Donald Trump and his Coterie of the Craven (part 16)

[onekidanddone]

3 minutes ago, 47of74 said:

I was having lunch with the maternal unit today and they mentioned it on the radio that President Fuckman is open to the idea of meeting with his fellow toddler in North Korea.  I almost blurted out something about the two wanting to get together so they could have a penis measuring contest.

Yuge.

[47of74]

Bob Cesca had this excellent piece in Salon today after Presidunce Fuckman revealed how stupid he truly is;

salon.com/2017/05/01/donald-trump-thinks-andrew-jackson-could-have-avoided-the-civil-war-words-cannot-capture-how-ignorant-and-offensive-that-is/

Quote

Whenever we observe that President Donald Trump answers questions like an eighth grader who didn’t do his homework and has to BS his way through an exam, part of me thinks he’ll eventually conjure some discipline and admit he’s not up to speed on whatever the topic happens to be. Or maybe he’ll do what most politicians do, faced with a zone of ignorance: Reject the premise of the question and pivot to the message of the day. Deflection often worked for Ronald Reagan, but Trump always — always! — takes the bait, because he has apparently deluded himself into believing he’s an expert on everything. In this regard, he’s the perfect chief executive for this era in which every anonymous screecher on social media thinks he or she knows everything about everything.

When asked about Andrew Jackson by SiriusXM’s Salena Zito, Trump lapsed into a familiar routine: pretending to know more than he does, consequently embarrassing himself and revealing that, yes, in fact he knows nothing. In this case, he not only delivered a typically hagiographic overview of Jackson, who was at best a sociopath and at worst a genocidal madman, but also seemed to suggest that Jackson was still alive during the American Civil War. On top of everything else, Trump told Zito that the bloodiest war in American history could have been avoided through a political solution brokered by Jackson himself.

In an effort to reverse-engineer Trump’s ignorance, loyalists have correctly noted that the existential debate that led to the war went on throughout the first half of the 19th century. But Trump was much more specific, citing the war by name. He wasn’t talking about the debate over slavery, otherwise he would have said “the debate over slavery.” Trump was talking about the war itself, Jackson was long dead before secession fever ignited after the 1860 election, rapidly disintegrating into unprecedented carnage. It’s almost like saying that Franklin D. Roosevelt hated the Vietnam War, or that Richard Nixon opposed the Iraq invasion.

Our president isn’t very smart. We get it. But what does this latest idiotic outburst say about Trump and his belief about genocide, slavery, states’ rights, the American Civil War, secession and the “lost cause” mythology? There’s no other way to describe this latest bit of insanity other than intellectually violent. On which side of history does Trump reside? Someone should ask him. Meanwhile, since he is actually the president, perhaps Trump needs to spend less time hanging on Steve Doocy’s every word and more time reading about the history of the United States and how its government functions. You never know, he might learn something.

 

[JMarie]

2 hours ago, onekidanddone said:

The article in the WoPo quoted Toddler said Lincoln was "low energy".  Where the fuck does  he come off insulting a great man like that?

...our president-historian posits that the war might not have happened if only Andrew Jackson had still been around. The whole thing apparently could have been avoided if only we had a bona fide negotiator — someone more up to the task than Low Energy Abe Lincoln.

He did that during the election cycle pontificating how much energy he had compared to his opponents. I read it as if he were implying that if he was President, he would have had more energy and could have made a "deal" to prevent the war. Would somebody please send him back to 6th grade history.  What a shit.  A complete and total shit stain. 

Is there ANYONE he won't pick on??

[GreyhoundFan]

9 minutes ago, JMarie said:

Is there ANYONE he won't pick on??

I think the only person exempt from his wrath may be Ivanka.

[47of74]

I think the only person exempt from his wrath may be Ivanka.

Well just wait til she saves her own skin at the expense of Agent Orange.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump’s 100th-day speech may have been the most hate-filled in modern history"

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For those who claim that Donald Trump has been pasteurized and homogenized by the presidency, his sour, 100th-day speech in Harrisburg, Pa., was inconvenient.

Trump used his high office to pursue divisive grudges (Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer is a “bad leader”), to attack the media (composed of “incompetent, dishonest people”) and to savage congressional Democrats (“they don’t mind drugs pouring in”). Most of all, Trump used his bully pulpit quite literally, devoting about half his speech to the dehumanization of migrants and refugees as criminals, infiltrators and terrorists. Trump gained a kind of perverse energy from the rolling waves of hatred, culminating in the reading of racist song lyrics comparing his targets to vermin. It was a speech with all the logic, elevation and public purpose of a stink bomb.

On a selection of policy issues (Chinese currency manipulation, NATO, the North American Free Trade Agreement), Trump has been forced to accommodate reality. But those who find the president surprisingly “conventional” must somehow dismiss or discount this kind of speech, which George Wallace would have gladly given as president. They must somehow ignore the children in the audience, soaking up the fears and prejudices of their elders. They must somehow believe that presidential rhetoric — capable of elevating a country — has no power to debase it.

It is not sophisticated or worldly-wise to become inured to bigotry. The only thing more frightening than Trump’s speech — arguably the most hate-filled presidential communication in modern history — is the apathetic response of those who should know better.

For vigorous and insightful criticism of Trump, we should turn to someone who is not an American at all. He is a Czech intellectual, playwright and politician — who also happens to be dead.

I viewed Trump’s speech immediately after reading Vaclav Havel’s essay “Politics, Morality and Civility” (in an edition recently issued by the Trinity Forum). Havel surveyed the post-communist politics of his time and found leaders willing “to gain the favor of a confused electorate by offering a colorful range of attractive nonsense.” Sound familiar? His diagnosis continues: “Making the most of this situation, some characters with suspicious backgrounds have been gaining popular favor with ideas such as, for instance, the need to throw the entire government into the Vltava River.”

The great temptation, in Havel’s view, is for people to conclude that politics can’t be better — that it “is chiefly the manipulation of power and public opinion, and that morality has no place in it.” This demoralized view of politics would mean losing “the idea that the world might actually be changed by the force of truth, the power of a truthful word, the strength of a free spirit, conscience and responsibility.”

...

Read the whole essay — a Czech giving voice to real Americanism. It is certainly not the spirit of Trumpism, which exemplifies the moral and spiritual poverty Havel decries: the cultivation of anger, resentment, antagonism and tribal hostilities; the bragging and the brooding; the egotism and self-pity. All is visible. None will be forgotten.

The alternative to Trumpism is the democratic faith: that people, in the long run, will choose decency and progress over the pleasures of malice. The belief that they will choose the practice of kindness and courtesy. The conviction that God blesses the poor, the hungry, the weeping and the stranger. Faith in the power of the truthful word.

It is the job of responsible politics to prepare the way for new leaders, who believe that all of us are equal in dignity and tied together in a single destiny. But this can take place only if we refuse to normalize the language of hatred.

 

[Cartmann99]

Keith Olbermann's latest about Trump's desire to change the libel laws:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump’s nifty plan to spend more and hurt poor people more — at the same time!"

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Who says President Trump isn’t a policy genius? He’s figured out a clever way to spend more government money just to stick it to poor people.

His innovation has to do with the intricate interplay of Affordable Care Act subsidies.

Obamacare has two major kinds of subsidies designed to make health care cheaper for low- and middle-income Americans buying insurance on the exchanges. The first is a tax credit that helps enrollees pay their premiums. The second, which is a bit less well-known, is called “cost-sharing reductions.” These subsidies shrink poor people’s out-of-pocket health spending — for example, the co-pays and deductibles that apply when they fill a prescription or see their doctor.

...

Obamacare plans are offered in different “metal” levels, which refer to the share of total health costs plans are expected to cover (“bronze” plans cover 60 percent on average, “silver” 70 percent, “gold” 80 percent, “platinum” 90 percent). The law says that to participate in the marketplaces, insurers have to offer lower-income people a special deal: They can buy silver-level plans but still get closer to gold- or platinum-level coverage.

About half of enrollees in the exchanges benefit from these subsidies, and their savings can be huge. For those making below 150 percent of the poverty line, combined medical and prescription drug deductibles are reduced by $3,354 on average, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation study.

Every month, the government reimburses insurers for the costs required to offer this more generous coverage for poor people. But the Trump administration has lately been cagey about how long this will continue.

In 2014, House Republicans sued the Obama administration over this spending; they argued it was illegal because Congress never explicitly appropriated the money for it. A federal judge sided with Republicans last year, but that ruling is on hold while the case is on appeal, and the Trump administration has not indicated whether it will continue defending it.

Last week the administration said it would continue the payments for the time being. But then a Sunday-morning tweet from Trump suggested the end was nigh. 

If in fact the subsidies disappear — or even if their funding just remains in doubt for long enough to cause insurers to panic — both bleeding-heart liberals and fiscal conservatives should worry. That’s because (a) poor people would lose access to health care; and (b) perhaps counterintuitively, the government would have to spend even more money on health insurance. 

Let’s start with (b). 

Even if the government reimbursements ended, insurers would still be required by law to continue guaranteeing poor people reduced out-of-pocket spending on silver plans. Where would they get the money for that? Mostly likely by raising premiums on these same silver plans — by about 20 percent, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

And that’s where things really go awry — and where the structure of Obamacare creates a domino effect that costs the government billions more. 

Recall that the other kind of subsidy offered to poor and middle-income people on the Obamacare exchanges is a tax credit on premiums. 

The amount of this credit happens to be pegged to silver-plan premiums. If premium prices increase for the benchmark silver plan, then the size of tax credits for everyone eligible for tax credits also increases. This is true even for those choosing something other than a silver plan, and even if the underlying premiums on their chosen plans don’t rise at all. 

As a result, the government would be on the hook for about $12.3 billion in additional premium tax credits, outweighing the $10 billion it would save by killing out-of-pocket-spending subsidies. 

Of course, the other way insurers might deal with the elimination of cost-sharing reduction payments is just to exit the marketplaces altogether. Anthem and Molina have both threatened to do so. 

A possible wave of departures, as well as the general chaos likely to result from sharp premium hikes, would result in more hardship and less insurance coverage for poor and middle-class Americans. A broad, bipartisan alliance of insurers, health providers, anti-poverty advocates, the Chamber of Commerce, the National Governors Association and state insurance commissioners have all argued as much. 

So has Trump himself, incidentally. With the Obamacare repeal-and-replace plan still in limbo, even some House Republicans are calling for these subsidies to continue. 

Insurers have a few more weeks to decide whether to stick around for the 2018 exchanges, and at what price. If Trump doesn’t commit to these subsidies by then, expect a full individual-market meltdown — for which Trump will take the blame.

Hey, nobody knew messing up American health-care could be so complicated.

He's not going to be happy unless he screws us all over.

[GreyhoundFan]

This is an interesting analysis of the tangerine toddler's Tweeting: "In 3 charts, here’s how President Trump’s tweets differ from candidate Trump’s tweets". I can't copy here, but it's worth checking out the charts. He's cut "giving thanks" and "explanation or enouragement" Tweets by more than 50% since he has occupied the Oval Office.

 

Another interesting analytical piece: "Trump’s right-wing populism is built on historical amnesia"

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President Trump won an election based on a promise about the past: "Make America great again," he proclaimed, conjuring up the mythic "good old days" while railing about the supposed disaster and mess of the present.

But the funny thing about Trump's nostalgia is that the president has proved, time and again, that he doesn't know much about the past after all.

That was obvious on Monday after Trump was interviewed on radio by the Washington Examiner in which he extolled President Andrew Jackson and suggested Jackson could have prevented the Civil War from taking place.

...

Jackson's vicious campaigns against the indigenous populations of the American South paved the way for the expansion of slavery there. When he was in power, he banned the post office from delivering abolitionist literature in slave states.

"Jackson had a big heart for white farmers," Nicole Hemmer, a historian at the University of Virginia, told Yahoo News. "Less so for the American Indians he slaughtered and the African-Americans he enslaved. Given Trump’s own focus on white Americans over non-white Americans, it’s not surprising that he would fail to see the limits of Jackson’s big-heartedness."

Trump's rhetoric echoes that of people who cling to an earlier revisionist reading of the Civil War, which sought to minimize the significance of slavery as a cause of the war and, instead, framed the conflict as a tragic blunder that could have been avoided.

That reading underlies the "Gone With the Wind" romanticism and Confederate nostalgia that sees the 150-year-old flag of a treasonous, white supremacist breakaway faction still plastered on American cars, flown from houses and even enshrined in some state capitols. But, as Post columnist Jonathan Capehart pointed out, it's also simply wrong. "Forget the 'War Between the States,' 'War of Northern Aggression' or 'The Lost Cause,'" he wrote. "They are euphemisms to make a war about maintaining the evil of slavery and the economy it built seem like a noble effort by a noble people."

"The entirely uncontroversial consensus among professional historians is that slavery caused the war, although this conclusion has not reached much of the general public," wrote the Atlantic's Yoni Applebaum, who is also a former academic in American history. "Leaders like Jackson, then, only postponed the inevitable reckoning."

...

Trump's brand of populism may invoke a romantic past, but it needs to be distanced from the real one to succeed. The same is true across the pond, where French far-right leader Marine Le Pen — recently praised by Trump as the candidate "strongest on borders" — constantly plays a double game, invoking an older, more glorious France while also playing down her own party's connections to neo-fascism and Holocaust denial. If she loses a run-off election this weekend, her opponents might well consider it history's own kind of revenge.

But for Trump, barely more than 100 days into his term, there's a lot more reckoning to come.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I know Michael Moore can be a bit strident, but this should be interesting: "‘In a take-no-prisoners mode,’ Michael Moore announces one-man, anti-Trump Broadway show"

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Ever since Donald Trump announced his candidacy, Michael Moore has voiced his opposition on nearly every available medium.

The documentarian and political agitator tweeted about it, appeared on numerous cable news shows to discuss it and even launched a “resistance calendar,” which allows users to post about “anti-Trump, pro-democracy” events in the United States.

Add Broadway to that list.

Moore announced Monday he will star in a new one-man Broadway show titled “The Terms of My Surrender,” which he called “a very refined piece of satire.” The show, directed by Tony Award winner Michael Mayer, will preview at the 1,018-seat Belasco Theatre on July 28 before opening Aug. 10 and running for 12 weeks.

Its tagline reads, “Can a Broadway show take down a sitting President?”

“I operate under the hope that he won’t be president for very long,” Moore said at a news conference Monday at Sardi’s. “Why don’t we see if every night — and twice in the afternoon — for 12 weeks if a piece of theater can raise enough of a ruckus to discombobulate the man sitting in the Oval Office? I don’t know, but I’d like to find out. … Stranger things have happened in the last year.”

“I’m in a take-no-prisoners mode,” Moore added.

...

His hope for the show — as with most of his recent work — is simple: to see Trump leave office, one way or another. And he thinks it’s possible.

“Don’t you believe after this last year that literally anything can happen? That used to be a cliche, but we now know anything can happen,” he told the Hollywood Reporter. “He could resign next week.”

“I have a good amount of humility in me, but if he does resign before or during the run of the show, count on it, I will take some of the credit,” Moore added. “I’m just saying it now.”

Hey, if it inspires Agent Orange to get out, I'm for it.

[fraurosena]

Interesting. And scary as hell.

Yale historian warns it’s ‘inevitable’ that Trump will stage his own ‘Reichstag fire’ to save his presidency

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Yale University Professor Timothy Snyder‘s recent book focusing “On Tyranny” not only puts President Donald Trump in context with other 1930s fascists but it walks readers through steps for the resistance to maintain freedom.

In a recent interview for Chauncey DeVega’s podcast, Snyder explained that Americans assumed nothing bad would ever happen once the Cold War ended. Trump managed to tap into the idea that the U.S. isn’t a democracy anymore so people should simply let him be their very own oligarch. But because Americans tend to throw around terms like “fascist,” “dictator” and “Hitler,” the idea loses its meaning. Add to that, Americans tend to believe in our own exceptionalism.

“As I see it, there are certainly elements of his approach which are fascistic,” Snyder explained. “The straight-on confrontation with the truth is at the center of the fascist worldview. The attempt to undo the Enlightenment as a way to undo institutions, that is fascism.”

Fascists during the 20th century were quick to urge putting aside the facts. They also tend to use language similar to Trump’s during his rallies. They name enemies, remove opponents and use blunt slogans and soundbites over and over again.

“And Mr. [Steve] Bannon’s preoccupation with the 1930s and his kind of wishful reclamation of Italian and other fascists speaks for itself,” Snyder notes.

At the same time, somehow the Democrats became the status quo party while Republicans became the party seeking to undo the system. Bannon’s fascination with the Fourth Turning plays into it as Bannon seems to want to instigate the next great turning so that he can craft the future the way he wants. Bannon believes the only way we can usher in a new world order with a “massive reckoning” that results in conflict, thus he eggs on such conflicts.

Trump is allowed to soldier on with one failure after another as evidence of his incompetence staggers around the White House in a bathrobe. As a television personality, he’s judged only by those standards, not by the standards we hold real political leaders and public servants.

“I think another part of it has to do with attention span,” Snyder continued. “It’s not so much a lack of outrage — people are in fact outraged. But in order for a scandal to have political logic, the outrage has to be followed by the research, it has to be followed by the investigation, it has to be followed by an official finding.”

Snyder writes in his book that Trump will likely have his own conflict that brings about the “massive reckoning” Bannon seeks. Something like Hitler’s Reichstag fire that is either a war with North Korea, Iran, China, Russia or any of the other countries he’s antagonized over the last 100 days. In fact, Snyder said that it was “inevitable” that Trump and his team would try such an obvious stunt.

“Whether it works or not depends upon whether when something terrible happens to this country, we are aware that the main significance of it is whether or not we are going to be more or less free citizens in the future,” Snyder explained. “My gut feeling is that Trump and his administration will try and that it won’t work. Not so much because we are so great but because we have a little bit of time to prepare. I also think that there are enough people and enough agencies of the government who have also thought about this, and would not necessarily go along.”

Snyder’s book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century outlines steps Americans can take to fight back. He anticipates we’ll know within the first year which direction Trump is taking and the degree to which it will work. Right now, however, Americans are already taking steps to resist including marches, rallies and more. The problem is that Trump and his people have already started.

“Every day you don’t do something, it makes it less likely that you will ever do something. So you’ve got to get started right away,” Snyder said. “Don’t obey in advance, because you have to start by orienting yourself against the general drift of things. If you can manage that, then the other lessons — such as supporting existing political and social institutions, supporting the truth and so on — those things will then come relatively easily if you can follow the first one, which is to get out of the drift. To recognize that this is the moment where you have to not behave as you did in October 2016. You have to set your own habits now.”

Looking at America now, is like looking at a trainwreck in super slow motion. As I see it, there are two possible outcomes. Either America slides slowly but inexorably into a totalitarian state, or a total implosion of the current government will occur, sucking the presidunce, and all his cronies and enablers into a veritable black hole of impeachment and prosecution. I am fervently and very tightly crossing my fingers the latter will happen. Sadly, I don't think America will come out of this unscathed either way.

[GreyhoundFan]

"When is it okay to say the president might be nuts?"

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On Saturday, President Trump gave an angry, rambling speech to his supporters in which he obsessed over perceived enemies in the media and elsewhere. Recently he insisted he won’t “stand by anything” in his accusations about alleged wiretapping by President Barack Obama, yet argued that his case has been “proven very strongly.” (In reality, the entire national security community has rejected it, as have the chairmen and ranking minority-party members of House and Senate committees.) ...

Trump has praised the dictator of North Korea, Kim Jong Un, as a “smart cookie.” He insisted the health-care bill that the House is struggling to pass does not say what it does and is still changing (although Gary Cohn insists there are likely votes for it). Politico quotes a senior GOP aide as saying of Monday’s interviews, “He just seemed to go crazy today.”

Is Trump nuts, ill-informed or a liar — or all three?

Until now, people who could have shed light on a president’s mental state were professionally hindered from doing so. The so-called Goldwater Rule — named for the late Sen. Barry Goldwater, whom some psychiatrists took to calling crazy because of his foreign policy views — admonishes medical professionals not to opine on the mental health of people whom they had not examined. In the context of Trump, however, there has been some buzz about doing away with the rule on the grounds that psychiatrists should be able to give their best medical judgment to “warn” the public.

...

There are myriad problems with diagnoses by doctors not treating a patient. We saw during the campaign how unfounded speculation about Hillary Clinton’s health got out of hand. Supporters and critics of an incumbent president (not to mention psychiatrists) are unlikely to agree. And in any event, it is not clear that a finding that “the president is suffering from a narcissistic personality disorder” can be used to invoke the 25th Amendment.

There are, however, a few points on which many Americans can agree. First, there is a fundamental difference between calling someone “crazy” because of his views, for example, on the Vietnam War and questioning someone’s mental stability based on his behavior, speech and other observable factors. Second, Congress could try to pass a law requiring an annual physical and mental checkup for the commander in chief, although it would have to get past a likely veto. Congress would also need to figure out how to enforce such a requirement and tackle the issue of doctor-patient confidentiality. All of that seems a bit much to overcome. Third, in an era when anyone has access to social media, we are going to see professional and unprofessional voices eager to assess a president whose behavior seems out of the ordinary.

From our vantage point, the issue, we think, is not about getting a medical diagnosis. Assessing the president’s mental, temperamental and physical fitness is what voters do. They judge for themselves based on all the evidence they wish to consider (they can look up the DSM-5 for themselves). It’s perfectly valid for them to look at Trump’s short attention span as well as his lack of coherence, self-control, rationality, steadiness and ability to process information. In 2016, enough voters thought he passed muster. However, in 2020, they will have to make that judgment all over again unless Trump chooses not to run. This time they will have witnessed how he functions, listened to him speak and observed how he makes decisions. They may well conclude that he’s too erratic, self-absorbed, dishonest, confused and ignorant to be president. They won’t need a doctor to tell them that.

I'm going with now. He's nuts.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Richard Branson on Trump’s coal plans: ‘I can’t think of anything more stupid’"

Quote

“I can’t think of anything more stupid than to talk about bringing coal back.”

Sir Richard Branson didn’t mince words when I asked him about promises made during the presidential campaign to bring coal jobs back. Our conversation was part of Washington Post Live’s CEO Series Executive Actions held on April 28 that we turned into the latest episode of “Cape Up.”

...

None of what the British billionaire said should have come as a surprise. Branson, in town for the climate march on April 29, is an advocate of renewable energy and among those trying to figure out how to slow the rate of planet-killing climate change. When I asked him why the research of climate scientists doesn’t get through to skeptics in Washington, Branson said to knowing laughter, “Well, it seems to be unique to America, the climate skeptic. As Americans, you’ve got quite a few things unique about you at the moment, but climate change is one of those things.”

There is hardly an issue Branson doesn’t care about. Carbon in the atmosphere? “We set up the Virgin Earth prize, a $25 million prize, to see if anybody could come up with a way of extracting carbon out of the earth’s atmosphere,” he said.

...

Right there with ya, Richard.

[Childless]

2 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Interesting. And scary as hell.

Yale historian warns it’s ‘inevitable’ that Trump will stage his own ‘Reichstag fire’ to save his presidency

Looking at America now, is like looking at a trainwreck in super slow motion. As I see it, there are two possible outcomes. Either America slides slowly but inexorably into a totalitarian state, or a total implosion of the current government will occur, sucking the presidunce, and all his cronies and enablers into a veritable black hole of impeachment and prosecution. I am fervently and very tightly crossing my fingers the latter will happen. Sadly, I don't think America will come out of this unscathed either way.

Ironically, those who have the most to loose in a war with North Korea/Iran/Russia/whoever (military members and their families) are the ones who voted for Lord Dampnuts (at least a large majority of them).  Talk about voting against your own best interest.  Thank God my kids won't get to the age of majority until long after the senile orange gremlin is gone.

[GreyhoundFan]

Good freaking God: "Trump raises prospect of government shutdown to leverage better budget for GOP in fall"

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President Trump on Tuesday called for a government shutdown later this year and suggested the Senate might need to prohibit future filibusters, dramatic declarations from a new commander in chief whose frustration is snowballing as Congress continues to block key parts of his agenda.

“Our country needs a good ‘shutdown’ in September to fix mess!” Trump wrote in a series of tweets Tuesday morning. He likely meant a shutdown in October, as the current spending bill lawmakers have agreed to would fund government operations through Sept. 30.

Trump’s call for a shutdown, which appears to be unprecedented from a sitting president, come as his problems are mounting within the House and Senate, chambers that are both controlled by his party.

House Republicans are still split on whether to approve a bill he supports to roll back the Affordable Care Act, and Trump had to agree to major concessions on a stopgap spending bill in order for it to win support in the Senate, which typically requires 60 votes to pass legislation. Republicans only control 52 votes in the 100-seat chamber.

That made it easier for Democrats to block any funding for the creation of a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, which had been a top priority for Trump. They were also able to continue funding programs that Trump has sought to cut off or scale back, such as Planned Parenthood and the National Institutes of Health.

“The reason for the plan negotiated between the Republicans and Democrats is that we need 60 votes in the Senate which are not there!” Trump wrote on Twitter.

He continued that Republicans needed to “either elect more Republican Senators in 2018 or change the rules now to 51%,” referring to the idea that they should only need 51 votes to pass legislation in the Senate, instead of 60.

Senate rules require 60 lawmakers to agree before most bills can move to a final vote.

Congress is supposed to approve “appropriations” bills for different agencies and programs, voting to authorize annual spending bills. It requires both parties to agree on spending levels for different programs, a difficult but crucial task. This process has broken down in recent years, and lawmakers instead have mostly passed short-term spending bills that must be continually renewed.

One reason for this is that many Republicans want a sharp increase in defense spending and major cuts to other agencies, while Democrats have insisted that increases in defense spending must be matched by increases in spending for other agencies.

White House officials debated whether to take a stand on the current spending bill and demand money for the construction of the border wall. But they decided instead to pull back and cut a deal with Democrats to prevent a shutdown this spring.

...

Still, some of Trump’s top advisers are incensed at what they perceive as gloating from Democrats over the way the short-term spending discussions played out.

Mick Mulvaney, director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, told reporters Tuesday that Trump’s call for a shutdown later this year is a “defensible position, one that we will deal with in September.”

He also said Democrats have wildly mischaracterized the spending package as a win for their party and a capitulation by the White House, something Mulvaney said is false.

“The American people won, and the president negotiated that victory for them,” Mulvaney said on the call. He said some Democrats are “scared to death” of what would happen if Americans found out what was in the spending bill, and he proceeded to list different parts of the package that he said were major victories for the White House.

Principal among those victories, Mulvaney said, is the roughly $21 billion in new money for military spending that lawmakers have agreed to. He said that increasing defense spending by this much while only boosting nondefense spending by roughly $4.5 billion breaks a multiyear demand from Democrats that there be parity between defense and nondefense budgets.

“We broke it in such a way that it almost defies logic that the Democrats would allow us to have such a huge win,” Mulvaney said.

Mulvaney’s characterization of the spending bill, though, was much rosier than Trump’s. Judd Gregg, the former chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said he understood Trump’s “frustration,” but he said the White House will have to learn how to work with the Senate to promote its agenda. And he said Republicans will take all the blame for a shutdown later this year because they control the House, the Senate and the White House.

“I get the sense they are beginning to realize this isn’t like building a building or opening a golf course,” Gregg said of the White House. “This is high politics, not high-rise buildings, and the process is entirely different. The motivation is entirely different.”

Trump’s new demands, calling for a shutdown later this year and a possible end of the Senate filibuster, could further complicate any prospect of working with Democrats on future legislation.

In a speech on the Senate floor, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he was “deeply disappointed” by Trump tweeting about a “shutdown,” arguing that the spending bill was the result of bipartisan negotiations.

“It is truly a shame that the president is degrading it because he didn't get 100 percent of what he wanted,” Schumer said. He went on to quote a Rolling Stones song to make his point, adding, “You can't always get what you want.”

...

Meanwhile, when asked Tuesday morning about Trump’s tweets, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan began with a shrug and a smile: “How many times have I had this, ‘Do you agree with the tweet this morning?’”

“Look, we’ve got a long ways to go between now and September, but I share the president’s frustration,” Ryan said. “What a lot of people in America don’t realize is appropriations bills, they take 60 votes to pass. They can be filibustered. So, all appropriations bills therefore have to be bipartisan because Democrats can always filibuster an appropriations bill. Having said all that, I feel very good about the wins that we got with the administration in this bill.”

Every time I think it can't get more incredible, it does.

[GreyhoundFan]

A couple more articles that go with the last one I posted. "The real reason Trump is so frustrated with Congress: He keeps on taking bullets for Republicans"

Quote

President Trump is ready to give up on Congress — or maybe he already has. And we can totally see why he wants to just shut it down and start all over again. Democrats are united against him, Republicans seem hopelessly divided, and Trump's top priorities are no closer to being law than when he was running for president.

But in this remarkable pair of tweets the president shot off Tuesday morning, Trump may be directing his ire at the wrong party. In two major showdowns so far — the budget and health care — Trump has been taking hits for an ideologically divided Republican Party that can't quite figure out how to legislate.

To wit: There's no question Democrats won this week's budget showdown, and it was mostly Trump's priorities that got left on the cutting floor when congressional leaders were making a deal.

Republicans were too divided to provide enough votes for a strictly conservative budget, so the president had a choice: Push for a political reality that doesn't exist to try to make good on his campaign promises, or back off what he wants and help his divided party in Congress avoid a shutdown.

Then, on health care: The first go-round in March to revise Obamacare, Democrats folded their arms, sat back and watched Republicans struggle to make a deal amid themselves. (Had they reached a deal, it would not have even been subject to a 60-vote filibuster by Democrats in the Senate.)

Trump didn't put all his political capital on the line to sell it, but when the bill had so little support leaders didn't even bring it up for a vote, Trump clearly felt it was Congress's fault. The next day on Twitter, he called for his supporters to watch a Fox News show in which the host called on House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) to step down. And then the day after that, he specifically targeted the group of conservative Republicans in the House Freedom Caucus that mostly opposed the bill.

...

Trump's finger-pointing at Congress — no matter which party he's blaming at the moment — isn't entirely fair to Congress.

Trump came into this job knowing pretty much zilch about the way Washington works. Why else would he have promised during the campaign to get Obamacare repealed, a “phenomenal” tax deal and a full budget that puts America's priorities in the Obama years on its head in just 100 days? Legislating those kinds of massive overhauls take years, if not decades.

Trump has yet to show any desire to try to learn. Most of his team has no firsthand experience on Capitol Hill (Vice President Pence being the notable exception). Over the past several days, Trump has made clear he'd rather just blow up how Congress works than try to work within its “archaic” rules.

The exact same intransigent GOP dynamics that Trump is struggling with have brought down much more experienced politicians. In 2015, faced with the potential for a government shutdown, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) suddenly retired rather than try to bring his party together.

“Trump is having trouble with the curve — the learning curve,” said Jim Kessler, a former top Senate Democratic aide now with the center-left Third Way think tank. “It’s a difficult job being president, and Trump hasn’t shown an overwhelming desire to figure out how Washington works.”

Nor has Washington been able to work for him. And that brings us to this moment in time: a broken Republican-controlled Congress, and a Republican president who has no idea what to do with it.

 

The second article is an update to one I posted a few days ago: "Frustrated by failures, Trump now demands more power"

Basically, he is trying to push to eliminate the fillibuster. Bitch McTurtle doesn't seem inclined to do so, but I trust him about as far as I can throw him, so who knows what will happen.

[Childless]

22 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Good freaking God: "Trump raises prospect of government shutdown to leverage better budget for GOP in fall"

Every time I think it can't get more incredible, it does.

Republicans better be careful.  No party remains in power indefinitely.  Eventually, Dems will win back Congress and the White House and Repubs will really be sorry they went nuclear with SCOTUS and got rid of the filibuster (if they succeed in doing so).  Karma is a bitch and when your infantile power grab is used against you, you'll be wishing you had put more thought into tearing down government checks and balances.

[AmericanRose]

Does Trump even realise that if you have rules that are so easily changed (IE, Republicans have 51 (or was it 52?) seats, and they need 60 votes... so just make the 'new rule' that they need 51 votes) there's no reason to have rules? And that rules exist for a reason?

[Cartmann99]

14 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Good freaking God: "Trump raises prospect of government shutdown to leverage better budget for GOP in fall"

Every time I think it can't get more incredible, it does.

I know my friend, I know. 

If we do have a government shutdown, we'll have the usual gang of idiots cheering and then whining like small children after they figure out that they can't do X,Y, or Z because of the shutdown. 

Between having jury duty yesterday, and the never ending stream of bullshit released every damn day by the Trump regime, I have zero patience today.

[fraurosena]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

an ideologically divided Republican Party that can't quite figure out how to legislate

 

2 hours ago, Childless said:

Karma is a bitch and when your infantile power grab is used against you, you'll be wishing you had put more thought into tearing down government checks and balances.

I think the infantile power grab is the only thing that is tenuously holding the Republican Party together at the moment.

Once reality sets in and they realize that this power is too fleeting to hold on to and is slipping like grains of sand between their grubby little fingers, you can bet that the divisions within the party will finally and inexorably break the GOP apart.

[formergothardite]

I wish whatever is going on with the Russia investigation would speed up so we can get started getting these idiots out of office. He, with the help of the corrupt Congress, is going to destroy our entire country. 

[GreyhoundFan]

Aaaaand, in today's installment of "who is violating the emoluments clause?": "While in White House, Trumps remained selling points for ‘very special’ Philippines project"

Quote

Investors looking to buy a condo at Trump Tower in the Philippines would have found, until this week, some high-powered video testimonials on the project’s official website.

There was Donald Trump, in a message filmed several years before he was elected president of the United States, declaring that the skyscraper bearing his name near the Philippine capital would be “something very, very special, like nobody’s seen before.” Then there was his daughter Ivanka Trump, now a senior White House adviser, lavishing praise on the project as a “milestone in Philippine real estate history.”

Four months into President Trump’s tenure, his business relationship with a developer who is one of the Philippines’ richest and most powerful men has emerged as a prime example of the collision between the private interests of a businessman in the White House and his public responsibility to shape U.S. foreign policy.

The potential conflict first came into focus shortly before Trump was elected, when the Philippines’ iron-fisted president, Rodrigo Duterte, named the Trump Organization’s partner on the Manila real estate venture his top trade envoy.

The connection burst back into public view this week, after Trump stunned human rights advocates by extending a White House invitation to Duterte, known for endorsing hundreds of extrajudicial killings of drug users, following what aides described as a “very friendly” phone call. Trump aides have said the outreach to Duterte is part of a broader effort to isolate North Korea.

Although the promotional videos were posted online in 2013, the continued presence of Trump and his daughter in marketing materials for the Manila tower reflects the extent to which they remain key selling points even as they have vowed to distance themselves from their global real estate and branding businesses.

After The Washington Post inquired Monday about the use of the Trumps in promoting the Manila project, the links and videos on the corporate website could no longer be accessed. Nonetheless, their lingering connection to the property’s sales pitch shows how difficult it is to separate the president from Trump-branded projects, particularly in foreign markets where there is less oversight of how his image is used.

...

Trump’s company does not own or invest in the Manila project, a luxurious 56-story tower nearing completion in Makati, a bustling financial center that is part of metropolitan Manila.

In a long-term licensing deal, the project’s development company agreed to pay royalties for use of the Trump brand. Trump reported receiving $1 million to $6 million in payments from the project between 2014 and mid-2016, according to his financial disclosures.

Jose E.B. Antonio, chairman of the development company, has retained his position in the firm even as he functions now as a top official in the Duterte government. Antonio did not respond to requests for comment, but he told Bloomberg News in November that his role is to “enlarge the relationship between the two countries,” adding of his business relationship with Trump: “I guess it would be an asset.”

...

Now, to ethics experts who have warned for months that Trump’s refusal to divest from his business created the potential for his personal financial interests to compete with his public role, Trump’s recent interactions with Duterte serve as a worrisome sign.

“It does look like the way he is handling U.S. policy to the Philippines is consistent with Donald Trump’s business interests,” said Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis who is an expert on government ethics. “It is inconsistent with how the U.S. has been relating to Duterte since he came to power. But it is consistent with what is important to Donald Trump.”

The $150 million Manila tower, which was originally slated to open last year, is set to be finished in the coming months, with 95 percent of the units sold, according to the Trump Organization.

The Trump family has been a key part of marketing the project since it began in 2012 with promises of becoming one of the Asian nation’s tallest towers.

...

 

Sigh.

Just now, formergothardite said:

I wish whatever is going on with the Russia investigation would speed up so we can get started getting these idiots out of office. He, with the help of the corrupt Congress, is going to destroy our entire country. 

One of my senators is a muckety-muck on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is supposed to be investigating. I've called his office to complain about the slow walking of this investigation.

[47of74]

Keith Olbermann once again hits it out of the park regarding President Fuckman

 

[Cartmann99]

1 hour ago, Cartmann99 said:

Between having jury duty yesterday, and the never ending stream of bullshit released every damn day by the Trump regime, I have zero patience today

Sorry for quoting myself, just wanted to explain my comment about jury duty. I understand that having jury duty is a necessary part of our legal system, my beef is that my county goes about the process in a very inefficient manner. 

Also, the parking situation sucks, the courthouse is too small to meet the needs of the county, and the main entrance is inaccessible to anyone who cannot easily climb stairs. Since no football games are played inside of our courthouse, the voters refuse to grant the county permission to fix these issues. 

[GreyhoundFan]

9 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

Sorry for quoting myself, just wanted to explain my comment about jury duty. I understand that having jury duty is a necessary part of our legal system, my beef is that my county goes about the process in a very inefficient manner. 

Also, the parking situation sucks, the courthouse is too small to meet the needs of the county, and the main entrance is inaccessible to anyone who cannot easily climb stairs. Since no football games are played inside of our courthouse, the voters refuse to grant the county permission to fix these issues. 

Oh, I understood what you meant about jury duty. I'm in a large county, and the parking at the courthouse is a joke. And so much of jury duty is "hurry up and wait".

 

"Why CNN refused to air Trump’s new ad targeting ‘fake news"

Quote

In a self-congratulatory ad marking his first 100 days in office, President Trump labels major television networks “fake news.” So CNN is refusing to sell the president airtime to show the commercial.

“CNN requested that the advertiser remove the false graphic that the mainstream media is ‘fake news,’” the cable channel said in a statement. “The mainstream media is not fake news, and therefore the ad is false and per policy will be accepted only if that graphic is deleted.”

The “fake news” graphic to which CNN referred appears over a split-screen showing NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos and CBS’s Scott Pelley.

...

“It is absolutely shameful to see the media blocking the positive message that President Trump is trying to share with the country,” Michael Glassner, the Trump campaign's executive director, said in a statement. “It’s clear that CNN is trying to silence our voice and censor our free speech because it doesn’t fit their narrative.”

By the dictionary definition of “fake,” CNN is correct to say that “the ad is false.” With few exceptions (Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair), mainstream news outlets do not fabricate stories. They might display shades of bias or publish errors requiring corrections, but that does not make them fake.

Trump, however, has tried (largely successfully) to turn “fake news” into a catchall slur for reporting he doesn’t like.

Observe: In an email about the ad, his campaign said it is “calling out the mainstream media for peddling fake news and not reporting on the fact that President Trump is making America great again.”

By Trump’s standard, news is fake if it does not promote the subjective view that he is “making America great again.”

Trump has aimed the “fake news” pejorative at CNN more often than at any other outlet. Meanwhile, CNN President Jeff Zucker has warned that “the perception of Donald Trump in capitals around the world is shaped, in many ways, by CNN. Continuing to have an adversarial relationship with that network is a mistake.”

It is easy to understand why CNN would ban Trump’s insulting ad from its airwaves.

Glassner is a glassbowl. "...positive message..." SERIOUSLY? Agent Orange wouldn't know a positive message if it bit him in his ample ass.