What are those bumps on the first lady's feet?
Trump Destroys American Greatness From Within
From the Justice Department to the military, the president is corroding and destabilizing the institutions of democracy.
By Timothy Egan
Contributing Opinion Writer
It’s hard to work up much sympathy for the hollowed-out husk of a human being that is Mitch McConnell, or Lindsey Graham for that matter. This country is a harder, colder, more meanspirited place because these senators would rather bootlick a bully than stand for the principles they once espoused.
Surely, they know the price of their vassalage. To serve Donald Trump is to lose all self-respect. You lie for him. You cover for him. You hate for him. John Boehner, the former House speaker, has more honor as a mercenary for marijuana than the elected Republicans shoveling dirt over the grave of the Constitution.
But Americans should care about a more lasting and damaging corrosion — the destabilizing of venerable institutions. It’s one thing to corrupt a politician, the natural osmosis of the species. It’s quite another to debase the foundations of a great democracy.
It started on Day 2, when the hapless liar, newly subsidized by taxpayers, tried to conscript the National Park Service into the fantasy that his crowd was the largest ever.
The beloved Park Service survived the encounter with the devil, barely. But now the keepers of our national story are facing an authoritarian president who wants to dominate the Independence Day celebration on the National Mall. He would politicize what has long been a nonpartisan family affair, setting up “the angriest July 4 ever,” as Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia delegate in the House, put it.
After the inauguration debacle, Trump moved on to bigger targets — the judiciary, the military, the press, and the professional class of bureaucrats who have made the United States a model for competence and incorruptibility in the Civil Service.
With William Barr, Trump now has an attorney general who doesn’t care how much lasting damage he does to truth, justice and the American way. His mandate as the nation’s top prosecutor is to carry out Trump’s private vendettas.
Next week, the House will vote on whether to hold Barr in contempt for defying the constitutional role of oversight by the legislative branch. Get used to it. Barr is marshaling the enormous legal muscle of the people’s Justice Department as a political hit squad. He’ll use the law, which he ignores when it suits him, to try to imprison public servants who launched an early investigation of Russian attempts to subvert an American election.
No matter that an earlier presidential quisling, failed Kansas gubernatorial candidate Kris Kobach, could find no evidence of another of Trump’s fictions, millions of illegal voters. Barr’s job is to muddy the origins of the Russian investigation enough to frame career public servants as traitors.
Normally, the courts would be bulwarks against the barbarians. And indeed, many judges have stood up to some of Trump’s most outlandish and illegal behavior. But the Trump effect, turning everything he touches to a cheap commodity, is to denigrate the legal arbitrators as “Obama judges” or “Mexican” judges. You’re with him or against him.
This is dangerous stuff. And it gets worse. The most disgusting of the recent corruptions is the attempt to make the military another extension of presidential vanity. The White House wanted to “minimize the visibility” of the U.S.S. John S. McCain while Trump was in Japan. So, a family name synonymous with sacrifice on behalf of country was covered up so that President Bone Spurs would not be offended. Kim Jong-un has to be jealous.
Following this desecration, the acting defense secretary, Patrick Shanahan, said the military “will not be politicized.” Sorry. That ship has sailed.
You would think that matters of the soul would be harder for the soulless occupant of the White House to tarnish. After a round of golf last Sunday, a disheveled-looking Trump abruptly showed up at a church in Virginia. The White House said Trump wanted parishioners to pray for victims of a recent mass shooting. Instead, they were asked to pray for Trump. The pastor later said he had been blindsided.
The same cannot be said for the man who oversees the Census Bureau, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. He’s trying to use a mandate of the Constitution, the decennial census, to shore up power in the Electoral College and Congress for the aging white men of Trump’s base.
Any day now, the Supreme Court will rule on Ross’s effort to insert, into the census form that goes out to every household, a citizenship question, something that hasn’t been asked since 1950. It could mean that about 6.5 million people would go uncounted — citizens and noncitizens.
This is a blatant abuse of power and of an otherwise benign government agency, affecting not just the number of representatives or electoral votes each state gets, but also the fate of numerous cities dependent on federal billions in mostly blue America.
The same cannot be said for the man who oversees the Census Bureau, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. He’s trying to use a mandate of the Constitution, the decennial census, to shore up power in the Electoral College and Congress for the aging white men of Trump’s base.
Any day now, the Supreme Court will rule on Ross’s effort to insert, into the census form that goes out to every household, a citizenship question, something that hasn’t been asked since 1950. It could mean that about 6.5 million people would go uncounted — citizens and noncitizens.
This is a blatant abuse of power and of an otherwise benign government agency, affecting not just the number of representatives or electoral votes each state gets, but also the fate of numerous cities dependent on federal billions in mostly blue America.
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The US military has been eroding from inside for quite some time, same with the Judiciary and other governmental organizations
the necessary questioning and reforms weren't implemented, I guess when you are in constant wars, you don't have time for it
Trump is simply accelerating that process, a process that must end eventually before it can reset itself
Vive le Trump!!!
^No, we will not reach a tipping point as in Marxist theory. Things will just keep getting worse and the country we knew will become unrecognizable.
that's why the Soviet Union imploded, it was far more advanced in every matters than the west, science, society, politics, world dominance and it all came to a brutal end, almost overnight
think as the Soviet Union as the things to come for us, the roadmap to destruction we have chose to follow
Trump is the Gorbachev of the USA, GW Bush was Brezhnev
‘All I have done, no credit!’ Enraged Trump defends US-Mexico migrant deal
The Trump administration was forced to defend its immigration agreement with Mexico on Sunday, amid reports that key provisions in the deal, forged under the threat of trade tariffs, were mostly old commitments agreed to months ago.
A surge in migration to America’s southern border continues, with May bringing the highest number of monthly apprehensions made by US authorities in the past 13 years.
In the deal announced with significant self-congratulation by Donald Trump on Friday, Mexico agreed to deploy its national guard and to expand a heavily criticised program that keeps migrants seeking asylum in the US in Mexico as their claims are processed.
Trump withdrew a threat of 5% tariffs on all Mexican goods.
But on Saturday the New York Times reported that Mexico had already agreed to key provisions in the joint declaration during secretive negotiations over the past six months.
On Sunday, the president fired off a series of enraged tweets as he headed for a second day of golf at his course in Sterling, Virginia.
The Guardian or CNN
"All I have done!".
Translation: Play golf and tell lies.
I just found this. It's old but seems remarkably prescient.
Though it must be said that he's more then a little full of himself. Milking the Trump connection with a rather transparent attempt to profit from his 15 minutes of notoriety.
Bit of a twat really.
Last edited by crackerjack101; 10-06-2019 at 07:14 PM.
How the rich state (please no names here) can be so poor nowadays, when after such outrage of the "international community" due to the Kashoggi heinous murder - they (and the POTUS either) will persuade the world that they cannot lose a lucrative job ($50B?), even if losing a face of the most righteous country in the world...
Trump sees China’s Xi as more of a friend than US Fed chief Powell, whom he actually appointed
President Donald Trump sees Chinese President Xi Jinping as more of a friend than the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Monday.
Key Points
- Between the Fed chairman and the presidents of China and Mexico, Trump suggests that “Powell is probably the worst for the country,” CNBC’s Jim Cramer says.
- Earlier, Trump criticized the Fed for raising interest rates too quickly, calling it “very, very disruptive to us.”
Among Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Powell and Xi, Cramer said Trump suggests, by his words, that he believes “Powell is probably the worst for the country” and “Powell is not a friend.”
Trump on CNBC on Monday criticized the Fed for raising interest rates too quickly, calling the four hikes last year “very, very disruptive.”
“It’s more than just Jay Powell. We have people on the Fed that really weren’t — they’re not my people. But they certainly didn’t listen to me because they made a big mistake: They raised interest rates far too fast,” Trump told CNBC’s Joe Kernen on “Squawk Box. ”
The president also blasted central bankers for their balance-sheet runoff program, which allows bonds in the Fed’s portfolio to mature without replacing them.
The balance sheet had swelled to more than $4.5 trillion in early 2015 in the wake of several rounds of quantitative easing, or bond-buying, aimed at boosting the economy after the 2008 financial crisis.
The Fed — responding to CNBC’s request for reaction to the Cramer and Trump remarks — said it had no comment.
Credit
Symbolic:
"Tree planted by Trump and Macron to symbolize French-American friendship has died"
https://www.yahoo.com/news/tree-plan...?.tsrc=fauxdal
he phoned in to CNBC yesterday, and stayed on the line for nearly half an hour complaining.
must have been during his 'executive time'.
he does moan a lot, like an old lady
oh wait, he is an old lady
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