But of course he can’t and he still snipes at Bannon over twitter. It’s so unnecessary because Bannon is happily screwing himself, most recently supporting alleged child molestor Roy Moore who lost because Alabama voters were smarter than we all thought. Bannon certainly didn’t endear Trump to him because he was critically quoted in the new book “Fire and Fury.”
And for the record, I’m not thrilled about the existence of this book. The author stated that there were statements that people made that might or might not have been true. And he included them in the book so that readers could “decide for themselves.” I’m sorry, no. That’s not journalism. In journalism you get two or even better three sources for everything you write. That’s just Journalism 101. Just reporting stuff without verifying it isn’t reporting, it’s rumor mongering. It casts everything into doubt, and it had no place in a book. This is the first time where, when Trump and company accuse someone of lying, I suspect that they might very well be right.
3). The center of the universe.. “There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don’t care who gets the credit.” Ronald Reagan said that. And it is a sentiment that Trump completely ignores because he is ONLY about getting credit. There were zero deaths from airplane crashes this year. Why? Because “I have been very strict on Commercial aviation.” North and South Korea are having peace talks? Wouldn’t be happening “if I wasn’t firm, strong and willing to commit our total “might” against the North. (Uh, Donald, when you put quotes around a word like that, it implies the word actually isn’t accurate. Your tweet implies we really DON’T have the might. You jerk.).
Actually, though, who knows: he might have a point. Kim Jong un is an insane dictator. But to a large degree, so is Trump. It seems to me that Kim is seeing Trump as a means of changing his public persona, to raise him to a level where other countries would interact and treat him with respect. He’s changed his wardrobe and hair style. He accepted the notion of getting into talks with South Korea and even sending a delegation to the Olympics. What was our response? Some are stating that we will not go to the Olympics if North Korea is there, as if we can’t stand the notion that North Korea is starting to shift its policies. It seems to me that Kim Jong un is trying to come across as more of a statesman than Trump.
And let’s face it. That’s not too hard.
Did he do anything right? He restricted his activities to Twitter. So that was appreciated.
PAD
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Kim may be trying to appear more sane, but he still has Emperor Cartagia’s hairstyle.
“..child molestor Roy Moore who lost because Alabama voters were smarter than we all thought.” Actually he lost because of BLACK voters (particularly black women); white Alabamans are still pretty much as suspected.
More importantly, so glad to see you’re well enough to be able to post longform again!! Hope your nerve situation continues to improve rapidly.
And now it appears that one of those Alabamans has burned down the house of one of Moore’s accusers. Lots of loving Christians down there.
Actually, Elayne, you need to cut out the “white-bashing.”
In Alabama politics (and I live here), African-Americans do NOT have enough of an impact WITHOUT a substantial number of WHITE voters going along to elect a Democrat at any level aside from, of course, a State-level House/Senate race or a US Congressional district.
African-Americans, as a group, make up between 25 and 30% of the state’s total population and they’re pretty widely spread out (mainly in the cities of Birmingham, Montgomery and Mobile plus west-central AL–which makes up the bulk of the 7th congressional district–and Macon County, which includes Tuskegee).
In 2008, the state was afforded the chance to have not one, but two, African-Americans on statewide ballots–Barack Obama for President and Vivien Figures for Senate. Now, there were fewer overall votes cast in the Senate race but Ms Figures received FEWER votes than Obama did (conversely, Jeff Sessions got more votes in the Senate race than John McCain got for President) and neither one even cracked the 40% level.
As I wrote in a comment on Daily Kos, Doug Jones’ win was, just as easily, due to depressed white GOP voters. Jeff Sessions ran UNOPPOSED in 2014 and he still got 140,000 MORE votes than Moore received (Sessions got more than 795K votes while Moore got just under 652K votes). In 2008, Sessions got 1.3 million votes to Vivien Figures’ 752K votes (to compare, Jones got just under 674K last month).
If GOP voters had been motivated and enthusiastic about Moore, he’d have been elected, even if “BLACK voters (particularly black women)” had gone 100% for Jones.
Alabama has 67 counties. In 25 of them, voter turnout exceeded 40%. Of these 25, 17 voted for Jones. Conversely, in 20, voter turnout was less than 37%. Of these 20, 17 voted for Moore.
Speaking as a captive of Alabama for the past 20 years since I moved here from Virginia (which the Deep South seems to have forgotten was the capital of the Confederacy, thus I’m from “Up North”), Doug Jones didn’t really win the election so much as Roy Moore lost. Consider:
Jones 670,551
Moore 649,240
Write In 22,777
Well, you can be sure that those write ins were NOT Democrats protesting against Jones. They were Republicans who have a conscience (or listened to Sen. Shelby, who said HE was going to do a write in)and probably would have voted Republican with almost literally any other Republican candidate. If these votes were added to the Moore votes, he would have won by 2000 votes. And that’s also not counting the untold number of Republicans who decided to sit this election out rather than vote for Moore. I’m fairly confidant that this number of votes for Jones is the absolute best that the Democrats can do.
The representative from Distric One in AL, who’s running for reelection this fall, is currently UNOPPOSED as a Republican. The Democrats haven’t put up a candidate, and the filing deadline in Feb. 9th. This is the district of Mobile, the second largest city in the state. But the Dems don’t have a prayer when you have almost an equal number of voters who’d just a soon vote for a racist sex offender over a democrat. Who would vote back onto the State Supreme Court a Justice who was so ignorant and unethical he couldn’t understand that the Supreme Court and Constitution are the ULTIMATE law of the land and having your court strewn with Christian symbols and scripture is not going to present a “fair and impartial” setting if a Muslim was suing a Christian. Where the last elected governor said in his inaugural speech that he was there to represent the Christians.
The level of ignorance and stupidity is staggering here. Everytime an issue comes up that I think is a no-brainer, the people of Alabama surprise me with the depths of their idiocy. No wonder we’re 49th in education.
If there’s one thing I learned, stupidity is national. I grew up in Suffolk County on Long Island and had many people drop me on Facebook during the 2016 campaign because they were to the right of Atilla the Hun. And I see people on FB who continue to defend the clod no matter what. If he railed against oxygen, they’d probably decide not to breath.