Donald Trump was out the other day, once again proving his stupidity, as he blabbered about raking the forest floor to prevent the leaves catching fire. No asshole, this is not what prevents forest fire. In fact leaves are necessary on the forest floor to insulate roots and create mulch in which new forestation germinates. Then he attacked Admiral William McCraven who headed the Special Forces groups that killed Osama bin Laden and ousted Saddam Hussein. The fat coward who evaded the draft has never been to a war zone. Last week, when the world was honoring those, from around the world that died in WWI, he decided he was too delicate to get rained on, so he just didn’t show up at the dedication.
That’s the kind of guy he is, a slovenly, craven punk who sends troops to the Mexican border for a political ploy, causing these men and women who have served heroically in Afghanistan to miss the holidays with their families. While this is going on, Trump, who has been in office for 668 days has spent 210 of those days on vacation at Trump properties and 159 golfing at various resorts, so he has spent more than half his time away from the White House and his job. There are, for obvious reasons, many who think this is a good thing. There are also those of us who would like to see him work at the job to which he was elected rather than just spend his time hustling money for the family trust.
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Tom Steyer may be a nice guy who knows what to do with some of his money but we can’t listen to him regarding his campaign to impeach Trump. It’s just not the most important thing on the Democratic agenda and frankly with the numbers in the Senate being what they are, it’s not even possible. That makes it a waste of time.
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The US government report on the climate, states very lucidly and definitively that fossil fuels are now not only a threat to the planet environmentally but are also a severe threat to our, and other nations, economies. Trump just doesn’t believe it. Why? Not because he has any proof to the contrary, but because it doesn’t suit his agenda of promising more coal jobs to an industry that really no longer exists, as well as leasing government land to oil interests so they can drill in all kinds of areas that can do serious environmental damage.
Given that he doesn’t believe in the dangers of climate change, Trump should still be able to see the disastrous economic predictions on the wall if it is ignored. Solar is already cheaper to deliver to the distribution point than fossil fuel. The change is coming. Still our government denies it putting the entire nation in economic danger.
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Congressman Elijah Cunnings who was not granted subpoena power as the ranking member of the house judiciary committee has now been asked if he will grant subpoena power to the incoming ranking member of that committee who will be a Republican. He says no. He was asked, “why” on Meet the Press. He really didn’t explain so let me do that for him.
The man who will be ranking member of the GOP minority in the House has had the last six years to subpoena all the people he wanted. If, because of Republican ennui, he didn’t get to it, that’s just too bad. Now he has lost the election and he will have to wait, just like Cummings waited until he won an election. It’s very simple.
Cummings will work with the Republicans. He will consider what they want to do and he will listen to them, unlike what the GOP did when they were in power. Cummings seems to understand that the Dems must put legislative priorities over revenge against Trump. That’s more than Paul Ryan understood.
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When asked what he was thankful for this weekend, our esteemed President told the nation that the thing he was most thankful for was himself! Does that make you happy? Or possibly nauseous? This psychotic egomaniac thinks that the thing we should all be thankful for is Donald Trump. He also gives himself an A+ ranking only because there is nothing higher on the scale. That’s because, according to him. this country is much stronger than when he took office. If you believe the ridiculous asshole, it’s all because of him. Donald Trump is about Donald Trump. Everything you ask him, is referenced back through him; how it effects him, how he reacts to it, how he feels about it.
People keep talking about how we elected this egomaniacal madman. Wedidn’t elect him! He was elected by a stupid, greedy, self-serving minority of the American public who, for the most part, are too ignorant to understand what a catastrophe they have promulgated electing him. Trump is so self-involved that he can’t even see how a government agency like the CIA should be acting for the benefit of the country instead of the benefit of Donald Trump. He always acts in his own benefit regardless of how it affects the country so in his self-involved mind he can’t see or understand anyone else reacting any other way. That’s how he can ignore the attested to CIA findings in the Khashoggi matter and side with Saudi Prince MBA.
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Another move in a long line of chaos and incompetence was instituted by Trump this weekend when he ordered armed troops stationed at the Mexican border to shoot at members of the caravan of women and children approaching said border as they flee the murderers and drug dealers, often allied to US law enforcement, that run the countries from which they are fleeing.
Trump is stupid enough to think that being tough is being right. This kind of thought process is natural to the bully in this despicably flawed individual. But putting a loaded gun in the hands of, often trigger happy, young men who have already suffered through deployments to Afghanistan and other war zones is a recipe for disaster. One incident, one trigger happy or scared kid who shoots down a mother or child and we will be ass deep in another international incident in which we are dead wrong. If that happens, and it’s only a matter of time before it does, it will be Trump who has pulled the trigger. And we all know he isn’t man enough to own up to it.
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There is a simmering question moving through the south even as there are many who are trying to stop that question from being asked or even considered. Does the modern south continue to look to the past for its identity or does it move into the future? The recently completed Senatorial race in Mississippi between Mike Espy and Cindy Hyde-Smith is the second to blatantly illustrate that question during this election period.
The first was Alabama where the forces of the old south had a seriously flawed candidate. Roy Moore was a known pedophile. That carries a lot of negative weight, even when the election is about black and white. The question is does Moore’s pedophilia measure up to Hyde-Smith’s racist ranting’s in an adjacent heavily white southern state. Hyde-Smith brought nothing new or surprising to the table. She is a proven and seemingly dedicated racist both by her words and by her actions. She ran against a black man with a record of being the first back elected congressman in Mississippi since reconstruction.
The question that seemed to drive the election was; how does pedophilia rank with racism in what has always been a racist state? Roy Moore despite his long and well-documented history of hustling pre-teen girls barely lost in Alabama, a state that is unfortunately renowned for its all enveloping attention paid to young girls, but he did lose.
But in Mississippi, a state with a soft spot for racists it was impossible for Espy to overcome the state’s natural tendencies long enough to see the evil in the stance of Hyde-Smith and possibly do the right thing in ejecting her racism? It was a very long shot but the Dems went down that road based on the possibility that there were enough enlightened voters still breathing in the South’s most racist state to do the right thing. They were wrong and the whole nation will suffer for it.
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Having flipped almost 600 state legislative seats in the midterm elections, the Democrats are now in a position to attack gerrymandering all across the country but they have to be very careful. The temptation is to reverse what the Republicans have already done in the crooked manner in which they have already done it. That would be wrong. That would just lead to a flip back anytime the GOP won an election. The right way to handle this is the most simple, straightforward way. Don’t do the same thing the crooked GOP did. Make an honest attempt to set up reasonable voting districts in a way that they become invulnerable to hack politicians fiddling with them in the future. To me, the obvious way is to do it along county lines. That might seem to play into the gerrymandering concept that it would give more weight to a heavily populated county than one with a smaller population. True, if that’s as far as you go, but the extension of the concept is; depending on population, some counties would have more than one representative, just like some states have more members of the House than others. The county line concept comes from seeking a division that is along firmly established lines, one that will not change with population movement and one that will not produce the abstract expressionistic district borders that often exist today.
This concept is simple, direct and one that could end the practice of gerrymandering forever, if it is strictly adhered to. It would be really refreshing, if for once, our local governments would do something simple, honest and straightforward, something that will benefit the practice of democracy without consideration of political gain.
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Once again the lips that lie are at it big time. This time it’s Trump attacking GM for plans to close a couple of plants in Ohio. That’s the same Ohio that went big for Trump in 2016 when he promised never to allow manufacturing to slow down under his administration. It’s a promise he never should have made, mainly because it’s about a situation he can’t control, even as President. But being the stupid SOB he is, he just couldn’t hold his lying tongue.
Now he’s running around making threats against GM, threats based on circumstances that don’t even exist. He’s going to attack GM’s plants in China by stopping them from importing into the US. Sounds tough doesn’t it? It would if any part of the accusation were true but like everything else Trump spits out of that fetid mouth it’s not. Chinese GM plants don’t export to the US. Their entire product goes to domestic sales, nothing to export.
Of course Trump didn’t bother to find out why GM is closing plants or what those plants made. It wouldn’t have mattered if he did because the reasons would run counter to his own goals. He just doesn’t want to understand that the market for cars is changing drastically and it will, for economic reasons alone, drastically change what is manufactured in the automotive industry in this country and what is not.
The plants being shut down manufacture combustion engines and transmissions neither of which will be in demand in the near future. This is a very smart move on the part of GM but Trump just doesn’t understand smart. He only understands what he wants. Solar power, the electric engine and improvements in storage batteries are already changing the entire automotive industry. GM is just trying to stay ahead of the curve. They and other automotive giants already know what Trump refuses to believe, that in the near future they will be selling a mere fraction of the cars they do now and those they do sell will all be electric and most driverless.
Trump can rant and stamp his feet all he wants, but the reality of the future is just what GM is planning for. The jobs of the future will demand education, something that Betsy DeVos, Trump’s Secretary of Education, just doesn’t understand. The fact is that there is no area of the Trump administration that is prepared to meet the technological future, not in education, climate, industry, economics or any of a hundred other areas in which we are falling behind the emerging world.