Trump Watch
 

A list someone compiled from Dan Rather's news group:

For those of you keeping score:
Five. Days. In.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the DOJ’s Violence Against Women programs.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the National Endowment for the Arts.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Minority Business Development Agency.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Economic Development Administration.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the International Trade Administration.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Manufacturing Extension Partnership.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Legal Services Corporation.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Environmental and Natural Resources Division of the DOJ.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Office of Electricity Deliverability and Energy Reliability.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Office of Fossil Energy.
* On January 20th, 2017, DT ordered all regulatory powers of all federal agencies frozen.
* On January 20th, 2017, DT ordered the National Parks Service to stop using social media after RTing factual, side by side photos of the crowds for the 2009 and 2017 inaugurations.
* On January 20th, 2017, roughly 230 protestors were arrested in DC and face unprecedented felony riot charges. Among them were legal observers, journalists, and medics.
* On January 20th, 2017, a member of the International Workers of the World was shot in the stomach at an anti-fascist protest in Seattle. He remains in critical condition.
* On January 21st, 2017, DT brought a group of 40 cheerleaders to a meeting with the CIA to cheer for him during a speech that consisted almost entirely of framing himself as the victim of dishonest press.
* On January 21st, 2017, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer held a press conference largely to attack the press for accurately reporting the size of attendance at the inaugural festivities, saying that the inauguration had the largest audience of any in history, “period.”
* On January 22nd, 2017, White House advisor Kellyann Conway defended Spicer’s lies as “alternative facts” on national television news.
* On January 22nd, 2017, DT appeared to blow a kiss to director James Comey during a meeting with the FBI, and then opened his arms in a gesture of strange, paternal affection, before hugging him with a pat on the back.
* On January 23rd, 2017, DT reinstated the global gag order, which defunds international organizations that even mention abortion as a medical option.
* On January 23rd, 2017, Spicer said that the US will not tolerate China’s expansion onto islands in the South China Sea, essentially threatening war with China.
* On January 23rd, 2017, DT repeated the lie that 3-5 million people voted “illegally” thus costing him the popular vote.
* On January 23rd, 2017, it was announced that the man who shot the anti-fascist protester in Seattle was released without charges, despite turning himself in.
* On January 24th, 2017, Spicer reiterated the lie that 3-5 million people voted “illegally” thus costing DT the popular vote.
* On January 24th, 2017, DT tweeted a picture from his personal Twitter account of a photo he says depicts the crowd at his inauguration and will hang in the White House press room. The photo is of the 2009 inauguration of 44th President Barack Obama, and is curiously dated January 21st, 2017, the day AFTER the inauguration and the day of the Women’s March, the largest inauguration related protest in history.
* On January 24th, 2017, the EPA was ordered to stop communicating with the public through social media or the press and to freeze all grants and contracts.
* On January 24th, 2017, the USDA was ordered to stop communicating with the public through social media or the press and to stop publishing any papers or research. All communication with the press would also have to be authorized and vetted by the White House.
* On January 24th, 2017, HR7, a bill that would prohibit federal funding not only to abortion service providers, but to any insurance coverage, including Medicaid, that provides abortion coverage, went to the floor of the House for a vote.
* On January 24th, 2017, DT ordered the resumption of construction on the Dakota Access Pipeline, while the North Dakota state congress considers a bill that would legalize hitting and killing protestors with cars if they are on roadways.
* On January 24th, 2017, it was discovered that police officers had used confiscated cell phones to search the emails and messages of the 230 demonstrators now facing felony riot charges for protesting on January 20th, including lawyers and journalists whose email accounts contain privileged information of clients and sources.
From https://www.newsandgutsmedia.com (Dan Rather's new organization)
*credit for compilation: Karen Cornett-Dwyer. h/t Si Browne

Trumpland, Trumpland, über alles!

Industrial Workers of the World, but that is a chilling list.

Horrendous. Sharing on FB. :mad:

But the Dow is over 20,000, so 's all good, right??

At least, 's all good for some...

When Obama took office in 2009, the Dow Jones stood at: 7,949. When he left on Jan. 20th, it stood at: 19,732.

Somebody made a lot of money while he was president, didn't they?

FYI, Andrew, Trump did not say that he was cutting NEA or NEH. He hasn't said anything about it. A spokesman or a source is quoted as having said that. Dan Rather is a rather (pun intended) dubious source for news these days. He has an agenda.

Charlie, admittedly fake news is all over the place these days, but even Trump's closest aid Steve Bannon's Breitbart News says that about cutting the NEA:

http://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywo...ndowment-arts/.

Do you think they're just saying it there to get a rise?

Charlie,

FWIW, I think Obama's and the Fed's response to the financial crisis (namely, to bail out the plutocrats) is a big reason that we now have Trump. I do not see Trump as a step back in our descent into oligarchy. Perhaps I am wrong. I hope I am.

Michael, I sort of agree with you about the oligarch thing. That's more what I see Trump as. I hope we're both wrong.

Andrew, I think Trump is pulling the Left's chain. The Breitbart article still only quotes a source, not Trump. Look, put aside all of his bombast for a moment. He's a New Yorker. It's the seat for the arts. I think it's really about someone or someones he doesn't like running those programs. I think this is the reason to instill fear in them. He has the upper hand and can wield the axe at any time. That's the message.

How soon people forget! The big Wall Street bailout of $700 billion was signed into law by Bush in October 2008, three months before Obama took office—in fact, even before he was elected.

The current head of the NEA is Janet Chu, who is from the heartland (Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas) whose signature achievement seems to be seeing how the arts affect GDP--before taking over the NEA, she was best known for pushing to build an arts centre in Kansas City. What has she done that deserves to be "put on notice"? Genuinely curious.

The people who were advising Bush weren't any brighter than Bush was. Globalists can afford to gamble with other peoples money. There was the bailout by Bush, and then there was the stimulus by Obama and congress. Two separate things, if you ask me. The stimulus went primarily to democrat hacks and unions, not to infrastructure. Of course, I'm sure someone posted a stimulus sign on Christie's boondoggle in Jersey to make it look good. It's why Christie and Obama could share a hug.

I'm glad that we're back in reality with a separation of the stimulus and bailout--two different pieces of legislation in different years from different administrations.

You're right, Charlie, the stimulus bill did not include a lot of infrastructure spending--a little less than $50 billion out of the $830 billion that was eventually spent on the ARRA were earmarked for it, according to my quick search. Contrast this to the $275 billion in tax cuts. You're saying all this went to union members and Dem hacks?

The Obama-Christie hug came during a visit to inspect Hurricane Sandy relief efforts, iirc.

But getting back to Andrew's original list . . . y'all are in for quite a ride. We here in Canada are sure to catch a lot of it. The NEA is the least of my worries, although of course it matters, too.

No, Edward, not to the union members, but their bosses. A good bit of it did go to Dem party officials, however, as of today, not all of the stimulus money has been spent, yet. There's a little left to blow. Back to the subject of the arts; I have no idee who at NEA or NEH has pissed off Trump. It could be anyone. I am fairly certain there are some evangelicals who have Trump's ear and hate those orgs as well. I don't care much for those entity's either. I'm sure there is a list somewhere that gives an accounting for a lot of the "art" projects which have been approved and paid for which have little to do with art, in the purest sense of the word. I do know a couple of folks from my Seattle days who applied for money. Those guys have never truly worked a day in their lives. It's easier to live on the public teat. It's free money. Who wouldn't go for it?

Charlie your normalizing of the birth pangs of the Plague by pointing out the deadly fevers in past generations must be reassuring to you. If that is why you are doing it, keep up the good work. If you are hoping for someone to take the time to respond more fully, don't hold your breath. There comes a point where to keep saying "It isn't as bad as all that" becomes collaboration. For me, you past that line a long time ago. Your comfort with the violence against the biosphere, the lower class, and reasoned approaches to reality are duly noted. When Madame DeFarge is reserving seats for the "You Helped It Happen" Ball I am sure she will put you down for two. Bring a friend.

If this darling little fascist hatchling gets knocked from the nest to the pavement before it is feathered, it will be from open resistance not from wasting anymore time talking to he self inoculated. And by chick I don't mean just Trump. He is gonna make a go of it for Godfather but prolly is just a useful meat puppet with horns that will be sliced into cutlets once the china shop is sufficiently aerated. Maybe he has the chops for the Full Reichstag but unless they can get the voltage right on his treatments and find an IQ donor with a blood type compatible with Useful Moron I doubt it. It will be much more complicated than his impeachment, which if hasn't happened by this time next year would indicate they did in fact find that donor after all.

The whole vampiric spectrum of this State is due for a day in the sun and I get Obama's integration in its violence and half measures but I don't hear that in your comments. I figure anybody who can't see the common decency in the guy compared to what we are up against here struggles with basic distinctions to the point of being irrelevant. In that willful collapse I hear something I can't play nice with. So allow me to leave it at this for the whole thread and just ignore your posts. That doesn't mean I don't think you dismissing Dan Rather as having an agenda while you read aloud from your Chick Tracts isn't funny. That laugh I can thank you for.

Edward,

I’m not forgetting. TARP was an important part of the bailouts, but its $700 billion or so was dwarfed by the $16 trillion provided by the Fed, largely with the consultation and consent of the department of Treasury, into 2010 (see this Fed timeline). Bank of America, Citi, AIG, Fannie and Freddie were on government life support well into Obama’s administration and needed subsequent guarantees and capital infusions. Citibank and BofA alone needed an additional $400+ billion in asset guarantees which, IIRC, were only finalized after the election and closed as late as January 2009. I don't believe that Obama was ignorant of or opposed these actions.

It is also arguable and even probable that the Fed’s $4+ trillion quantitative easing and ZIRP programs were designed primarily to recapitalize the big banks, many of which were insolvent well into 2009 and beyond; ‘asset reflation’ was how the Government rebuilt the bank balance sheets. Alas, this strategy has widened the disparity in wealth in the US to historic, and I believe very, very dangerous levels -- and I think this greatly feeds into populist anger. If Obama had strongly opposed the Fed's actions, he likely would not have nominated Bernanke to a second term as Fed Chair, or nominated Yellen as Bernanke's successor.

I think it was damaging that the Obama administration failed to prosecute senior bank officials or to break up the banks, while substantially socializing their losses. Obama and Geithner argued again and again that they took ‘hard and unpopular’ actions for the benefit of the American people, to stave off systemic collapse. Perhaps so; but these actions fueled the notion that our plutocratic elites play by a different set of rules than everyone else: they keep their profits, we socialize their losses. It's a difficult notion to combat because it seems true, and not just on Wall Street. I think the rage against the elites we now see is traceable in part to the memory of these events.

(edited in: if you care to hear Geithner's full-throated defense of all the Government's actions in the financial crisis, I remember his interview on "Charlie Rose" (here in six parts) is pretty good. BTW, after leaving Treasury, Geithner became President and Managing Director of Warburg, Pincus, one of the US's largest private equity firms. I think there's a whiff of oligarchy.)

In my life, I watched the Right tear up Jimmy Carter as: Naive.
I watched the Left tear up Ronald Reagan: Dangerous Cowboy.
I watched the Right tear up Bill Clinton: Sexual predator.
I watched the Left tear up George W. Bush: Stupid.
I watched the Right tear up Barack Obama: Muslim.

Yep, Andrew, I've watched the past generations play lawn tennis with every recent past president. I don't know yet for sure whether Donald Trump will be treated the same as the rest or worse. I suspect the latter.


I know the medications of the nut-alt-left are alluring to some, maybe even you, Andrew, but that is your business. This is still America. Are we ever really led by the very best person that all of us can agree on?

When has the public ever played nice?

Your biosphere comment is uncalled for. And beneath you.

Though USA business isn't really my business, may I remind all youse that Obama told us to go to the back of the queue and the Donald told us to go to the front. Which we are now doing. His common decency didn't show here though the students like him

Andrew M, you seem to speak a curious opaque language all your own. But then you are not writing for the likes of me. I do get that Trump is President and you don't like it.

Just a quick reminder that Eratosphere's guidelines don't prohibit harsh criticism of either poems or ideas. If you think someone's poem or idea is dreck, you are free to say so (ideally by identifying specific points that will help that person revise).

However, critiques need to stay focused on the poems or ideas, and not wander off into critiques of the personal shortcomings of the people associated with those poems or ideas.

An attack on the weaknesses of your poem or idea is not automatically an attack on you. Please don't interpret it as such. (And if someone does attack you personally, please don't respond in kind--just remind that person of the site guidelines, and bring the conversation back to the poem or idea.)

Now back to our regularly scheduled argument.

As you were...

The "queue", to which John refers, is about to become a roll of dishonour. Perhaps Trump should be aware that he jostles in May's list with Erdogan and Modi. Perhaps May should wake up to Trump's blaring "rule" number two - "Buy American" - before she scribbles her signature, with Faustian flourish, to any 'deal'. Perhaps, here, we should all promote a triple volume offer of reprints - Orwell's 1984, Roth's The Plot Against America, and Paul Dehn's Quake, Quake, Quake.

The veteran Viennese refugee journalist, Willi Frischauer, commenting on the notion that there was such an animal as a 'new' Nixon, shortly before Watergate broke, offered the reflection, "The thing that worries me about these politicians, is that they actually mean what they say." Go figure.

As to the evaluation of Trump and the Obama years, the brilliant Guardian journalist Peter Jenkins, writing of the looming re-election of Nixon, set up a comparison, which would transfer well today....
"Barack Obama is a ten times better man than Donald Trump, and let him be remembered when the stains of Trump's presidency have been scrubbed out from the American heritage." Now, it seems, we must all hope that your heritage - and ours - lasts that long.

An optimistic view of Trump is that he's an intensely stupid man who happens to have a severe personality disorder. I happen to think it's much worse than that, but I'll try hard to be an optimist.

Hey Julie. Nice to see you as a moderator. This idea of separating the person from the ideas is about become a much more difficult task so I don't envy your job. Here is the thing: The ugly notions in the hands of thugs like Trump who act quickly and with certainty are actions almost before they are ideas. And defense of them, or allowing the actions taking place to be obscured is a necessary part of that action. So when someone in power moves to split families and deport people in mass simply or to gut the few remaining regulations that are slowing the destruction of the biosphere down the action is inherent in the idea and a refusal to acknowledge the need to resist that idea/movement is to take sides. And if you take sides with deforestation or deportation or you are part of the action. You become a deporter, a misogynist, a racist, what have you, by nature of the necessity of your support/silence/assistance in the spread of propaganda. These aren't disagreements on scansion. This is a critical moment where only clear and uncompromising resistance has any chance of lessening the damage. So forgive me if I lose patience with stupid/violent ideas and suggest that holding them might make one stupid/violent.

What can you deduce from this video?

http://abcvod.abcnews.com/i/abcnews/...3u8?b=500-4500

It was directed by Christopher Guest?

That link didn't work for me, Jim.

Here's an interesting bit of Trump watching I just saw on Twitter:

Trump plans to block visas to anyone from:

Iran
Iraq
Libya
Somalia
Sudan
Syria
Yemen

where apparently he has no business interests, unlike:

in Egypt, Turkey, Saudi.

Here's a map of where his money is. (This, along with his cabinet of billionaires--oh yeah, he's the President of the unheard masses like I'm Napoleon Bonaparte.)

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C3Czet2W8AEbSWp.jpg

I have just seen him advocate torture in an ABC interview. What more does he have to do to be impeached?

The answer to that, Nigel, is to turn on the people who elected him. About 60 million of them or so, all racists, bigots, homophobes, climate deniers, and those of us who like pork in our hot dogs. And if it somehow happens to come true, (his impeachment) Pence will become president. He doesn't own any companies, he isn't rich, and the religious right (me) will cheer him on. Trump is wresting the country back from socialists and worse. He has my attention. For the better. No one's gonna impeach him over his support of waterboarding. So far, taking the country back from those who would have us living in caves is a good move. Unless one lives in a cave already.

Pence calls his wife "mother." (That's gotta be Christopher Guest.)

That's downright funny, James.

I'm not sure, Charlie, what your reference to "those of us who like pork in our hot dogs" is supposed to convey?

Trump explicitly spoke approvingly of "torture" - not that "waterboarding" isn't torture - but let's not pretend that he didn't explicitly say "torture".

Could you also direct me to where and when the US was taken hold of by "socialists", and who were or are these people? - and just when and where there has been an attempt to make Americans into cave dwellers? Or am I making the mistake of looking for facts instead of just accepting "alternative facts" - presumably offered as some sort of 'joke'.

Nigel, lots of people who voted for Trump are diverse in their ideology. It has been stated by some on the left side of the political spectrum that those who voted for Trump are all the things I said and much more. The pork in the hotdog thing is my answer. There is a lot of diversity in 60 million people who voted for him. It can't be discounted or counterfeited.

If you rule out torture as a tool to save American lives, then terrorists will do anything to kill and make a mockery of our self-righteousness. I am against that more that the concept of torture. Common sense applies.

Many socialists prefer the term: Progressive. When pressed on the term, they will nearly always revert to the Socialist tenets of their beliefs.

Cave dwellers can be a derogatory or metaphorical term that is used to allude to the fact that there are people who wish to go back to all mother nature/earth uses of earth instead of modern modes of living. It can apply to nearly any regressive meme not mutually exclusive of or to progressives or nativists. It began in America in the early 1900's and became prevalent in the 1960's and to the extreme the past twenty years or so.

Chuckems--

Someone needs to tell you what words mean. "Socialism," at its most reformist, can be argued to have some bleed-over into "progressivism,"but you're starting to sound LIKE THIS (as are certain Clinton supporters who don't seem to realize that the fall of the Berlin Wall is old enough to drive, vote, and buy a round of drinks).

Apparently, Charlie, you - as well as Trump - need to be told that "torture" doesn't work to "save lives", American or otherwise. It also happens to be a serious crime in both your domestic and in international law. Its practice at Guantanamo and in the other US 'black sites' around the world has done much to blacken the name of the US and of the West and is very much a 'part of the problem'. It is a 'solution' to precisely nothing.

I still do not understand your 'hotdog' reference which appears to target people with an objection to pork. That sounds uncomfortably like an endorsement of religious/ethnic prejudice. Whether so or not, it certainly does little to enhance understanding of your point.

Oh, never mind (wrong link anyway).

I apologize for the apparent type-casting, misuse of the term, Quincy. Would it be easier without an ad hom attack against me if I would dare compare what I actually meant to what you might espouse as an ideology?

Wouldn't that clear things up a bit? Surely you are proud of what you believe. Please, if you will, proceed to explain your ideology so that I would not make the same mistake twice in one thread.

Nigel, no one is pure-minded. My point with the pork comment is that I like to eat pork and others don't. It doesn't keep me away from being friends with them or them me. Different strokes for different folks. Conservatives get hemmed into a very small pen, defined by whatever someone who disagrees with them dictates as extreme. That's not a good way to look at things. Lots of people voted for Trump who disagree with him on several issues. Rank and file union members, gays, women, and so on. Personally, I am surprised that Trump has leaned conservative coming out of the chute. Millions of people are applauding that stance. Me too. Intolerance is just as must a detriment to the left as it is to the right. I've seen a lot from the left proving that the past few days.

Charlie, I don’t have any contact with people who still think it’s a positive thing that Trump is president, so bear with me. I'd really like to understand where you and other Trump supporters are coming from.

Let’s say for discussion sake that Trump’s view on torture is not a problem, and that his approach to fixing things economically for people who need it is going in the right direction and is going to help them financially and jobs-wise in ways they’ve been wanting for a while now.

Even apart from those things, and even if they are (in your view) things in his favor, how then do you and others live with the fact that Trump:

• cannot possibly avoid entangling his business interests with his politics
• has 8 members of his Cabinet whose combined assets equals the total assets of the bottom third (or is it half?) of the U.S. people
• befriends Putin, and compliments him in preference to his own country’s intelligence agencies
• suggests that NATO is obsolete even though his own Defense Secretary says it may be the most successful alliance in history, and one that aided the U.S. greatly after 9/11
• denies climate change and is undoing whatever progress we’ve made to wean our economy from fossil fuels and coal
• tangibly incites hatred, prejudice, and xenophobia
• suppresses opposing views
• attacks the free press, without which democratic society is impossible
• lashes out inappropriately at the slightest provocation or criticism, even though every president in history has received criticism every single day of the presidency

?

Again, even if you and other Trump supporters are in agreement with the first things I mentioned, do you feel that those positives outweigh the negatives I’ve listed and the great damage he can do to the U.S. and the world?

I assume you have squared this with your conscience, since you obviously think about these things, and I am genuinely curious to hear how you do it. I’m not being polemical here--I’m curious, and honestly, utterly bewildered how it’s possible to believe that the negatives are worth taking on board for four to eight years.

I’ll end this post by saying that I have working-class friends and family members whose job situation has sucked for a long time, and they still hate Trump--with a passion--for the reasons I stated. So there has to be something else besides jobs and money that makes it possible for other people to think that Trump’s positives outweigh the negatives. What are they, for you and others you know?

Again, what I'm trying to get is not just what's good about Trump, according to you, but how the bad things are acceptable, as though they can't cause more damage than the good things bring good.

Just to add to Andrew's excellent list:

- refuses to release his tax returns, although Presidents going back to Nixon all have; and indications are that he has paid little, if any taxes for many years.

- by not releasing his tax returns he gives credence to the suspicion that he is deeply in debt - and obligated - to Russian and Chinese sources.

- accepts and repeats as fact lies and conspiracy theories from sources like Alex Jones, and appoints a known conspiracy theorist - retired General Michael Flynn - as National Security Advisor.

But but but...liberal tears taste good?

This is only partially tongue in cheek. When I've confronted some people with all the material Andrew and Michael have, their basic response has been that they won, and that he must be doing good things because liberals are upset.

From a human at the EPA
Shared from a friend's source.

Sharing with permission.
From an EPA staffer:
"So I work at the EPA and yeah it's as bad as you are hearing:
The entire agency is under lockdown, the website, facebook, twitter, you name it is static and can't be updated. All reports, findings, permits and studies are frozen and not to be released. No presentations or meetings with outside groups are to be scheduled.
Any Press contacting us are to be directed to the Press Office which is also silenced and will give no response.
All grants and contracts are frozen from the contractors working on Superfund sites to grad school students working on their thesis.
We are still doing our work, writing reports, doing cancer modeling for pesticides hoping that this is temporary and we will be able to serve the public soon. But many of us are worried about an ideologically-fueled purging and if you use any federal data I advise you gather what you can now.
We have been told the website is being reworked to reflect the new administration's policy.
Feel free to copy and paste, you all pay for the government and you should know what's going on. I am posting this as a fellow citizen and not in any sort of official capacity."
If you share, please do so with copy and paste.
(h/t Shirley Thompson Marshall)