Trump 23: The Death Eaters Have Taken the Fucking Country

[fraurosena]

Guys, guys, guys, look very, very closely at the resignation letter:

Did you see it? Did you notice something very awkward indeed?

The answer is under the spoiler.

Spoiler

Did you see exactly who is Honorary Chairman of this Committee, that just quit because of the presidunce's hateful rhetoric?

Brownie points if you saw it's Melania!

 

[VelociRapture]

17 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Guys, guys, guys, look very, very closely at the resignation letter:

Did you see it? Did you notice something very awkward indeed?

The answer is under the spoiler.

  Hide contents

Did you see exactly who is Honorary Chairman of this Committee, that just quit because of the presidunce's hateful rhetoric?

Brownie points if you saw it's Melania!

 

I don't think that person under the spoiler resigned. Just the ones listed in black ink under the actual letter. I could be wrong, but I don't think I am.

[47of74]

Heather Heyer's mother told Donnie Dumbfornicate to get lost

Quote

Susan Bro, the mother of slain anti-Nazi protester Heather Heyer, told ABC’s Good Morning America on Friday morning that she does not want to talk with President Donald Trump.

Bro acknowledged that the Trump White House called her on three separate occasions, including once during her daughter’s memorial service. While Bro says that she initially simply missed the White House’s calls, she now says that she does not want to speak with the president.

“I’m not talking to the president now, I’m sorry,” Bro said on GMA. “After what he said about my child… it’s not that I’ve seen someone else’s tweets about him, I saw an actual clip of him at a press conference equating the protesters, like Ms. Heyer, with the KKK and the white supremacists.”

Good.  Fornicate Donny.  I wouldn't talk to him even if the good lord Jesus came down and asked me personally to do so.

[fraurosena]

1 minute ago, VelociRapture said:

I don't think that person under the spoiler resigned. Just the ones listed in black ink under the actual letter. I could be wrong, but I don't think I am.

Oh, I wasn't under the impression this person personally had... I just had to laugh at that person's role and that this person's on the resignation letter 

[allthegoodnamesrgone]

So this is where FJ's come to fret about the rolling dumpster fire that is our 'government'.   Any bets on when this whole cluster fuck will implode hopefully taking down Donnie and everyone around him, including McConnell whom I feel is eyeball deep in this Russia bull shit.

[VelociRapture]

5 minutes ago, allthegoodnamesrgone said:

So this is where FJ's come to fret about the rolling dumpster fire that is our 'government'.   Any bets on when this whole cluster fuck will implode hopefully taking down Donnie and everyone around him, including McConnell whom I feel is eyeball deep in this Russia bull shit.

2018/2019 if the Dems take back Congress. 2020/2021 if they don't. And never if Trump and the Repugs manage to get reelected in 2020 - because it's kind of tough to save the country if we all implode via nuclear warfare.

(That's worst case scenario. I'm hoping he's booted within the next year and Dems retake congress because it would make Mike "SHOCK THE GAY AWAY" Pence's job as President way harder.)

[singsingsing]

I feel like it will take Trump getting impeached/forced to resign. I hate to be a cynic, but I just don't see the Democrats winning anything in 2018, and frankly I feel the same about 2020. Donald Trump is extremely unpopular, but he was before the election and he still won. He's got people outraged, but the same was true in 2016. He still won. The Democrats are ridiculously divided right now and the left-wing/Bernie side of the party seems primed to either take over or to do serious damage to their more moderate colleagues. I'm making no value judgement here whatsoever, but the majority of the country is simply not that left-wing, and there are a shocking number of people who either won't vote, or who will hold their noses and vote for Trump, because teh libruls scare them more.

I mean, I hope I'm completely off base. I hope the Democrats win everything. I hope Trump is thrown in jail. I just have a hard time being that optimistic after the clusterfuck that was the 2016 election and the ensuing fuckery we've been subjected to since.

[GreyhoundFan]

This is sobering, because I can see it happening. The TT doesn't understand the federal budgeting process at all. "Fears grow that Trump could ignore Congress on spending"

Spoiler

Lawmakers and activists are preparing for the possibility that President Donald Trump's administration, in its zeal to slash the federal budget, will take the rare step of deliberately not spending all the money Congress gives it — a move sure to trigger legal and political battles.

The concern is mainly focused on the State Department, where Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has drawn criticism for failing to spend $80 million allocated by Congress to fight Russian and terrorist propaganda and for trying to freeze congressionally authorized fellowships for women and minorities. Activists and congressional officials fear such practices could take hold at other U.S. departments and agencies under Trump.

"We've seen just too many instances these past few months ... where there is clear congressional intent and funds provided, yet an unwillingness or inability to act," Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement to POLITICO.

Advocacy groups are consulting lawyers and gathering information on current spending and the laws that govern the budget; one NGO network is even surveying humanitarian organizations to gather more facts. Capitol Hill staffers are scouring the fine print of appropriations bills, hunting for loopholes that would allow the executive branch to slow down or stop spending.

The goal is to fend off cuts that they fear could damage foreign aid programs, hobble U.S. diplomacy and ultimately weaken America’s national security.

The issue could be a topic of debate at the upcoming confirmation hearing of Eric Ueland, a Trump nominee for a top State Department position. A former Republican Senate budget staffer, Ueland is hailed by conservatives and reviled by liberals for his budget wizardry.

Presidential administrations, even Republican ones that promote a small-government ideology, usually try to spend whatever money they get from Congress’s annual budget process. Federal managers sometimes find creative reasons to spend money to preserve their budgets for future years. Unspent funds revert to the U.S. Treasury.

The State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development would be among the worst hit under Trump's fiscal 2018 budget, with a roughly one-third cut in their finances. But one Capitol Hill aide said questions about the Trump administration’s true spending goals have risen among activists who deal with a range of other U.S. departments and agencies, most of which face cuts of some kind under Trump's plans.

Lawmakers from both parties have declared the proposal “dead on arrival,” making it likely that Congress will budget billions more for some federal functions, like diplomacy and foreign aid, than Trump has requested.

Trump has already ordered executive branch agencies to submit plans to reorganize and streamline themselves, and he has limited federal hiring.

And in one sign of his mentality towards federal spending, Trump thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this month for ordering the U.S. embassy in Moscow to cut its staff by hundreds of people, “because now we have a smaller payroll.” State Department officials were furious over Trump’s remarks, which he later said were sarcastic.

Of the 587 key federal jobs that require Senate confirmation, 364 still have no nominee, according to the Partnership for Public Service. That has raised speculation that Trump intends to leave numerous jobs unfilled indefinitely.

Foreign policy insiders say administration officials have given them the impression that Tillerson plans to restructure the State Department for at least a 30 percent budget cut, even though lawmakers insist that's not going to happen.

"We're talking to pro bono counsel about what is the state of the budget law and what are the possible gray areas," said an official from a top advocacy group that has been asking about Tillerson's plans.

InterAction, a Washington, D.C.-based alliance of NGOs that engage in foreign aid and development, sent out an online survey to many of its members to get a sense of the spending environment under Trump.

One question on the survey, seen by POLITICO, asks organizations whether the administration has been slow to disburse promised funding.

Another asks: "Have you been encouraged to either submit or not submit proposals prior to the end of the [U.S. government] fiscal year? If so, by whom? What rationale was given?"

InterAction officials declined to comment.

The State Department dismissed the concerns. "The department and USAID will obligate funding appropriated by Congress consistent with applicable law, including the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974,” a State Department official said.

The White House Office of Management and Budget denied that it is looking for ways to avoid spending appropriated funds. “We have, of course, apportioned funds to agencies as required by statute," said OMB spokesman John Czwartacki.

Any attempt by Trump officials to avoid spending money on ideological grounds would face legal roadblocks, budget experts note.

The 1974 law cited by the State Department official was enacted amid anger over President Richard Nixon's decision to not spend—or “impound”— billions of dollars appropriated by a Congress that Nixon blamed for deficits and inflation. Lawmakers saw a threat to their constitutional control of federal tax and spending policy.

The law allows the executive branch to request permission from Congress to not use certain funds. But it also says any such request must offer lawmakers a specific and pragmatic rationale for holding on to the money. A general claim that the administration wants to shrink spending won't pass muster, experts said.

The law does give an administration leeway to defer spending available funds, but for limited amounts of time, depending on the program. Some observers expect Trump officials to rely heavily on such deferrals.

Trump’s budget critics note that the law gives the U.S. Comptroller General power to sue an administration for not spending funds without a legitimate reason, according to an analysis recently circulated among concerned NGOs.

Still, a president seeking to spend less will find plenty of room to maneuver in the language used in an authorization or appropriations bill, budget experts said. One Senate aide predicted that lawmakers will pay extra attention to whether a bill uses words such as "may," "should," or "shall" -- each of which gives an administration different degrees of flexibility in terms of how money is spent.

The executive branch also "can slow walk things. It can propose reprogramming. It can propose all sorts of things it can do that won't provoke a legal crisis," the Senate aide added.

An administration keen on trimming the budget can find an advantage in delaying spending. "That makes it look like you have more than you need going into the next fiscal year. Then you can say 'We don't need as much,'" said Heather Higginbottom, a former deputy secretary of state for management and resources.

That would be a stark reversal for one of Washington’s worst-kept secrets: the rush by agencies to prove to Congress that they need every dime they’re given. “Use it or lose it” season has seen agencies spend huge amounts on everything from artwork to lavish conferences so that their budgets aren't trimmed the following year.

A spending fight would be a healthy way to force Congress and the administration take a tougher look at how money is allocated, argued Brett Schaefer, an analyst with the conservative Heritage Foundation. He defended the Trump administration’s overall aims, saying: "It's not about saving money -- it's about whether the expenditure advances the priorities and interests of the United States in an effective way."

Trump's critics are especially wary given his decision to nominate Ueland as the next undersecretary of state for management, a job with significant sway over the State Department budget. The job is among a small handful at the department for which Trump has picked a nominee.

Ueland has served in a number of Senate staff roles, including as the Republican staff director of the U.S. Senate Budget Committee. His knowledge of budget rules and procedure is considered formidable, and administration detractors suspect he's being brought in to specifically to help financially gut the State Department in ways that pass legal scrutiny.

"He is stone cold evil," said Jim Manley, a longtime aide to former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. "Very few, if any, people know how to manipulate the budget rules for better or worse than Eric. If anyone's looking for him to do the right thing you're looking at the wrong guy.”

Ueland declined to comment. A date for his confirmation hearing has not been announced.

Joel Charny, director of the Norwegian Refugee Council USA, said his organization has been trying with little luck to get answers from people inside the administration, especially those who work within the Population, Refugees and Migration bureau at the State Department and the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance at USAID.

"We can't get to the bottom of it, and our colleagues in the U.S. government won't tell us if they're getting a specific instruction from the Office of Management and Budget to slow down the disbursements of money," Charny said. "My strong suspicion is that they are, but the evidence isn't entirely clear. They're just feeling so under the gun."

G. William Hoagland, a former longtime Senate budget aide, noted that the budget differences are pitting a GOP-controlled Congress against a Republican president.

If Trump really wants to trim back government spending, "his first line of attack is to make sure Congress doesn't appropriate the money if he doesn't like it," Hoagland said. "And if he thinks the appropriations bills are spending too much, he can veto them.”

 

16 minutes ago, singsingsing said:

I feel like it will take Trump getting impeached/forced to resign. I hate to be a cynic, but I just don't see the Democrats winning anything in 2018, and frankly I feel the same about 2020. Donald Trump is extremely unpopular, but he was before the election and he still won. He's got people outraged, but the same was true in 2016. He still won. The Democrats are ridiculously divided right now and the left-wing/Bernie side of the party seems primed to either take over or to do serious damage to their more moderate colleagues.

I'm concerned that you are right. I've read several articles where the argument is that the Dems won't retake either the house or the senate in 2018. If that happens, 2020 could bring president pence (let me pause to do the Munch scream) or continue with president orange menace (let me pause to bang my head on a brick wall). I hope, hope, hope the Dems can pull it off, but Bernie seems to be riling up his bros to push the party further left, which will turn off moderates, especially those not on either coast.

[CTRLZero]

1 hour ago, fraurosena said:

Did you see it? Did you notice something very awkward indeed?

I did notice that, but I first zeroed in on that word "complicit," lol.  I'll forever associate it with SNL!

They didn't pull any punches in that letter, but I was reading about the group being mostly Obama-administration holdovers, so the Trumps will probably just shrug their collective shoulders.  Maybe others will use the letter as a template.

[allthegoodnamesrgone]

What gets me is the sheer numbers of people who just don't pay attention.  They like Trump so what ever, but they aren't watching the news or reading anything about it.  So they can just keep on.  How can you go for weeks without watching the news? Is my family that strange that we try to keep ourselves informed 90% of the time? I know 2 people off the top of my head who had no idea about what happened last Saturday, they believe the "both sides did it" I'm like you are siding with LITERAL Nazi's here, you do realize this. And they just shrug their shoulders and go meh.

[singsingsing]

A lot of them watch/read the news, but it's right-wing bullshit news, so it just feeds and inflames their preconceived biases. 

[Destiny]

2 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Did you see it? Did you notice something very awkward indeed?

LOL. I thought you were pointing out that the first letter of every paragraph spelt out RESIST. 

[candygirl200413]

Also in the letter, read the first letter of each paragraph. It spells

Spoiler

Resist

 

[singsingsing]

23 minutes ago, Destiny said:

LOL. I thought you were pointing out that the first letter of every paragraph spelt out RESIST. 

Oh man. That's effing amazing.

[AnywhereButHere]

 

Quote

President Trump has told senior aides that he has decided to remove Stephen K. Bannon, the embattled White House chief strategist who helped Mr. Trump win the 2016 election, according to two administration officials briefed on the discussion.

The president and senior White House officials were debating when and how to dismiss Mr. Bannon. The two administration officials cautioned that Mr. Trump is known to be averse to confrontation within his inner circle, and could decide to keep on Mr. Bannon for some time.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/08/18/us/politics/steve-bannon-trump-white-house.html?referer=

So, is this the end for Bannon? And what tales will he tell if so?

[GreyhoundFan]

"‘Known racist and a nazi sympathizer’: Activist projects message onto Trump’s D.C. hotel"

Spoiler

D.C.’s resident projection protest artist did not mince words Thursday night in his latest rebuke to President Trump.

Robin Bell drove his van to Trump International Hotel and projected several slides on the facade of the president’s eponymous hotel that said in all capital letters, “The president of the United States is a known racist and a nazi sympathizer.”

“This is not a drill,” the message continued. “We are all responsible to stand up and end white supremacy. #Resist.”

The message gained traction on social media as passersby took photos and posted them online.

Bell, a D.C.-based artist and filmmaker, also projected images Thursday night on the Newseum and on a Confederate statue near D.C.’s Judiciary Square.

The image on the Newseum was in honor of Heather Heyer, the 32-year-old woman killed at the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville after a man drove a car through a crowd of counterprotesters.

“Heather Heyer,” the projection read. “1985-2017.”

The animated image at the statue of Albert Pike, a Confederate soldier, in the nation’s capital showed a dotted line at the base of the statue with the words “Remove racism above line” written beneath it.

Animated scissors then mimics cutting the line.

The D.C. Council has called for the statue, which is on federal property, to be removed.

In a separate incident Friday morning in Washington, a small group of protesters draped a banner around the statue, calling Chief of Staff John Kelly, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Chief Economic Advisor Gary Cohn “modern confederates.”

Anthony Torres, a D.C. resident and community organizer who helped to make the banner, said he singled out those names because “it is not just the usual suspects in the administration who support an agenda of white supremacy.”

“It’s been reported that these men have been uncomfortable and upset about Trump’s rhetoric, yet they’ve done nothing,” Torres said. “If they were serious about their discomfort with Trump’s overt supremacy, then they would resign from their posts.”

As for the projection on Trump’s hotel, Bell has been using his art to protest throughout the Trump presidency.

He’s projected an animated version of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s face outside the Justice Department headquarters with a magnifying glass, saying “investigate Trump, investigate Russia,” in English and Russian.

In May, his protest focused on the emoluments clause of the Constitution and projected images on the Trump International Hotel, one of which said “Pay Bribes Here” with arrows pointing to the hotel entrance.

He has said that projection art is an effective form of protest because it sends a message without vandalizing property.

“That is one of the big things that I’m trying to do — using our artwork to explain these stories that are tricky,” Bell said about his emolument clause projections. “If someone can laugh and look at something, and then talk about it.”

You can see videos and pictures in the article.

[allthegoodnamesrgone]

33 minutes ago, AnywhereButHere said:

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/08/18/us/politics/steve-bannon-trump-white-house.html?referer=

So, is this the end for Bannon? And what tales will he tell if so?

I'm wondering if he will sell Trump out to the highest bidder out of spite or if he will just keep being the weasel he is.

[Penny]

Let' hope he talks and tells us where the bodies are buried.

[GreyhoundFan]

More cancellations! "Salvation Army, Red Cross, Susan G. Komen abandon Trump’s Mar-a-Lago"

Spoiler

The Salvation Army, the American Red Cross and Susan G. Komen on Friday joined a growing exodus of organizations canceling plans to hold fundraising events at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, deepening the financial impact to President Trump’s private business amid furor over his comments on Charlottesville.

The major exits now mean seven of the club’s biggest event customers have abandoned it in a matter of hours, likely costing the Trump business hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue or more.

The Red Cross said it would cancel its annual fundraiser at the club because “it has increasingly become a source of controversy and pain for many of our volunteers, employees and supporters,” the charity said in a statement Friday.

Susan G. Komen, the nation’s largest breast-cancer fundraising group, said Friday it would seek another venue after hosting its “Perfect Pink Party” gala at Mar-a-Lago every year since 2011.

And the Salvation Army, which has held a gala at the club every year since 2014, said in a statement that it would not hold its event there “because the conversation has shifted away” from its mission of helping those in need.

The Autism Project of Palm Beach County also said Friday that it is no longer planning on hosting an event at the club, President Richard Busto told The Post Friday. The group has held “Renaissance Dinner” galas at the club every year since at least 2008.

The charitable groups joined three other large event cancellations Thursday: the Cleveland Clinic, the American Friends of Magen David Adom and the American Cancer Society, which cited its “values and commitment to diversity” in its decision to abandon the club.

Another group, the Unicorn Children’s Foundation, said it is “currently exploring other options” for a previously planned luncheon at Mar-a-Lago and would make its final decision next month.

The cancellations hit at one of the private Florida club’s top moneymakers: The club earned between $100,000 and $275,000 each from similar-sized events in the past during Palm Beach’s glitzy social seasons.

But they also reveal a widening vulnerability for Trump, who, unlike past presidents, refused to divest from his business interests when he joined the White House.

The groups’ cancellations follow rebukes from business executives this week, who heavily criticized Trump’s comments that white supremacists and counterprotesters were similarly at blame during a deadly weekend in Charlottesville.

The Trump Organization did not respond to requests for comment.

Hooray!

[Cartmann99]

@VelociRapture, from now on, I will refer to scooping out the litter boxes as scooping out the Mitch McConnells.  

[CTRLZero]

11 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

The Salvation Army, the American Red Cross and Susan G. Komen on Friday joined a growing exodus of organizations canceling plans to hold fundraising events at the Mar-a-Lago Club

What took them so long?  I guess it's better late than never, but there has been clearly something horribly wrong with this administration from the get-go.  I hope more organizations take note and join the exodus.  Plenty of other venues out there (i.e., the Stonewall [Jackson] Resort--kidding!).

[GreyhoundFan]

I think the title says it all: "Trump is a cancer on the presidency"

Spoiler

On Monday, I declared that President Trump had neither the moral core nor the moral authority to respond properly to the openly racist horror that took place in Charlottesville. I said flat out that I didn’t believe him when he mouthed words that fell short of what was required for a moment so pivotal. Trump’s denunciation of “the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups” later that day was as forced as the confessions from the Central Park Five.

On Tuesday, he proved my gut feeling right.

In the lobby of his tacky tower on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, the president of the United States defended the torch-bearing racists who lit up the night sky on the University of Virginia campus as they chanted “white lives matter.” He reiterated his “both sides” blasphemy, equating the racism and violence of the bigots who rallied last weekend with the counterprotesters who gathered to uphold the ideals of this nation. And he defended the cause of the Confederacy by siding with those trying to prevent the removal of statues that New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu correctly called “murder.”

The damage Trump has done to the presidency is unmistakable. The damage done to the nation is incalculable. He is unfit to serve.

Up until Trump’s election, the American people sent to the Oval Office men (thus far) who were a reflection of our better selves. None was perfect. All had shortcomings. But they revered the Constitution and its ideals. Expanding their support to buttress their moral authority to make decisions on behalf of all Americans was paramount to preserving national unity. Those men understood that the presidency was bigger than themselves. Not Trump.

He is siding with racists who want to turn the clock back to the 1800s. He is giving comfort to bigots who want to “take our country back” with racial violence. He is fueling the hate that allegedly drove James Alex Fields Jr. to plow his car into a crowd, killing Heather Heyer and injuring 19 others. He doesn’t see how doing these things is tearing the country apart. And he doesn’t care. Rather than a reflection of our better selves, Trump is a cancer on the presidency.

In his book “Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency,” journalist Joshua Green notes the lesson Trump learned in 2011 while pushing the racist birther lie against then-President Barack Obama.

Trump, who has an uncanny ability to read an audience, intuited in the spring of 2011 that the birther calumny could help him for a powerful connection with party activists. He also figured out that the norms forbidding such behavior were not inviolable rules that carried a harsh penalty but rather sentiments of a nobler, bygone era, gossamer-thin and needlessly adhered to by politicians who lacked his willingness to defy them. He could violate them with impunity and pay no price for it. …

Privately, what amused him the most, he later told a friend, was that no party official in a position of power dared to stand up to him.

Trump must be held accountable for his false moral equivalency and his willingness to exalt the treasonous Confederacy at the expense of our union. The “harsh penalty” that escaped him in 2011 must be visited upon him now. People of good conscience must speak up and stay vocal. More Republicans must stand up to him now and do so boldly. They have to put the country before party or some longed-for policy that pales in comparison to the preservation of our ideals. And if Trump succeeds in surviving this unbelievable affront to all we say we are, he will not be to blame. We will.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

From Jennifer Rubin: "Yes, boycott the White House — and Trump properties"

Spoiler

President Trump was forced to disband two advisory business councils this week when CEOs left en masse. He has had to drop the idea of an infrastructure council, one suspects, because it would be hard to round up people willing to attend.

Now ESPN reports:

Kevin Durant says he will not visit President Donald Trump at the White House if the NBA champion Golden State Warriors are invited.

“Nah, I won’t do that,” said Durant, the 2017 NBA Finals MVP. “I don’t respect who’s in office right now.” . . .

“I don’t agree with what he agrees with, so my voice is going to be heard by not doing that,” said Durant, who said it wasn’t an organizational decision. “That’s just me personally, but if I know my guys well enough, they’ll all agree with me.

He added,  “So to see [what happened in Charlottesville] and to be where we are now, it just felt like we took a turn for the worse, man. It all comes from who is in the administration. It comes from the top. Leadership trickles down to the rest of us. So, you know, if we have someone in office that doesn’t care about all people, then we won’t go anywhere as a country. In my opinion, until we get him out of here, we won’t see any progress.”

We certainly hope Durant’s teammates, fellow basketball players and indeed all professional and college sports players make the same choice. They are inarguably role models, and America could use some role models right about now. Durant and others can emphasize that their extraordinary action is required because of Trump’s deliberate effort to rewrite history and redefine the United States in ways that are antithetical to our founding creed.

We’ve urged public figures of all types — entertainers, civic leaders, public intellectuals, business leaders, scientists, etc. — to make the same decision. Those who publicly decline to attend events deserve praise; those who attend deserve our contempt. No one can honestly say that meeting with the president offers a chance to shape Trump’s views, influence his decisions or help our country. This week should have removed any doubt that Trump is immune to reason, indifferent to history and contemptuous of advice.

Charities are also making some public decisions. Both the American Cancer Society and the Cleveland Clinic have canceled events at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. The Post also reports, “The American Friends of Magen David Adom, which raises money for Israel’s equivalent of the Red Cross, also said it would not hold its 2018 gala at the club ‘after considerable deliberation,’ though it did not give a reason. The charity had one of Mar-a-Lago’s biggest events last season, with about 600 people in attendance.” I cannot imagine why any charitable organization that wants the support of a wide array of Americans would think it was in its interest to stage an event under the Trump logo.

We find it appalling, frankly, that the Fund for American Studies (TFAS) — a group that bills itself as dedicated to teaching “limited government, free-market economics and honorable leadership to students and young professionals in America and around the world” — would think to have its event at Trump’s International D.C. Hotel. The group’s actions in selecting its venue speak volumes. (A separate issue has arisen as to whether it is appropriate for Justice Neil Gorsuch to speak there, given the potential for litigation on the emoluments clause reaching the Supreme Court. Legal ethics experts are divided as to the propriety of, in essence, Gorsuch being the star attraction at an event that would enrich the president who appointed him; we find it unseemly.)

Private and public citizens, like politicians, will have to make their own decisions about how they want to conduct themselves with regard to this president. Whatever they decide, however, they will be setting an example for others, if only their children, and they have every reason to be judged harshly by those who find that Trump has not only defiled the presidency but waged an assault on our civic virtues and democratic norms.

I hope more and more boycotts start happening.

[allthegoodnamesrgone]

42 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I think the title says it all: "Trump is a cancer on the presidency"

Trump isn't the cancer, Trump is the symptom that brought the cancer to light, like a big ugly mole or a huge lump in your breast, revealing all these nasty malignant things stewing inside of you for decades and suddenly BOOM!

[Palimpsest]

@allthegoodnamesrgone, we knew the cancer was there, barely controlled by what we thought was the chemotherapy of decent thinking people, and the odd dose of radiation from legislation by previous administrations.  Trump is the gasoline on the deadly fire of of the cancer.