Donald Trump and the Fellowship of the Alternative Facts (Part 14)

[Cartmann99]

22 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I sometimes feel like I go crazy and am posting too much. Of course, then I see something else that chaps my hide and want to share it with folks who will also be outraged

Please keep posting! All of you, please keep posting articles and comments that you find relevant! I think of this place as sort of a support group. For me, reading your comments and articles, while the locals here are furiously cheering for their golden calf, keeps me sane. 

[GreyhoundFan]

Not about Agent Orange, but I'm sure this waiter is a Branch Trumpvidian: "A California waiter refused to serve 4 Latina women until he saw ‘proof of residency’"

Quote

It was girls’ day out, and Diana Carrillo had abandoned her desire to eat healthy well before she, her sister and two friends got to the Southern California restaurant. The destination: Saint Marc, an upscale spot in the seaside city of Huntington Beach, where Carrillo had been once before.

As the waiter walked up to the table, Carrillo figured she’d splurge on the grilled-cheese sandwich and pay the $2 up-charge to add some of the restaurant’s signature bacon. To start, maybe she’d share a watermelon and cheese plate with her sister and friends.

But the mood soured quickly after the waiter appeared. Before he could serve the four Latina women, he said, they needed to show proof of residency. “I need to make sure you’re from here,” he said.

Flummoxed, the four women handed over their IDs. But as what was happening sank in, they fumed. “I looked at my sister and [my friend], and I said, did he really just say that?”

A few moments later, they walked over to the manager and told him what had happened. He offered them a separate section and his business card to make things right — but they had already decided to leave.

...

Seeing the social media backlash, the restaurant’s management contacted Carrillo that Monday. They offered a VIP experience at the restaurant and pledged to donate 10 percent of the weekend’s proceeds to a nonprofit organization of the group’s choice. The four women declined the lavish meal, but asked that the restaurant donate the money to Orange County Immigrant Youth United.

Kent Bearden, the senior director of operations at Saint Marc, told The Washington Post that the waiter who had asked for the women’s IDs had been fired. It was the first time the employee had done anything like this, Bearden said, and he “had never received so much as a write-up” before.

“I don’t know if he had an agenda or not,” said Bearden. “My concern is he violated a company policy. We’re very specific about how we treat out guests. That individual did not treat a table of guests to the expectations that we set forth in that company policy, and that caused him to be terminated.”

Bearden stressed that the employee’s actions “are something that you can’t control. The true measure is how you then handle it as a company. I feel very proud of our team and how we tried to take a proactive approach, trying to create a positive out of this situation.”

Carrillo said she’d been warned about this kind of treatment by her parents but had never experienced it firsthand. She told The Post that she wondered if the employee’s insulting request was a result of “who is President.”

...

I'm glad the asswipe was fired.

[CTRLZero]

56 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I sometimes feel like I go crazy and am posting too much.

I can't always post, but I am always reading everything here.  I appreciate the posting that goes on in this forum, so a big "thank you" to all.  My latest road trip included going through a town with a tacky Trump tower.  Grrrr.

 

58 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

here's an article about Tweedle-Dumber (Eric) seeking H2 visas for foreign workers to work Agent Orange's winery here in VA

I didn't see a link, but I'll take a look at what is going on with this winery.  If nothing else, I'll make sure to avoid his brand.

[GreyhoundFan]

2 minutes ago, CTRLZero said:

I didn't see a link, but I'll take a look at what is going on with this winery.  If nothing else, I'll make sure to avoid his brand.

Sorry if I forgot the link. Here it is.

Oh boy, our "buddy" Tomi is like a bad penny, she keeps turning up: "Tracking the special treatment media get when they play nice with the White House"

Quote

Some people regard Tomi Lahren as a racist.

The social-media star’s past commentary on the conservative website the Blaze, including her disparagement of the Black Lives Matter movement, caused her to be booed when she appeared last year on Trevor Noah’s “The Daily Show.”

Noah acknowledged that — even as he urged his progressive audience to be polite to his guest: “Imagine you’re at Thanksgiving again and your racist uncle walked in.”

But President Trump seems to like her style. He was so taken with Lahren’s recent appearance on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show that he rang her up.

“He called and said, ‘Thank you for your fair coverage of me,’ ” Lahren told Washingtonian magazine, which reported that the president had watched the show live as the 24-year-old waxed enthusiastic about why so many Americans had flocked to Trump: ‘They said: ‘Guess what? This man is doing something amazing.’ ”

Lahren also told Washingtonian that in the 10- or 15-minute conversation with the president, he “was asking about me personally,” but she gave no details about his questions.

With this uplifting example, I inaugurate an occasional feature: Access Watch, tracking the special treatment — phone calls, interviews, perhaps the lone press seat on the secretary of state’s plane — that can result when media people play nice.

...

 

[RoseWilder]

3 hours ago, Scribber said:

 

I am split on this. The conservatives have their heads so far up their asses that it's potential he will still be around. (Anyone else? Impeachment would have already begun...)

I hope he's gone ASAP and that dems take back the house and senate in 2018. But I don't know how much faith I have in this.

Over 40% of the American people still approve of this asshat.

 

His approval ratings just dropped to 37%: 

 

[CTRLZero]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I'll see if I can find anything about my region, but here's an article about Tweedle-Dumber (Eric) seeking H2 visas for foreign workers to work Agent Orange's winery here in VA. I guess they're the "right" type of foreigners.

Thank you for finding the article.  I vaguely recall the winery issue from earlier (so much going on in this presidency), but this really points to yet another serious disconnect with his thinking:

[snipped from the Washington Post article - my bolding]:
 

Quote

 

Trump, whose transition team and press office did not respond to requests for comment on the matter, consistently argued during the presidential campaign that the federal government should limit immigration to protect American jobs. The visas his business seeks do not allow workers to permanently reside in the United States.

About 8,800 temporary agricultural visas for 172,654 jobs were requested nationwide in federal fiscal 2016, Labor Department reports show.

The Trump vineyard applied for 19 temporary visas for foreign workers in 2014, 2015 and this year, before the most recent request, according to federal records. In addition, he has sought to hire 513 foreign workers since 2013 for some of his other businesses, including for his Palm Beach home, Mar-a-Lago Club.

 

 

[RoseWilder]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Not about farm workers, but another critical area: "Rural Areas Brace for a Shortage of Doctors Due to Visa Policy"

Quote

In Coudersport, Pa., a town in a mountainous region an hour’s drive from the nearest Walmart, Cole Memorial Hospital counts on two Jordanian physicians to keep its obstetrics unit open and is actively recruiting foreign specialists.

In Fargo, N.D., a gastroenterologist from Lebanon — who is among thousands of foreign physicians in the state — has risen to become vice president of the North Dakota Medical Association.

In Great Falls, Mont., 60 percent of the doctors who specialize in hospital care at Benefis Health System, which serves about 230,000 people in 15 counties, are foreign doctors on work visas.

Small-town America relies on a steady flow of doctors from around the world to deliver babies, treat heart ailments and address its residents’ medical needs. But a recent, little-publicized decision by the government to alter the timetable for some visa applications is likely to delay the arrival of new foreign doctors, and is causing concern in the places that depend on them.

While the Trump administration is fighting, in the courts of justice and public opinion, for its temporary travel ban affecting six countries, the slowdown in the rural doctor pipeline shows how even a small, relatively uncontroversial change can ripple throughout the country.

In Montana, for example, where nine counties do not have a single physician, it means Benefis Health does not know when a Romanian doctor trained in kidney transplants will arrive. The health care company spent months recruiting the doctor and had been expecting her in July.

“Our health system already has nine months invested in her, and now we have no idea when she can start,” said Erica Martin, who recruits doctors for the company.

...

 

"Inside Trump’s White House, New York moderates spark infighting and suspicion"

Quote

Inside the White House, they are dismissed by their rivals as “the Democrats.”

Outspoken, worldly and polished, this coterie of ascendant Manhattan business figures-turned-presidential advisers is scrambling the still-evolving power centers swirling around President Trump.

Led by Gary Cohn and Dina Powell — two former Goldman Sachs executives often aligned with Trump’s eldest daughter and his son-in-law — the group and its broad network of allies are the targets of suspicion, loathing and jealousy from their more ideological West Wing colleagues.

On the other side are the Republican populists driving much of Trump’s nationalist agenda and confrontations, led by chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who has grown closer to Chief of Staff Reince Priebus in part to counter the New Yorkers.

As Trump’s administration enters its third month, the constant jockeying and backbiting among senior staff is further inflaming tensions at a time when the White House is struggling on numerous fronts — from the endangered health-care bill to the controversial budget to the hundreds of top jobs still vacant throughout the government.

The emerging turf war has led to fights over White House protocol and access to the president, backstabbing and leaks to reporters, and a heated Oval Office showdown over trade refereed by the president himself.

...

 

[RoseWilder]

1 hour ago, RoseWilder said:

His approval ratings just dropped to 37%: 

 

I'm quoting myself now. Obnoxious. But, I wanted to show a comparison, so everyone can see just how bad a 37% approval rating is at this point in the presidency: 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump, Working-Class Zero" (the picture of the tangerine toddler and president bannon is nauseating)

Quote

It’s not unknown, of course.

In ancient Egypt, there was the symbol of the ouroboros, the snake that eats its own tail. Nerve-addled octopuses sometimes consume their own arms.

But we’ve never watched a president so hungrily devour his own presidency.

Soon, there won’t be anything left except the sound of people snickering.

Consumed by his paranoia about the deep state, Donald Trump has disappeared into the fog of his own conspiracy theories. As he rages in the storm, Lear-like, howling about poisonous fake news, he is spewing poisonous fake news.

The Hirshhorn has a sold-out exhibit of Yayoi Kusama’s stunning infinity mirror rooms. But they are nothing compared to the infinity mirror room of Trump’s mind, now on display a mile and a half away at the White House.

...

Trump’s aversion to veracity is exacerbated by his inner circle of sycophants and conspiracists. As far as Trump is concerned, his budget and health care plan are going great, when everyone else in Washington is averting their eyes.

...

 

 

"Jake Tapper and the 3 basic truths of covering Trump’s falsehoods". The graphic in the article is fascinating. In the 56 days we've been subjected to pseudo-president tangerine toddler, there have been only TWO days without a false or misleading claim and two days with over 20 such claims. Good gravy.

[Cartmann99]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Sorry if I forgot the link. Here it is.

Oh boy, our "buddy" Tomi is like a bad penny, she keeps turning up: "Tracking the special treatment media get when they play nice with the White House"

 

If Tomi Lahren doesn't land a Fox gig pretty soon, I bet she'll end up in Trump's administration. I could even see her ending up as the new Mrs. Trump, if she's willing to give up her career aspirations.

[bashfulpixie]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Sorry if I forgot the link. Here it is.

Oh boy, our "buddy" Tomi is like a bad penny, she keeps turning up: "Tracking the special treatment media get when they play nice with the White House"

 

 

8 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

If Tomi Lahren doesn't land a Fox gig pretty soon, I bet she'll end up in Trump's administration. I could even see her ending up as the new Mrs. Trump, if she's willing to give up her career aspirations.

Exactly what I was thinking. He called her because she's young and "pretty". He's prospecting for wife number four

[GreyhoundFan]

Big Brother, anyone? "White House installs political aides at Cabinet agencies to be Trump’s eyes and ears"

Quote

The political appointee charged with keeping watch over Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt and his aides has offered unsolicited advice so often that after just four weeks on the job, Pruitt has shut him out of many staff meetings, according to two senior administration officials.

At the Pentagon, they’re privately calling the former Marine officer and fighter pilot who’s supposed to keep his eye on Defense Secretary Jim Mattis “the commissar,” according to a high-ranking defense official with knowledge of the situation. It’s a reference to Soviet-era Communist Party officials who were assigned to military units to ensure their commanders remained loyal.

Most members of President Trump’s Cabinet do not yet have leadership teams in place or even nominees for top deputies. But they do have an influential coterie of senior aides installed by the White House who are charged — above all — with monitoring the secretaries’ loyalty, according to eight officials in and outside the administration.

This shadow government of political appointees with the title of senior White House adviser is embedded at every Cabinet agency, with offices in or just outside the secretary’s suite. The White House has installed at least 16 of the advisers at departments including Energy and Health and Human Services and at some smaller agencies such as NASA, according to records first obtained by ProPublica through a Freedom of Information Act request.

These aides report not to the secretary, but to Rick Dearborn, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy, according to administration officials. A top Dearborn aide, John Mashburn, leads a weekly conference call with the advisers, who are in constant contact with the White House.

...

The arrangement is unusual. It wasn’t used by presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush or Bill Clinton. And it’s also different from the traditional liaisons who shepherd the White House’s political appointees to the various agencies. Critics say the competing chains of command eventually will breed mistrust, chaos and inefficiency — especially as new department heads build their staffs.

“It’s healthy when there is some daylight between the president’s Cabinet and the White House, with room for some disagreement,” said Kevin Knobloch, who was chief of staff under Obama to then-Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz.

“That can only happen when agency secretaries have their own team, who report directly to them,” he said. “Otherwise it comes off as not a ringing vote of confidence in the Cabinet.”

...

 

[RoseWilder]

Trump voters are so stupid: 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

We've talked about Russia and so many other topics, I don't think we've had much about North Korea. This article scared me. There are lots of graphics and multiple potential situations. Sigh.

Quote

In a remarkable statement last week, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson declared that “the political and diplomatic efforts of the past 20 years to bring North Korea to the point of denuclearization have failed.” Shortly afterward, in response to joint military exercises being conducted by the United States and South Korea, the North Korean government held a news conference and declared that “the situation is already on the brink of nuclear war.”

The threat of nuclear war, mostly background noise for the past 25 years, is alarming. But given the uniqueness of North Korea’s position in the world, it’s worth wondering how concerned we should actually be.

To answer that question, we need to first identify the “we” we’re talking about. If that “we” includes South Koreans, the answer is: Quite a bit.

...

 

 

And, on another note: "To South Carolina District, Trump’s Tough Budget Is a Promise Kept". I'd love to go shake some of these people.

Quote

UNION, S.C. — As Johnny Sinclair sees it, this declining mill town voted overwhelmingly to send President Trump to the White House for one overriding reason: to change rules of political engagement in Washington that had long left places like this high and dry.

So when Mr. Trump released his first budget last week, proposing to significantly y shrink the footprint of federal government while building up the military, Mr. Sinclair saw a politician finally following through.

“We don’t expect Trump to get everything done he said he would. But we expect him to try,” Mr. Sinclair said Friday, as he sat in a restaurant here with four friends. “The roads may not end up paved in gold, but we expect him to be out, shovel in hand.”

...

 

[MarblesMom]

57 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

There are lots of graphics and multiple potential situations. Sigh.

This subject worries me greatly.

I have a 30 year old son working in Seoul.  He has been there almost 5 years.  When we discuss what is in our media here in the US about NK, he assures me this is the annual spring rabble-rousing, and not to worry.  

This year is the first year (since son has moved) that NK seems to be a bit more direct and intentional in their message.

I am a mom.  I worry.

I also worry about Oompah-Loompah saying "you're fired" to NK and pushing the fucking button.

[RoseWilder]

If this was a Democrat, impeachment proceedings would have already been started: 

 

[RoseWilder]

 

[Audrey2]

34 minutes ago, MarblesMom said:

This subject worries me greatly.

I have a 30 year old son working in Seoul.  He has been there almost 5 years.  When we discuss what is in our media here in the US about NK, he assures me this is the annual spring rabble-rousing, and not to worry.  

This year is the first year (since son has moved) that NK seems to be a bit more direct and intentional in their message.

I am a mom.  I worry.

I also worry about Oompah-Loompah saying "you're fired" to NK and pushing the fucking button.

Thank you for sharing. I know that those of use who read and post on Quiver Full of Politics will be watching the Korean situation even closer than we were and will be thinking of you and your son. 

[JMarie]

2 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

If Tomi Lahren doesn't land a Fox gig pretty soon, I bet she'll end up in Trump's administration. I could even see her ending up as the new Mrs. Trump, if she's willing to give up her career aspirations.

She fits the pattern:

First wife -- European

Second wife -- American

Third wife -- European

Fourth wife -- American

Bonus points for the blonde hair.

[Cartmann99]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

We've talked about Russia and so many other topics, I don't think we've had much about North Korea. This article scared me. There are lots of graphics and multiple potential situations. Sigh.

What's this?

Quote

Try not to be on the first story of a wood-frame house.

Well, shit. If you had told me six months ago, that I'd be reading about how the North Koreans may have nuclear weapons that could reach every part of the United States except for southern Florida, and then looking at pictures of bomb shelters on Amazon while musing about how we were going to tear the old garden shed down anyway.... I'd tell you to seek professional help ASAP. 

Fuckity-fucking-fuck.

[Audrey2]

17 minutes ago, JMarie said:

She fits the pattern:

First wife -- European

Second wife -- American

Third wife -- European

Fourth wife -- American

Bonus points for the blonde hair.

Even more bonus points for being younger than Ivanka and his two oldest sons. Yikes! He did say that he would date his daughter, though. 

[fraurosena]

Hey guys. I know that everything seems so dismal and disappointing right now. Especially looking at the approval ratings and realizing that there still seems to a significant number of people that support the Tangerine Toddler.

@RoseWilder already gave you some perspective on the approval ratings, by putting up the ratings of previous presidents.  I’d like to give you another perspective altogether, that might make you feel a little better. I’ve stated before that I really, really dislike statistics. I’ll reiterate that here, again. I’ll explain why this is especially significant with these ratings data.

You see, how do we know what the ratings are? How are they measured? I took a look at Gallup’s website to find out. From what it says, it seems they poll about 1000 people. So, one thousand people in the whole of the US are asked a simple question: Do you approve or disapprove of the way the president is handling his presidential job?

Wait. What?

How can a poll of 1000 people of the total of 325,809,490 people living in the US really be representative? They ask a measly 1000 people. That’s just about 0.00001% of the populace (note: math geek I most certainly am not, so it might be more or less 00’s behind that first 0, but you get the point).

Gallup even clarify themselves that there are problems with gleaning meaningful information from these ratings.

Quote

[...] We also need to consider that presidential job approval as a measure is quite volatile by its very nature. There are several reasons for this. For one, we find that Americans tend to use their rating of the president as a repository for their feelings about what is going on in the country in general, and those feelings are subject to rapid change. Like the quarterback of a football team, the president tends to get too much credit when things go well, and to get too much of the blame when things go badly. So, almost anything that happens in the country can theoretically cause presidential job approval to go up or down.

I also think Americans feel comfortable changing the ratings they give the president on a short-term basis. The public is probably used to the idea that all of our elected officials can be and should be "graded" daily, weekly, and monthly. Like judges in an Olympics competition, the public can easily view itself as sitting in judgment of the president, marking him up or down based on the latest information they have received. The president in the United States isn’t subject to repeated votes of confidence as he or she would be in a parliamentary system, but job approval ratings from the public in a presidential system may provide the public some of this same thumbs up/thumbs down function.

It is also important to note that the president is almost constantly in the news. There is ample information flow from which the American public can make its judgments on the president’s performance on a day-to-day and week-to-week basis. There are very few days that go by in which the actions of the president are not covered in the news media in one way or the other. Some of these reports are neutral, but the American political and media system have institutionalized the idea that elected officials are fair game for criticism. The interested observer is quite frequently subjected to all manner of negative comments on the behavior, performance and motives of the president as well as spirited defenses of his actions and behavior.

The challenges Gallup themselves have noted, combined with the fact that the ratings are based on a really, really, really teeny tiny percentage of the total populace make me go: “Well, that’s nice dear. But those ratings are utterly meaningless.”

 

[47of74]

14 hours ago, formergothardite said:

Be prepared to be angry reading this. It is an article about how Christians can copy Trump. 

 

 

 

http://www.wnd.com/2017/03/the-rev-trump-what-church-can-learn-from-prez/

Instead of trying to be like Trump, maybe they should try to copy Jesus for a bit. Work on feeding the poor and caring for the sick, things like that. 

 

Yeah, and try actually reading the goddman New T for once.  Especially parts like Matthew 23 and 25.  I think the version of the bible the Branch Trumpvidians have has most of the New T redacted out.

[sawasdee]

Sorry, I had to share this. A friend's suggestion - rather than TT's State Visit to the UK being hosted by her Maj and Philip, why not have Prince George (going on 4) and Princess Charlotte (going on 2) as the official hosts? Much more age appropriate company!