I apologize to anyone in the other three time zones for the lateness of this posting. I am currently out at the Phoenix Comic Fest and it’s still Friday here. I hope no one will be too cranky, especially considering the new amount of idiocy currently happening as a result of the #FAKEPOTUS.
1) Half an hour later it’s like you’ll want to be spied on again. Back in 2016 the Chinese telecom company ZTE was forbidden to do business in the US for a period of seven years. It seemed that its equipment was not exactly according to Hoyle, allowing them to spy on the phones’ users and therefore have espionage roots in the US. To the shock of no one since it’s impossible for Trump to shock anyone anymore, he is working with ZTE to enable them to come back to America and, presumably, start spying again. This knowledge prompted the Senate to actually agree on something for once: This is bad and Trump should not be allowed to do it. Trump will naturally ignore the Senate and try to steamroll it through. Chuck Schumer declared, “We all know that China is involved in stealing our intellectual property. There is no better way to do it than through ZTE, and we’re going to let them be here, and slap them on the wrist with a fine? That’s a dereliction of our duty here in the Congress, and it’s the president’s duty to protect us.” It’s almost kind of sweet to think that after over a year of Trump’s endless bûllšhìŧ that Schumer still believes Trump is interested in protecting anyone except himself.
2) It’s on/It’s off/It’s On/God knows. Remember how astounded everyone was that Trump actually seemed ready to sit down with North Korea for peace talks? His mindless followers even began stumping for the Nobel Peace Prize even though nothing had been actually accomplished by Trump. South Korea, yes, Trump, not so much. And then think about how utterly unsurprised everyone was when Trump dropkicked the entire meeting while of course blaming Kim Jong un. Well, apparently someone convinced Trump that he’d be scratching his Nobel Prize chances if the meeting went away. So now he’s turned around and stated that he’s still open to a meeting which he himself scratched, and whether or not it happens is ostensibly in Kim’s hands even though Trump was the one who cancelled it. Part of me is wondering if this is going to turn into an espionage film in which Trump and Kim get together and then masked men come sweeping in, kidnap them both, and holds them for ransom with the demand being to replace both of them. I’d watch that.
3) Gee, I thought he loved unions. Trump signed three executive orders (you remember, the things he always slammed Obama for using) that are designed to make life much harder for civil service workers. The government said that it was for making “better use” of taxpayer dollars. The American Federation of Government Employees disagreed, stating, “President Trump is attempting to silence the voice of veterans, law enforcement officers, and other frontline federal workers through a series of executive orders intended to strip federal employees of their decades-old right to representation at the worksite.” So, y’know, that’s going well.
4) She couldn’t have told us this, oh TWO YEARS AGO?!? 60 Minutes reporter Lesley Stahl stated that back when she was interviewing Trump after he’d won the GOP nomination, she asked him off camera why he kept going on and on about “fake news.” It was old hat, and he must have known that. Trump’s reply was perfect: “You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you.” He flat out admitted it, and Stahl kept that to herself until recently when she was being interviewed by PBS’s Judy Woodruff. It didn’t occur to her to try and get him to say that on camera? All that’ll happen now is that people who dislike him will say, “Of course that’s why” and all his supporters will say, “Lesley Stahl is lying.”
5) Stephen King is back! Remember when Trump blocked Stephen King and others from following him on Twitter? Here’s the thing: his Twitter feed is a government account. And there’s a rumor that the government is not allowed to restrict others from speaking. What’s the thing called again…? Oh, right. The First amendment. That’s part of the Constitution that Trump swore to uphold. Judge Naomi Buchwald stated that Trump’s blocking people violated the First amendment. The thing is, she didn’t order Trump to remove the blocking because she simply assumed that one she said what was what, Trump would take care of it himself. Yeah. Good luck with that.
Did he do anything right? Thanks to Matt Adler for pointing this out to me. Trump, after getting a phone call from Sylvester Stallone, pardoned Jack Johnson. Johnson, a legendary figure in boxing who inspired the play and film “The Great White Hope,” was ostensibly found guilty of violating the Mann Act when what he was really convicted of was becoming a boxing champion while being black. People have been asking presidents for decades to pardon him, but none did. But Trump did so. So ostensibly good on him for that.
Here’s the problem: If Trump had been around in 1913, he would have been one of the ones who actively condemned Johnson. Why do I say that? The most obvious reason is because how he has relentlessly and racially gone after black football players who knelt during the Star Spangled Banner. Trump’s relentless bashing of black players prompted the NFL to unanimously declare that players must stand during the anthem or face sizable financial punishments. You know that they did it to shut Trump up as his bashing was unquestionably having an effect on the game’s profitability. So, you know, good for Jack Johnson and good on Trump for doing something that was genuinely good. But I think it has far less to do with Johnson and far more to do with Trump (a) trying to fool us into thinking he’s not a racist, and (b) doing something that Obama had failed to do. So…yay?
Me, I think that the NFL football players, during the anthem, should criss cross their arms in the “Wakanda Forever” salute. Let them try to legislate against THAT.
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I wish some prominent player in football, some top player that a team would really not want to lose, would walk out onto the field at the first game and when the Banner is played, take a knee. Arranging for as many players as he could to do so with him would be even better.
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How long would a team continue to hold to this stupid rule if half their starting line refused to go along with it?
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The owners, like any bullies, are counting on nobody calling them on their šhìŧ. Because as soon as someone does, the stupidity of their new rule would be even more obvious and embarrassing for them.
One of the commentators I hear made a similar point. The new rule says the players “must stand respectfully”. What if someone raises a fist? Or players stand, but link arms like many did last season? Who decides what a “respectful” pose is?
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(It’s like Trump’s “fake news” where fake means “anything critical of me”. Undoubtedly the owners, fearful bullies that they are, believe “disrespectful” means “anything that shows you have a different opinion than I do.”)
I read the bit about someone kidnapping Trump and my mind went back to the film “Ruthless People” and Bette Midler’s character, learning that her rather inept and too kind-hearted for their own good kidnappers were lowering the ransom since her husband was refusing to pay, crying out “I’ve been kidnapped by K-Mart!”
Slightly more seriously, should anyone ever kidnap the twit(ter) president, it should be up to the Republicans to pay the ransom. After all, they’d be the ones who would want him back.
Nah, Mexico will pay the ransom.
If the Mexicans paid the ransom, would that mean he belonged to them? Could we make them keep him?
I just can’t see them taking the chance. They’re much too smart for that.
Or, as Trump supporters call all of this, #WINNING!
Peter David: 5) Stephen King is back! Remember when Trump blocked Stephen King and others from following him on Twitter? Here’s the thing: his Twitter feed is a government account.
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Luigi Novi: Actually, @RealDonaldTrump is his personal account. @POTUS is the presidential one. And in any event, aren’t they owned by Twitter, rather the account holder, since Twitter is a private company, and no money is used in account’s operation, since the accounts are free?
Doesn’t matter. The moment he first posted any government announcements/opinions/plans, it became a government tool and subject to first amendment control. The judge could not have been more specific on this point.
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The White House has declared that Trumps tweets are official statements.
“The President is the President of the United States, so they’re considered official statements by the President of the United States”
Peter,
Even though the NFL players are not protected by the First Amendment from their employers punishing/retaliating them for their on-the-job protest, I maintain it SHOULD be protecting them from the President of the United States attacking them during official functions, in his tweets, and in his communications to the owners, trying to persuade them to get fired, in an attempt to silence their protests. The First Amendment protects the citizenry from being attacked by the Government, and a President butting in like this is a violation of the Constitution. And yet, no one seems to be pointing this out!
Actually I seriously think that that could be the basis for lawsuit from the players. Alleging that Trump’s continuous bashing of them at various government functions, which causes them to have their First Amendment rights trampled by their owners, could be a very valid grounds for complaint.
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I wonder if they could file slander/libel lawsuits. Trump has said — both verbally and in writing — that the players are not patriotic and are disrespecting the flag. Those false statements have caused serious harm to the players with regard to their standing with the public and with regard to their relation to their employer. And if some of them get fined by the NFL under the new regulations, then it will be easy to show significant financial harm as well.
Actually, the specific act that got ZTE busted was selling tech to Iran that was banned by sanctions.
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And they weren’t actually barred from doing business in the US – just from purchasing anything (like CPUs and other hardware, or a license for the Android operating system).
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If they’d just been banned from doing business in the US {that is, selling their stuff}, they could soldier on.
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It was the purchasing ban that put them on the ropes.
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{I have a ZTE phone that i bought from MetroPCS last September, BTW.}
Paragraph 3: To clarify, if they had other sources, non-US, for chips and OS licenses, they could have gone on doing business in the rest of the world.