It’s no secret that the Trump administration has been at a loss to fill many government jobs and that this has seriously damaged the administration’s ability to function on any serious level. The State Department has a huge hole in its ranks especially when it comes to ambassadors and foreign embassy staff. Trump, thinking like the Little Dictator, has made it clear that he figures he can take care of all this stuff just by waving his hand, but this is the most powerful and one of the largest nations in the world and it takes more than just a dunce waving his tiny hand to make it go.
A prime example of this was seen today on Face the Nation when host, John Dickerson interviewed author Michael Lewis who has written a book entitled The Undoing Project, in which he illustrates how the failure of the Trump administration to be prepared to run a country will probably do incredible damage to our nation fifty years down the road.
Lewis uses the Agriculture Department as a prime example, Most people think of the Agriculture Department as the people who give subsidies to farmers and that’s true but it also has a $3 billion annual budget for scientific development programs that will alter what we grow and how it will deal with the climate changes that will dictate whether or not we have enough food in 2067 to feed the country.
Lewis explains that the Obama administration spent the better part of its last year in office preparing for the transition, developing informational literature and transition materials so when the next government took office it would have the information that would allow it to function smoothly. Then on the day after the inauguration when the new government made up of the people chosen by new President Trump was supposed to move into their offices, no one showed up. Who knows how Trump spent the time between the election and the inauguration but it wasn’t in doing his job. He hadn’t hired any of the people necessary to run the country. This clown who constantly describes himself as a great business man but who actually ran a Mom ‘n Pop operation, had no idea how to run a huge country like this and was too dumb and too stubborn to ask for help. And things haven’t changed since. So there’s really no one running our government.
Cathy Witecki, the woman who led the Agriculture Department’s scientific development arm has been with the agency for almost 50 years; learning her job and those of the people around her. She has a scientific background plus a thorough knowledge of the problems that exist and how to deal with them.
When he finally did appoint someone to replace Witecki, Trump found a clown named Sam Clovis, a radical right talk radio host who knows nothing about anything, and whose only association with the Department of Agriculture and food is that he overeats to a grotesque degree. Clovis has since been fired for other reasons but now the job is empty. Does anyone think that Trump has enough brains to re-appoint Witecki who actually knows what she is doing? Not a chance. After all, she comes from the Obama administration and for Trump, that’s more important than functional qualifications.
Lewis states unequivocally that the government is filled with people who care about their jobs, who are trying to make America better and it’s those people who are making America work, not the political appointees who are looking at what job in the private sector they can get after their politically appointed job. Trump doesn’t understand this because all he has ever thought about or cared about is himself and what he can get from the Presidency. That is all he is interested in.
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Just watched a New Jersey millionaire named Eric Schonenberg rip the guts out of a Fox News host with a weird accent named Stuart Varney over the newest GOP tax plan. Schonenberg brought his own tax return with him and just battered Varney into a bloody lump, proving that the new tax plan was just GOP BS and that it would save him and millionaires like him over half the taxes they are currently paying. Varney tried the usual lies and obfuscations, but he was no match for Schonenberg and his facts.
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Watched a pair of broadcasters who have a political show in Alabama called Annie and Matt and even after watching the whole interview I couldn’t tell if they were Right or Left leaning and that’s a great thing, especially when you consider their audience.
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Watched Martha Raddatz interview Tom Perez the Democratic Chairman and even in victory Perez cannot answer a straight question with a straight answer. That’s why the Democrats may not get congress back in 2018. Yes, they had a significant victory last week but they still have many of the same problems that kept them from office for the last eight years.
It’s time for the Democrats to stop bashing Trump. There are plenty of us outside the party to do that. We all know that he’s an egomaniacal, degenerate, lying sociopath. Now we want to know what the Democrats can contribute to the conversation. We all know you oppose the GOP’s attempt to dump Obamacare and we all know that’s good. Now we want to know what you are going to do to fix Obamacare because it’s all we’ve got and yes, it needs fixing. We all know that you oppose both the House and the Senate tax proposals but no one has seen a working tax proposal from you. And we all know that the GOP will never come up with a serious bill on functional gun control but you haven’t either and we want to know that you can, before we vote for you.
That’s the problem with the Democrats and if you don’t fix it you may win a couple of more seats in congress just because so many people are disgusted with Trump and the stupid, incompetent, way the Republicans are using their governmental majority to do nothing, but you won’t win all the seats that are available and you won’t get the veto proof control that you need to override Trump and make this a better country.
When asked about Bob Menendez Tom Perez speaks in exactly the same ridiculous way that Republicans speak of Roy Moore. If he can’t bring more to the table than the GOP then there’s no reason to listen to anything he has to say or to vote for his candidates.
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Watched John Dickerson conduct a panel of Trump voters, asking them about various aspects of the President’s personality and leadership abilities and it was very surprising. Almost to a man or woman they all saw problems, sometimes very dangerous problems with Trump but all except one still seemed to be fully behind him. One woman described what she felt a president had to be, and then spoke to the fact that Trump fulfilled none of these characteristics but still thought he was doing a good job.
None of these people seemed to realize that though the country was doing okay economically, Trump had very little to do with it. They all spoke to the stock market and lower unemployment with no cognizance of the fact that his only contribution to anything was the hope by the market that his lowering of regulations would bring it higher profits that might, or more probably might not, trickle down to them.
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What else did you expect? Trump is again acting like a third world dictator. A couple of weeks ago he denigrated Attorney General Jeff Sessions for not going after Hillary Clinton for anything they can find. Jeff Sessions has stated before a congressional committee that he just doesn’t have the basis for an investigation of the Clintons. So once more Trump is doing the wrong thing, attempting to influence the judicial branch of government to do some dirty work he would like to see done.
Is Trump doing this because he hates the Clintons or because they actually gave money to charity while he promised to do it but never delivered?
This whole idea of chasing the office holder who preceded you is just bad precedent! It will set up a continuum whereby new leaders will prosecute those that they are replacing just like in all the third world dictatorships in the rest of the world. No one had a better case to prosecute a predecessor than Obama did when Bush lied us into two wars and then cut regulations on his friends to set up the crash of 2007. But Obama passed because he recognized the fact that this is a dangerous precedent to set and would only lead to repetition after every election and that would be bad for the country.
Of course Trump isn’t mature or intelligent enough to realize this. He is a small, petty man who is always looking for revenge for any silly reason that comes to his damaged mind. Congress must stand up on its hind legs and refuse this request by Trump and his sycophants.
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Now we all know that Donald Trump has almost no familiarity with the truth but his latest outlandish attack on Hillary Clinton seems over the top even for him.
The Accusation: Clinton, while Secretary of State, approved a huge uranium sale to the Russians. The first time this accusation appeared it was attributed to Peter Schweitzer, senior editor of Brietbart. Yeah, we all know what a pile of shit Brietbart is, but that’s not the end of it.
The next year Trump stated that Clinton okayed the deal to sell 20% of our uranium to the Russians while investors in the Russian company gifted $25 million to the Clinton Foundation. This was in November of 2010.
So, let’s look at some facts. First the Clinton State Department had no power to okay or veto any such transaction. By law, when a foreign company wants to buy anything with national security implications the federal government must approve it. A nine member panel at an agency known as CIFUS does that. If even one member of the panel objects the decision goes to the President. But in this case the decision was unanimous. The nine department heads of CIFUS all approved the sale of the uranium to the company based in Canada. There is no evidence that Clinton participated at all in the decision.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission also approved the sale on 11/14/10 but in doing so stipulated that no uranium produced could be exported. The EIA reports that all the uranium went to American power companies. . So Uranium One, the Canadian company in question sold all the uranium to US power companies to use in their power generators.
As to the donations to the Clinton Foundation; Most of them were from one man, Frank Giustra, the founder of Uranium One. He gave $141 million to the Clinton Foundation But he sold his stake in the company in 2007, three years before the deal and before Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State. The donations from actual Uranium One investors was really only $4 million..
Trump’s lie is predicated on the fact that Hillary approved the sale. In fact, she did not. The sale was approved by CIFUS and finalized by Obama. Hillary had nothing to do with it. Once more Trump spews out the big lie and once again the fools believe him but it’s just False News.
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The religious aspect of our lives reaches far into all parts of America. This morning there was a big story on CBS News about the new Museum dedicated to the Bible in Washington, DC. The Museum is huge, one of the biggest museums in the world, financed by the Green family that owns Hobby Lobby. You may remember Hobby Lobby as the evangelically owned business that didn’t want to pay for women’s health care because it might involve the possibility of birth control devices.
So these super rich evangelical’s, the Green family has now along with other members of their movement laid out a ton of money to create this museum to the Bible. If the news story was accurate there is a lot to be proud of in the creation of this building. But to many of us, there is also the idea that it is a colossal waste of money, money that could have been spent to help the poor, the sick and the under educated.
Why are these ardent followers of the Bible building a temple to a book, when there is such a need for Christian charity in this world? It seems like a terrible waste but this narrow minded evangelical family is not alone. Roman Catholic Cardinal Egan in NYC recently spent over $7 million to clean the front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral at the same time as he was closing parochial schools for lack of funds. Is this an intelligent or even Christian use of the hard earned money that Catholics contribute to the Church? I think not.
And now there are the Evangelical Christians of Alabama, who are banding together to protect a child molester. They are pushing this degenerate for the Senate just to keep a member of a rival political party from getting into office. Is this the use of religion that inspired the constitution to protect it? Is it the use of religion that inspired that same constitution to demand its separation from the state?
Although not a fan of organized religion, we must realize that it has a place in our society. But in order to maintain that place, the leaders of the various religions must understand that they cannot be allowed to bring the tenants of their various religions into the political sphere or they will be putting their religion in danger of being ostracized. That’s what is happening in Alabama today. Evangelical pastors are giving up their franchise to back a clearly degenerate political candidate with whose political agenda they agree. They already did this in 2016 when they ignored Donald Trump’s self-confessed, clearly degenerate behavior in order to make a political statement. They are doing it again and have clearly violated the parameters that allow their churches many financial and social advantages not available to the rest of society.
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The problem with Rand Paul is that his next-door neighbor only broke a couple of his ribs. This idiot is trying to use the already flawed Senate tax bill to get rid of the already accepted Obamacare mandate. It isn’t bad enough that the GP is trying to set up a tax bill that will screw the poor and middle class. Paul also wants to try to destroy Obamacare so all those people who get screwed by the tax bill will have to suffer through that without healthcare. Paul’s neighbor didn’t do half enough damage. There were many more bones that needed to be broken.
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Donald Trump had promised a big announcement after his trip to Asia. What the idiot in the White House actually had to say was that the countries he visited had all thrown him big parades. They understand that it’s just the way to get the attention of a mentally slow five year-old.