Days 144-145 since Nov 8 2016 election and days 74-75 since shitgibbon has been in office.
I notice I post more stories and more news items than actual links. It's because the links may die in the future and it's better to copy the actual story.
No 45 is in serious trouble and people are jumping ship because they know how fucked the administration is.
The LA Times has been writing a scathing rebuke of his administration and it's basically spot on.
No 45 also shook hands with a dictator but wouldn't shake hands with an ally.
Dictator: Male
Ally: Female
Wonder why?
Trump’s Authoritarian Vision
tanding before the cheering throngs at the Republican National Convention last summer, Donald Trump bemoaned how special interests had rigged the country’s politics and its economy, leaving Americans victimized by unfair trade deals, incompetent bureaucrats and spineless leaders.
He swooped into politics, he declared, to subvert the powerful and rescue those who cannot defend themselves. “Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.”
To Trump’s faithful, those words were a rallying cry. But his critics heard something far more menacing in them: a dangerously authoritarian vision of the presidency — one that would crop up time and again as he talked about overruling generals, disregarding international law, ordering soldiers to commit war crimes, jailing his opponent.
Trump has no experience in politics; he’s never previously run for office or held a government position. So perhaps he was unaware that one of the hallmarks of the American system of government is that the president’s power to “fix” things unilaterally is constrained by an array of strong institutions — including the courts, the media, the permanent federal bureaucracy and Congress. Combined, they provide an essential defense against an imperial presidency.
Yet in his first weeks at the White House, President Trump has already sought to undermine many of those institutions. Those that have displayed the temerity to throw some hurdle in the way of a Trump objective have quickly felt the heat.
Consider Trump’s feud with the courts.
He has repeatedly questioned the impartiality and the motives of judges. For example, he attacked the jurists who ruled against his order excluding travelers from seven majority Muslim nations, calling one a “so-called judge” and later tweeting:
Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril. If something happens blame him and court system. People pouring in. Bad!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 5, 2017
It’s nothing new for presidents to disagree with court decisions. But Trump’s direct, personal attacks on judges’ integrity and on the legitimacy of the judicial system itself — and his irresponsible suggestion that the judiciary should be blamed for future terrorist attacks — go farther. They aim to undermine public faith in the third branch of government.
The courts are the last line of defense for the Constitution and the rule of law; that’s what makes them such a powerful buffer against an authoritarian leader. The president of the United States should understand that and respect it.
Other institutions under attack include:
1The electoral process. Faced with certified election results showing that Hillary Clinton outpolled him by nearly 3 million votes, Trump repeated the unsubstantiated — and likely crackpot — assertion that Clinton’s supporters had duped local polling places with millions of fraudulent votes. In a democracy, the right to vote is the one check that the people themselves hold against their leaders; sowing distrust in elections is the kind of thing leaders do when they don’t want their power checked.
2The intelligence community. After reports emerged that the Central Intelligence Agency believed Russia had tried to help Trump win, the president-elect’s transition team responded: “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.” It was a snarky, dismissive, undermining response — and the administration has continued to belittle the intelligence community and question its motives since then, while also leaking stories about possibly paring and restructuring its ranks. It is bizarre to watch Trump continue to tussle publicly with this particular part of the government, whose leaders he himself has appointed, as if he were still an outsider candidate raging against the machine. It’s unnerving too, given the intelligence services’ crucial role in protecting the country against hidden risks, assisting the U.S. military and helping inform Trump’s decisions.
3The media. Trump has blistered the mainstream media for reporting that has cast him in a poor light, saying outlets concocted narratives based on nonexistent anonymous sources. In February he saidthat the “fake news” media will “never represent the people,” adding ominously: “And we’re going to do something about it.” His goal seems to be to defang the media watchdog by making the public doubt any coverage that accuses Trump of blundering or abusing his power.
4Federal agencies. In addition to calling for agency budgets to be chopped by up to 30%, Trump appointed a string of Cabinet secretaries who were hostile to much of their agencies’ missions and the laws they’re responsible for enforcing. He has also proposed deep cuts in federal research programs, particularly in those related to climate change. It’s easier to argue that climate change isn’t real when you’re no longer collecting the data that documents it.
In a way, Trump represents a culmination of trends that have been years in the making.
Conservative talk radio hosts have long blasted federal judges as “activists” and regulators as meddlers in the economy, while advancing the myth of rampant election fraud. And gridlock in Washington has led previous presidents to try new ways to circumvent the checks on their power — witness President George W. Bush’s use of signing statements to invalidate parts of bills Congress passed, and President Obama’s aggressive use of executive orders when lawmakers balked at his proposals.
What’s uniquely threatening about Trump’s approach, though, is how many fronts he’s opened in this struggle for power and the vehemence with which he seeks to undermine the institutions that don’t go along.
It’s one thing to complain about a judicial decision or to argue for less regulation, but to the extent that Trump weakens public trust in essential institutions like the courts and the media, he undermines faith in democracy and in the system and processes that make it work.
Trump betrays no sense for the president’s place among the myriad of institutions in the continuum of governance. He seems willing to violate long-established political norms without a second thought, and he cavalierly rejects the civility and deference that allow the system to run smoothly. He sees himself as not merely a force for change, but as a wrecking ball.
Will Congress act as a check on Trump’s worst impulses as he moves forward? One test is the House and Senate intelligence committees’ investigation into Russia’s meddling in the presidential election; lawmakers need to muster the courage to follow the trail wherever it leads. Can the courts stand up to Trump? Already, several federal judges have issued rulings against the president’s travel ban. And although Trump has railed against the decisions, he has obeyed them.
None of these institutions are eager to cede authority to the White House and they won’t do so without a fight. It would be unrealistic to suggest that America’s most basic democratic institutions are in imminent jeopardy.
But we should not view them as invulnerable either. Remember that Trump’s verbal assaults are directed at the public, and are designed to chip away at people’s confidence in these institutions and deprive them of their validity. When a dispute arises, whose actions are you going to consider legitimate? Whom are you going to trust? That’s why the public has to be wary of Trump’s attacks on the courts, the “deep state,” the “swamp.” We can’t afford to be talked into losing our faith in the forces that protect us from an imperial presidency.
This is the third in a series.
Why Trump Lies
Donald Trump did not invent the lie and is not even its master. Lies have oozed out of the White House for more than two centuries and out of politicians’ mouths — out of all people’s mouths — likely as long as there has been human speech.
But amid all those lies, told to ourselves and to one another in order to amass power, woo lovers, hurt enemies and shield ourselves against the often glaring discomfort of reality, humanity has always had an abiding respect for truth.
In the United States, born and periodically reborn out of the repeated recognition and rejection of the age-old lie that some people are meant to take dominion over others, truth is as vital a part of the civic, social and intellectual culture as justice and liberty. Our civilization is premised on the conviction that such a thing as truth exists, that it is knowable, that it is verifiable, that it exists independently of authority or popularity and that at some point — and preferably sooner rather than later — it will prevail.
Even American leaders who lie generally know the difference between their statements and the truth. Richard Nixon said “I am not a crook” but by that point must have seen that he was. Bill Clinton said “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” but knew that he did.
The insult that Donald Trump brings to the equation is an apparent disregard for fact so profound as to suggest that he may not see much practical distinction between lies, if he believes they serve him, and the truth.
His approach succeeds because of his preternaturally deft grasp of his audience. Though he is neither terribly articulate nor a seasoned politician, he has a remarkable instinct for discerning which conspiracy theories in which quasi-news source, or which of his own inner musings, will turn into ratings gold. He targets the darkness, anger and insecurity that hide in each of us and harnesses them for his own purposes. If one of his lies doesn’t work — well, then he lies about that.
If we harbor latent racism or if we fear terror attacks by Muslim extremists, then he elevates a rumor into a public debate: Was Barack Obama born in Kenya, and is he therefore not really president?
An ‘extremely credible source’ has called my office and told me that @BarackObama's birth certificate is a fraud.— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 6, 2012
Libya is being taken over by Islamic radicals—-with @BarackObama's open support.— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 31, 2011
If his own ego is threatened — if broadcast footage and photos show a smaller-sized crowd at his inauguration than he wanted — then he targets the news media, falsely charging outlets with disseminating “fake news” and insisting, against all evidence, that he has proved his case (“We caught them in a beauty,” he said).
If his attempt to limit the number of Muslim visitors to the U.S. degenerates into an absolute fiasco and a display of his administration’s incompetence, then he falsely asserts that terrorist attacks are underreported. (One case in point offered by the White House was the 2015 attack in San Bernardino, which in fact received intensive worldwide news coverage. The Los Angeles Times won a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on the subject).
If he detects that his audience may be wearying of his act, or if he worries about a probe into Russian meddling into the election that put him in office, he tweets in the middle of the night the astonishingly absurd claim that President Obama tapped his phones. And when evidence fails to support him he dispatches his aides to explain that by “phone tapping” he obviously didn’t mean phone tapping. Instead of backing down when confronted with reality, he insists that his rebutted assertions will be vindicated as true at some point in the future.
Trump’s easy embrace of untruth can sometimes be entertaining, in the vein of a Moammar Kadafi speech to the United Nations or the self-serving blathering of a 6-year-old.
But he is not merely amusing. He is dangerous. His choice of falsehoods and his method of spewing them — often in tweets, as if he spent his days and nights glued to his bedside radio and was periodically set off by some drivel uttered by a talk show host who repeated something he’d read on some fringe blog — are a clue to Trump’s thought processes and perhaps his lack of agency. He gives every indication that he is as much the gullible tool of liars as he is the liar in chief.
He has made himself the stooge, the mark, for every crazy blogger, political quack, racial theorist, foreign leader or nutcase peddling a story that he might repackage to his benefit as a tweet, an appointment, an executive order or a policy. He is a stranger to the concept of verification, the insistence on evidence and the standards of proof that apply in a courtroom or a medical lab — and that ought to prevail in the White House.
There have always been those who accept the intellectually bankrupt notion that people are entitled to invent their own facts — consider the “9/11 was an inside job” trope — but Trump’s ascent marks the first time that the culture of alternative reality has made its home at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
If Americans are unsure which Trump they have — the Machiavellian negotiator who lies to manipulate simpler minds, or one of those simpler minds himself — does it really matter? In either case he puts the nation in danger by undermining the role of truth in public discourse and policymaking, as well as the notion of truth being verifiable and mutually intelligible.
In the months ahead, Trump will bring his embrace of alternative facts on the nation’s behalf into talks with China, North Korea or any number of powers with interests counter to ours and that constitute an existential threat. At home, Trump now becomes the embodiment of the populist notion (with roots planted at least as deeply in the Left as the Right) that verifiable truth is merely a concept invented by fusty intellectuals, and that popular leaders can provide some equally valid substitute. We’ve seen people like that before, and we have a name for them: demagogues.
Our civilization is defined in part by the disciplines — science, law, journalism — that have developed systematic methods to arrive at the truth. Citizenship brings with it the obligation to engage in a similar process. Good citizens test assumptions, question leaders, argue details, research claims.
Investigate. Read. Write. Listen. Speak. Think. Be wary of those who disparage the investigators, the readers, the writers, the listeners, the speakers and the thinkers. Be suspicious of those who confuse reality with reality TV, and those who repeat falsehoods while insisting, against all evidence, that they are true. To defend freedom, demand fact.
This is the second in a series.
Flailing the rich asshole reduced to citing ‘Fox & Friends’ reports to bash Obama and Clinton
President some rich asshole was up early on Twitter Monday morning, lashing out at former President Barack Obama and his former Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
First, the rich asshole cited a report on Fox & Friends to claim vindication for his baseless claims that Obama illegally spied on him during the 2016 presidential campaign. Despite the fact that the rich asshole has access to some of the top intelligence agencies in the world, he’s still relying on morning cable news shows as the primary sources for supporting his assertions about illegal intelligence gathering.
Such amazing reporting on unmasking and the crooked scheme against us by @foxandfriends. "Spied on before nomination." The real story.
Next, the rich asshole lashed out at former Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, whose brother the rich asshole alleges got paid “big money” to lobby against sanctions against Russia.
And finally, the rich asshole once against attacked Hillary Clinton for getting “the answers” to debate questions ahead of a Democratic primary town hall — despite the fact that Clinton only received tips about the questions that would be asked, not the answers themselves.
WATCH: Trump Praises And Shakes Hands With Brutal Dictator After Previously Insulting An Ally
Donald Trump is not just Vladimir Putin’s puppet anymore.
When German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited the White House, Trump insulted her by refusing to shake her hand. Trump’s behavior toward Merkel drew international outrage. Not only did Trump insult Merkel as a woman, he insulted our longtime ally. Germany is a fellow democratic nation that has supported the United States for decades.
As we all know, Trump has lavished praise upon Vladimir Putin, complimented North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, and even invited Rodrigo Duterte, who has committed human rights atrocities in the Philippines, to the White House to pal around.
“You gotta give him credit,” Trump once said in clear envy of Kim Jong Un. “How many young guys — he was like 26 or 25 when his father died — take over these tough generals, and all of a sudden … he goes in, he takes over, and he’s the boss. It’s incredible. He wiped out the uncle, he wiped out this one, that one. I mean this guy doesn’t play games.”
But Trump went a step further on Monday when he not only met with Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, but also shook his hand twice while being serenaded as “Your Excellency” by el Sisi through a translator.
Trump bragged about the United States military and how he is making it even bigger and more expensive, and suggested that Egypt is gong to benefit a lot from it.
After singing each other’s praises, Trump eagerly shook hands with the dictator without having to be asked and later shook hands again.
Clearly, Trump values dictators more than our democratically elected allies.
Trump has been an admirer of el-Sisi for months and even met with him during the campaign months before Election Day.
The Egyptian dictator does not respect human rights and often puts advocates for democracy in prison.
This is the kind of leader Trump respects and wants to be friends with and that’s a problem that should not be tolerated by the American people.
Also, Trump is a complete hypocrite. While Germany pays for their own defense and military, Egypt currently gets $1.5 billion a year from the United States, and you don’t see Trump handing el-Sisi a bill for it. Trump certainly isn’t demanding that Egypt pay up like he did on Twitter two weeks ago when he falsely accused Germany of owing America money for their defense.
Donald Trump’s insulting behavior toward our democratic allies and his admiration of dictators is un-American.
Fucking Idiot Trump Just Tweeted The FBI To Show Them A Fox News Story Because Of Course
The Toddler-in-Chief has been busy this morning lashing out at Hillary Clinton, John Podesta’s brother and vigorously trying to prove that former President Barack Obama had his phones wiretapped, a conspiracy theory which has never been backed by evidence. And now Trump tagged the FBI’s Twitter account (and that’s totally not weird at all, k?) to alert the agency to allegations by Fox News of “electronic surveillance” against him.
Earlier, Trump tweeted, “Such amazing reporting on unmasking and the crooked scheme against us by @foxandfriends. “Spied on before nomination.” The real story.”
Such amazing reporting on unmasking and the crooked scheme against us by @foxandfriends. "Spied on before nomination." The real story.
That didn’t go down well on Twitter.
@realDonaldTrump @FoxNews @FBI And it's just brilliant you're ccing the FBI into your tweet - like they'll sit up and pay attention. Sad.
@realDonaldTrump @FoxNews @FBI "Quick, the guy we're investigating for corruption just tweeted some Fox News bullshit - put Russia on hold!"
@realDonaldTrump @FoxNews @FBI In short: you're a ridiculous hypocrite that loves making himself look brainless.twitter.com/realdonaldtrum…
In a nutshell, this is the ‘real story’ of what happened.
@realDonaldTrump @FoxNews @FBI NOBODY WIRE-TAPPED TRUMP.
The FBI wiretapped some shady Russians.
Trump was caught because he was in contact w the shady Russians.
@realDonaldTrump @FoxNews @FBI Why did you tag the FBI when you can get the info from them? You don't have to wait for FOX. This is unprecedented. You are the President.
@realDonaldTrump @FoxNews @FBI Why did you tag the FBI when you can get the info from them? You don't have to wait for FOX. This is unprecedented. You are the President.
@tonyposnanski @realDonaldTrump @FoxNews @FBI Ha ha ha! He is tagging the FBI with Fox news "Intel"! You just can't make this shit up...
@realDonaldTrump @FoxNews @FBI YES! We, THE PRESIDENT, need to watch FOX NEWS to get our intel, and we relay this intel to the FBI via posting it on TWITTER! This is #MAGA
Such amazing reporting on unmasking and the crooked scheme against us by @foxandfriends. "Spied on before nomination." The real story.
@realDonaldTrump @foxandfriends On this matter, we must follow the President's own words ... pic.twitter.com/qAupTOxXya
Trump has been critical in the past of media outlets using anonymous sources, but to the surprise of no one, he’s not doing that in this instance as he deflects from his Russia scandal.
As ‘president’, Trump has access to U.S. intelligence agencies, the same ones he’s blasted in the recent past. Instead, though, Trump’s go-to source for information is cable news.
Early this morning, Trump lashed out at Hillary Clinton to try to get the public to focus on her instead of his own Russia scandal. “Was the brother of John Podesta paid big money to get the sanctions on Russia lifted? Did Hillary know?” he tweeted just after 6:00 in the morning.
The amateur president followed that tweet up with another one, saying, “Did Hillary Clinton ever apologize for receiving the answers to the debate? Just asking!”
Well, Donald, she isn’t the President. Apparently, he doesn’t know that. Has Donald apologized for that botched mission in Yemen yet? Or his birther conspiracy theories about America’s first black President? Or how about his pussy grabbing remarks in which he advocates for sexual assault. Or calling Mexicans ‘rapists.’ Instead of apologizing, he doubles down. It’s what he does.
The internet recoils in disgust after report suggests Trump won because he’s handsome
While more than half of America thinks President Donald Trump should resign, one columnist cited a recent study to claim that Trump’s success hinges on his physique.
The columnist cited a study led by a professor of social psychology at the University of Helsinki, which concluded that good looks matter to conservative voters more than liberal ones in the U.S., Europe and other countries. The study is consistent with others, which have said that attractive people earn more money and are able to achieve greater success in life than those with average looks.
Those on Twitter, however, seemed to take real issue with the fact that anyone could find Trump attractive.
@BettyBowers Helsinki should be embarrassed. Trump is attractive sort of like blob fish. Resemblance is striking.— Lisa Stander Horel (@GFCanteen) April 3, 2017
@Oregonian Attractive? Trump? What? If attractiveness decided the presidency, Oscar Isaac would be President.
@talkwordy Sure. I get it. Trump is physically attractive. Up is down. Hot is blue. Cats are ice cream.
yooooo wait if trump is attractive then im sexy as helllllltwitter.com/oregonian/stat…
@Karnythia I would find the human embodiment of a pus-oozing abscess more attractive than Trump
"donald trump is physically attractive"pic.twitter.com/JX3UYFes2W
@Oregonian You mean "relatively speaking" right? To a toothless hillbilly, Trump may be considered attractive.
Who the fuck finds trump attractive? Get your eyes checked if you do— R(@Rokkaaaaa) April 3, 2017
uh, did anyone in this study look at donald trump? attractive would not be the word. twitter.com/Oregonian/stat…
I'd shove a flaming hot dildo in my anus before I ever think that Trump is attractive. twitter.com/oregonian/stat…
The internet recoils in disgust after report suggests Trump won because he’s handsome bit.ly/2nwOWtUpic.twitter.com/yhVTDgZuX4
@SarahBurris Handsome only if you think that tall, fat Oompa-Loompas are handsome
Trump started the morning with a bang…of cocaine (allegedly)..and a couple of dumbass tweets. I covered those, very angrily, because that stupid sh*t makes me mad and because I own a blog so therefore, I can. Then, because he’s an imbecile, he followed it up with a tweet so ridiculous I just couldn’t help but do a second Trump tweet story in as many hours.
I know…the humanity. Still, this one is pretty damned stupid:
Where does one even begin with this utter silliness? Let’s go with the obvious. The Russia connection to Mike Flynn is fake news. Paul Manafort…fake news. Russian connections to anyone associated with Trump are all fake news because the news is all fake and biased and trying to make Trump look bad. Fox news? Unprecedented!!!
What an asshole.
Fox News is nothing but the propaganda arm of the Republican party, using attractive, scantily clothed, mostly blonde women to cater to a bunch of 68-year-old men looking for 2 things: being pissed off and wardrobe malfunctions. Their sources, who are almost always unnamed, have all exonerated Trump from any wrongdoing ever and have instead confirmed that even though it’s a giant crock of sh*t that nobody else can prove, Trump was the subject of illegal surveillance.
Trump and his team are under investigation by the FBI for a good reason. They’re crooked. They have no business in government and it’s highly likely they were placed there by a foreign interest. This administration is corruption personified. The very premise of the Fox “report” is ludicrous and everyone but the Trumpsters knows it.
But alas…62 million pieces of American sh*t think he’s just great and are rather enjoying their newfound freedom to be racist, xenophobic douchebags. Through lying, cheating, gerrymandering, voter suppression and fraud they’ve stacked the deck so the minority rules in America. Their leader — an abusive, shallow, stupid f*ck with the IQ of a rotten avocado — is the final solution to the problem of people getting smarter in this country.
If we don’t figure this out and find a way to get Democrats off of their asses to vote in the midterm elections, we’re done. We may be able to get through 2 years while they fight amongst themselves, but come 2018, the powers that be will buy the seats of those who won’t cooperate and we’ll see a wave of oligarchy and corruption the likes of which the world has never known.
It’s 7:30 AM On A Monday Morning And Trump Just Tweeted…Sigh…Here We Go Again
the rich asshole allies in short supply as DC finds out trusting him is ‘like putting your faith in a human IED’
Oh for f*ck’s sake, Donnie, give it a rest. Does it really have to be every single Monday Morning? And…who writes this crap? Is it you, the voices in your head or the cocaine? Seriously, you six-foot-three pile of steaming orange cowpie…shut it down, take the week off and try to end the bender you’re on. At this point it’s not even about you anymore. Everyone knows you’re an idiot; stop taking the rest of us with you.
When a candidate seeks office by running as a renegade opposed to both dominant parties, it shouldn’t come as a shock if he later has trouble finding friends in office. Still, it’s remarkable how quickly some rich asshole has managed to isolate himself in the White House, struggling to find allies among Republicans and Democrats alike. Rather than follow up his successful presidential bid with an effort to heal wounds and suss out supporters for his key initiatives, his 70 days in office have left him both loathed by Democrats – nothing new there – but also caught between two antagonistic wings of the party he nominally represents.
Several of the news organs the rich asshole despises are suggesting he’s edging towards open war with the conservative Republican faction among which his biggest enthusiasts were located. While the White House may dismiss it as Fake News, the reports once again originate in the rich asshole’s own words: specifically, another of the series of intemperate tweets that have consistently gotten him into trouble.
This time he launched an outburst at the Freedom Caucus, the powerful hardliners who were a regular thorn in the side of President Barack Obama, Democrats, moderate Republicans and the party’s entrenched ruling class. If anyone should be the rich asshole people, you’d think, it’s the 30-40 the members of the Freedom Caucus, who make up a small minority of the 246 Republicans in the House of Representatives but have used it to produce influence well beyond their numbers. Instead, the president is threatening to help defeat those who face re-election in next year’s mid-terms.
Angry that the GOP effort to replace Obamacare failed, the rich asshole demanded caucus leaders quit blocking his agenda or face his wrath. “The Freedom Caucus will hurt the entire Republican agenda if they don’t get on the team, & fast. We must fight them, & Dems, in 2018!” he tweeted. Days earlier he’d warned its leaders “I’m gonna come after you” if they let the Obamacare effort collapse. They ignored him, and it did collapse, a major defeat for the young presidency. A more disciplined president might recognize the loss as a signal that he needed to find some friends in Congress if he hoped to see any of his biggest projects turned into reality; instead the rich asshole is engaged in a full-scale attack on the very people who, as one of their members tweeted back, “stood with u when others ran.”
At heart, the Freedom Caucus agrees with the basic principle of Trumpism: that Washington doesn’t work, that its members are denizens of a corrupt and dysfunctional swamp, and that only a revolution in its operations can save the republic. The dilemma for the rich asshole is that conservatives largely built their base of support on fierce opposition to the establishment agenda, and an ability to gum it up to the point nothing gets done. Its hardline members think it’s better to maintain gridlock rather than allow bad government to continue.
the rich asshole may agree with that, but as president he also needs to get things done. He made promises after all: to repeal Obamacare, to reshape the tax system, to build a wall … lots of things. If he can’t follow through, what’s the point of being president
Unfortunately, the rich asshole’s inexperience and basic lack of understanding of government – and reluctance to learn – evidently included ignorance of the fact the president lacks the power of a chief executive, and is dependent on Congress to approve major initiatives. He can’t just wave his hand and order compliance. He needs the votes. But Democrats won’t vote with him out of principle, and moderate Republicans still recall how gleefully he savaged them during his election bid. He pretty much dedicated himself to chasing their sorry asses out of Washington.
the rich asshole, as many predicted before his victory, suffers from having no real beliefs other than a drive to win at whatever cost
It was the Freedom Caucus that made life so unbearable for former Speaker John Boehner that he quit politics rather than put up with them. Paul Ryan, his replacement, has struggled just as mightily to work with them, a problem he foresaw when he initially resisted calls to take the job. It was Ryan who talked the rich asshole into making the repeal of Obamacare his first priority; now that it’s turned into a disaster the rich asshole is angry at Ryan, but also attacking the caucus. In other words, he’s fighting both sides while leaving himself isolated in the middle, a reflection of the crucial flaw that threatens his entire presidency. Any general will tell you a two-front war is not a recipe for success.
the rich asshole, as many predicted before his victory, suffers from having no real beliefs other than a drive to win at whatever cost. It not only makes him highly unreliable, but anathema to other politicians who fear throwing in their lot with so unstable and unpredictable a president. It’s like putting your faith in a human IED (improvised explosive device) – who knows what bump will set it off, and who the victims may be?
The dilemma could easily threaten the rich asshole’s entire presidency. His next major quest – a root-and-branch reform of the tax code, which the country badly needs – can’t possibly be achieved without significant compromises. But, as with the Obamacare initiative, moderate Republicans are likely to oppose extremes proposed by the Freedom Caucus, while conservatives are sure to work against any moderate measures they view as weak and insubstantial. It would take a skilled, subtle and diplomatic leader to bring the two together. the rich asshole is the opposite of that, and has surrounded himself with aides and advisors who, so far, have favoured his scorched-earth approach to every issue.
It’s lonely at the top. the rich asshole keeps making it even lonelier for himself. Maybe that’s why he holds so much sympathy for Russia, where they’re used to autocrats, and legislatures that know better than to object.
OK, so here are the mega ultra important tweets coming out of the Oval Office where Lord Cheeto the Sh*tstain on Humanity is currently doing rails off of a picture of Reagan on the Resolute Desk:
Just…what? The Clinton campaign ended in November of last year, you simpleton. The answer to your questions are “just…what?”, “are you seriously this stupid?” and “What in the everloving f*ck are you talking about?” We’re gonna also go with “no, no and no,” stupid. Try to get this through your massive pumpkinhead: nobody cares about a Fox and Friends investigation into nothing, John Podesta’s brother doesn’t exonerate you or your friends from colluding with Russians and…get the f*ck over your sorry-ass debate losses, you fool…the electoral college stole you an election. Just be happy about it and shut up.
Maybe we’re approaching this idiot wrong. Maybe if we all tell him he’s a wonderful person with the biggliest crowds and giant hands who makes the bestest of deals who we all admire, he’ll just get back to doing the only thing that won’t destroy our country…Playing golf.
‘That’s what happens with an unpopular president’: GOP allies flee the rich asshole as his poll numbers take a nosedive
Faced with historic low poll numbers after only slightly more than 70 days in office, President some rich asshole is becoming more isolated as fellow Republicans distance themselves from the chief executive after a string of policy failures.
According to the Washington Post, the rich asshole’s unorthodox governing style along with his unfamiliarity about how bills get passed has lawmakers from his own party moving away from him, with a former White House official stating, “That’s what happens when you have an unpopular president.”
Following the failure of Trumpcare to even reach the floor of the House for a vote due to pushback from the hardline Republican Freedom Caucus, the president has launched attacks on the members — including having his social media director call for one member to be defeated at the polls.
With the rich asshole making no effort to reach out to Democrats, and the president surrounding himself with family members including his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner, the rich asshole seems to be making more enemies than friends in Washington D.C.
“He seems both politically and personally isolated these days,” explained former White House adviser David Gergen. “He’s flailing because he doesn’t know where to find his natural allies.”
“Part of it is self-imposed,” agreed former RNC Chairman Michael Steele told the Post. “People know him, they see him at meetings, but it’s been hard for people in Congress and around it to get to know him in a way that’s helpful for the rich asshole.”
This past week Deputy Chief of Staff Katie Walsh resigned from the White House to work with an outside group created to help the president smooth the waters with lawmakers and get Republicans back in line.
Despite that, the rich asshole’s unpredictability makes it hard for Republicans to fully get behind the president whose poll numbers are collapsing as his administration is dogged by investigations and petty squabbles.
According to former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, the rich asshole’s popularity collapse makes it easy for Republicans to tend to their own business and challenge the president without worry that he can hurt their reelection prospects.
“That’s what happens when you have an unpopular president … popularity scares people,” Fleischer explained. “Lack of popularity emboldens them.”
‘Sociopathic’ the rich asshole will be impeached because he can’t change course or admit when he’s wrong
By Marty Kaplan/AlterNet
“I blame myself—it was my fault, and I take full responsibility for it,” some rich asshole never said, not once in his entire life.
Here’s what else the president didn’t say about the rout and ruin of repeal and replace: “I was clueless about health care policy. Instead of reading my briefing books or even my own bill, I played golf. I bullshitted my way through every meeting and phone call. And when it was explained to me that this dumpster fire of a bill would break my promise that everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they are now, which was a huge applause line by the way, I threw my own voters under the bus.”
In the wake of his Waterloo, instead of manning up, the rich asshole blamed Democrats for not voting to strip health insurance from 24 million people, not voting to cut Medicaid by $880 billion in order to cut taxes by $883 billion and not voting to obliterate the signature legislative accomplishment of the Barack Obama years.
“Look,” he complained with crocodile bafflement to the New York Times, “we got no Democratic votes. We got none, zero.” Yet the rich asshole and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan had not asked a single Democrat what it would take to get them to support a health care bill. “The good news,” the rich asshole said, seeing the sunny side of the catastrophe he predicts is coming, is that the Democrats “now own Obamacare.” Don’t blame me—it’ll be their fault when it explodes, not mine.
the rich asshole blamed Republicans, too. The morning of Friday, March 24, when the bill was still in play, he tweeted that if the Freedom Caucus stops his plan, they would be allowing Planned Parenthood to continue. That afternoon, amid the wreckage, the rich asshole told the Washington Post’s Robert Costa he was just an innocent bystander. “There are years of problems, great hatred and distrust” in the Republican Party, “and, you know, I came into the middle of it.”
White House aides, bravely speaking without attribution, blamed Ryan for snookering the rookie-in-chief into tackling Obamacare before tax reform. the rich asshole himself told Costa, “I don’t blame Paul.” He repeated it: “I don’t blame Paul.” Then again: “I don’t blame Paul at all.”
The laddie doth protest too much, methinks. By tweet time Saturday morning, clairvoyantly touting Jeanine Pirro’s Saturday night Fox News show, the rich asshole had found a surrogate to stick the knife in Ryan without his fingerprints on it. “This is not on President the rich asshole,” Pirro said, avowing that “no one expected a businessman,” a “complete outsider,” to understand “the complicated ins and outs of Washington.” No, it’s on Ryan, she said. Ryan must step down.
Blame precedes politics. In Western civilization’s genesis story, Adam blamed Eve for tempting him, and he blamed God for Eve. But America’s genesis story contains a noble, if apocryphal, counter-narrative: When George Washington’s father asked him who chopped down the cherry tree, the future father of his country didn’t blame someone else—he copped to it. That’s the legacy Harry Truman claimed when he put “The buck stops here” sign on his Oval Office desk.
But the rich asshole is the consummate blame artist, a buck-passer on a sociopathic scale. He kicked off his campaign by blaming Mexico for sending us rapists and stealing our jobs. He blamed Hillary Clinton for founding the birther movement. He blamed President Obama for founding ISIS. He blamed Obama’s Labor Department for publishing a “phony” unemployment rate. He blamed 3 million illegal voters for his losing the popular vote to Clinton. He blamed the botched raid in Yemen on U.S. generals. When U.S. District Judge James Robart ruled against his Muslim travel ban, he blamed Robart for future terrorism: “If something happens, blame him and the court system.” He blamed “fake news” for treating Michael Flynn, “a wonderful man” he had fired as his national security adviser, “very, very unfairly.” He blamed Obama for wiretapping the rich asshole Tower. He made his spokesman blame British intelligence for carrying that out. When GCHQ called that a crock, the rich asshole played artful dodger: “All we did was quote … a very talented lawyer on Fox. And so you shouldn’t be talking to me, you should be talking to Fox.”
Obamacare is imperfect but fixable. But the rich asshole wants to bomb it, not improve it. He wants to light the fuse and then blame Democrats for exploding it. the rich asshole could shore up the insurance exchanges that cover 10 million Americans by marketing them when enrollment opens again in November—but I bet he won’t. He could instruct government lawyers to appeal a lawsuit halting federal subsidies for co-payments and deductibles of low-income enrollees that House Republicans won last year—but I bet he won’t. On the other hand, he has the power to narrow the essential benefits Obamacare requires insurers to provide by, say, limiting prescription drug coverage and lowering the number of visits allowed for mental health treatment or physical therapy—and I bet he will.
Will the rich asshole get away with it? He’s spent a lifetime banging his highchair and blaming the dog for his mess. No wonder he calls the free press fake news; no wonder he calls citizen activists paid protesters. You call someone who gets away with blaming others “unaccountable.” You know what the antonym of that is? Impeachable.
Our Dishonest President
It was no secret during the campaign that some rich asshole was a narcissist and a demagogue who used fear and dishonesty to appeal to the worst in American voters. The Times called him unprepared and unsuited for the job he was seeking, and said his election would be a “catastrophe.”
Still, nothing prepared us for the magnitude of this train wreck. Like millions of other Americans, we clung to a slim hope that the new president would turn out to be all noise and bluster, or that the people around him in the White House would act as a check on his worst instincts, or that he would be sobered and transformed by the awesome responsibilities of office.
Instead, seventy-some days in — and with about 1,400 to go before his term is completed — it is increasingly clear that those hopes were misplaced.
In a matter of weeks, President the rich asshole has taken dozens of real-life steps that, if they are not reversed, will rip families apart, foul rivers and pollute the air, intensify the calamitous effects of climate change and profoundly weaken the system of American public education for all.
His attempt to de-insure millions of people who had finally received healthcare coverage and, along the way, enact a massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich has been put on hold for the moment. But he is proceeding with his efforts to defang the government’s regulatory agencies and bloat the Pentagon’s budget even as he supposedly retreats from the global stage.
These are immensely dangerous developments which threaten to weaken this country’s moral standing in the world, imperil the planet and reverse years of slow but steady gains by marginalized or impoverished Americans. But, chilling as they are, these radically wrongheaded policy choices are not, in fact, the most frightening aspect of the the rich asshole presidency.
What is most worrisome about the rich asshole is the rich asshole himself. He is a man so unpredictable, so reckless, so petulant, so full of blind self-regard, so untethered to reality that it is impossible to know where his presidency will lead or how much damage he will do to our nation. His obsession with his own fame, wealth and success, his determination to vanquish enemies real and imagined, his craving for adulation — these traits were, of course, at the very heart of his scorched-earth outsider campaign; indeed, some of them helped get him elected. But in a real presidency in which he wields unimaginable power, they are nothing short of disastrous.
Although his policies are, for the most part, variations on classic Republican positions (many of which would have been undertaken by a President Ted Cruz or a President Marco Rubio), they become far more dangerous in the hands of this imprudent and erratic man. Many Republicans, for instance, support tighter border security and a tougher response to illegal immigration, but the rich asshole’s cockamamie border wall, his impracticable campaign promise to deport all 11 million people living in the country illegally and his blithe disregard for the effect of such proposals on the U.S. relationship with Mexico turn a very bad policy into an appalling one.
In the days ahead, The Times editorial board will look more closely at the new president, with a special attention to three troubling traits:
1the rich asshole’s shocking lack of respect for those fundamental rules and institutions on which our government is based. Since Jan. 20, he has repeatedly disparaged and challenged those entities that have threatened his agenda, stoking public distrust of essential institutions in a way that undermines faith in American democracy. He has questioned the qualifications of judges and the integrity of their decisions, rather than acknowledging that even the president must submit to the rule of law. He has clashed with his own intelligence agencies, demeaned government workers and questioned the credibility of the electoral system and the Federal Reserve. He has lashed out at journalists, declaring them “enemies of the people,” rather than defending the importance of a critical, independent free press. His contempt for the rule of law and the norms of government are palpable.
2His utter lack of regard for truth. Whether it is the easily disprovable boasts about the size of his inauguration crowd or his unsubstantiated assertion that Barack Obama bugged the rich asshole Tower, the new president regularly muddies the waters of fact and fiction. It’s difficult to know whether he actually can’t distinguish the real from the unreal — or whether he intentionally conflates the two to befuddle voters, deflect criticism and undermine the very idea of objective truth. Whatever the explanation, he is encouraging Americans to reject facts, to disrespect science, documents, nonpartisanship and the mainstream media — and instead to simply take positions on the basis of ideology and preconceived notions. This is a recipe for a divided country in which differences grow deeper and rational compromise becomes impossible.
3His scary willingness to repeat white supremacy conspiracy theories, racist memes and crackpot, out-of-the-mainstream ideas. Again, it is not clear whether he believes them or merely uses them. But to cling to disproven “alternative” facts; to retweet racists; to make unverifiable or false statements about rigged elections and fraudulent voters; to buy into discredited conspiracy theories first floated on fringe websites and in supermarket tabloids — these are all of a piece with the Barack Obama birther claptrap that the rich asshole was peddling years ago and which brought him to political prominence. It is deeply alarming that a president would lend the credibility of his office to ideas that have been rightly rejected by politicians from both major political parties.
Where will this end? Will the rich asshole moderate his crazier campaign positions as time passes? Or will he provoke confrontation with Iran, North Korea or China, or disobey a judge’s order or order a soldier to violate the Constitution? Or, alternately, will the system itself — the Constitution, the courts, the permanent bureaucracy, the Congress, the Democrats, the marchers in the streets — protect us from him as he alienates more and more allies at home and abroad, steps on his own message and creates chaos at the expense of his ability to accomplish his goals? Already, the rich asshole’s job approval rating has been hovering in the mid-30s, according to Gallup, a shockingly low level of support for a new president. And that was before his former national security advisor, Michael Flynn, offered to cooperate last week with congressional investigators looking into the connection between the Russian government and the the rich asshole campaign.
On Inauguration Day, we wrote on this page that it was not yet time to declare a state of “wholesale panic” or to call for blanket “non-cooperation” with the the rich asshole administration. Despite plenty of dispiriting signals, that is still our view. The role of the rational opposition is to stand up for the rule of law, the electoral process, the peaceful transfer of power and the role of institutions; we should not underestimate the resiliency of a system in which laws are greater than individuals and voters are as powerful as presidents. This nation survived Andrew Jackson and Richard Nixon. It survived slavery. It survived devastating wars. Most likely, it will survive again.
But if it is to do so, those who oppose the new president’s reckless and heartless agenda must make their voices heard. Protesters must raise their banners. Voters must turn out for elections. Members of Congress — including and especially Republicans — must find the political courage to stand up to the rich asshole. Courts must safeguard the Constitution. State legislators must pass laws to protect their citizens and their policies from federal meddling. All of us who are in the business of holding leaders accountable must redouble our efforts to defend the truth from his cynical assaults.
The United States is not a perfect country, and it has a great distance to go before it fully achieves its goals of liberty and equality. But preserving what works and defending the rules and values on which democracy depends are a shared responsibility. Everybody has a role to play in this drama.
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