Donald Trump, the road that might not lead to the White House!

[CrabbedOne]

On Politico ‘He Has This Deep Fear That He Is Not a Legitimate President’

...
Kruse: He’s also always been a believer in bad publicity, and that bad publicity is, in fact, good. Publicity means people are talking about him. It worked through his breakup with Ivana and his affair with Marla Maples. It worked through the casino bankruptcies. It worked certainly throughout the campaign. Can that work—bad publicity is good publicity—when you’re president?

O’Brien: No, it can’t. It can’t be. The Trump Organization is this mom-and-pop boutique. It’s got less than 100 people, I think, working for it, and he’s about to take the reins of a portion of the federal government that employs over 2 million people, is global, touches on every key policy in American life, and in our overseas profile and he knows very little about most of all of that and papering that over with any kind of publicity or the good publicity, is in a strategy that’s a Hail Mary. And I think he’s going to be in for a rude awakening if that’s how he’s going to approach things, what his day-to-day life might become.
...

The qualification that gave American's confidence in Trump was his well advertised business genius. His business employs about 22K people and has an estimated revenue of 55 billion but at its core it does seem to be run like a typical family SME with a shouty micro managing boss.

This is no small thing but isn't Rex Tillerson at Exxon which is more like a modern East India Company running much of US global energy policy with a quarter trillion dollars of revenue a year.

Reckons that the only people he listens too in his current business dealing are his daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner. and that won't change in the White House. Loves to be in the spotlight even as the bad guy. No appetite for bad news that just gets flushed away. Putin, a former KGB colonel, every day goes patiently through a folder of intel reports. Likely they are a bit paranoid and crafted to please but he's not as insulated from the real world as the book reading adverse Trump is going to be. He's a man who believes information is power not just in directing blizzards of misinformation at his foes like Trump.

There's already a scandal in CENTCOM with analysts complaining there stuff on IS was being cooked to present a sunny picture to the higher ups including the often bubble dwelling Obama. It's already evident the intelligence agencies are going to have a big problem with Trump. Nixon also had a very bad relationship with the agencies but was very well informed on world affairs. When Stalin didn't like what the NKVD told him he used to have his hard working spies shot or sent to the gulag. That included hard evidence that the Nazis were going to invade that he refused to believe. The spooks learnt to survive by supporting his conspiracy theories. I think it's going to be that sort of relationship.

 

[J Ed]

Alex Jones is mainstream now

 

[ska invita]

Alex Jones is mainstream now

i just went over to infowars to see what the old twat was up to, and he's busy making money selling this;

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

Holy crap, Donald Trump is getting inaugurated as president tomorrow - this shit's really happening! If I'm in the pub and it's on TV I'm going to play the "Drink every time Trump says something stupid or disturbing" drinking game...

I'm celebrating the event by going to a sign making party for the Women's March the next day.

 

[Wilf]

I'm celebrating the event by going to a sign making party for the Women's March the next day.

Suggested Text:

"Will the person who keeps going back in the time machine and not shooting the right person PLEASE sort it out. We've only got one more reset left before the fuel rods conk out"

 

[CrabbedOne]

What absolute crap. Of course people aren't responsible for what their governments do. The people of the UK no more supported Iraq than they support the privatisation of the railway system, they aren't given a choice. To argue as you do is to argue that the very governments that assist capital in exploiting workers are the responsibility of the workers is bullshit.
...

I recall Marx despaired of the British working man only wanting to walk his dog in the park of a Sunday rather than tear down Capitalism. Little has changed beyond the franchise being extended. Let me explain about peoples in flawed democracies getting the politicians they deserve.

In 92 the John Major committed the Tories to railway privatisation and got elected. The people had spoken. The people were numbskulls and a lot of swing voters were workers rather pleased with previous Tory electoral bribes and eager for lower taxes. They'd go on to elect other governments with privatisation agendas while moaning about decaying public transport. A large part of the problem with this system is people shirk all of the responsibility implicit in these political actions so there is no feedback loop. It's all just the politicians fault and if a wealthy businessman ran the place all would be fine is a surprisingly common misconception.

From a Lefty bubble one might think no one supported the Iraq war. Polling reveals a different picture of UK public opinion with a slim Brexit like majority approving though like Trump a lot no longer admit to it as in retrospect it was fairly obviously daft. A sovereign Parliament voted pretty wholeheartedly for it. And there's no denying the British People reelected Tony Blair anyway if with a reduced majority. They's also reelected a rather smug Cameron even though Libya predictably sank into violent chaos.

I'm a grown up and wasn't helpless politically at the time. I bitched about it a lot beforehand but certainly failed to stop the Iraq war. I'm afraid the British people elected representatives who did these things even if you feel utterly blameless yourself as a tiny cog amidst systemic failure. Trump voters raging at the Swamp in DC who previously voted for Bush in twice as most of them did probably feel similarly impotent if for different reasons.

If I was a liberal US Democrat today I'd be feeling rather painfully complicit in failing to stop the increasingly dangerous looking Trump bullshit his way to controlling the nuclear codes. If I was an establishment GOP voter I might soon be considering the various options a 30-06 deer rifle offers.

 

[J Ed]

I really like this article, features forum member Laurie Penny whose personal ethical brand I suppose is no longer considered all that noteworthy since nearly everyone to the right of Breitbart has become her.

The Scourge of Self-Flagellating Politics | Current Affairs

From the gospel according to Luke, “For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” If we are to take Luke at his word, then there must be plenty of heavenly exaltation in store for Jeopardy contestant turned social justice columnist caricature Arthur Chu who once tweeted: “As a dude who cares about feminism sometimes I want to join all men arm-in-arm & then run off a cliff and drag the whole gender into the sea.” Or for those who, on the morning following the election of Donald Trump, took to social media to publicly humble themselves to their followers, expressing their intense inward-turned shame and self-hatred. Typical of the style, New Statesman editor Laurie Penny wrote: “I’ve had white liberal guilt before. Today is the first time I’ve actually been truly horrified and ashamed to be white.” Others expressed their self-disgust at being straight white males and assured followers that while they of course did not vote for Trump, merely looking like those who did required some readily self-inflicted penance.

Every time a liberal conducts one of these performances of self-hatred, a predictable reaction cycle is set off. A ragtag army of nasty nihilistic right-wingers (a mixture of quasi-ironic anime-loving Nazis, celibate male separatists, and those who make it their duty to observe and report creeping Cultural Marxism) react with a flurry of anonymous retaliations. To the alt-right, this ritual confession of guilt is further proof of Western civilizational suicide. The self-flagellator is then met with a deluge of racist and/or misogynist abuse, which leaves them even more assured that their own dismal view of the West as white supremacist, misogynist, and essentially evil was correct all along. Online, stuck in an endless loop and unmoored from the cultural mainstream, niche online subcultures from right and left both reinforce their opposed but similarly depressing views of society.

All of which would be a mere curiosity, if it kept itself confined to the darker recesses of the Internet’s fetid bowel. However, since the mainstream media is always struggling to keep up with whatever the kids are into, the discourse of white self-criticism has gone somewhat more mainstream. It is now fairly typical to see ritualized confessions of white guilt. As Fredrik deBoer describes it:

[There is] an entire cottage industry devoted to it. Similar arguments calling for white people to own their privilege have been published in places like the Huffington Post and Salon. Popular sites like YouTube and Tumblr play host to hundreds of earnest white people, eagerly disclaiming white privilege and their complicity in white supremacy. White rapper Macklemore recently released his second track concerning his own white privilege.

Even Donald Sutherland recently felt compelled to describe his feeling “ashamed” for being a “white male.” Sutherland apparently had a moment of breakthrough when Helen Mirren, Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, informed him “You are the most privileged person on Earth… You are a white male.” Damning men for their crimes and defending purest womankind, Michael Moore, author of titles such as Stupid White Men, recently tweeted, “No women ever invented an atomic bomb, built a smoke stack, initiated a Holocaust, melted the polar ice caps or organized a school shooting.’ (This is false. The Manhattan Project had its unsung female heroes, there are plenty of female oil and gas executives, and female school shooter Brenda Ann Spencer inspired the 1979 Boomtown Rats hit “I Don’t Like Mondays.” Ironically, Moore erases women’s history by neglecting its greatest villains.)

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Elijah Cummings Has Ominous Warning: Congress Has Info on Trump That Would Shock Americans

 

[J Ed]

Elijah Cummings Has Ominous Warning: Congress Has Info on Trump That Would Shock Americans

Wow, this one last bit of information is what is finally going to bring Trump down! Click here!

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Those who oppose Donald Trump and the threat to American democracy he represents would be wise to manage their energy and selectively choose their battles. This may involve a disturbing revelation: You cannot shame the shameless. By implication, you cannot shame Donald Trump or his hardcore supporters.

Trump’s presidency will feature (seemingly) childish pronouncements on Twitter, a concerted campaign of lying and disinformation by his spokespeople and the right-wing news media, and threats of violence and intimidation from his supporters. This is an effort by the “Great Leader” to condition the public to his moods with the goal of creating a condition of fear, anxiety, confusion and vulnerability. Such a strategy is also a feature of authoritarian regimes.

The American people must not surrender to such a political feedback loop. Resistance in this moment must involve careful long-term planning and organizing. We cannot afford to be sidetracked or distracted by every ludicrous pronouncement of our Wormtongue-like president.

Sorry, folks — Donald Trump “won” his Twitter feud with John Lewis

 

[J Ed]

Sorry, folks — Donald Trump “won” his Twitter feud with John Lewis

I wonder who it is that might have been suggesting that shaming and moralising were not a good way to fight against Trump... what part of the political spectrum did this sort of insight come from originally?

 

[Yata]

kim jong uns got the fireworks sorted

North Korea threatens to ‘nuke’ Trump’s inauguration | New York Post
North Korean ICBM test looking more likely, says South
U.S. sees indications of possible North Korea missile test-launch

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

kim jong uns got the fireworks sorted

North Korea threatens to ‘nuke’ Trump’s inauguration | New York Post

They should stop trying to suck up. It's embarrassing.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Woody Johnson, of the Johnson and Johnson family, has been announced as the next US Ambassador to the Court of St. James.

Woody is third from the left.

 

[pesh]

Woody Johnson

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

Woody Johnson

A classic in the vein of "Peter O'Toole".

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

A classic in the vein of "Peter O'Toole".

Speaking of US Government double entendres:

In his magisterial 1860 biography of Andrew Jackson, James Parton wrote that "the political history of the United States, for the last thirty years, dates from the moment when the soft hand of Mr. Van Buren touched Mrs. Eaton's knocker."

 

[CrabbedOne]

Woody Johnson, of the Johnson and Johnson family, has been announced as the next US Ambassador to the Court of St. James.

Woody is third from the left.

Classy! Is that a porn name?

 

[Raheem]

Kanye West not asked to perform at the inauguration because they wanted it "typically American" according to a spokesman. West, as I'm sure everyone is aware, is usually considered typically Japanese.

I'm pretty sure the main reason is the risk that he might try to talk to the crowd, but the quote is illuminating all the same. Even if what's illuminated wasn't exactly shrouded in darkness up to now.

 

[J Ed]

 

[2hats]

A new scientific discovery: a moth with a silky head of bright yellow scales, which has been described as orange-yellow in colouration.

Notably its genitalia is “comparatively smaller” than that of the Neopalpa neonata, its closest relative.

Found in Southern California, and into Mexico, it has been named Neopalpa donaldtrumpi:

The monotypic genus Neopalpa was described in 1998 by Czech entomologist Dalibor Povolný based on two male specimens from Santa Catalina Island, California, which he named N. neonata. The female of this species was discovered recently based on a DNA barcode match and is described. In addition, a new species with marked differences in morphology and DNA barcodes from southern California and Baja California Mexico is described as Neopalpa donaldtrumpi sp. n. Adults and genitalia of both species are illustrated, new diagnosis for the genus Neopalpa is provided, and its position within Gelechiidae is briefly discussed.

DOI:10.3897/zookeys.646.11411

 

[J Ed]

#

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

What exactly do you people think you’re doing? Do you not get how much the world relies on your stability?"
Even as Trump prepares to place his hand on a Bible, the world is shucking its reverence for American democracy, aghast at our penchant for triviality. When I was in Australia last summer, when Trump was just a nominee, the comment I heard again and again from the political elite was some version of: What exactly do you people think you’re doing? Do you not get how much the world relies on your stability?

Yes, we get it. And apparently we’re tired of it. No offense, but we’re all expanded out over here.

Of course America can still be great in the decades ahead. (And yes, Mr. President-elect, it is.) We’re bound by demographics to become a more diverse, more enlightened country, not less so. We remain the world’s leading exporter of culture and consumerism. We’re awash in technological talent, and we command more military machinery than any nation in history.


The vastness of America’s vision gives way now to the smallness of Trump’s appeal. The American Century recedes, 140 characters at a time.

- from Yahoo

 

[coley]

The Betsy DeVos Hearing Was an Insult to Democracy

Beyond sickening, let's hope the next four years will portray the Trump presidency as an abject lesson in the failures of a democracy hijacked by rampant globalisation/neoliberalism.
Thats as long as his little fingers can be kept away from thon fascinating big red button-

 

[J Ed]

The DeVos Democrats | Jacobin

Unfortunately, many Democrats have long supported the same so-called education reform measures that DeVos backs. Often wrapping these measures in civil rights language, Democratic education reformers have provided cover for some of the worst types of reforms, including promoting the spread of charter schools — the preferred liberal mechanism for fulfilling the “choice” agenda. (Charter schools operate with public money, but without much public oversight, and are therefore often vehicles for pet pedagogical projects of billionaire educational philanthropists like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.)

DeVos will not have to completely reverse the Department of Education’s course in order to fulfill her agenda. Obama’s “Race to the Top” policy — the brainchild of former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, past CEO of Chicago Public Schools — allocates scarce federal resources to those states most aggressively implementing education reform measures, particularly around charter schools.

Perhaps the most effective advocate of school choice is New Jersey senator Cory Booker, who many Democrats are touting as the party’s savior in the post-Obama era. Liberals swooned when Booker opposed his Senate colleague Jeff Sessions, the right-wing racist Trump tapped to be the next attorney general. But however laudable, Booker’s actions didn’t take much in the way of courage.

Booker’s funders — hedge-fund managers and pharmaceutical barons — don’t care about such theatrics. They’re more concerned that he vote Big Pharma’s way and keep up his role as a leading member of Democrats for Education Reform, a pro-privatization group. They want to make sure he continues attacking teachers’ unions, the strongest bulwark against privatization.

Their aim is to undercut public schools and foster union-free charter schools, freeing the rich from having to pay teachers as unionized public servants with pensions.

So in the fight against Trump and DeVos, we can’t give Booker and his anti-union ilk a pass. As enablers of DeVos’s privatization agenda, they too must be delegitimized.

 

[coley]

I recall Marx despaired of the British working man only wanting to walk his dog in the park of a Sunday rather than tear down Capitalism. Little has changed beyond the franchise being extended. Let me explain about peoples in flawed democracies getting the politicians they deserve.

In 92 the John Major committed the Tories to railway privatisation and got elected. The people had spoken. The people were numbskulls and a lot of swing voters were workers rather pleased with previous Tory electoral bribes and eager for lower taxes. They'd go on to elect other governments with privatisation agendas while moaning about decaying public transport. A large part of the problem with this system is people shirk all of the responsibility implicit in these political actions so there is no feedback loop. It's all just the politicians fault and if a wealthy businessman ran the place all would be fine is a surprisingly common misconception.

From a Lefty bubble one might think no one supported the Iraq war. Polling reveals a different picture of UK public opinion with a slim Brexit like majority approving though like Trump a lot no longer admit to it as in retrospect it was fairly obviously daft. A sovereign Parliament voted pretty wholeheartedly for it. And there's no denying the British People reelected Tony Blair anyway if with a reduced majority. They's also reelected a rather smug Cameron even though Libya predictably sank into violent chaos.

I'm a grown up and wasn't helpless politically at the time. I bitched about it a lot beforehand but certainly failed to stop the Iraq war. I'm afraid the British people elected representatives who did these things even if you feel utterly blameless yourself as a tiny cog amidst systemic failure. Trump voters raging at the Swamp in DC who previously voted for Bush in twice as most of them did probably feel similarly impotent if for different reasons.

If I was a liberal US Democrat today I'd be feeling rather painfully complicit in failing to stop the increasingly dangerous looking Trump bullshit his way to controlling the nuclear codes. If I was an establishment GOP voter I might soon be considering the various options a 30-06 deer rifle offers.

" If I was an establishment GOP voter I might soon be considering the various options a 30-06 deer rifle offers"
You might be considering an extended stay in an obscure Latin American embassy should your comment be followed by events-

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Looking at this photo, it's sobering; like a bad dream from which one can't awaken.

 

[belboid]

We are going to close this embarrassment of a thread once the shit actually takes office, aren't we?

 

[Yossarian]

Looking at this photo, it's sobering; like a bad dream from which one can't awaken.

Lincoln looks like he's thinking about giving Trump a kick.

 

[elbows]

The brag, blag, bluff and bluster shows no signs of abating.

Mr Trump told the crowd in the presidential ballroom: "We have a lot of smart people. I tell you what, one thing we've learned, we have by far the highest IQ of any cabinet ever assembled."

Trump inauguration: President-elect pledges unity at concert - BBC News