Trump 28: He's a "stable genius" with a "big & powerful button"

[fraurosena]

In light of @Destiny's wonderful name of this new thread, this latest Randy Rainbow song is rather appropriate.

I love the way he disses SHS with her own words and expressions!

[fraurosena]

This op-ed by David Brooks in the NYT is a must read.

The Decline of Anti-Trumpism

Quote

Let me start with three inconvenient observations, based on dozens of conversations around Washington over the past year:

First, people who go into the White House to have a meeting with President Trump usually leave pleasantly surprised. They find that Trump is not the raving madman they expected from his tweetstorms or the media coverage. They generally say that he is affable, if repetitive. He runs a normal, good meeting and seems well-informed enough to get by.

Second, people who work in the Trump administration have wildly divergent views about their boss. Some think he is a deranged child, as Michael Wolff reported. But some think he is merely a distraction they can work around. Some think he is strange, but not impossible. Some genuinely admire Trump. Many filter out his crazy stuff and pretend it doesn’t exist.

My impression is that the Trump administration is an unhappy place to work, because there is a lot of infighting and often no direction from the top. But this is not an administration full of people itching to invoke the 25th Amendment.

Third, the White House is getting more professional. Imagine if Trump didn’t tweet. The craziness of the past weeks would be out of the way, and we’d see a White House that is briskly pursuing its goals: the shift in our Pakistan policy, the shift in our offshore drilling policy, the fruition of our ISIS policy, the nomination for judgeships and the formation of policies on infrastructure, DACA, North Korea and trade.

It’s almost as if there are two White Houses. There’s the Potemkin White House, which we tend to focus on: Trump berserk in front of the TV, the lawyers working the Russian investigation and the press operation. Then there is the Invisible White House that you never hear about, which is getting more effective at managing around the distracted boss.

I sometimes wonder if the Invisible White House has learned to use the Potemkin White House to deke us while it changes the country.

I mention these inconvenient observations because the anti-Trump movement, of which I’m a proud member, seems to be getting dumber. It seems to be settling into a smug, fairy tale version of reality that filters out discordant information. More anti-Trumpers seem to be telling themselves a “Madness of King George” narrative: Trump is a semiliterate madman surrounded by sycophants who are morally, intellectually and psychologically inferior to people like us.

I’d like to think it’s possible to be fervently anti-Trump while also not reducing everything to a fairy tale.

The anti-Trump movement suffers from insularity. Most of the people who detest Trump don’t know anybody who works with him or supports him. And if they do have friends and family members who admire Trump, they’ve learned not to talk about this subject. So they get most of their information about Trumpism from others who also detest Trumpism, which is always a recipe for epistemic closure.

The movement also suffers from lowbrowism. Fox News pioneered modern lowbrowism. The modern lowbrow (think Sean Hannity or Dinesh D’Souza) ignores normal journalistic or intellectual standards. He creates a style of communication that doesn’t make you think more; it makes you think and notice less. He offers a steady diet of affirmation, focuses on simple topics that require little background information, and gets viewers addicted to daily doses of righteous contempt and delicious vindication.

We anti-Trumpers have our lowbrowism, too, mostly on late-night TV. But anti-Trump lowbrowism burst into full bloom with the Wolff book.

Wolff doesn’t pretend to adhere to normal journalistic standards. He happily admits that he’s just tossing out rumors that are too good to check. As Charlie Warzel wrote on BuzzFeed, “For Wolff’s book, the truth seems almost a secondary concern to what really matters: engagement.”

The ultimate test of the lowbrow is not whether it challenges you, teaches you or captures the contours of reality; it’s whether you feel an urge to share it on social media.

In every war, nations come to resemble their enemies, so I suppose it’s normal that the anti-Trump movement would come to resemble the pro-Trump movement. But it’s not good. I’ve noticed a lot of young people look at the monotonous daily hysteria of we anti-Trumpers and they find it silly.

This isn’t just a struggle over a president. It’s a struggle over what rules we’re going to play by after Trump. Are we all going to descend permanently into the Trump standard of acceptable behavior?

Or, are we going to restore the distinction between excellence and mediocrity, truth and a lie? Are we going to insist on the difference between a genuine expert and an ill-informed blow hard? Are we going to restore the distinction between those institutions like the Congressional Budget Office that operate by professional standards and speak with legitimate authority, and the propaganda mills that don’t?

There’s a hierarchy of excellence in every sphere. There’s a huge difference between William F. Buckley and Sean Hannity, between the reporters at this newspaper and a rumor-spreader. Part of this struggle is to maintain those distinctions, not to contribute to their evisceration.

 

Food for thought.

[AmazonGrace]

Spoiler

CNN)President Donald Trump has boldly declared that he is a genius -- a "very stable" one at that. His Republican colleagues on Capitol Hill were not so quick to agree.

"He's smart and capable at getting himself elected president," said Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran.

But is he a genius?

<img alt="Republican senators who once criticized Trump have learned how to work with him" class="media__image" src="//cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/171017162632-lindsey-graham-rand-paul-large-169.jpg">

Republican senators who once criticized Trump have learned how to work with him

Moran paused for several seconds, smiled and said simply, "Got nothing."

Moran isn't the only Republican to hesitate. In interviews with more than a dozen House and Senate Republicans on Monday, none of them agreed with Trump's assertion that his intellect is far superior than his peers'.

Read More

While they disagreed with the Democratic attack that Trump is not fit to be commander in chief, Republicans mostly laughed off Trump's repeated assertions that he's a genius -- even if the President himself seems to be serious about it.

"Listen, my view of the President -- I find him to be engaging, gracious, you know, pretty funny, and I don't have a question he's fit for office," said Sen. Ron Johnson, the conservative from Wisconsin.

Asked if he agreed with Trump's assessment that he's a genius, Johnson laughed, walked into the Senate chamber and didn't reply.

<img alt="'It's a mess': DACA negotiations hit a snag ahead of White House meeting" class="media__image" src="//cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/180108180109-01-donald-trump-camp-david-0106-large-169.jpg">

'It's a mess': DACA negotiations hit a snag ahead of White House meeting

Trump over the weekend fueled debate over his intelligence after pushing back on Michael Wolff's book, "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House," which questions whether he has the mental stability to hold office. As GOP leaders were huddled in Camp David for strategy sessions, Trump fired off a furious round of tweets attacking detractors for questioning his mental capacity.

"Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart," Trump tweeted. He added: "I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius....and a very stable genius at that!"

Asked if he agreed with Trump, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott: "I'm not commenting on anything." Asked why not, Scott quipped: "I don't want to."

Neither did Sen. John Thune, the No. 3 Republican in the chamber.

"He obviously was just responding to the book, and I think he's just egging you guys on," Thune said.

<img alt="4 scary numbers for Republicans in 2018" class="media__image" src="//cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/171122135741-cnn-house-of-reps-2016-map-large-169.jpg">

4 scary numbers for Republicans in 2018

But asked if he thought Trump was a genius, as the President often declares, Thune grinned and slipped into the ornate Inner Sanctum room on the first floor of the Senate without saying anything else.

Trump's weekend tweets are hardly the only time the President has boasted about his intelligence. He frequently says he has a very high IQ, pointing to his Ivy League pedigree and his successful real estate career. And he called himself a genius more than once.

"I don't really know what that means," said Texas GOP Rep. Roger Williams. "I mean the fact of the matter is that he was very successful in business, been elected President of the United States, excuse me that's a lot of success but the word genius?"

"There are not many geniuses, depending on how you describe them," added Sen. Richard Shelby, the senior Alabama senator, who also said Trump was "well and alert" when he spent time with him over the fall.

"No comment," said Sen. Jeff Flake, the Arizona Republican and frequent Trump critic.

Rep. Carlos Curbelo, a Florida Republican who declined to endorse Trump in 2016, was more blunt.

"I would never call myself that," Curbelo said. "It's not my style. But you know these characteristics that people were complaining about and some of the President's antics -- it's not new."

Sen. Bill Cassidy, a conservative from Louisiana, praised Trump's economic record and said, "I wish he would tweet less, but that's his style."

Asked if he agreed with Trump's tweet asserting that he's a genius, Cassidy said: "Well, again how many of us are geniuses in everything? But he's got great kids. Everybody in this accepts that he's got great kids."

http://edition.cnn.com/2018/01/09/politics/trump-genius-hill-republicans/index.html

Quote

Asked if he agreed with Trump's tweet asserting that he's a genius, Cassidy said: "Well, again how many of us are geniuses in everything? But he's got great kids. Everybody in this accepts that he's got great kids."

Not sure they could put the bar any lower if they tried. Not sure he's very smart but once upon a time he used to be fertile so it's all good.

 

----

Michael Wolff Calls Trump The ‘Biggest Leaker’ In The White House

The president calls a “coterie of friends and billionaires, and motor-mouths,” the “Fire and Fury” author said.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-biggest-leaker-says-wolff_us_5a53fd82e4b0efe47ebbfac3
 

Spoiler

 

Fire and Fury author Michael Wolff called President Donald Trump the “biggest leaker” in the White House in an interview Monday, as he defended himself from attacks against his tell-all book on the Trump administration.

While Trump complained about press leaks, “the biggest leaker was Donald Trump,” Wolff told Katy Tur in an MSNBC segment.

“Many of the leaks that he would come out and rail against started because [Trump] gets on the phone at night with his coterie of friends and billionaires, and motor-mouths,” Wolff said. “Then they call other people to say, ‘Oh my God, this is what he said.’ And then those people call other people. And suddenly you have leaked... This is all Donald Trump.” 

Is Trump “aware of what he’s saying?” Wolff asked. “I would suspect not all of it.” 

Wolff went easy on his source Steve Bannon, even as the former White House chief strategist attempted in a statement Sunday to distance himself from the book that has infuriated the president. 

In the book, Bannon describes a June 2016 meeting that involved campaign aides, Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer as “treasonous” and “unpatriotic.” But Bannon said Sunday that the comments were aimed not at Trump’s son but rather at former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. He attributed the discrepancy to “inaccurate reporting.”

Bannon did not deny any other remarks attributed to him, but he described Trump Jr. as a “patriot and a good man,” and said that his support for Trump and his agenda is “unwavering.”

Wolff said on MSNBC that Bannon’s “treasonous” comments were “absolutely” in reference to Trump’s eldest son.

“Steve was incredibly helpful on this book, and his insights are penetrating,” Wolff said. “I don’t feel great about putting him in what seems obviously a difficult position. But he was talking about Don Jr. He was not talking about Paul Manafort.”

Wolff indicated that Bannon tried to make amends to the president with the statement, but with the “minimal amount of contrition and the minimal amount of dissembling that he possibly could.” “I think Steve is trying to figure out what to do right now,” Wolff said. “Where does he go?”

Wolff said the president is “bouncing off the walls” over the book, calling his lawyers, “doing what no president should do and what no president has ever done ― trying to accuse an author of invading his privacy and libeling him. It’s nutso.”

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Oh, for pity sake: "Trump Spiritual Advisor Wants You To Send Her Up To 1 Month’s Pay Or Face ‘Consequences’"

Spoiler

Paula White, a prosperity gospel preacher with close ties to President Donald Trump, is calling on followers to send her donations of up to one month’s salary. Those who don’t pay up could face “consequences” from God as he demands the dough as a “first fruits” offering.

“The reason is God lays claim to all firsts,” White wrote on her website. “So when you keep for yourself something that belongs to God you are desecrating what is to be consecrated to God.”

In this case, the “firsts” are money, which “supernaturally unlocks amazing opportunity, blessing, favor and divine order for your life.”

White, who is chairwoman of Trump’s evangelical advisory committee, claims she contributes a month’s pay every year as a “seed,” which according to prosperity gospel is supposed to grow into riches and other blessings. She’s also calling on others to contribute their own firsts, in the form of wages for a day, week or entire month: 

“When you honor this principle it provides the foundation and structure for God’s blessings and promises in your life, it unlocks deep dimensions of spiritual truths that literally transform your life! When you apply this everything comes in divine alignment for His plan and promises for you. When you don’t honor it, whether through ignorance or direct disobedience there are consequences.”

While White said these firsts “belong to God and God alone,” she wants them sent to her in the form of offerings to her ministries. 

White delivered a prayer at Trump’s inauguration, where she called on God to give the president “the confidence to lead us in justice and righteousness, and the compassion to yield to our better angels.”

No, just no.

[GreyhoundFan]

The WaPo's daily roundup mega-article starts off with how badly this administration has treated the Latino population: "The Daily 202: Trump systematically alienates the Latino diaspora — from El Salvador to Puerto Rico and Mexico"

Spoiler

THE BIG IDEA: A Manchurian Candidate who was secretly trying to alienate Hispanics would be hard pressed to do as much damage to the Republican brand as President Trump.

The administration announced Monday that it will terminate the provisional residency permits of about 200,000 Salvadorans who have lived in the United States since at least 2001, leaving them to face deportation. Trump previously ended what is known as Temporary Protected Status for Nicaraguans and Haitians, and he’s expected to cut off Hondurans later this year.

This is part of a strategic, full-court press to make America less hospitable to immigrants, both legal and illegal. Immigration enforcement arrests are up 40 percent, Trump has slashed the number of refugees allowed into the United States to the lowest level since 1980 and the Justice Department has tried to crack down on “sanctuary cities” during his first year.

Most consequentially, Trump created an artificial political crisis by announcing the end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which allows about 700,000 undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country as children to avoid deportation and obtain work permits.

The president is now trying to use the “dreamers” as bargaining chips to force Congress to pony up $18 billion for his border wall, breaking a campaign promise that Mexico would pay. Congressional Republicans are also offering to negotiate an extension of TPS protections in exchange for scaling back the diversity visa lottery program.

There is a chance of a government shutdown in the next several weeks over the wall and/or DACA.

Immigration is the biggest stumbling block in negotiations about keeping the lights on past Jan. 19, which is next Friday. Republicans say Democrats are holding spending talks hostage to secure a DACA fix, which they’d prefer to consider separately. As he meets with a bipartisan group of lawmakers at the White House later today, both Trump and Democratic leaders think they have the better hand — a recipe for trouble. The likeliest outcome is another short-term agreement. 

Outside Washington, Trump’s pardon of Joe Arpaio after he was convicted of contempt of court for ignoring a federal judge's order to stop racially profiling spoke volumes to Hispanics who see the former Arizona sheriff as a boogeyman. The president is also expected to travel later this month to look at prototypes of possible border walls, creating a visual that his base will love but will further galvanize Latinos.

More consequentially, Trump threatened to abandon Puerto Rico’s recovery in October if people on the island didn’t express more gratitude for his efforts in the wake of Hurricane Maria. He has downplayed the death toll, thrown rolls of paper towels at people who lost everything and personally attacked the mayor of San Juan. Meanwhile, many still don’t have power — and electricity might not be fully restored until May. Adding insult to injury, Puerto Rico is one of the biggest losers in the GOP tax bill.

The continuing humanitarian crisis has triggered a massive influx of Puerto Ricans to the mainland, specifically the perennial political battleground of Florida. Unlike those who benefit from TPS, the Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. So they can easily register to vote. Their collective anger at Trump makes that likely.

-- Trump’s nativism may cost Republicans Senate seats this year in Arizona and Nevada, as well as several House seats across the Sun Belt. The party’s top recruit for the Florida Senate race, outgoing Gov. Rick Scott, could opt not to run if the political atmospherics continue to be this bad.

But the much bigger issue is the long-term damage that Trump is inflicting on his adopted party. When they look back a century from now, historians will likely write that immigration and health care were the defining issues of our time. Five years after the Republican National Committee’s “autopsy” of the 2012 election highlighted the urgency of appealing to Latinos, Trump is driving his party down the same path that Pete Wilson followed in California when he embraced Proposition 187 to get reelected in 1994. He won a Pyrrhic victory. The Golden State GOP can’t even field a credible candidate for governor or Senate in California this year.

-- None of this is surprising. Trump literally kicked off his campaign in June 2015 with an attack on Mexican immigrants. “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists,” he said. “And some, I assume, are good people.” Trump made dozens of similarly ugly comments before the election, from calling for a “deportation force” to saying that a federal judge who was born in Indiana couldn’t fairly adjudicate a fraud case against Trump University because his parents immigrated from Mexico.

-- The latest moves underscore how much juice the hard-liners still have in the White House, specifically policy adviser Stephen Miller and Chief of Staff John Kelly. But the ultimate decider is Trump himself. 

-- Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, Kelly’s protege, said Monday that she determined conditions in El Salvador have improved significantly since earthquakes ravaged the country in 2001, which was the justification for the original program. She is giving an 18-month grace period for people to either leave or get legal residency — and to give Congress a window to change the law.

“Immigrant advocates, Salvadoran government officials and others had implored Nielsen to extend the TPS designation, citing the country’s gang violence and the potentially destabilizing effect of so many people being sent home,” Nick Miroff and David Nakamura report. “El Salvador’s homicide rate — 108 per 100,000 people in 2015 — was the world’s highest for a country not at war, the most recent U.N. data shows … The mayors of Houston, Los Angeles and other cities with large numbers of Salvadorans had urged Nielsen to take into account the wider contributions of TPS recipients, a third of whom are U.S. homeowners . . .

“Others urged Nielsen to consider the approximately 190,000 U.S.-born children of Salvadoran TPS recipients. Their parents must now decide whether to break up their families, take their children back to El Salvador or stay in the United States and risk deportation. Senior DHS officials told reporters Monday that Salvadoran parents would have to make that choice.”

-- Meet one of the people hurt by the announcement. From a story by Maria Sacchetti: “Oscar Cortez feels like he has an ordinary American life. He carries a Costco card. He roots for the Boston Red Sox. And five days a week, he rises before dawn, pulls on four shirts and two pairs of pants, and ventures into the frigid air to work as a plumber, a good job that pays for his Maryland townhouse and his daughters’ college fund. At 15th and L streets NW in Washington, Cortez saw the news on his mobile phone while taking a break from laying copper pipe at the construction site of the new Fannie Mae headquarters. ‘You feel like you’re up in the air,’ the silver-haired 46-year-old said. ‘I feel bad and offended. They’re playing with our stability. … I consider this my country.’

“Cortez said he visited his parents in 2016 for the first time since he left and was shocked to see that the house had six locks on every door to ward off burglars. People he knew had left or died. Strangers stared at him on the street. ‘I felt like a foreigner in my own land,’ he said. ‘Everyone is looking at you like you’re from outer space.’”

-- Columnist Petula Dvorak argues that Trump is taking away the American Dream from hundreds of thousands of hard-working people: “Because she didn’t know how else to calm her nerves on Monday, Carmen Paz Villas did what she does best. She went to work, cleaning rooms at the hotel. On her day off. ‘And now, I cry and cry,’ Paz Villas said, in between rooms, when she learned that, no matter how hard she works, the country she’s called home for 18 years doesn’t want her family anymore. ‘Everybody with TPS, all we can do is cry now.’ Because, according to our government today, it’s not enough to work hard, open a 401(k), buy a home, obey the law, start a business, get a Costco card, become a sports fan, win Employee of the Month and have a family to become an American.”

Trump’s announcement means Paz Villas’s husband can’t stay: “He’s from El Salvador. She’s from Honduras, and the administration announced two months ago that roughly 57,000 Hondurans in the United States with protected status like her may also have to leave soon. So much for their home, their kids, their neighbors and their friends in Gaithersburg.” 

-- Ishaan Tharoor contrasts the DHS announcement with a speech that Pope Francis delivered yesterday at the Vatican: “He bemoaned the hostile climate in the West toward refugees and migrants. He decried politicians who demonize foreigners ‘for the sake of stirring up primal fears’ and urged greater global action to help asylum seekers. ‘In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the history of salvation is essentially a history of migration,’ said the pontiff. That's a message that clearly doesn't register with President Trump.” 

...

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump isn’t big on reading. Teddy Roosevelt consumed whole books before breakfast."

Spoiler

Interest has arisen again in the reading habits of President Trump, who recently disclosed that he is a “very stable genius.”

The topic of his literacy first arose during the presidential campaign. The Washington Post’s Marc Fisher asked Trump whether he had read any presidential biographies. Nope. No time. “I never have,” Trump said.

TV host Joe Scarborough pushed the question a bit further:

“Can you read?”

Awkward silence.

“I’m serious, Donald. Do you read?” I continued. “If someone wrote you a one-page paper on a policy, could you read it?”

Taken aback, Trump quietly responded that he could while holding up a Bible given to him by his mother. He then joked that he read it all the time.

Now comes Michael Wolff’s bombshell and much-attacked book, which examines Trump’s White House reading habits by quoting an email from Gary Cohn, the president’s top economic adviser.

“It’s worse than you can imagine,” the email reportedly says. “Trump won’t read anything — not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers, nothing.”

Trump’s reading habits, when ranked against previous presidents, place him about near Zachary Taylor, who may have been illiterate, and far, far away from Republican Teddy Roosevelt, who read entire books before breakfast, which sometimes consisted of 12 eggs.

Unlike Trump, Taylor did not attend a private boarding school. His father was a planter.

“Zachary’s formal education was limited,” a biography of him says, “and his earliest surviving writing suffers from poor spelling and unusually bad grammar, while his hand was that of a near illiterate.”

Taylor became president after his heroic military leadership in the Mexican-American war. He died 16 months into his presidency, so he didn’t have time for much White House reading, anyway.

In taking measure of presidential reading habits, it’s probably worth noting that the president Trump is sometimes compared with — James Buchanan, widely ranked as the country’s worst leader for letting the South secede — was a serious reader throughout his life. He especially loved biographies of George Washington.

“His reading embraced all classes of literature, and he conversed intelligently on all subjects,” according to an 1883 biography by George Ticknor Curtis, which also quoted a letter from his nephew describing precisely how Buchanan read, including his love for being read to:

He had a very peculiar way of reading at night. No matter how many lights might be in the room he always had a candlestick and candle, which he held before his eyes, and by that means read his paper or book. As he grew older we often felt quite anxious for fear his paper might take fire, and, occasionally, on the next morning a hole would be found burnt in it, but, as far as I can recollect, nothing more serious ever came of his reading this way.

Trump wouldn’t have that problem. He could use his iPhone light.

As reading candles go, nobody could hold one to Teddy, who was left with one working eye after a White House boxing match that didn’t end in his favor.

“Reading with me is a disease,” the 26th president once said.

Edmund Morris described Teddy’s reading habits in his three-volume biography:

He succumbs to it so totally — on the heaving deck of the Presidential yacht in the middle of a cyclone, between whistle-stops on a campaign trip, even while waiting for his carriage at the front door — that he cannot hear his own name being spoken. Nothing short of a thump on the back will regain his attention. Asked to summarized the book he has been leafing through with such apparent haste, he will do so in minute detail, often quoting the actual text.

At minimum, Teddy read a book a day — history, poetry, philosophy, novels.

He devoured newspapers and magazines, too, Morris wrote, though in a somewhat predatory way: “Each page, as he comes to the end of it, is torn out and thrown onto the floor.”

This went all night, every night, until Teddy’s one good eye had enough. Then he would leap from his rocking chair, get into his cozy pajamas, and place next to his pillow “a large, precautionary revolver.”

Teddy would then “energetically fall asleep,” Morris wrote, “there being nothing further to do.”

Like watching Don Lemon on CNN.

Yeah, night and day.

[GrumpyGran]

3 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Oh, for pity sake: "Trump Spiritual Advisor Wants You To Send Her Up To 1 Month’s Pay Or Face ‘Consequences’"

  Reveal hidden contents

Paula White, a prosperity gospel preacher with close ties to President Donald Trump, is calling on followers to send her donations of up to one month’s salary. Those who don’t pay up could face “consequences” from God as he demands the dough as a “first fruits” offering.

“The reason is God lays claim to all firsts,” White wrote on her website. “So when you keep for yourself something that belongs to God you are desecrating what is to be consecrated to God.”

In this case, the “firsts” are money, which “supernaturally unlocks amazing opportunity, blessing, favor and divine order for your life.”

White, who is chairwoman of Trump’s evangelical advisory committee, claims she contributes a month’s pay every year as a “seed,” which according to prosperity gospel is supposed to grow into riches and other blessings. She’s also calling on others to contribute their own firsts, in the form of wages for a day, week or entire month: 

“When you honor this principle it provides the foundation and structure for God’s blessings and promises in your life, it unlocks deep dimensions of spiritual truths that literally transform your life! When you apply this everything comes in divine alignment for His plan and promises for you. When you don’t honor it, whether through ignorance or direct disobedience there are consequences.”

While White said these firsts “belong to God and God alone,” she wants them sent to her in the form of offerings to her ministries. 

White delivered a prayer at Trump’s inauguration, where she called on God to give the president “the confidence to lead us in justice and righteousness, and the compassion to yield to our better angels.”

No, just no.

This woman, if I were ever in the same space with her, I'd punch her. Essentially she's saying "Send me your money or I'll tell God to punish you." Special place in Hell for her.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[apple1]

14 hours ago, Destiny said:

Yikes. He really does not know the words. At all. How sad. 

Between the national anthem fiasco and the clips I heard from the "speech" to the "farmers" (quote marks intended) - I believe he is truly exhibiting signs of serious memory loss and dementia.

It's increasingly scary the position our nation is in.

[GrumpyGran]

5 minutes ago, apple1 said:

Between the national anthem fiasco and the clips I heard from the "speech" to the "farmers" (quote marks intended) - I believe he is truly exhibiting signs of serious memory loss and dementia.

It's increasingly scary the position our nation is in.

I don't think he ever knew the words to the national anthem. And to be fair, lots of people struggle with it. But the ever-increasing repetition of words and phrases alone is an indicator of some thing serious.

[apple1]

7 minutes ago, GrumpyGran said:

I don't think he ever knew the words to the national anthem. And to be fair, lots of people struggle with it. But the ever-increasing repetition of words and phrases alone is an indicator of some thing serious.

It was only the first verse of the national anthem. How can any American not know the first verse of the national anthem?

And Trump lost it by the second line - "What so proudly we hailed, at the twilight's last gleaming?"

I would understand if we were talking about other verses, but not the first verse. Plus the fact that Trump never had any interest in this game (he left before halftime). To him it was a politically-motivated show to give him an opportunity to - in his mind - press his point about the national anthem protests by pro football players. He didn't even do enough homework to refresh his memory on the lyrics (or either just stand at attention and not even try to sing) - nor to realize that college players do not ordinarily go out on the field until after the anthem. It was all about dog whistles to racists - and he screwed that up.

Just my thoughts on it.

1 hour ago, GrumpyGran said:

This woman, if I were ever in the same space with her, I'd punch her. Essentially she's saying "Send me your money or I'll tell God to punish you." Special place in Hell for her.

Prosperity "gospel" at its best. Zero in common with the teachings of Jesus.

[Cartmann99]

Yes!! 

 

[47of74]

Oh, joy.  Fornicate face is going to the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Quote

U.S. President Donald Trump plans to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland later this month, his chief spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

This year, Trump will discuss his “America First” agenda in person, said White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders.

“At this year’s World Economic Forum, the president looks forward to promoting his policies to strengthen American businesses, American industries, and American workers,” Sanders said in a statement.

I'd make a drinking game out of taking a shot every time fornicate face said or did something stupid over there but I think I'd die of alcohol poisoning then.

[AmazonGrace]

Trump in Davos: I'll have one huge corruption and two smaller ones, thanks.

 

Americans Can't Afford to Grow Used to This

A year into the presidency of Donald Trump, the country is in danger of accepting the unacceptable.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/trump-numb/550064/

 

Spoiler

 

We’re nearly a full year into the Trump presidency. Steve Bannon has been removed from the NSC Principals’ committee, and then purged from the Trump circle. Stocks are up, taxes are down—at least for most people, at least for now. The ATMs continue to dispense cash; there has been no nuclear war. Factor in that a complete interloper, an unreliable rule-breaker, has just vaulted into spectacular prominence with a mega-selling new book crammed with salacious warnings that the president is succumbing to the first stages of dementia.

All in all, it’s the perfect time for a round of thoughtful conservative punditry boldly to challenge conventional wisdom and proclaim that the Trump presidency, like the old joke about Wagner’s music, isn’t nearly as bad as it sounds.

The reversal of the conventional wisdom would be welcome to many news consumers. It’s fatiguing and upsetting to be told every day that something has gone dangerously and importantly wrong with the government of the United States. And after all, people have business to do with the administration: bills they want signed; regulations they want relaxed. Other people work for that administration. Nobody wants to be made to feel like an enabler or collaborator for shrugging off a few irregularities and getting on with his or her work. And isn’t that work the real story—much bigger and more important than the president mumbling the words of the national anthem at a football game?

If abnormality continues long enough, it becomes normal. Chronic illness; a barrier that closes a once-open border; the death of a loved one: There is nothing that cannot lose its power to surprise and shock. The phrase “President Trump” once supplied a joke to The Simpsons. By now, we have all got used to hearing and saying it. It is our reality.

We have gotten used as well to the publicly visible consequences of that reality: the lying, the bullying, the boasting. It seems useless to keep complaining, and so by and large the formerly unacceptable has been accepted. Trump’s “very stable genius” remark got traction because it was so much more extreme than usual; his usual stream of thoughts, any of which would have generated headlines coming from previous presidents, now largely pass unnoticed. We have gotten used, too, to a routine level of disregard for the appearance of corruption: the payments from lobbyists and foreign hotels to Trump-branded properties; the flow of payments to the presidential family from partners in Turkey, the Philippines, India, and the United Arab Emirates; the nondisclosure of the president’s tax returns.

We have gotten used to the president’s party in Congress sabotaging and discrediting the investigation into foreign manipulation of the U.S. presidential election. We have gotten used to the dwindling of the State Department, the paralysis of the National Security Council, and presidential attacks on the independence of prosecutors, the FBI, and the Department of Justice. We have gotten used to the party of the president pushing through vastly significant laws without hearings and even without accurate estimates of their costs and consequences. We are becoming used to state parties rewriting local election laws explicitly to impede voting by people who might vote against them.

When we worry about democratic decline in the United States, it’s important to be clear what we are worrying about: corrosion, not crisis. In a crisis, of course we’ll all be heroes—or so we assure ourselves. But in the muddy complexity of the slow misappropriation of the state for self-interested purposes, occasions for heroism do not present themselves. On the contrary, the rhetoric of “resistance” comes to seem disproportionate, strident, cranky. Most things continue to operate more or less as they used to do. When the administration seeks to do something improper, oftentimes it is prevented—by the bureaucracy, by the courts, by the administration’s own bottomless inefficiency and distractedness. And if a few things get through, or more than a few—we can tell ourselves that soon enough things will return to normal. The adults who are failing to discipline Trump in the here and now can surely be trusted to clean up after him in the by-and-by.

Yet the unacceptable does not become more acceptable if it is accepted by increments. If you flow with the current, you’ll be surprised where you end up. “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world,” George Bernard Shaw observed a century ago. The saying is true, but it was not meant as a compliment.  It will take a strong dose of unreasonableness to save the country from the destination to which it is tending.  

 

 

 

[Chickenbutt]

https://www.facebook.com/PCPolitics/

Just going to leave this here. A FB page dedicated to exposing Trump and his shenanigans. 

[AmazonGrace]

The resident genius has no idea what he is talking about.

[GreyhoundFan]

The WaPo editorial board has published a series of pieces about what a presidential president would say or do. Here is the most recent. "What a presidential president would have said about his health"

Spoiler

PRESIDENT TRUMP is scheduled to undergo a routine physical examination on Friday. In the run-up to the exam, the president rebutted questions about his mental health by tweeting that he “would qualify as not smart, but genius....and a very stable genius at that!” Here’s what a more presidential president would be saying this week about his health, mental and physical:

“I know that, at 70, I was the oldest president ever to be sworn in for his first term. Although I believe I am in good shape, the public cannot help but wonder about my health. Media reports about my eating and sleeping habits, as well as my own admission during the campaign that I could lose a few pounds, can only contribute to the concern. The days in which a president could hide health problems, even major ones, from the public are rightly gone. Americans should know whether their president has the energy to stay focused through a long workday and the chances that a significant health issue could compromise the executive office in the years to come. Given heightened tensions with a nuclear-armed North Korea, among many other tense global problems, Americans also need to know that their president, with ultimate control over our nation’s vast nuclear power, is of sound mind. Some people wondered about Ronald Reagan’s mental fitness during his second term, before he was tragically diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. I hope to show Americans they need not harbor any similar doubts about me.

“When George W. Bush had my job at a substantially younger age, he submitted himself to a wide battery of tests from a team of doctors, and he released detailed results. I owe the public the same — or a greater — level of transparency.

“Medical records are confidential by law, and I can choose to withhold the results from the public, selectively or entirely. But I realize that I am not an ordinary citizen, and my health is a public concern. I pledge to release all results, whether positive or negative, including any medications that are prescribed for me and any other doctors’ recommendations.

“Given my father’s Alzheimer’s and my own age, I will also insist on taking a mental acuity test. I will release the results of that test also, and I will repeat it every year.

“In my effort to show the American people the same respect my predecessors did, I will also honor another long-held tradition and release two decades of tax returns along with the results of my medical exam. Presidents releasing their tax records is a bipartisan norm and a valuable one. It gives Americans a sense of how their president has conducted his private affairs and of what potential conflicts of interest he has.

“These traditions exist for good reasons. I am no more special than any other person who has held my office, and I deserve no exceptions from these expectations.”

Yeah, he wouldn't utter a single sentence.

[Audrey2]

1 hour ago, AmazonGrace said:

The resident genius has no idea what he is talking about.

This is yet another tweet that reminds me of a junior high or high school student trying to B.S. their way through a test they didn't study for and never did any homework for or listen to any of the instruction on.

[GreyhoundFan]

Yeah, this just about sums it up: "The Worst and the Dumbest"

Spoiler

Like millions of people around the world, I was reassured to learn that Donald Trump is a “Very Stable Genius.” You see, if he weren’t — if he were instead an erratic, vindictive, uninformed, lazy, would-be tyrant — we might be in real trouble.

Let’s be honest: This great nation has often been led by mediocre men, some of whom had unpleasant personalities. But they generally haven’t done too much damage, for two reasons.

First, second-rate presidents have often been surrounded by first-rate public servants. Look, for example, at a list of Treasury secretaries since the nation’s founding; while not everyone who held the office was another Alexander Hamilton, over all it’s a pretty impressive contingent — and it mattered.

There’s an ongoing debate over whether Ronald Reagan, who was given a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s five years after he left office, was already showing signs of cognitive deterioration during his second term. But with James Baker running Treasury and George Shultz running State, one didn’t have to worry about whether qualified people were making the big decisions.

Second, our system of checks and balances has restrained presidents who might otherwise have been tempted to ignore the rule of law or abuse their position. While we’ve probably had chief executives who longed to jail their critics or enrich themselves while in office, none of them dared act on those desires.

But that was then. Under the Very Stable Genius in Chief, the old rules no longer apply.

When the V.S.G. moved into the White House, he brought with him an extraordinary collection of subordinates — and I mean that in the worst way. Some of them are already gone, like Michael Flynn, whom Trump appointed national security adviser despite questions swirling even back then about his foreign ties, and who last month pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. about those ties. Also gone is Tom Price, secretary of health and human services, done in by his addiction to expensive private plane trips.

Others, however, are still there; surely the thought of Steve Mnuchin at Treasury has Hamilton rolling over in his grave. And many incredibly bad lower-level appointments have flown under the public’s radar. We only get a sense of how bad things are from the occasional story that breaks through, like that of Trump’s nominee to head the Indian Health Service, who appears to have lied about his credentials. (A spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services says a tornado destroyed his employment records.)

And while unqualified people are marching in, qualified people are fleeing. There has been a huge exodus of experienced personnel at the State Department; perhaps even more alarming, there is reportedly a similar exodus at the National Security Agency.

In other words, just one year of Trump has moved us a long way toward a government of the worst and dumbest. It’s a good thing the man at the top is, like, smart.

Meanwhile, what about constraints on presidential misbehavior? Hey, checks and balances are just so 1970s, you know? Republicans may have cared about unlawful actions by the president during Watergate, but these days they clearly see their job as being one of protecting the V.S.G.’s privileges, of letting him do whatever he wants.

Count me among those who found the revelations from the new Michael Wolff book not all that shocking, because they just confirm what many reports have told us about this White House. The really important news from last week, as I see it, involved indications that leading Republicans in Congress are increasingly determined to participate in obstruction of justice.

Until now, it wasn’t entirely clear whether pro-cover-up members of Congress, like Devin Nunes, who has been harassing the Justice Department as it attempts to investigate Russian election interference, were freelancing. But Paul Ryan, the House speaker, has now fully taken Nunes’s side, in effect going all in on obstruction.

At the same time, two Republican senators made the first known congressional referral for criminal charges related to Russian intervention — not against those who may have worked with a hostile foreign power, but against the former British spy who prepared a dossier about possible Trump-Russia collusion.

In other words, even as much of the world is questioning Trump’s fitness for office, the only people who could constrain him are doing their best to place him above the rule of law.

So far, the implosion of our political norms has had remarkably little effect on daily life (unless you’re living in hurricane-battered Puerto Rico and still waiting for electricity thanks to an inadequate federal response). The president spends his mornings watching TV and rage-tweeting; he has wreaked havoc with the government’s competence and his party doesn’t want you to know if he’s a foreign agent. Yet stocks are up, the economy is growing and we haven’t gotten into any new wars.

But it’s early days. We spent more than two centuries building a great nation, and even a very stable genius probably needs a couple of years to complete its ruin.

Sad, but true. I truly believe that we have to get the Dems back in control of at least one, but preferably both, houses of congress to arrest this downward spiral. Lyan, McTurtle, Nunes, and their ilk have plenty of time to screw the American people until January 2019, when, Rufus willing, they'll go back to the minority party.

[onekidanddone]

7 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Yeah, this just about sums it up: "The Worst and the Dumbest"

  Reveal hidden contents

Like millions of people around the world, I was reassured to learn that Donald Trump is a “Very Stable Genius.” You see, if he weren’t — if he were instead an erratic, vindictive, uninformed, lazy, would-be tyrant — we might be in real trouble.

Let’s be honest: This great nation has often been led by mediocre men, some of whom had unpleasant personalities. But they generally haven’t done too much damage, for two reasons.

First, second-rate presidents have often been surrounded by first-rate public servants. Look, for example, at a list of Treasury secretaries since the nation’s founding; while not everyone who held the office was another Alexander Hamilton, over all it’s a pretty impressive contingent — and it mattered.

There’s an ongoing debate over whether Ronald Reagan, who was given a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s five years after he left office, was already showing signs of cognitive deterioration during his second term. But with James Baker running Treasury and George Shultz running State, one didn’t have to worry about whether qualified people were making the big decisions.

Second, our system of checks and balances has restrained presidents who might otherwise have been tempted to ignore the rule of law or abuse their position. While we’ve probably had chief executives who longed to jail their critics or enrich themselves while in office, none of them dared act on those desires.

But that was then. Under the Very Stable Genius in Chief, the old rules no longer apply.

When the V.S.G. moved into the White House, he brought with him an extraordinary collection of subordinates — and I mean that in the worst way. Some of them are already gone, like Michael Flynn, whom Trump appointed national security adviser despite questions swirling even back then about his foreign ties, and who last month pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. about those ties. Also gone is Tom Price, secretary of health and human services, done in by his addiction to expensive private plane trips.

Others, however, are still there; surely the thought of Steve Mnuchin at Treasury has Hamilton rolling over in his grave. And many incredibly bad lower-level appointments have flown under the public’s radar. We only get a sense of how bad things are from the occasional story that breaks through, like that of Trump’s nominee to head the Indian Health Service, who appears to have lied about his credentials. (A spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services says a tornado destroyed his employment records.)

And while unqualified people are marching in, qualified people are fleeing. There has been a huge exodus of experienced personnel at the State Department; perhaps even more alarming, there is reportedly a similar exodus at the National Security Agency.

In other words, just one year of Trump has moved us a long way toward a government of the worst and dumbest. It’s a good thing the man at the top is, like, smart.

Meanwhile, what about constraints on presidential misbehavior? Hey, checks and balances are just so 1970s, you know? Republicans may have cared about unlawful actions by the president during Watergate, but these days they clearly see their job as being one of protecting the V.S.G.’s privileges, of letting him do whatever he wants.

Count me among those who found the revelations from the new Michael Wolff book not all that shocking, because they just confirm what many reports have told us about this White House. The really important news from last week, as I see it, involved indications that leading Republicans in Congress are increasingly determined to participate in obstruction of justice.

Until now, it wasn’t entirely clear whether pro-cover-up members of Congress, like Devin Nunes, who has been harassing the Justice Department as it attempts to investigate Russian election interference, were freelancing. But Paul Ryan, the House speaker, has now fully taken Nunes’s side, in effect going all in on obstruction.

At the same time, two Republican senators made the first known congressional referral for criminal charges related to Russian intervention — not against those who may have worked with a hostile foreign power, but against the former British spy who prepared a dossier about possible Trump-Russia collusion.

In other words, even as much of the world is questioning Trump’s fitness for office, the only people who could constrain him are doing their best to place him above the rule of law.

So far, the implosion of our political norms has had remarkably little effect on daily life (unless you’re living in hurricane-battered Puerto Rico and still waiting for electricity thanks to an inadequate federal response). The president spends his mornings watching TV and rage-tweeting; he has wreaked havoc with the government’s competence and his party doesn’t want you to know if he’s a foreign agent. Yet stocks are up, the economy is growing and we haven’t gotten into any new wars.

But it’s early days. We spent more than two centuries building a great nation, and even a very stable genius probably needs a couple of years to complete its ruin.

Sad, but true. I truly believe that we have to get the Dems back in control of at least one, but preferably both, houses of congress to arrest this downward spiral. Lyan, McTurtle, Nunes, and their ilk have plenty of time to screw the American people until January 2019, when, Rufus willing, they'll go back to the minority party.

I don't want to get ahead of myself and have Rufus think me greedy, but a veto-proof majority would be nice. Pretty please

[smittykins]

1 hour ago, Audrey2 said:

This is yet another tweet that reminds me of a junior high or high school student trying to B.S. their way through a test they didn't study for and never did any homework for or listen to any of the instruction on.

Or try to stretch a 600-word term paper into the required 1,000.

[iweartanktops]

15 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Oh, for pity sake: "Trump Spiritual Advisor Wants You To Send Her Up To 1 Month’s Pay Or Face ‘Consequences’"

  Reveal hidden contents

Paula White, a prosperity gospel preacher with close ties to President Donald Trump, is calling on followers to send her donations of up to one month’s salary. Those who don’t pay up could face “consequences” from God as he demands the dough as a “first fruits” offering.

“The reason is God lays claim to all firsts,” White wrote on her website. “So when you keep for yourself something that belongs to God you are desecrating what is to be consecrated to God.”

In this case, the “firsts” are money, which “supernaturally unlocks amazing opportunity, blessing, favor and divine order for your life.”

White, who is chairwoman of Trump’s evangelical advisory committee, claims she contributes a month’s pay every year as a “seed,” which according to prosperity gospel is supposed to grow into riches and other blessings. She’s also calling on others to contribute their own firsts, in the form of wages for a day, week or entire month: 

“When you honor this principle it provides the foundation and structure for God’s blessings and promises in your life, it unlocks deep dimensions of spiritual truths that literally transform your life! When you apply this everything comes in divine alignment for His plan and promises for you. When you don’t honor it, whether through ignorance or direct disobedience there are consequences.”

While White said these firsts “belong to God and God alone,” she wants them sent to her in the form of offerings to her ministries. 

White delivered a prayer at Trump’s inauguration, where she called on God to give the president “the confidence to lead us in justice and righteousness, and the compassion to yield to our better angels.”

No, just no.

Am I the only one who noticed that Trump has an "evangelical committee"? What on earth? When did that become a thing? 

[bashfulpixie]

6 hours ago, iweartanktops said:

Am I the only one who noticed that Trump has an "evangelical committee"? What on earth? When did that become a thing? 

When he needed their votes

[AmazonGrace]

Art of the deal:

We got a glimpse of Trump negotiating today. It … didn’t go well.

By Aaron Blake

January 9 at 2:54 PM

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/01/09/we-got-a-glimpse-of-trump-negotiating-today-it-didnt-go-well/?utm_term=.6fcaa7876ed2

 

Spoiler

 

White House officials made the unusual decision Tuesday to allow cameras to film a nearly hour-long immigration meeting with a bipartisan group of lawmakers. They probably wish they hadn't.

For a moment, Democrats thought they had struck an unexpected deal with President Trump. Trump had previously insisted that any deal protecting "dreamers" — undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children — should also include border security and/or a border wall. But he now says that he would support a “clean” bill protecting dreamers, and then take up comprehensive immigration reform later.

“What about a clean DACA bill now, with a commitment that we go into a comprehensive immigration reform procedure?” asked Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). Trump responded: “Yeah, I would like to do that. I think a lot of people would like to see that.”

The problem? Trump didn't know what “clean DACA bill” meant. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) quickly interjected and made clear that Trump believes a “clean” bill would include border security. Except that's not at all what a clean bill is; that's a compromise bill. A clean bill, by definition, only has one component to it.

By the end, Trump sought to clarify things. “I think a clean DACA bill to me is a DACA bill, but we take care of the 800,000 people,” he said. “But I think to me, a clean bill is a bill of DACA — we take care of them, and we also take care of security.”

 

President Trump hosted Republican and Democratic lawmakers at the White House on Jan. 9 to discuss a replacement for DACA, a program shielding young undocumented immigrants from deportation that expires on March 5. (Jordan Frasier/The Washington Post)

If anything, the whole mess showed pretty vividly just how utterly disengaged Trump is in the finer details of policy discussions. Which is exactly the perception that he has recently fought against.

Asked by the New York Times late last month about this perception, Trump bristled. “I know the details of taxes better than anybody — better than the greatest CPA,” he said. “I know the details of health care better than most, better than most.”

The problem is that every public indication gives us the opposite impression. Trump almost continually moves the goal posts on what he wants, shifts the terms of the debate, and misstates what's actually contained in the legislation that is before Congress.

The Washington Post's Josh Dawsey said it well:

[tweet]

Even by the end of the meeting, Trump seemed to indicate that the border wall isn't necessarily a must-have for him — becoming just the latest iteration in a dizzying series of back-and-forths on what he wants in a DACA deal.

“I think my positions are going to be what the people in this room come up with,” Trump said. He added: “I'm not going to say, 'Oh, gee, I want this,' or 'I want that.' I will be signing it.”

Okay, so you're no longer demanding the border wall or even border security, then?

If you are a Democrat hearing those words, it's pretty clear that Trump isn't wedded to his position on, well, anything. The border wall seems more like an opening bid. If Trump has shown us anything, it's that he just wants to sign bills and make sure the base doesn't hate him for it. So as long as he can plausibly say he fought the good fight for the border wall — even if he didn't — it seems he's ready to just get it over with and claim a legislative win.

 

Which is generally okay! Presidents needn't dirty their hands with all of the sausage-making that happens down Pennsylvania Avenue. Congress produces the bills, and the president decides whether to sign them.

But Trump has repeatedly assured us that he knows this stuff better than almost anyone and that he's the world's preeminent negotiator. What we saw Tuesday was neither of those things.

Update: As The Post's Ashley Parker and Philip Rucker report, Trump's "Yeah, I would like to do that" line was conveniently left out of the White House's transcript:

THE PRESIDENT:  I remember that.  I have no problem.  I think that's basically what Dick is saying.  We're going to come up with DACA.  We're going to do DACA, and then we can start immediately on the phase two, which would be comprehensive.

SENATOR FEINSTEIN:  Would you be agreeable to that?

THE PRESIDENT:  I think a lot of people would like to see that, but I think we have to do DACA first. 

 

 

[AmazonGrace]

All countries matter: