Saturday 28 January 2017

"The Damn Fool"

An immigrant then: 






Immigrants now:


208 comments:

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   Lee C.  ―   U.S.A.     said...

 
Unrepentant Neo-Con Elliot Abrams who was until today the leading candidate to take the number two position at the State Department has been nixed by Trump after Trump read news reports (preesumably in the clippings he gets for his morning publicity fix) which mentioned that Abrams had been critical of Trump during the campaign, had, in fact, said that neither Trump nor Clinton acceptable to him as President.  Seems Trump thought that was enough to make Abrams unacceptable to him as Deputy Secretary of State.
I guess this isn't an unreasonable position, but, this late in the vetting process, and given that Shorthands learned of this information from press clippings and not from his own administration's reports on Abrams it reveals that Rex Tillerson has very little ‘juice’ with Trump.  This will not go unnoticed among those foreign ministers with whom Tillerson shall have to deal.  Trump just knee-capped his own Secretary of State.  It also appears that Trump's staff knew of Abrams' prior criticisms of Trump and had concealed that information from Trump.  (Not a good sign for the rest of us.)

   Lee C.  ―   U.S.A.     said...

 
And it seems that Michael Flynn, Shorthands' Senior National Security Advisor (Senate confirmation not required) has lied extensively about whether or not he was negotiating with Putin's government before the election.  He was; he said he hadn't, but he did.  And, the Trump administration has had Veep Mike Pence go out in public on what Trump calls ‘the shows’ and tell everybody that, "No, Flynn hadn't been negotiating with Putin's government before the election."  That turns out to be wrong.  (Also illegal, although I don't expect anything to come of that with the Republicans controlling both houses of Congress.)

But, here's the thing to consider that may not make the analyses of the talking heads in the coming days.  Pence and his people are now adamantly telling everybody that Flynn lied to Pence.  So, Trump's people are lying to his Veep, and apparently there'll be no consequences for that either.  Kinda knocks down the standing of Veep Pence.

Trump is busy knee-capping his own upper echelon officials.  First Rex Tillerson, now Pence.  That's not gonna work out well over the long run.

But, getting back to my point…  We gotta worry that Trump's personal circle (Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, Flynn, son-in-law Jared Kushner, et al.) are apparently not afraid of the official government people and apparently consider the government people, the Veep, the Secretary of State, etc. to be sacrificial to the inner circle.

This should worry folks more than it seems to.  Trump considers his shadow government to be important enough to receive and benefit from the sacrifice of the official government.

Lynnette In Minnesota said...

US investigators confirm some aspects of the Russia dossier

For the first time, US investigators say they have corroborated some of the communications detailed in a 35-page dossier compiled by a former British intelligence agent, multiple current and former US law enforcement and intelligence officials tell CNN. As CNN first reported, then-President-elect Donald Trump and President Barack Obama were briefed on the existence of the dossier prior to Trump's inauguration.

None of the newly learned information relates to the salacious allegations in the dossier. Rather it relates to conversations between foreign nationals. The dossier details about a dozen conversations between senior Russian officials and other Russian individuals. Sources would not confirm which specific conversations were intercepted or the content of those discussions due to the classified nature of US intelligence collection programs.
But the intercepts do confirm that some of the conversations described in the dossier took place between the same individuals on the same days and from the same locations as detailed in the dossier, according to the officials. CNN has not confirmed whether any content relates to then-candidate Trump.


Now I wonder if this will concern them.

Lynnette In Minnesota said...

It appears that Trump is not in any hurry to appeal this last court ruling on his ban. He seems to be considering just writing another Executive Order saying the same thing.

Now at some point in time one would think that even some of Trump's die hard supporters will get tired of him and his crazy behavior.

   Lee C.  ―   U.S.A.     said...

 
      "Now at some point in time one would think that even some of
      Trump's die hard supporters will get tired of him and his crazy
       behavior.
"

Well, Gorsuch appears to be acceptable to both Bible Thumpers and the Radical Right Wingers, and maybe at least tolerable to the Masters of the Universe, so Shorthands got himself a lot of forbearance among the traditional elements of the Republican Party still holding in there with that nomination.  It's a solid enough traditional Republican coalition move to both placate his base and to get him some additional tolerance in the coming days with the ‘establishment’ Republicans.  But, he's got a budget he can't escape coming up real soon.  And that'll be where the shakeout will inevitably have to begin.

   Lee C.  ―   U.S.A.     said...

 
(And, for a lot of the ‘burn the whole damn thing down’ crowd, crazie behavior is exactly what they want--they'll go to fairly extreme lengths to try to justify Trump's destructive behavior, just so long as it looks like Trump is wrecking havoc on somebody ain't them.)

   Lee C.  ―   U.S.A.     said...

 
Oh, and just for fun…

Kellyanne Coway has hired a Chief of Staff.  She didn't actually have a staff when she got her Chief of Staff, but that's been fixed now; she's made another hire, and now she's got an assistant for the Chief to be Chief of.

   Lee C.  ―   U.S.A.     said...

 
      "He seems to be considering just writing another Executive Order
      saying the same thing.
"

Yeah, starting to look that way.  He runs into a problem of consistency.  The more he tries to make it look like something other than the religious discrimination he promised during his campaign, the more it looks like he's just trying to conceal his intentions.  He's kinda got an ‘original sin’ problem that won't go away without him giving up on taking pleasure in his sin, which he has no intention of doing.
So, he's gonna be buried in fighting this one in the courts for quite awhile.  I expect whatever he comes up with next will get tossed too, on account of they already know what's behind what's comin’.  And there's no way to make that go ‘way.

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