The Trump Presidency

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And you, of course. Everybody but the very rich and white got screwed in the last one, and in 2000, and in 2004, and in 1980, and in 1984
What is it that you want? Food, shelter, liberty? What is it that you are lacking at this time?
 
What is it that you want? Food, shelter, liberty? What is it that you are lacking at this time?
Justice, equality, clean air and water, peace, and a financial system that isn't stacked against the majority. For a start.
 
Justice, equality, clean air and water, peace, and a financial system that isn't stacked against the majority. For a start.
We have a justice system. How would you improve it? Equality of opportunity or outcome? The air and water seem fine. The financial system gives us the quality of life we now enjoy?
 
We have a justice system. How would you improve it? Equality of opportunity or outcome?
Doing away with for-profit prisons that actively benefit from higher rates of reoffense and incarceration, and thus have zero incentive to actually rehabilitate someone would be a wonderful start.

The air and water seem fine.
I guess you haven't been paying attention -

http://www.lung.org/assets/documents/healthy-air/state-of-the-air/state-of-the-air-2017.pdf
The “State of the Air 2017” report shows that, even with continued improvement, too many people in the United States live where the air is unhealthy for them to breathe.
“State of the Air 2017” shows that more than four in 10 people had unhealthy air quality in their communities.
The “State of the Air 2017” found continued improvement in air quality in 2013-2015 in ozone and year-round particle pollution, but an unrelenting increase in dangerous spikes in particle pollution

http://archive.epi.yale.edu/epi/country-rankings
The US comes in 33rd in overall environmental health ranking, with a score of 67.5... barely a passing grade

http://archive.epi.yale.edu/epi/country-profile/united-states-america
We are 38th in air quality, 36th in water and sanitation, and 35th in health overall.

The financial system gives us the quality of life we now enjoy?

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/overall-full-list
The United States dropped from 4th to 7th in ranking of "best country overall" to live in since last year.

The new "tax reform" being proposed would see the wealthiest amongst us get massive tax cuts... with absolutely no plan on how to make up the difference, short of slashing medicaid/medicare and other social welfare programs.

Yeah... our financial system is "giving us a quality of life we now enjoy"... if you are in the top 10% or so, perhaps.
 
We have a justice system. How would you improve it? Equality of opportunity or outcome? The air and water seem fine. The financial system gives us the quality of life we now enjoy?
Equal access to quality representation. Often poor people who are innocent will plea out. This is a well known issue. Bail is another issue. People with money can bail out and keep their jobs. The air and water are not fine, but I would expect a conservative to know that. The financial system rewards extreme risk with the nation's money, my money. And no one gets prosecuted for financial crimes to the same degree as other crimes due to legal corruption.
 
Doing away with for-profit prisons that actively benefit from higher rates of reoffense and incarceration, and thus have zero incentive to actually rehabilitate someone would be a wonderful start.

I've never done any time in prison, so I can't comment from personal experience. But I do believe you have a point, that there is a profit motive tied to the industry. However, how do you propose we rehabilitate criminals? I mean, that sounds great.


I guess you haven't been paying attention -

http://www.lung.org/assets/documents/healthy-air/state-of-the-air/state-of-the-air-2017.pdf

http://archive.epi.yale.edu/epi/country-rankings
The US comes in 33rd in overall environmental health ranking, with a score of 67.5... barely a passing grade

http://archive.epi.yale.edu/epi/country-profile/united-states-america
We are 38th in air quality, 36th in water and sanitation, and 35th in health overall.

Yet we have the luxury to fill our toilets with drinking water. There's a contrast between what we have and what others don't have.

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/overall-full-list
The United States dropped from 4th to 7th in ranking of "best country overall" to live in since last year.

People are still willing to swim with sharks to get here.

The new "tax reform" being proposed would see the wealthiest amongst us get massive tax cuts... with absolutely no plan on how to make up the difference, short of slashing medicaid/medicare and other social welfare programs.

I have mixed feelings about this. We've been living on credit for so long, I believe no amount of taxes will dig us out of the hole. If I ever collect a Social Security check, I will count myself as one of the lucky. I take no pleasure in suggesting that government assistance might come to an end in the future, but I'm not ready to blame the wealthy should that happen.

Yeah... our financial system is "giving us a quality of life we now enjoy"... if you are in the top 10% or so, perhaps.

I'm searching for a reply to the above. I suppose I'm asking myself whether I care that other people have more than me. At the same time I measure my own good fortune relative to that of others.
 
Yet we have the luxury to fill our toilets with drinking water. There's a contrast between what we have and what others don't have.
We call that the soft bigotry of low expectations. Most people can drink tap water, so why bother about the 1% controlling the rest of us like feudal lords?
 
What is it that you want? Food, shelter, liberty? What is it that you are lacking at this time?
Health care, reversal of environmental degradation, infrastructure and environmental maintenance, education of children, reduction in the prison population, reduction in racially focused violence and injustice, lower burden of debt, protection from fraud and theft, access to capital, reduction of economic inequality, protection of public resources (fresh water, soil fertility, forested landscape, key organisms and ecological cycles, etc) - - - - and so forth.

Competent governance, in short. That would include protection from the rich and powerful.

All of these affect my food, shelter, and liberty, btw. Which is needless to say - of course you knew that, right? You aren't a fucking moron yourself, after all.
People are still willing to swim with sharks to get here
People will swim with sharks to get to Bangladesh (from which others flee to India etc), to Kenya, to Burma (from which others are fleeing to Bangladesh), to Malaysia, to Indonesia, to Australia, to Thailand, to Spain, to Greece, to Armenia, to Germany, to Syria not long ago (fleeing from the US, in part, they were), to Canada, to China.
The question is what they flee. And in the US case, what they flee is very often the consequences of bad US governmental policy in their home towns - over the decades we've seen refugees from the death squads in Guatemala, the death squads in Haiti, the narco-terrorism in Mexico and Colombia, the despotism installed by the US in Chile and Peru, and so forth. Even the Cuban situation was shaped primarily by US policy.

Coming to the US to escape the US government and its allies - there is some credit there, in that possibility. But not bragging rights.
I take no pleasure in suggesting that government assistance might come to an end in the future, but I'm not ready to blame the wealthy should that happen
Ok, maybe you are a fucking moron.
 
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#incompetence | #WhatTheyVotedFor


The setup and punch line, courtesy Steve and the Conservatives:

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) has effectively staged an intervention of late, making clear his belief that Donald Trump is unfit for the presidency. There have been several reports this week suggesting the Tennessee Republican's GOP colleagues quietly agree with him, but they lack the courage to say so.

And while their silence is tough to defend given the seriousness of the problem, it's arguably worse to hear some Republicans make the case that Corker's criticisms should remain private. Politico reported this morning, for example:

House Speaker Paul Ryan on Wednesday downplayed the ongoing feud between President Donald Trump and GOP Sen. Bob Corker, advising the two men to talk through their differences but also joking that he's been there, too.

The Wisconsin Republican, known for his no-drama approach to Trump, quipped that "I've had my share too" when asked about the Corker-Trump spat…. "I think just talk it out amongst yourselves," Ryan suggested. "My advice is for these two gentlemen to sit down and just talk through their issues."

That would be Benen↱, not Bannon.

Meanwhile, there is also a strange, recursively conflicted and conflicting feeling about it. To the one, it's not surprising, as lowball, lowbrow, and LCD internet behavior has been creeping into mainstream politics over the years, particularly and especially Republican; to the other, there is something about the prospect of sitting around and talking through issues with someone who has no intention of attending in good faith, and, furthermore, this has to do with nuclear war, that just seems pointedly, even exponentially escalated compared to more mundane right-wing machismo about penis size and incontinence.

Then again, this is also yet another crystallization of "Republican" or "conservative" principle in these United States. Nuclear war seems just one of many potential cataclysms Speaker Ryan would glady bear witness to if it means he can crow that he was right all along about how government just doesn't work.

And don't bother asking when "antisocial" became a political platform; it always was. How else do groups convince others to allow a monopoly on force? The difference between government and a protection racket is supposed to be consent of the governed, and, you know, we've all spent pretty much all of my lifetime, and most of my parents', at least, pretending none of us want nuclear war. That is to say, the goverened have largely consented to something else.

Speaker Ryan's antisocial behavior aids and abets the endangerment of the human species. And of course it does; he's part of the government, government doesn't work, and this is what the winners consented to; that is to say, this is #WhatTheyVotedFor.
____________________

Notes:

Bade, Rachel. "Ryan: Trump and Corker should ‘just talk it out'". Politico. 11 October 2017. Politico.com. 11 October 2017. http://politi.co/2hCzQSH

Benen, Steve. "Republicans learn the wrong lessons from Bob Corker's candor". msnbc. 11 October 2017. msnbc.com. 11 October 2017. http://on.msnbc.com/2xB1IBs
 
So Bob Corker joins a long list of eminent persons who consider Trump to be unfit for POTUS.
It would be interesting to see:
  1. A list of all members of the senate and congress that have publicly declared that Trump is unfit.
  2. That a secret ballot of Senate and congressional members to indicate confidence or lack thereof in Trump was carried out and a genuine indication of the degree of confidence could be ascertained.
 
#gunsgunsguns | #WhatTheyVotedFor


So, this is how it works:

The United States does not have a whole lot of restrictions on who can purchase firearms. Still, the Brady Handgun Prevention Act stipulates that when a gun dealer runs a background check, and finds that a would-be customer is a “fugitive from justice,” they can’t sell that person a gun. But there’s been a decade-long dispute between the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives about who, precisely, counts as a fugitive.

The FBI has argued that anyone with an outstanding warrant is a fugitive, at least for the purposes of the Brady law. The ATF has insisted that only people with outstanding warrants who have crossed state lines to avoid prosecution are fugitives. Earlier this year, the Trump Justice Department took the ATF’s side — and drastically narrowed the category of suspected criminals who are legally barred from purchasing firearms.

This week, the the Atlanta Journal-Constitution obtained FBI records that document the far-reaching consequences of this administrative change:

Although the revision has only been in effect for six months, there has already been a noticeable dip in the number of gun sales denied because the potential buyer was a “fugitive from justice.” According to NICS data, there was an 80 percent decline, compared to the same period in 2016.

…The FBI records show that 518,670 names have been removed from the nationwide background check database, meaning those individuals would not automatically be banned from obtaining a gun.

Nationwide, there were 1,581 gun sales or carry permits sought by fugitives that were declined between March and August in 2016; 18 percent of all denials. This year, there were 321 denials based on entries in the “fugitive from justice” category in NICS, or 4 percent of all denials nationwide.

“I cannot believe this has happened,” Vernon Keenan, the director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, told the paper. “I told them this is a problem.”


(Levitz↱)

Most assuredly, this is #WhatTheyVotedFor.
____________________

Notes:

Levitz, Eric. "Trump Administration Gave 500,000 Fugitives the Right to Buy Guns". New York. 11 October 2017. NYMag.com. 12 October 2017. http://nym.ag/2yitAJC
 
I believe if the media can show that a large majority of Congress and the Senate believe that Trump is unfit for POTUS and be able to prove it using public video, written testimony etc then the people of the USA and we as a "world" can all say that Trump is believed to be unfit by the majority of his own government.

Trump would then have to go on knowing that every one knows what they know and that, for Trump would be extremely difficult, given his intense narcissistic predilection.

I do not believe he has won one single friend in the international community. Even Putin is avoiding him. He appears to be at war with everyone.
 
I believe if the media can show that a large majority of Congress and the Senate believe that Trump is unfit for POTUS and be able to prove it using public video, written testimony etc then the people of the USA and we as a "world" can all say that Trump is believed to be unfit by the majority of his own government.

Sadly, this probably won't happen - the GOP is too worried about keeping their hold on power... notice, it is only the ones not looking to run for reelection that have had the stones to call Trump out on his bullshit?
 
Sadly, this probably won't happen - the GOP is too worried about keeping their hold on power... notice, it is only the ones not looking to run for reelection that have had the stones to call Trump out on his bullshit?
There must be at least 10 or so that have declared him unfit.. in what hey have said or written in the past.
Add that to all the other testimonies and so on.. and you get a pretty damning list of erudite people all saying the same thing.

They just need to be presented as a collective statement and I reckon Trump would probably implode atomically... :)

but you may be right...

just thoughts..
 
There must be at least 10 or so that have declared him unfit.. in what hey have said or written in the past.
Add that to all the other testimonies and so on.. and you get a pretty damning list of erudite people all saying the same thing.

They just need to be presented as a collective statement and I reckon Trump would probably implode atomically... :)

but you may be right...

just thoughts..
What to make of Tillerson's apparent "moron" comment?

I wonder if it could be based on Trump still dispensing with briefings or showing no sign of having understood them.

I doubt any of his close colleagues would lightly give vent to feelings of intellectual superiority. There are surely far worse traits than poor intelligence as Trump has shown( brazen dishonesty first among them)

Reagan was considered an intellectual lightweight but gave the impression of decency and of being prepared to learn as best he could.

Of course he did have this acting skill which may have helped him throw the public off the scent.
 
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