So Trump fired David Schulkin head of the VA and replaced him with Dr. David Jackson, the doctor who has announced to the American public that Trump has a great gene pool and that if he had eaten right during his life he would be scheduled to live to be two hundred. This may have massaged Trump’s ego, one of his favorite activities, but this is a personal doctor being given charge of the second biggest department in the American government.
Like everything else in Trump’s America, this isn’t about experience, or qualifications, but about who kisses his ass with the most enthusiasm. This is about Trump appointing a Cabinet and then having them line up and tell him how great he is. Knowing how to grovel has occasionally been a prerequisite for a post in previous Cabinets but I’ve never before seen an entire group lined up on their knees with their lips pursed. Maybe that’s why Trump has had to replace that passel of incompetent clowns, some for the second time. But what makes anyone think that a man with a record of horrible appointments like Trump will ever get anything right?
The recent appointment of John Bolton, a psycho-neocon with a desire to wage nuclear war – on everyone- as long as there’s a profit to be made, certainly makes one think that Trump will never look to experience and competence in his appointments. Agreeing with the President only means that you agree with confused policy and blundering lies. It doesn’t mean those appointments have any ability to do the jobs they have been given and so far most f them have spent their time in office proving that point.
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There has been a great deal of talk lately about the resumption of the Cold War with Russia, this despite Donald Trump’s seeming man crush on Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin. It does seem that way, with Putin waving nuclear weapons at everyone and committing atrocities in Syria following his unacceptable actions in the Ukraine. Trying to kill an old Russian spy and hi daughter in England certainly didn’t help alleviate the situation but it did, finally, get Trump to stop gazing at Putin’s picture long enough to get him to agree with the rest of the civilized world that Putin had gone too far.
So what’s it all about? It’s all about Russia’s failing economy and Putin’s need to provide bread and circuses for the proletariat. Fossil fuels, on which Russia’s entire economy is built, are crashing all over the world being replaced at record speed by renewables. That leaves Russia’s economy tottering on the brink of disaster. It also leaves the Russian people looking for a scapegoat. Putin is no one’s fool. He knows where all the scapegoats live and most of his are in the West, so he drums up a conflict with America and waves his flag so people will rise up behind it and fight back against the great Western threat. This is Dictator 101. This is standard procedure for a guy who was a KBG agent and is now the longest running dictator in the world. You don’t get to keep that job by being Mister Nice Guy. You keep it by killing off anyone who threatens you and by stabbing anyone or anything that gets in your way, in the back.
Right now there are two world leaders; the United States and China. Putin wants there to be three but he can’t pull that off with his rotten economy so he is trying to fake a war machine that will make the West back off and let him get away with his bullying tactics. Like most bullies, however, he doesn’t know when he’s gone too far and his latest attempt to kill one of his enemies with a poison only made in Russia, which has endangered British citizens, seems to have encouraged the whole European Union plus the US and various other layers to dump on him. Yes, this will help him rally the patriots back home but it will cost him in having to beef up his military to make his bluff look real. It appears that the actions in Syria will bring this whole thing to a head but so far results are inconclusive. More about that in a later blog.
It’s interesting that Trump went along with the Europeans in their anger over the British poisoning, especially after he has refused to attack Putin on any of his other obnoxious levels. But instead of closing down Russian embassies which only allows the Russians to do the same to our embassies, he should first have first sanctioned Putin’s Russian billionaires and closed down their ability to do business here. That’s what he’s doing now and it will be interesting to see how Putin deals with his buddies not being able to do business with American banks.
But it’s in Syria that we really have to get a grip. Trump loves to boast that he beat ISIS in Iraq and Syria but when reality takes hold everyone understands that he had almost nothing to do with it. Yes, we have Special Forces troops over there backing up Kurdish troops who are doing most of the serious fighting. Now after the Kurds have broken the back of ISIS, Trump talks about pulling our Special Forces troops out, even as the Russians and the Turks are attacking the Kurds who fought for us. Will this be another US betrayal like the ones in Nam and other places across the globe where we have abandoned people who have supported us as soon as it as no longer convenient for us to do our share? The only group in the Middle East that has been our true ally since we pushed Iran away forty years ago has been the Kurds. Will Trump now betray them too? The Kurds are the ones who beat ISIS. Trump should stay with them if only to allow him to keep repeating the big lie that he stopped them.
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Trump went to church this Easter Sunday and while he was there he managed, as usual, to lie about almost everything he said. The biggest lie was about DACA. He stated that current immigrants were crossing the border in an attempt to attain DACA status. He then stated that he would stop this fictional invasion, which actually exists only in his diseased mind. This illustrates that Trump has no idea what DACA, a process about which he has been talking for months actually is, or he is just, as usual, lying.
He babbles about immigrants crossing the border because border guards can no longer “Catch & Release.” What are these, people or fish? Trump doesn’t care. he has no regard for the difference. All he knows is that they are pawns in a strategy to please his ignorant base.
It is now crystal clear that Trump knows nothing about DACA and cares less. To him the DACA kids are only chips in a poker game he is playing against anyone who stands between him and some kind, any kind of win.
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Both Fact Check and Politico have informed us that Donald Trump lies 61% of the time he is speaking. This is the President of the United States. But those are old numbers. In the last month Trump has lied just about every time he has opened his mouth. One, but only one of the major lies Trump is promulgating is that we are not only building a Wall but also sending troops to the border to turn back the barbarian hordes that are inundating our security there and pouring into the country. In fact we are not building a Wall anywhere. We are repairing the mess that currently exists on our southern border. Homeland Security Secretary Kristin Neilson made a fool of herself yesterday trying to make Trump’s lies seem plausible when they are in fact idiotic. It amazes me how people can abandon every moral value just for a job as just another flunky in the White House.
But Trump and Neilson and whoever else Trump can get to stand up in public and lie their ass off for him, fill the screen with copious piles of bullshit about how those brown people from down south are going to overrun us, when the truth is, we are at a 46-year low on illegal immigration across our southern border. Yeah, that’s right, a 46-year low, but the Liar-in-Chief keeps piling on the crap.
So what, you say? What’s the big deal? Well you tell me. Who’s paying for those National Guardsmen? Who fills their jobs when they are twiddling their thumbs on the border looking for non-existent illegals? Who’s paying for the work being done on the Wall, work that isn’t necessary but is being done just so Trump can lie about building a wall? Mexico has told Trump to shove it up his ass, so now he’s shoving it up yours.
So in the last few weeks Trump has lied abut the Wall, lied about immigrants coming across the border, lied about Amazon, lied about tariffs and lied about what he has accomplished since the election. In fact he lies about everything. His lies are now causing anxiety in the economy because you can’t believe anything the president is saying even as he lays out political plans that damage the economy and create turmoil among our foreign friends.
The president’s statements are supposed to mean something. They are the information, upon which everyone in the world bases their decisions. If our president lies, there is no reality. And yet we have as president the biggest liar since Pinocchio.
Peter Navarro, apologist for the Trump administration was on Meet the Pressthis Sunday and used the term “fake news” to describe the Washington Post. It was a major mistake even despite Chuck Todd’s meek response. It was apparent that Todd had respect for Navarro so he really didn’t go after him. He didn’t confront him with the reality that if in a fact check competition, he held up the reporting of the Washington Post and NY Times on one hand as against Sinclair News and Fox News on the other, his attack on the Post would make him look like an utter fool. This position wasn’t something that Todd had to reach for. It’s on the tongue of everyone in the universe who understands the difference between truth and lies. Todd really let Navarro off a hook on which should have gaffed him..
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Right now Trump is fighting three wars that he started on his campaign which have no value at this point and are really antithetical to his own benefit. He is burying himself in a useless, ridiculous Wall controversy. He is starting a tariff war with China that he and the whole nation will lose and he is hardening a non-existent immigration policy aimed at phantom immigrants. So why is he still messing with these three losing concepts? It’s really simple, just like Trump’s mind. He feels he must keep his base solid and his base, being as stupid as the guy they voted for, wants a Wall which will cost money that could be going into programs like infrastructure and would help them; wants tariffs that they think will bring back manufacturing jobs but will really cost each and every one of them in raised prices on necessary consumer goods which we don’t make here and we must buy from China; wants stronger immigration policies to staunch an immigrant flow that just doesn’t exist. We are currently at the lowest rate of illegal immigration in 46 years. That means that white Americans are going to have to start cutting their own lawns and cleaning their own toilets. More important it means that skilled jobs that spur our current industries will go begging because we aren’t admitting the educated immigrants we need to fill them. To solve that problem we need to change all our existing immigration laws, not to toughen them but to make them more flexible. The reality of immigration, legal and illegal is that this country is starving for immigrants, maybe even more so than the 1800s when they flocked to our shores and helped to make this the greatest nation on earth. Only now we don’t need grunt labor as much as we need educated immigrants who can fill the empty jobs that exist in the industries of the future. In order to do that we must restructure our entire system from the menacing mess it is now to a more welcoming, intelligently motivated one that encourages the right immigrants, while still protecting the nation from its enemies.
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The newest action to run Trump off the tracks was the search warrant that the Southern District ADA, Christopher Bermen served on Mike Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer & hit man. It seems to have struck a nerve in the White House and like everything else that annoys the Psycho-in-Chief, it set him off on a tantrum. This time, however, the tantrum was set at a meeting of the Security Council that was supposed to be considering the insignificant matter of going to war in Syria. There he was, sitting at one of the biggest tables extant, surrounded by generals and Cabinet members, all primed to discuss the future of the civilized world and he went off about the crooks that broke into his personal lawyer’s office. Those at the meeting sat stone- faced as the Maniac-in-Chief attacked all the Democrats that were conducting an unfair witch–hunt against him and his people. He ranted, babbled and rambled around the facts of the search warrant even as he mumbled incoherently about any number of self-invented lies. But it was his attack on the Democrats who had instigated this warrant that laid the biggest egg, because everyone in the room and any informed persons watching, knew that almost everyone involved in the action was a Republican, many of whom had been appointed by Trump and even a few who had contributed to his campaign.
Trump can grumble and thrash about in his ignorant confusion all he wants but despite his babbling about witch-hunts and unfairness, this is how the law works. This is the constitutional way this country was set up. This is the way this nation keeps little would be dictators like Donald Trump from grabbing power in this country. This is the way our constitution protects the freedom of everyone, especially those who don’t have the money and power to protect themselves.
Trump with his bullying tactics has tried to run roughshod over everything he doesn’t like or that keeps him from taking what he wants. Now he is faced with the rule of law. It should be a novel experience for him.