Showing posts with label Presidency. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Presidency. Show all posts

Sunday, April 29, 2018

New poll shows that majority of Republicans have no interest in seeing a woman become President. Ever!

And this surprises you?
Courtesy of Newsweek: 

Asked if they'd see a woman president in their lifetime, 20 percent of respondents said they "definitely will," while 43 percent said they "probably will." A total of 63 percent believed they would likely see a female president before they die. 

YouGov also asked, "Do you personally hope that the United States elects a woman president of the United States in your lifetime, or not?" Sixty-six percent of all respondents said yes, while 34 percent said no.

A comfortable majority of Republicans—59 percent—responded no, they don't hope to see a woman president in their lifetime, according to YouGov. In comparison, 89 percent of Democrats and 63 percent of independents responded that yes, they hoped to see a woman president before they died.

Well gee perhaps it wasn't Hillary's politics that made the Republicans hate her so much, but rather her lack of a penis.

Instead of having a Vajayjay running the country they looked for the very embodiment of a dick.

And that boys and girls is how you get this guy.


Friday, April 27, 2018

Just in case you are still not aware of how badly Donald Trump crashed and burned during his Fox and Friends interview yesterday, I present this tweet as proof.

Keep in mind that was just one small piece of a rambling 30 minute interview, during which Trump seemed to be purposefully committing political and legal suicide.

Here are some other highlights (Or if you prefer, lowlights.).

On his, at the time, pick to head the VA Ronny Jackson:

"(Jackson) has a perfect record. He's got this beautiful record unblemished."

Boy that worked out well didn't it?

Decision to fire James Comey:

"I did a great thing for the American people by firing him."

Uh huh.

On interfering with the Mueller investigation:

" I'm very disappointed in my Justice Department but because of the fact that it's going under, and I think you'll understand this, I have decided that I won't be involved. I may change my mind at some point because what's going on is a disgrace."

"And our Justice Department, which I try and stay away from, but at some point I won't."

So he MIGHT interfere. But then again, he might not.

Trump history lesson:

"If you go back to the Civil War it was the Republicans that really did the thing." 

Yeah, you know the Republicans did the thing, at that place, during, you know, the time.

Trump grades his own presidency:

"I would give myself an A+."

I have to wonder if after this bizarre performance even Trump's most staunch supporters would give his presidency anything but an F-?

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Stormy Daniels lawyer Michael Avenatti is my new Nostradamus.

Look I don't always put a lot of stock in predictions, but you have to admit that Avenatti is hitting them out of the park right now.

The guy seems to be about three or four moves ahead of everybody, and he has been right with his predictions about 100 % of the time.

If I were standing at a roulette table and saw Avenatti put a bet down I would throw all of my cash on that same number.

Friday, April 13, 2018

ThisTime Magazine tweet is a must see.

From the Time Magazine article: 

Since the night of Nov. 8, 2016, Trump’s political and philosophical opponents have been publicly and repeatedly asking, How long can this last? Those who have concluded “not much longer” have been vexed time after time. After all, this is a man who defied convention and criticism to achieve the highest office in the country, not to mention one who spent decades honing his abilities as a media provocateur. Skilled as Trump has been at deploying suspense, misdirection and invective to his advantage over the last 15 months, the Trump reality show appears closer than ever to colliding with reality itself.

It is hard to believe this is not the case.

But then again, as pointed out in this article, we have though that time and time again.

Tuesday, April 03, 2018

The cover of New York Magazine.

I always see Donald Trump as a pig so it took me a second to see that they added photoshop.

Monday, April 02, 2018

Robert Reich asks "Is Donald Trump the Worst President in American History?" Is this a trick question?

Courtesy of Common Dreams:  

When he threatens to loosen federal libel laws so he can sue news organizations that are critical of him and revoke licenses of networks critical of him, he isn’t just bullying the media. He’s threatening the constitutionally guaranteed freedom and integrity of the press. 

When he equated Neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members with counter-demonstrators in Charlottesville, Virginia, by blaming “both sides” for the violence, he wasn’t being neutral. He was condoning white supremacists, thereby undermining the constitution’s guarantee of equal rights. 

When he pardoned Joe Arpaio, the former sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, for a criminal contempt conviction, he wasn’t just signaling it’s okay for the police to engage in violations of civil rights. He was also subverting the rule of law by impairing the judiciary’s power to force public officials to abide by court decisions. 

When he criticized NFL players for kneeling during the national anthem, he wasn’t just demanding they demonstrate their patriotism. He was disrespecting their – and, indirectly, everyone’s – freedom of speech. 

When he berates the intelligence agencies and the federal bureau of investigation, he isn’t just questioning their competence. He’s suggesting they’re engaged in a giant conspiracy to remove him from office – potentially inviting his most ardent supporters to engage in a new civil war. 

When he boasts that he made up information in a meeting with the prime minister of Canada, he isn’t just undermining his own credibility. He’s undermining the credibility of the united states in the eyes of the world. 

Donald Trump is degrading the core institutions and values of our democracy. 

Spoiler alert: So that answer appears to be "YES!"

Which means we are likely living through the worst presidency this country has ever endured. 

There are lessons which need to be learned here, and steps that should be taken to prevent something like this from happening again.

However I do not know exactly how those changes to our democratic process would be implemented, or even what they would look like.

All I know is that if we do not figure something out, our democracy will not be stolen from us by outside forces, but rather we will run it off a cliff all on our own.

Saturday, February 17, 2018

Donald Trump has set a new record by going an entire year without holding a news conference.

Hurry get him off the stage, they're asking questions.
Courtesy of CNN: 

Exactly one year ago today, Donald Trump held the first formal solo news conference of his presidency. 

He hasn't held a single one since. 

That puts him dead last among the group of recent presidents. In his first year in office, President Barack Obama held 11 formal news conferences while his predecessor, George W. Bush, held four. Bill Clinton held 14. George H.W. Bush held a whopping 26! (All of these stats come courtesy of Michael Calderone's terrific "Morning Media" newsletter.) 

Trump has made no secret of his disdain for the press and the standard conventions of how a president interacts with the media. More so than any president that has come before him, Trump utilizes the media -- and his base's hatred of it -- to his political advantage. 

The fact that he hasn't held a solo news conference in a full year will be greeted with joy by many of Trump's backers. Good, they will say. You media jackals are only out to get him! 

Which, of course, isn't true. And misses the broader point of why presidential press conferences are important for a healthy democracy. 

The President -- be it Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton, Tyler, Monroe or Washington -- is a hugely powerful figure. Decisions he makes have profound impacts on real peoples' lives. From what Trump does -- if anything -- in the wake of the Parkland, Florida, school shooting to his tax policy to immigration to a hundred other big and small decisions he makes on a daily basis, it all matters. Bigly.

Say it with me folks, "Snowflake!"

I cannot believe that Trump's supporters bought that bullshit tough guy image of his.

This is by far the weakest, most cowardly, and least effective president that we have seen in over a hundred years.

Barack Obama's retrospective job approval rating is 63%.

Courtesy of Gallup: 

Barack Obama's legacy appears to be on the right track, as 63% of Americans in hindsight say they approve of the way he handled his job. Gallup's first measure of Obama's retrospective job approval rating places him behind only John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan among the 10 most recent presidents. Richard Nixon is rated worst today for how he handled his job, with 28% approving.

Actually whoever typed this up made a mistake as George H. Bush is also rated higher than Obama by a point, which I find unacceptable.

I am also not pleased to see Jimmy Carter so far down the list, and Reagan at the top, as I do not believe this factually represents their contributions to this country.

I will say I fully expect that Obama's rating will only rise in the years to come, and that I would not be surprised if at some point he gave Ronnie a run for his money.

Monday, February 12, 2018

In what has to be the least shocking revelation of all, we now learn that Donald Trump deplores the #MeToo movement.

Courtesy of Axios:  

Trump tells friends that he deplores the #MeToo movement and believes it unfairly exposes CEOs to lawsuits from their female employees. The fact that women frequently face sexual predation in the workplace doesn’t impact his view on this.

This is the strongest indicator yet that Trump will reflexively defend his male allies from any and all accusations, even when he thinks those accusations are true.

Well of course Trump hates the #MeToo movement.

They were formed specifically because of him, and clearly he is at the top of their list of targets.

And according to Steve Bannon the movement will likely take Trump down.

Damn, one can only hope.

Friday, February 09, 2018

Unlike ALL of his predecessors Donald Trump does not read the President's Daily Brief. He has it read aloud to him like a children's bedtime story.

Needs more pictures.
Courtesy of WaPo: 

For much of the past year, President Trump has declined to participate in a practice followed by the past seven of his predecessors: He rarely if ever reads the President’s Daily Brief, a document that lays out the most pressing information collected by U.S. intelligence agencies from hot spots around the world. 

Trump has opted to rely on an oral briefing of select intelligence issues in the Oval Office rather than getting the full written document delivered to review separately each day, according to three people familiar with his briefings. 

Reading the traditionally dense intelligence book is not Trump’s preferred “style of learning,” according to a person with knowledge of the situation. 

The arrangement underscores Trump’s impatience with exhaustive classified documents that go to the commander in chief — material that he has said he prefers condensed as much as possible. But by not reading the daily briefing, the president could hamper his ability to respond to crises in the most effective manner, intelligence experts warned. 

Soon after Trump took office, analysts sought to tailor their intelligence sessions for a president with a famously short attention span, who is known for taking in much of his information from the conservative Fox News Channel. The oral briefings were augmented with photos, videos and graphics. 

After several months, Trump made clear he was not interested in reviewing a personal copy of the written intelligence report known as the PDB, a highly classified summary prepared before dawn to provide the president with the best update on the world’s events, according to people with knowledge of the situation. 

Administration officials defended Trump’s reliance on oral sessions and said he gets full intelligence briefings, noting that presidents have historically sought to receive the information in different ways.

You know I originally thought the whole "Toddler-in-Chief" meme was perhaps a little exaggerated, but it seems more and more fitting all of the time.

It was also reported that Trump really only prefers to get bad news or advice from Hope Hicks.

Apparently she is the "asshole whisperer" and he does not blow a gasket when she tells him things that he does not want to hear.

So here we have a commander-in-chief who cannot read complicated reports on his own, and cannot be told bad news unless a young attractive woman is the one telling him.

If this were the captain of a ship I would be urging everybody to rush for the lifeboats now. 

Jesus, even George W. Bush is capable of understanding that the Russians hacked our election.

Courtesy of the AP: 

Former President George W. Bush said on Thursday that “there’s pretty clear evidence that the Russians meddled” in the 2016 American presidential election, forcefully rebutting fellow Republican Donald Trump’s denials of Moscow trying to affect the vote. 

While never mentioning President Trump by name, Bush appeared to be pushing back on Trump’s attempts to have warmer relations with Russia, as well as his comments on immigration. 

The White House did not immediately comment on Bush’s remarks. 

“There’s pretty clear evidence that the Russians meddled,” Bush said at a talk in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. “Whether they affected the outcome is another question.” 

Bush also said that “it’s problematic that a foreign nation is involved in our election system. Our democracy is only as good as people trust the results.”

Remember this guy?

I must have said every single day that he was in office that he was the dumbest son-of-a-bitch we had ever elected to lead this nation.

I truly believed that once he was out we would NEVER make a mistake of that magnitude again.

And here he is recognizing the evidence that our current commander-in-chief refuses to even acknowledge.

I would really like to say that after Trump is dragged from office that we will never be stupid enough to elect such an incompetent, unqualified, traitorous leader ever again.

But now that I understand just how critically stupid many people are in this country, that would just be a waste of my breath. 

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

CNN threw together a supercut containing a number of Donald Trump's flubs during his first year as president.

Courtesy of Raw Story: 

CNN on Monday put together a hilarious supercut of Trump’s biggest first-year flubs, and it includes numerous botched handshakes, nonsensical tweets, and misadventures with water cups. 

CNN’s Jeanne Moos, who narrated the video, took particular delight in playing clips of Trump sniffling excessively and of Trump getting his hand swatted away by wife Melania Trump. 

“You’ve got to hand it to President Trump,” she said shortly before showing a montage of failed Trump handshakes. “When it comes to flubs, he’s got his hands full.”

Unbelievable!

And what is even more unbelievable is that there are so many more.

It seems as if Trump does something to embarrass the country almost every single day.

Saturday, January 20, 2018

Barack Obama has not communicated with Donald Trump since the inauguration. Anybody surprised?

Courtesy of CNN: 

A year since they last met, President Donald Trump and his predecessor Barack Obama haven't spoken, the first time in decades two successive presidents have avoided communicating in the 12 months after handing off power. 

Ties between presidents -- if not always friendly -- are usually at least existent. That Trump and Obama have avoided each other speaks to the unprecedented nature of the current White House, and the lingering animosity between two men who openly sparred during 2016's presidential campaign. 

Trump hasn't shied away from blasting decisions Obama made during his tenure, and has steadily chipped away at key pieces of Obama's legacy like the Paris climate accord and the Affordable Care Act. He's also launched personal attacks, falsely claiming that Obama ordered the phones tapped at Trump Tower or that Obama failed to call family members of slain US servicemen. 

Obama, meanwhile, has reserved his criticism of Trump for policy matters. On the rare occasions he's spoken publicly over the past year, he's made only veiled references to the current Oval Office occupant. 

The last time they spoke, Trump and Obama were standing on the East Front of the US Capitol as an idling military helicopter stood nearby. Moments after Trump was inaugurated, Obama appeared loose and smiling, his post-presidency life about to begin.

Apparently Obama left the traditional note for his successor in the Oval Office, but when Trump tried to reach out to thank him Obama was unavailable, and that was his last attempt.

There is really nothing about this report that should necessarily surprise anyone, because seriously how could Obama engage in a productive manner with the guy who continues to vilify him even a year after the election, and who seems determined to wipe every one of his accomplishments out of the history books.

And by the way I do not think that Obama is the only former president from who Trump feels he does not need to seek advice.

I also doubt very seriously that he has ever reached out to George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, or Bill Clinton.

In Trump's opinion he does not need to rely on the advice from anyone, because he, and only HE, knows what should be done.

And that boys and girls is how America got all fucked up.

Friday, January 19, 2018

Let's make this the final word for the day.

Courtesy of CBS News: 

A Senate attempt to move forward with a short-term spending bill vote failed Friday night, sending the government into a shutdown on the one-year anniversary of President Trump's inauguration.

Tomorrow's Trump tweets should be epic. 

Tuesday, January 16, 2018

I'm going to need this mug.

Okay has anybody else increased their caffeine intake since Trump was elected, or is that just me?

I had weened myself down to about two cups a day, and now I am back up to four, sometimes five.

So hard to type when the words on the page are doing jumping jacks.

Sunday, January 14, 2018

So whose fault was Hawaii's false missile alert yesterday? Oh, I think we know.

Could you even imagine receiving that?

I grew up during the Cold War and I never had anything happen that was anywhere near as frightening as this.

And it even appeared on local Hawaiian television.
Terrifying!

I went to college in Hawaii and I have say that back then at least there were just not that many places to go to for shelter.

The same must be essentially true today because residents were literally stuffing their children down storm drains in a frantic attempt to keep them safe.
It was almost forty minutes later that residents received this correction.
Can you imagine being that terrified for more than half an hour, only to find out that it was all a mistake?

Speaking of mistakes Donald Trump just kept right on golfing while all of this was going on:

Critics are blasting President Donald Trump for continuing to golf Saturday while frantic Hawaii residents rushed for cover after a false cell phone alarm about an incoming ballistic missile. 

The president was on the course at his Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, after the alert was issued at 1:09 p.m. EST, according to press pool reports. His motorcade didn’t leave the club for Mar-a-Lago until 1:38 p.m.

As of Saturday evening, Trump had not issued any personal statement — or tweet — about the scare. He did tweet about “fake news” and again called journalist Michael Wolff’s book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, a “fake book.” He described Wolff as “mentally deranged.”

I guess he must consider Hawaii to be one of those "shitholes" that are beneath his notice.

Ultimately what we learned yesterday is that this White House is completely incapable of responding to an actual nuclear attack.

Courtesy of Politico:

A false warning of a missile threat in Hawaii sent White House aides scrambling Saturday, frantically phoning agencies to determine a response and triggering worries about their preparedness almost a year into the Trump administration. 

President Donald Trump's Cabinet has yet to test formal plans for how to respond to a domestic missile attack, according to a senior administration official. John Kelly, while serving as Secretary of Homeland Security through last July, planned to conduct the exercise. But he left his post to become White House chief of staff before it was conducted, and acting secretary Elaine Duke never carried it out. 

The administration ran the exercise on Dec. 19 at the deputies' level, at the behest of Kelly and newly sworn in Homeland Security chief Kirstjen Nielsen. But as of Saturday, when Hawaii residents were taking cover, the federal government had yet to play out the same scenario with Cabinet secretaries at what is known as the principals level. 

"The U.S. government hasn't tested these plans in 30 years,” said the senior administration official involved in the White House response. “All the fresh faces sitting around the table in the situation room have little idea what their roles would be in this scenario. The bottom line is that without a principals level exercise we shouldn’t have any confidence that the Cabinet would know what to do in an attack scenario." 

Can't say I am surprised by this.

I saw the poor man in charge of these alerts in Hawaii taking responsibility for his mistake, and I think there is a strong possibility he will lose his job over it.

However let's take a moment to remember that the ONLY reason that Hawaii was doing these kinds of drills in the first place is the now very real concern that North Korea might send a missile toward America, and that this fear took hold because of some childish exchanges between Kim Jong Un and the imbecile in the White House.

It took actress Jamie Lee Curtis to say what most of us are probably already thinking.

Yes, exactly!

If Barack Obama had still been in charge, I seriously doubt that the people of Hawaii would have been quite so panicked in response to that alert.

After all they knew an adult was in charge and probably would have thought it was a mistake. Which it was.

But under Donald Trump, NOBODY feels safe.

And we know that not only is a nuclear war more likely, but that our government is completely unprepared for the first missile launches that would likely start one.

Welcome my friends, to Trump's America.

Friday, January 12, 2018

Time Magazine's new cover.

From the article:  

For all the criticism of Wolff’s methods, much about the portrait rings true. Trump didn’t expect to win and, if he thought about it, probably didn’t want to. The campaign itself gave him the power and the glory and the profits. The office takes those away. In the terms he cares about–nuclear button notwithstanding–he is in many ways less powerful as President than he was a year ago. Candidates can say whatever they want about what they will do; Presidents are expected go out and do it. There’s more ridicule and much less freedom. Harry Truman’s “great white jail” is spartan compared with a life pinballing between Mar-a-Lago and Fifth Avenue. The rewards of the office, such as they are, aren’t rewarding to Trump, other than the pomp, the crowds, the chance to show off the Lincoln Bedroom or to see in our response an awe he does not share but likes provoking. The fuel that powers the presidency–the passion for ideas, the attachment to allies, the give and take of practical politics–gives him no energy. So this is an exhausting, even debilitating, life for a 71-year-old, much less one with little curiosity or sense of mission beyond self-interest. The most thin-skinned public figure imaginable has been exposed to the elements. And he doesn’t like them. 

All of this speaks to fitness, which is different than mental capacity or competence or proficiency with policy. It goes to wanting to learn, to grow into the role, to be tested by the office held by others in more difficult times, to make the best of the challenge history hands you. As portrayed in Fire and Fury, Trump is little interested in such things. He is a President who is almost annoyed by the office he holds. What an unhappy man he must be.

Time Magazine also said this about Wolff's book:  

Wolff’s book confirms what others have glimpsed or reported about the baroque character of the Trump White House. But it does so in detail so granular that it may become, even with its shortcomings, a definitive text on the 45th presidency.

Just going to go out on a limb here and say that the cover depicted above may become even more accurate once Trump hears about this. 

Wednesday, January 10, 2018

Democratic lawmaker to introduce the "Stable Genius Act" which would require presidential candidates to undergo a mental health examination.

Rep. Brendan Boyle
Courtesy of The Hill:

A Democratic lawmaker says that he will introduce legislation that would require presidential candidates to undergo a mental health examination following a tweet from President Trump in which he praised himself as a "stable genius." 

Rep. Brendan Boyle's office said in a press release that the Pennsylvania Democrat would introduce the "Stable Genius Act" in the House on Tuesday. 

The act would require all presidential candidates to file a Federal Election Commission (FEC) report "certifying that he or she has undergone medical examination by the medical office under the jurisdiction of the Secretary of the Navy." 

Boyle said in the statement that American voters have the right to know whether a candidate has the mental fortitude to withstand the pressures of the White House.

Man do I love this!

It just seems like a no brainer that every American would want to know that their president is not a psychopath.

Right?

And hopefully they can have the law in place before 2020. 

In the early days of the Trump presidency one one of his senior national security officials suggested moving American troops to please Putin.

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:

A senior National Security Council official proposed withdrawing some U.S. military forces from Eastern Europe as an overture to Vladimir Putin during the early days of the Trump presidency, according to two former administration officials. 

While the proposal was ultimately not adopted, it is the first known case of senior aides to Donald Trump seeking to reposition U.S. military forces to please Putin—something that smelled, to a colleague, like a return on Russia’s election-time investment in President Trump. 

The White House did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment. The official who offered the proposal, a deputy assistant to Trump for strategic planning, mused in February 2017 about withdrawing U.S. troops close to Russian borders as part of a strategy proposal to “refram[e] our interests within the context of a new relationship with Russia,” the former official told The Daily Beast, who heard this directly from the official, Kevin Harrington. 

Harrington is the NSC’s senior official for strategic planning. He had neither military experience nor significant government experience before joining the White House. But he had an influential credential: As a managing director for the Thiel Macro hedge fund, he was close to Trump patron and ally Peter Thiel. Trump’s first national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, announced Harrington’s arrival in early February as part of a “talented group” ready to bring “fresh ideas to the table.”

Yes and one of those "fresh ideas" seems to have been to thank Putin for handing them the presidency by moving troops so that he could continue with his plans for expansion without the Americans closely monitoring him.

This sounds a little quid pro quo to me.

Sunday, January 07, 2018

Despite Trump campaign promises, US jobs are shipping overseas even faster than before.

I can't believe they're buying this.
Courtesy of Quartz:  

“We’re just shipping company after company after company is leaving this country and leaving jobs behind,” president Donald Trump said on the campaign trail last year. “And I’m going to get it stopped.” 

So far, not so good. A group that advocates for federal workers says government records show (pdf) more than 10,000 jobs at federal contractors have been sent over overseas since Trump was elected. That’s more than double the average annual amount during Barack Obama’s presidency. The organization, Good Jobs Nation, funded by unions and faith groups, wants the White House to hold these contractors accountable. 

All told, in the year since Trump was elected, more than 93,000 jobs have been certified by the Department of Labor as lost to outsourcing or trade competition, slightly higher than the average of about 87,000 in the preceding five years. But federal contractors made up 10% of that number, rather than the previous average of 4%. That suggests companies that work for the government like General Motors, Boeing and United Technologies aren’t worried about political repercussions from the man in the White House.

Consider United Technologies, which is the parent company of Carrier, a maker of air conditions and heating equipment. Carrier became famous shortly after the election when Trump loudly and personally intervened to “prevent” the company from outsourcing jobs to Mexico by offering it tax breaks. Since the spotlight has shifted along with Trump’s limited attention span, Carrier announced more layoffs, including 215 after the holidays. Local labor leaders say they feel betrayed.

I keep wondering what is the tipping point when the non-racist or batshit crazy Trump supporters will suddenly realize that they were duped.

I think stories like this might help make that a reality.

The idea that this idiot could deliver on ANY of the promises he made was always completely ridiculous. 

MAGA my ass.