There are two basic elements to the coalition, which voted Trump into office in November;
First is the blue-collar base, the out of work middle-aged white guys that have been lied to by Republican politicians since the 1980s. They can now sit back and watch another betrayal, as the man who told them he was looking out for them, that he was going to create jobs for them, nominates a cabinet overflowing with billionaires whose positions illustrate their opposition to anything that will get these people work or help them in any way.
Trump hollered to the hills about keeping 1000 jobs in this country when he made a deal for Carrier not to move its whole plant to Mexico. Nobody seems interested in the 1300 jobs that will still be lost or to the fact that Trump will be giving Carrier huge tax breaks to stay here. These tax breaks come directly from the pockets of the real taxpayers in the rest of the country. That’s exactly the same kind of deal he’s been yammering about Obama making with other countries around the world, the kind he says he will stop. Is Trump already discovering the difference between being a CEO and being a president?
The second group was the middle and upper-middle class people who recognized Trump for the lying sociopath that he is, but chose to ignore it because there was one significant item in his confused mélange of campaign promises that appealed to them. Among this group are doctors who are trying to get rid of Obamacare and businessmen who want to rid themselves of necessary regulation. These are mostly people who want something for their own benefit and are willing to ignore all the horrifying aspects of Trump’s personality or the dysfunctional, immoral areas of his programs. But they too are beginning to get the picture. They see Trump nominate people to his cabinet, who have no intention of carrying out any of his campaign promises; promises that were just more lies in a lifetime of lies and cheating. Great material for a president!
And that’s the problem. Trump is so used to lying about everything that he no longer knows how to tell the truth to the base that elected him. He keeps braying about making America great again and creating jobs. The reality of the world is, we are immersed in a global economy and a technological evolution that has simply obliterated many of the jobs that these people depended on to make their living. Until Trump admits that fact to his Trumpanzies they will never understand why one more candidate they voted for has betrayed them.
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It’s a good thing that Rick Perry that his wish to abolish the Energy Department never came true during the Obama administration because if it had he’s be out of a job. Yeah, in his continuing puzzlement of nominations Trump has now nominated a guy who is all about oil and who once wanted to abolish the agency he will now head.
This appears to be the final nail that Trump has driven into the coffin of clean energy. Perry is on the board of the company that is fighting Native Americans for the right to poison their rivers and trample their native burial grounds in North Dakota. Perry will support Scott Pruitt, the new head of EPA who doesn’t believe in climate change and wants to disband that agency. In adding Tillerson, the CEO of the largest oil company on earth as Secretary of State, Trump will have created a triumvirate of cabinet members whose principal goal in life seems to be to kill all living things on the planet.
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The CIA has stated, both political parties have been hacked by the Russians but only the DNC hacks were released. This, according to the CIA was done to aid the Trump candidacy in its battle with Clinton. Why would the Russians favor Trump over Clinton? Well, there are a number of reasons, but foremost among them is, they thought Clinton would be a better, stronger president for the US. Jesus! You mean even the Russians realize that?
Now the Trump team led by Reince Pribus is busy denying that the RNC was hacked at all. But how could they know if the hack wasn’t revealed. Do they have better intelligence sources than the CIA or are they just doing what they always do, lying to get out from under something they don’t like?
Pribus claims that he went to the FBIwho reviewed the situation and said that the RNC hadn’t been hacked. That sounds fine but the FBI is led by James Comey, who has already proven that he is a stooge of the Republican Party. Pribus whines that the press is running with unnamed sources. He should know. That’s what the GOP always does.
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Trump has promised the American people that he would not meddle with Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. But other Republicans in congress are already trying to get rid of all three. Will Trump keep these promises? All it will take to keep Social Security in place, is to extend the point at which the top 1.5% of eligible millionaires, stop paying into it. This would keep it solvent for the next 50 years.
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We keep trying to give Trump the benefit of the doubt as to his ability to be a functioning president but Trump keeps proving that he will not be; that he can no be. He lies about everything he says, raving, the other night, another blatant lie about crime being up in the nation when it is at an all time low. He does this because he thinks that if he gets enough of the dumb followers to believe him it will give him a mandate to build a military police force. Why would anyone want one of those, unless they were looking to establish a dictatorship? Sure it’s a long shot, but who would put anything past Trump? He has proven himself to be an egomaniacal, power hungry demagogue who lusts after power but wants to do none of the labor intensive activities that are a presidents duty and he hasn’t even gotten into the job yet.
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Listening to a talk with Al Sharpton and Kristin Clark on voter suppression really made me angry. Yes voter suppression is a terrible thing and yes it is carried out by the GOP but God damn it, instead of whining about it and trying to fight state governments that out-vote you, just go out and fulfill the requirements of the damned law. If a photo ID is required go and get one. This is not a heinous obligation. If you are too dumb or too lazy to get one, you shouldn’t be voting anyhow. Right now only about one third of the people in the country vote. They aren’t all black and Hispanic. There are plenty of whites that don’t vote. Many of the nonvoters shouldn’t vote anyway, many of them or too stupid or too uninformed to know how to vote. Trump just proved that.
A while back I wrote a piece in which I suggested that the right to vote should be somewhat mitigated by certain responsibilities, foremost of which is a knowledge of the issues. I have no idea, how to make that work, but there are still too many people voting who don’t know what they are voting for or about. I received a flood of vitriol about this stance but I sill maintain it.
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There’s been a lot of noise about Trump divesting his businesses but the reality is he can’t. His business empire is too vast to just sell off. It’s just not realistic. So another solution must be found. It probably could be found if we were dealing with someone other than Trump who just doesn’t see that everything has changed now that he is President. The bigger problem is that not one of his spoiled kids sees any difference either and they are going to be the ones that have to run those businesses.
Of all the problems Trump brings to the Oval Office this is really not among the most important… except to Trump. To Trump this could be a huge trap because it could lead to all kinds of charges against him and he is the kind of egomaniac that despite seeing them coming, would ignore them, deciding they didn’t apply to him because he is President
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This has always been a country of generally moral, ethical people, people who cared for each other and took pride in the nation they and their predecessors had built. “The times,” as Bob Dylan sang, “they are a-changin’.”
I’m not here to say that this is true of everyone but there is a significant segment of the electorate that no longer considers ethical or moral questions to be of importance. This is how we can elect a President who is a serial abuser of women, a cheap con man, an inveterate liar, an egomaniacal sociopath and a buffoon.
Just the concept of the man who we elect to run the country being Presidential, has completely disappeared with the advent of Donald Trump. We can look forward, Ugh! To the White House being occupied by a tasteless, classless, socially embarrassing thug who will, if given his wants, soon have a giant gold lettered sign plastered across the front of the White House declaring that TRUMP lives here.
What’s fascinating, if anything about this blowhard bully can be considered fascinating, is that he has already abandoned and betrayed those that won him the White House. (Chris Christie, Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, discarded, thrown out with the trash, no longer useful to the man who thinks only of himself.) His cabinet appointments, as mentioned above will do all they can to destroy organized labor and further suppress those who have been thrust out of work. His promises of gainful employment will be obliterated by his and his appointments of men who hate labor and are dead set against anything like a decent minimum wage.
nd remember all those campaign ads in which the Democrats pictured this madman with his finger on the nuclear button. Well, that nightmare has come true and he is already speaking about arms races and nuclear proliferation as if he’s pitching pennies. We always worried about Russia, China or even North Korea being the catalyst that would plunge the planet into nuclear holocaust but it no looks like it will be our country, led by a minority elected madman that ends all life on the planet.