President Cheeto 8: Our Long National Nightmare Begins

[louisa05]

Just now, Cartmann99 said:

Just wanted to remind everyone who follows President Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, Vice-President Joe Biden, or Second Lady Dr. Jill Biden on social media, that @Potus, @Flotus, etc... no longer belong to them.

Please update to their personal accounts if you intend to continue following them.

Oh, thank you. Off to make the change. 

 

[VixenToast]

I'll add the Obama's but I will keep the others. I gotta keep up to date on their lies so to be better able to sniff out the truth.

[GreyhoundFan]

52 minutes ago, catlady said:

good point; retro uniforms were very classy.  but in 1976, everyone went batshit crazy for red-white-and-blue patriotic everything.  i was 6, but i had pants *pants!* in a RW&B liberty bell pattern.  my mom sent me to school in them.

LOL, right there with ya, sister. Mine were red and white sailboats on navy blue polyester. Not a good look.

[Mecca]

A few more pictures...

 

[Palimpsest]

My theory: Lady Lydia sent her design for Melania to Ralph Lauren along with a blackmail note and he used it.  Just be glad he put his foot down and refused to make it pink.

I saw a bit of footage from CNN.  Who did Obama stop to greet so affectionately when they were all leaving the main podium?  Older man using a wheelchair - Trump pranced right past him.

[danvillebelle]

Fuckface Von Clownstick the serial sexual predator is not my fucking president.  

I changed my profile pic on fb to Evey Hammond from V for Vendetta.  

[GreyhoundFan]

"Metro ridership for Inauguration Day 2017 lowest in years"

Quote

Friday morning’s Metro ridership was the lowest in at least three presidential Inaugurations, according to Metro, as fewer riders flocked to the system than would even on a typical weekday.

The transit agency said about 193,000 people had taken trips through the system as of 11 a.m. That’s significantly lower than figures from the 2009 and 2013 Inaugurations of President Barack Obama, and on par with ridership for President George W. Bush’s second inauguration in 2005.

The number illustrated what many riders saw this morning: empty platforms, sparsely filled trains and little of the energy they’d grown so used to over the past two inaugurations.

By 11 a.m. on Jan. 20, 2005, when President George W. Bush was inaugurated, about 197,000 trips had been taken, just edging out Friday’s figures.

But Friday paled in comparison to the numbers for the Inauguration of the country’s first black president in 2009. By 11 a.m. the day President Barack Obama was sworn in, about 513,000 Metro trips had been taken — and the day’s ridership totaled about 1.1 million, making it the transit system’s busiest day ever.

Metro spokesman Dan Stessel said it was reasonable to assume this morning’s figure would double, meaning ridership for President Trump’s Inauguration Day will come in slightly under 400,000. Metro’s average weekday ridership for 2016 was 639,000.

But, I'm sure Cheeto will say it was the "yugest" ever. Oh, and since the last inauguration, Metro has added a new line with multiple stations, so the ridership would have been expected to go up, not down. Of course, that would be for a normal inauguration, not this one.

[Cartmann99]

11 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

Just wanted to remind everyone who follows President Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, Vice-President Joe Biden, or Second Lady Dr. Jill Biden on social media, that @Potus, @Flotus, etc... no longer belong to them.

Please update to their personal accounts if you intend to continue following them.

I just checked my Twitter account, and it looks like Twitter has elves helping us out! If you used to follow President Obama @Potus, you have been switched over to @Potus44. Same for Mrs. Obama, and the Bidens. I don't know if Facebook, etc... have done something similar. 

[louisa05]

On Twitter, Obama's account has simply been changed to @POTUS44 and Biden's to @VP44. Biden's Facebook has also just changed titles, so there is no need to unfollow or make any changes. I assume that the Trump admin will get @POTUS. 

 

[Cartmann99]

14 minutes ago, Palimpsest said:

My theory: Lady Lydia sent her design for Melania to Ralph Lauren along with a blackmail note and he used it.  Just be glad he put his foot down and refused to make it pink.

I saw a bit of footage from CNN.  Who did Obama stop to greet so affectionately when they were all leaving the main podium?  Older man using a wheelchair - Trump pranced right past him.

I didn't see it, but could it have been Bob Dole? I know he uses a wheelchair these days. 

[Imaginary_Wonderland]

I was so sad about them losing the Potus and Flotus twitter account and who was replacing them, it was one of my firtst actions  ( while Donald was giving his speech) was to go to twitter to unfollow them, then noticed they had already changed and had 44 added to them. Silly thing to be glad about.

 

@Palimpsest I think that old man in the wheelchair was Bob Dole. I wasn't sure myself but I think that was what the commentator said (I'm deaf so I could have misheard).

[Palimpsest]

6 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

I didn't see it, but could it have been Bob Dole? I know he uses a wheelchair these days. 

Could be.  If it was Dole he looks really quite ill.  

Obama is a gentleman.

[MarblesMom]

The WH website peeps are busy.... the Affordable Healthcare page is gone and replaced with... this...

https://www.whitehouse.gov/transitionsplash/

They are making other changes, too - Faux reported the WH Climate page was also changed/gone.

 

[Palimpsest]

1 minute ago, MarblesMom said:

The WH website peeps are busy.... the Affordable Healthcare page is gone and replaced with... this...

https://www.whitehouse.gov/transitionsplash/

They are making other changes, too - Faux reported the WH Climate page was also changed/gone.

 

Shit got real.

::Crawls back under my blankie::

[church_of_dog]

2 minutes ago, Palimpsest said:

Could be.  If it was Dole he looks really quite ill.  

Obama is a gentleman.

Yes, it was Dole.  Someone else upon leaving called out "How are you, Liddy?" as he passed.

I do think I saw Trump shake Dole's hand though, but certainly not with any affection.

[Palimpsest]

1 minute ago, church_of_dog said:

Yes, it was Dole.  Someone else upon leaving called out "How are you, Liddy?" as he passed.

I do think I saw Trump shake Dole's hand though, but certainly not with any affection.

Perhaps I was wrong.  I only caught a glimpse of Trump's backside exiting at speed.  Asshole.

[Cartmann99]

I'm glad to know you are safe!  

[GreyhoundFan]

10 minutes ago, Palimpsest said:

Could be.  If it was Dole he looks really quite ill.  

Obama is a gentleman.

The WaPo had a nice opinion piece: "The Obamas were a master class in dignity and civility. Did we learn what they taught?"

Spoiler

This is when grace leaves the White House.

Without talking about politics or policy, without getting into race or class, red or blue, the Obamas set a remarkable standard for personal decency and civility during their years as our first family.

The Obamas came in making history, changing America on Day 1. They were the first African American occupants of the country’s most famous address, a home slaves helped build.

Few families have faced such scrutiny. Would they be too black? Would they be too white? How on earth would they satisfy a nation of people who cry with joy at the sight of their faces and want them dead because of the color of their skin?

Their eight years in the White House were a master class in dignity and tolerance.

And it’s easy to forget that now.

Because now is the time, in the final hours of a presidency, when the historians and pundits measure a commander in chief’s legacy on the abacus of accomplishment. And political Washington is busy either dismantling or defending eight years of President Obama’s policies.

The Affordable Care Act, the Paris climate agreement, the Iran nuclear deal — all of these are under attack from President-elect Donald Trump and the Republicans in Congress. Much of it could vanish.

And if that’s the case, what were those eight years for?

The arc of history bends toward a different and enduring legacy that Obama and his family leave: decency.

There have been no terrible scandals. No Lincoln bedroom shenanigans, no blue dress, no Watergate plumbers, no psychics, no Teapot Domes. No strippers, no divorces and no children born of extramarital affairs (did you know that five presidents had those?).

Maybe we’ve lost all shame. Maybe we demand so little of ourselves and our elected leaders that we are thunderstruck when we encounter people who don’t behave like Real Housewives or Kardashians.

The Obamas maintained their poise in the face of relentless bile. Over the past eight years, it was impossible to speak or write a single word about the family, the Oval Office, the White House or even their dogs without a blast of racially charged, historically repugnant hate coming their way.

The president was depicted in cartoonish tribal costumes, the first lady Michelle Obama was called an ape in heels, football fans thought it would be funny to dress as the president in a noose.

Dozens of people have been indicted on charges of threatening to harm the Obamas since they moved into the White House. In 2011, a gunman fired at the family’s home, lodging seven bullets into the walls when one of the Obama girls and her grandmother was home. A fence jumper armed with a knife made it past security and all the way into the home before he was tackled by an off-duty agent.

The numbers vary, but some security sources said that threats against the Obama family were three times as many as other first families faced.

The biggest scandal in the White House while they lived there was the Secret Service’s breakdown in protecting them.

And facing all that, they never lashed out. They never tweeted their anger, derided their enemies or hit back with something harder and nastier.

“When they go low, we go high,” Michelle Obama said repeatedly. And she meant it.

The family’s refusal to engage in ugliness was almost old-fashioned in a world dominated by what my Post colleague Sarah Kaufman calls the “grace gap.”

“Our impatient, fragmented, competitive society conspires in many ways against gentleness and understanding. Popular culture stokes delight in humiliation and conflict,” Kaufman wrote in her book, “The Art of Grace.”

American society is increasingly defined by the Me Generation, the Be Yourself Generation and the reality show puppeteers.

It’s a selfie, manspreading, mean-spirited culture — and the attack on civility is being led by the next occupant of the White House.

One of mankind’s oldest books, written in Egypt 4,500 years ago by a pharaoh’s adviser named Ptahhotep, is an early Miss Manners column on how real leaders should behave, Kaufman says. “If though be powerful, make thyself to be honoured for knowledge and for gentleness,” Ptahhotep wrote.

That gentleness earned President Obama plenty of scorn from those who read it as weakness.

But it’s no secret that the pulled punch and the turned cheek take far more courage and character than a reptilian lash-out.

No, instead of petulance or cowardice, the Obamas taught us decency, forgiveness, courage — values that are the bedrock of American greatness.

The nation has seen grace. And now more than ever, we must remember it.

 

7 minutes ago, church_of_dog said:

Yes, it was Dole.  Someone else upon leaving called out "How are you, Liddy?" as he passed.

I do think I saw Trump shake Dole's hand though, but certainly not with any affection.

Agent Orange doesn't like to shake hands. Supposedly it's because he's a major germaphobe.

[Destiny]

The WH website peeps are busy.... the Affordable Healthcare page is gone and replaced with... this...
https://www.whitehouse.gov/transitionsplash/
They are making other changes, too - Faux reported the WH Climate page was also changed/gone.
 

I saw this and literally gagged. I can't believe this is real life.

[apple1]

49 minutes ago, Palimpsest said:

I saw a bit of footage from CNN.  Who did Obama stop to greet so affectionately when they were all leaving the main podium?  Older man using a wheelchair...

I believe that was Bob Dole. (I consider that interaction to show what kind of a person Obama is).

ETA - Sorry, I should have read to the end before posting.

[MarblesMom]

Watching the riots... good lowered.... I'm sick.

[NCLunaLovegoodFan]

Trump looks miserable at the congressional luncheon. Well, you're the president now. Get used to these long ceremonial events. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Donald Trump still can’t escape Hillary Clinton". The new president is still obsessed with fighting the election he barely won.

Quote

As Donald Trump takes the oath of office Friday, a shadow will loom over his inauguration. Is it his multitudinous conflicts of interest and almost certain violation of the Emoluments Clause? Well, yes, but there’s another shadow: Hillary Clinton.

Clinton may not have been the right person to beat Trump in November, but since then, she’s been the perfect person to lose to him. Despite her own efforts to bow out discreetly — to the margins of the Democratic Party, to out-of-the-way bookstores, to the woods — he can’t get her out of his head. Even now, he seems incapable of moving on from an election that he won.

Who can blame him? Clinton won the popular vote decisively, by almost 2.9 million votes, or 2.1 percentage points. Trump is the third-worst-performing winner in presidential history. He edged out only Rutherford B. Hayes and John Quincy Adams, who both won in the electoral college and lost the popular vote. Sad!

And he’s invoked Clinton in tweet after deranged tweet since the election, asserting that actually, he meant to lose the popular vote, and no, really, he did, and by the way, he won the popular vote anyway, because of “millions of people who voted illegally.” (That latter claim was, of course, accompanied by no evidence, because it was patently false.)

But he still couldn’t resist taking potshots at Clinton’s campaign spending, or claiming that she should not have been “allowed” to run (not how it works) and that she was “guilty as hell” (also not how it works).

At his only news conference as president-elect, Trump invoked Clinton by name five times, unprompted, while addressing questions about U.S. allegations that Russian operatives sought to assist him by hacking Democratic email accounts and spreading “fake news.” He scoffed at the idea that Russian President Vladimir Putin would have wanted to help him win: “Do you honestly believe that Hillary would be tougher on Putin than me?”

When reports emerged this month that Russia had allegedly attempted to gather compromising information on Trump and that U.S. intelligence was investigating the matter, he got all the more defensive, insisting on Twitter that Clinton lost not because of Russian influence, but because she “campaigned in the wrong states” and with “no enthusiasm” (returning to another favorite campaign theme).

President Obama did not taunt Sen. John McCain or besmirch Mitt Romney. George W. Bush left Al Gore to grow his beard in peace. Even Richard M. Nixon left Hubert Humphrey and George McGovern off his enemies list. But Trump just can’t quit Clinton. She’s always there, even when he’s lashing out at other targets. CNN is bad not just for their coverage, but because they “failed so badly in their support of Hillary Clinton.” Meryl Streep is not just overrated, but a “Hillary flunky who lost big,” which is why she criticized him at the Golden Globes. New “Celebrity Apprentice” host Arnold Schwarzenegger not only can’t compete with Trump in ratings, but “who cares, he supported Kasich & Hillary.” Trump even reminisced on his “thank you” tour about the good times he and his supporters had chanting about locking Clinton up, saying, “We did have a lot of fun fighting Hillary, didn’t we?”

Yes, he did have fun fighting Hillary. (And he sure seemed to enjoy beating her!) But to paraphrase someone who paraphrased former New York governor Mario Cuomo, “you campaign in poetry” and “govern in prose” (or, er, tweets). And even for a storyteller as astute as Trump, the plodding details of a presidential transition were no match for a woman whose popularity surges every time she’s not running for something.

As the inauguration neared, Clinton even began to loom over Trump outside his own mind.

His transition has been full of all the corrupt, swampy things he faulted her for — charity self-dealing, Goldman Sachs cronyism, avoiding news conferences. He even appeared to ignore email malfeasance when he met with David Petraeus, who was reportedly under consideration for Clinton’s old job, secretary of state.

Meanwhile, the crowds at Trump’s swearing-in and parade will probably be dwarfed by the resistance-flavored Women’s March on Washington the next day, with protesters flooding to the District on six times more buses than requested permits for Trump’s modest party. The guiding principles of the march begin, “Women’s Rights are Human Rights and Human Rights are Women’s Rights,” in an echo of a certain someone’s famous Beijing declaration. (A hint to a certain thin-skinned real estate developer and purveyor of Chinese-made merchandise: It was Hillary Clinton.)

Now Trump is entering office as unpopular as any incoming president has ever been and with more questions about how exactly he got there. Worse, as he steps up to take the oath, Clinton will be right there with him at the Capitol, hewing to duty as a former first lady, impossible to miss, as TV news cameras linger on her composed, inscrutable face for signs that she’s inwardly retching. And then, once he’s president, there she’ll be in the White House, smiling down from her portrait confidently in her pantsuit.

No wonder he’d rather hole up at Trump Tower.

 

 

2 minutes ago, NCLunaLovegoodFan said:

Trump looks miserable at the congressional luncheon. Well, you're the president now. Get used to these long ceremonial events. 

I'm surprised he didn't just walk out so he could go Tweet some obnoxious and incoherent crap.

[47of74]

Yeah I didn't watch the giant orange tapeworm's coronation either.

I had three papers to pump out for school due tomorrow so I got one of them out of the way this morning on work breaks.  It was on adverse possession.  (And no Cloven Hoof Bundy and Demon Spawn you cannot use adverse possession to possess the property of the government.  Doesn't work that way).

[AlwaysExcited]

21 minutes ago, MarblesMom said:

Watching the riots... good lowered.... I'm sick.

Trump brings worst out of people. Both his supporters and opponents. 

Please, don't respond to violence with violence, to ugly with ugly, to hate with hate. It leads to nothing. It creates more darkness. 
Ordinary people are not the enemy, even if they support Trump. 

Do good. Support one another. Protect the weak. Take good care of yourself, of your families, friends and neighbors. Create something. An art. An inspiration. Write or draw, or knit, or, sing, or, I don't know, plant a seed. Make more beauty in this world. Make people feel again... It's what's opposite of Trump, and it's what will bring him down.