President Donald Trump

Going from Flynn to McMaster feels like going from Beetle Bailey to Jack Ryan. But I don't know much about him. He is, importantly, full of degrees and the author of Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam, based on his PhD thesis. How do we do from a marginal Putin stooge/Russian asset/whateverthefuck to a highly qualified and possibly super ethical choice in one fell swoop? How does someone like McMaster accept an appointment like this if there isn't something wrong with him? I do have a hypothesis to explain part of this: Trump…
As the Republican led US Senate has voted to confirm (or deny) the party leader's cabinet picks, they've done a poor job, approving, for example, people who have acted in direct opposition to the areas of government they are expected to serve, or in some cases, being abjectly incompetent. The Republicans in the Senate were not vetting the nominees. Some of the Democrats were, but even there, we saw failures of conscious. The Senators need to be reminded that the critical choices made by the Trump administration tend to be poor ones. Look, for example, at the first NSA choice. General…
The most recent polling indicates that Donald Trump has a 43% approval and 53% disapproval rating. So he is not exactly loved by the American people, which is odd because he seems so lovable. And, he has told us that the American people love him. And his victory in the November election was unbelievably big league. But, that's how it is, according the scientific polling. Approval and favorability are apparently slightly different, but the pattern holds. The same polling tells us that the American people have a 45% favorable attitude about the president, which would be tremendous for any…
Neil Gorsuch is a significant and meaningful choice for SCOTUS. The image above is not fake, it really is his Harvard Law yearbook photo. If he was a Democratic pick, that one image would end him. Since he is a Republican pick, democrats have a Big Tent instead of a spine, and Republicans have no ethical floor to avoid crashing into, he will be confirmed. Judge Neil Gorsuch speaks, after US President Donald Trump nominated him for the Supreme Court, at the White House in Washington, DC, on January 31, 2017.President Donald Trump on nominated federal appellate judge Neil Gorsuch as his…
Those of us concerned with climate change are especially concerned with the nomination of former Exxon chief Rex Tillerson to be Secretary of State. Well, Rex Tillerson was just confirmed by the US Senate. Donald Trump is the least liked president ever for this point in a term. And, Rex Tillerson is now the least liked Secretary of State, with a 56-43 vote approving his appointment. Most of the time a SOC gets close to 100% confirming votes. This is, in fact, true of most cabinet positions most of the time. Once you know a certain nominee is going to win, you just join in, for the…
A brief update: This morning, Senate Republicans set aside the rules that say that both parties must be present, with at least one member, for a committee vote to advance a Presidential nominee for a cabinet appointment. In other words, as outlined below, our system is based not only on enforceable laws but also on rules that only work if everyone involves agrees to not be the bully on the playground who ignores the rules. The Republicans are the bully on the playground. The system requires honest actor playing by agreed on rules. So, without the honest actor, you get this. This fits…
From ClimateTruth.org, in response to Trump gag orders on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA): “President Trump and his administration have ignored scientific reality, and now they’re trying to hide it. “Merely five days into Donald Trump’s presidency, the administration is silencing the agencies tasked with protecting our environment, our health, and our food supply. This gag order sets a dangerous precedent and is sending a chilling message to civil servants throughout the country. “We knew the Trump administration would go…
It is generally felt that Trump's claims of voter fraud, especially, apparently, by illegal aliens -- Or some kind of alien, not sure -- could be a prelude, or excuse for some kind of widespread voter suppression campaign. In any event, these repeated claims were once thought of as an odd and embarassing bit of yammering by the President elect, but now they have become a keystone of the White House's current activism, foregrounded by the hapless Sean Spicer, who appears to not believe the claims himself. From NBC: The White House doubled down on President Donald Trump's widely debunked…
This is not a time to be distracted, to turn away from politics, to eschew activism. In fact, if you are an American Citizen, you have to look back at your life and recognize that you screwed up, in two ways. First, whatever time you spent agitating and activating and acting out, turns out, was not enough. You needed to spend something like 10% more time on that. Second, whatever decisions you made as to exactly what sort of activism you would do on a given day were likely flawed. Instead of yammering about Bernie after the primary you should have been going after Trump. At the beginning of…
The West Wing Version: Josh, Toby, Leo, and Donna are in Leo's office. They have just gotten word that a major auto manufacturer plans to build a plant in Mexico, and will likely close a corresponding plant in Michigan. Josh is pacing, Leo is behind his desk, Donna is standing near the door, and Toby is sitting in a chair smoking an unlit cigar. All four had just come from a poker game with the President and others. Josh Leyman: Screw the auto industry. If they decide to move another plant to Mexico, we just slap a 35% tariff on them! Leo Mcgarry: That won't go well, Josh, and you know it.…
Yes there are Nixon-Trump similarities. But in the end, probably not many. (A lot of Congresspersons boycotted his second inaugural, by the way). Also, for those who are not familiar with Watergate, I'll tell you this: The medium to worst case scenario of Trump's election, which would include Russian Hacking and possibly the Trump Dossier (but you don't need the dossier in this scenario) is about 400% worse than Watergate. The Watergate scandal, after which we now name all scandals, was also about stealing an election. It is not as clear that the Plumbers stole the election for Nixon that it…
This is a descriptive model of Donald Trump's behavior, which ultimately works out to a prediction that Donald Trump won't last very long. In an evolutionary sense, at least. I've found that many people use the term "spite" incorrectly. Many assume it has to do with vitriol or nastiness, or otherwise, is motivated negative behavior of some kind. This is not even close to the scientific definition of the term. A daffodil plant can carry out an act of spite, and a daffodil plant is unlikely to engage in motivated behavior. Spite involves carrying out an act where the ultimate cost to…
A lot of people are just catching up on who John Lewis is. One way to do that is to read his memoir, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement. U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) is presented with the 2010 Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama. He is a senior African American Representative to the House who was famously involved in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, along side Doctor King. If you watch any news at all you've seen him plenty of times. He is now also known as the latest person Donald Trump decided to denigrate and insult on Twitter. I would like to see everyone…
ADDED: It has been suggested that I clarify an important point about this post. So, dear reader, please understand that the information provided here is my best attempt at analysis of the information that I have available. There is clearly conjecture here. So, of course, read all this with a grain of salt. The size of that grain of salt can be as small or large as you like. I also amended the title of the post. -gtl ADDED Feb 1 I'll just be putin' this link here: http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/01/news/fsb-kaspersky-arrests/index.html?sr=twcnni020217fsb-kaspersky-arrests0129AMStoryPhoto…
He's trying, in the hearings, to not let it look this way, but the truth is that he and Exxon Mobile stand to benefit a great deal from a Tillerson SOC. Also, Russia will benefit a great deal. Putting it a slightly different way, Tillerson's appointment makes the most sense of you replace "Trump" with "Putin" in sentences that refer to who the leader of the United States is. The composite graphic above explains this. The context for those graphics is here:
Probably not, but it is worth brief consideration. Mainstream media is reporting that USMC General James Mad Dog Mattis's Senate confirmation hearing for Secretary of Defense is stalled because Mattis is a no show for a related hearing in the House. The reason for the cancellation of his appearance is at this writing a mystery, but it is known that it was the Trump transition team's word to the Senate, not the other way around, that underlies the delay. Here is what I was originally going to suggest: Mad Dog Mattis, as I have previously written, is in the position of breaking his solemn…
Many bad things happened at the Trump news conference. Many bad things. Many many. Unbelievably bad things, I tell ya. But one thing that happened, as bad as the rest of the things, and covered by the Washington Post, has not gotten sufficient attention. President-elect Donald Trump twice suggested at his news conference that states that voted for him overwhelmingly during the election would get special attention from his White House, especially on the issue of jobs and trade. ... many states “did get it right” by voting for him and those states would have better jobs, security and…
It has been suggested that President Elect Trump has been compromised by Vladimir Putin and/or the Russian Intelligence agency. This allegation suggests that Putin and/or the FSB have information, including video of unsavory sexual activities of some sort (loosely defined) and documentation of inappropriate business activities, that could be used to blackmail the future United States President. Since this is something I have been saying for weeks that we would eventually learn, I'm compelled to make a few comments. What did we sort of know and when did we sort of know it? In the weeks…
Donald Trump is meeting, this morning, with the editor of Vogue and the owners of Vogue's overarching publishing company. This can only mean one thing. We will be seeing The Donald on the cover of the famous magazine sooner than later. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/817374875962769408 This revelation comes after a long night of sweaty drunken tweets by the Oligarch, in which he compared himself favorably too Arnold Schwarzenegger. The good news: Trump's mind is on things other than how to run the United States government. That has to be a good thing.
Putin probably owns Trump. In the past, Trump has spent enough high profile time traveling in and out of Russia, that any smart intelligence agency would have long ago gotten the goods on such a sloppy self absorbed person. Assume there are movies. Young girls. Whatever. Putin probably owns Trump. The ex KGB officer probably owns a lot of people, a lot of foreign rich or influential individuals. That's how these things work. Trump is a man that relies on the image of great personal wealth. But, if he has great personal wealth it is a mere couple of billion or so. Alternatively, he may…