Y’know, I remember the days when Presidents didn’t do stupid stuff every dámņëd week. I remember when they didn’t dominate every minute of every news cycle with their idiocy. Those were good days. I miss them.
1). Trump’s lack of intelligence. Has there ever been a more ironically apt observation of Trump than this fact: he has no time for intelligence. Recently his intelligence heads testified before congress, basically stating that everything Trump was claiming about the world was wrong. They asserted that ISIS was not remotely defeated and that removing our troops would open the door for a resurgence of their influence and terrorism. They stated that Iran was not developing nuclear weapons.
Yet rather than listen to the assertions of his own people–people whose entire career is staked on KNOWING THIS STUFF–Trump insists that they are wrong, that they need to go “back to school” (what does that even mean?) and that he and his legendary gut know far better than people who are paid to know šhìŧ. There has never been a president so utterly self absorbed in his own conviction of eternal rightness, and so completely wrong about so many things. The fact that his poll numbers are plunging is not surprising; what’s astounding is that he has any backers left. Including his chief enabler, Mitch McConnell, whose own ties to Russia are now coming further and further out into the open.
I would like to quote directly from an article on the subject on medium.com:
McConnell recently voted to drop sanctions against Russian aluminum company RusAl which is still owned by one of Vladimir Putin’s sanctioned oligarchs, Oleg Deripaska. His action directly benefits one of the GOP leader’s major donors, whose fortune comes from Russian oil.
The Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC run by Sen. McConnell’s former Chief of Staff, received a total of $3,500,000 ($2,500,000 in 2016 and $1,000,000 in 2017) via Access Industries and a subsidiary. Len Blavatnik is a Russian oligarch with US and UK citizenship who owns Access Industries and donated to Sen. McConnell’s 2016 Senate campaign vehicles.
It is entirely possible that Robert Mueller will be coming for McConnell next, and wouldn’t that be sweet?
2). Global colding. I’m old enough to remember the arms race from the Cold War. This was back when neighbors were building fall out shelters and we were having drills in school that told us to hide under our desks in case a nuclear bomb went off nearby. Because nothing deters incineration and/or radiation poisoning like a desk.
I know absolutely no one who is nostalgic for that era of American existence, yet Trump apparently is. The Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces treaty has been in force since 1987. But Trump wants to pull out of it. He asserts that Russia has been in violation of it since 2014, but rather than trying to deal with it through diplomatic means, he is once again trying to strong arm them. Because threats and blackmail have worked so well for him in, for instance, dealing with Nancy Pelosi. This move has our European allies worried about their safety, and everyone concerned that we’re going to wind up in a brand new arms race where missiles could start flying because someone screwed up in a reading about incoming weapons.
Then again, he’s also pulled out of the Trans Pacific Partnership, the UN Human Rights Council, UNESCO, the Paris Climate agreement, and he’s begun pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal and threatened to pull out of the World Trade Organization. The next President shouldn’t be either a Republican or a Democrat; it should be someone from Damage Control because that’s what we’re going to need to repair everything this idiot has done.
3). Emerrrrgency. Everybody to get from street. It’s becoming fairly obvious what’s going to happen. Trump is going to declare a state of emergency in order to siphon money intended for other things to build his idiotic wall.
He and his enablers are going to have to come to grips with a simple reality: the wall is never going to be built. Trump’s emergency claim will immediately be challenged in court and likely be tied up for months if not years. And then there will be years more of delays as land owners along the border are going to refuse to turn their land over to the government and he’s faced with dozens of eminent domain lawsuits. The ONLY way this thing could roll forward at all is if Pence wins eight years in the White House as president. I want to say that won’t happen. I pray to God it doesn’t happen.
Here is a fact: the GOP is running scared. That’s never been more evident than when McConnell lambasted a Democratic series of laws designed to improve elections, describing it as a “power grab” by the Democrats. How could it remotely be argued that making elections fairer, more open and easier to get involved with is a power grab? It’s obvious. By improving elections, it makes it easier for Democrats to vote, which means that the people holding office will more accurately reflect the people and opinions of the majority of the country. The Trumpies can howl at the moon all they want, much like dinosaurs sinking in a tar pit, because they understand that they are genuinely a dying breed. The majority of the country has moved beyond them, and they are being left behind like the doomed neanderthals that they are. Assuming that we do not environmentally destroy the planet, this could be a great country in fifty years.
Did he do anything right? Yes, for the first time in a while. Foxconn, which had originally decided to build flat screens in Wisconsin, had announced that they were going to scuttle the plans to do so. Apparently Trump contacted the company’s chairman and convinced him to proceed with the original plans. Granted, Foxconn had stated they were going to hire over 13K people either way, but still, talking people into manufacturing anything in the US is a plus, so well done.
PAD
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I’ll say it again: Had Hillary been elected and pulled even half of what Trump is pulling, she would be being impeached for treason, if not burned to the stake. I wonder many times if Trump is trying to become the LAST President of the United States, either by starting a nuclear war or just gradually turning the country over to Putin. I am more scared of this man than I’ve even been scared of a President before.
As horrifying as it is realizing that we have a president that listens to his intestinal tract more than he listens to educated professionals, I find it soul-shattering to realize that about a third of the country is still supporting this semblance of a man. One out of three Americans can look at all the stupid stuff he says, with the most bloody slaughtering of the English language that I believe has EVER been seen in the history of public discourse, and say “well put, Mr. President, that’s just what I was going to say.” That they can look at the chaos unleashed by the government shutdown and the breaking of treaties and the imposing of tariffs, and have it directly put them under financial or emotional distress, and continue to think “that’s just the direction this country needed to go”. That their double standards are so deep and their cognitive dissonance so unconnected to reality that they can’t admit that if Obama did 5% of the crap Trump has done they would have him swinging from a D.C. lamppost by now. (I live, grudgingly, in Alabama and I can tell you that level of racist fervor still simmers down here). That they can divorce themselves from the traditional American ideals of equality and freedom enough to rip refugee families apart and put their children in cages.
And what I find most deeply and personally disappointing is that I’m related to some of these stupid áššhølëš. That my mother, who taught me to be fair and help others, to be generous, to think before I speak, voted for this creature. That my brother, raised with the same values as I, who I always thought was a better man than I in so many aspects, won’t show ANY remorse in voting for him. That my sister, with her religious fervor, can throw aside all the genuine good that the bible teaches (no, auto-correct, I refuse to capitalize that word ever again) to embrace the xenophobic and selfish teachings in that same book (see why I don’t think it’s earned a capital?). That my colleagues, who all did a psychiatric rotation in medical school, look at this malignant narcissism and think that’s presidential behavior.
About 15 years ago Alabama was facing a financial crisis and the Republican governor at the time proposed raising the tax on certain properties. This wouldn’t have affected the homeowners, it would have mostly taxed the corporations that owed huge tracts of timberland and other commercial lands. Without this tax, he said, big cuts would need to be made in state services. This was a REPUBLICAN proposing to raise taxes, amazingly enough. You would think that would have convinced the fine people of Alabama this was some serious šhìŧ, and since it wouldn’t hit 95% of them that it would have won by a landslide. It was put on a referendum and was defeated 60 to 40. My comment at the time was ” I knew Alabama had a lot of idiots, I just didn’t know we were outnumbered”. Nowadays I’m thinking that when I heard that famous Lincoln quote “you can fool some of the people all of time…” I thought he was talking about maybe 10% of the population. Now I know that “some” is 30-40% of Americans. After the Bush administration, and seeing so few people finally admit the Iraq war was a big mistake, I thought the lesson I learned was “it takes a big man to admit he was wrong, and an even bigger man to admit he was wrong and you were right “. Now I’m thinking 30+% of Americans are just incapable of learning from history and/or their mistakes. And please remember, the very definition of “stupid” is “incapable of learning”.
I’ve run out of patience and charity with these stupid people. I’m tired of trying to bending over to understand something that no intelligent person can understand. Stop negotiating and compromising with these stupid corrupt and morally repugnant Republicans and take a page from their playbook and maybe this country can drift back to the center instead of further and further to the right and the days of the super rich robber barons. Sure, Ghandi said “an eye for an eye just makes the whole world blind”. To that I say “least it levels the playing field”.
Today, my ultra-religious, “everything in The Bible is fact” sister posted something on Facebook about Nehemiah, who built a wall around Jerusalem to”protect its citizens from enemy attack.”
So, technology from the mid-400s BC is sufficient to protect our borders today? And, boy, that’ll sure protect us if any missiles are sent our way.
I would start saying “Please, God, not Trump” as I fall asleep at night from now to Election Day next year, but I did that in 2016 and it didn’t work. God doesn’t pay attention to such prayers.
Ask her if she ever heard the song “Joshua Fit the battle of Jericho”.
Philosopher Harry Frankfurt has explained the difference between the liar and the bûllšhìŧŧër:
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A liar, observed Frankfurt, knows what the truth is and wants to conceal it. To that extent, he is “respectful of it”. A bûllšhìŧŧër, on the other hand, does not care what is true or false. That’s why, Frankfurt suggested, bûllšhìŧŧìņg, even more than lying, is what is truly corrosive of politics, of society and of truth.
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Trump is a bûllšhìŧŧër, actually.
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Now, I think the people most receptive to him and other authoritarians worldwide aren’t actually gullible and “deceived” by him. At some level, they know they are wrong. They’re being bûllšhìŧŧërš, but they are also bûllšhìŧŧìņg themselves.
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I do believe it’s a sign of despair in the face of the ultimate failure of some of their cherised dreams.
It’s a power grab because it might actually lead to the hosenoses losing some of their ill-gotten power…
Yes. I think someone said it’s a power grab – grabbing power from the hands of the GOP and giving it back to the people.
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It’s quite grotesque that these guys keep getting elected with a minority of the votes.
“Granted, Foxconn had stated they were going to hire over 13K people either way, but still, talking people into manufacturing anything in the US is a plus, so well done.”
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I’ll be shocked if Foxconn ever employs 1/10th that many people in Wisconsin. Trump claiming to have made a ‘deal’ is quite the cherry on top of the embarrassing pile of šhìŧ that this has been for the state, when all Foxconn has to do is continue to twiddle their thumbs.