trump is serious!!!!!

[Econoline]

Some good ones there, but I'm still going to hold off at least until the impeachment proceedings begin...

[Big RR]

I have to like Pumpkin Pinochet.

[BoSoxGal]

Like Econo, I generally stick to just Trump.

But sometimes 45.



Occasionally when I'm really frustrated, I do call him Cheeto-in-Chief.

[Econoline]

[Lord Jim]

I don't know if I'll be able to stick with it, but my plan is to always refer to him as just plain "Trump"...

I like to mix it up....

Lord Dampnut, Drumpf, The Trump-thing, The Orange Leader...Donald Ivanovich...

and a couple of my own creation...

Il Boobce and El Clodillo...

[Lord Jim]

You know, it may not look like it from everything I've said, but right after he was elected, I was really willing to give this guy a chance, despite all my deep animosity towards him and complete lack of confidence in him...

Once I got over the initial shock...(I'm still not completely over the shock...every time I see him standing in front of a podium with the Seal Of The President Of The United States on it, or watch him descending from Air Force One or Marine One and returning the salute to the Airman or Marine standing at the end of the steps, I still blink and rub my eyes in disbelief...)

You may remember that shortly after he was elected, I started a thread about his early appointments where I gave him a passing grade...

I also gave him credit for the reasonably gracious victory speech he gave on election night...

But he completely lost me with the Tillerson appointment...

And his overall behavior during the transition, and his revoltingly un-Presidential comportment since he took Office has done nothing but confirm me in the view that he really needs to go...

Some folks around here may recall that back at the CSB, I was highly critical of Rush Limbaugh and others who announced at the out-set of Obama's Presidency that they were "rooting for him to fail"....(though I certainly became highly critical...and remain so... of Obama's performance as President, I never "rooted for him to fail")

I am fundamentally philosophically resistant to that way of thinking; just as I was when some liberal Democrats were saying the same thing when George W. Bush became President...

As a general operating principle, I agree with what John Kasich said a couple of weeks ago after emerging from a meeting with The Orange Leader:

"When you're sitting on the plane, you have to root for the pilot"


That's a very good general rule; no matter what you think of the pilot...

Unless....

The pilot is deliberately trying to steer the plane into the side of a mountain, or he knows so little about how to steer the plane that it's going to go into the side of a mountain...

At which point you have to stop rooting for the pilot, and start rooting for the co-pilot, the flight crew, and the passengers to take the controls away from the pilot and wrestle him to the ground so the plane can fly safely...

I sincerely believe that's the point at which we're at....

It's not an easy conclusion for me to come to...

Particularly with a President who is a nominal Republican... (that makes it particularly painful)

And it's not the case that I disagree with everything he's done or proposed...

I'm in favor of building the Keystone Pipeline, I support the general principle of a major increase in defense spending, I support tax cuts and reducing regulation for small businesses, I support school vouchers, I support a major infrastructure investment, I support Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court...

But I have come to the very sad conclusion that even if I support some of the data points in his announced agenda, The President Of The United States is fundamentally unfit for the Office...

There are many reasons for this, but the biggest one of course (the one that outweighs everything else; yes he's a narcissistic oaf, and a complete incompetent, but you could say, "well, he was still elected so we'll just have to put up with it") is that he is either a willful traitor to his country and his Oath Of Office, or a person so venal and unprincipled that he is willing to violate his Oath Of Office and betray the best interests of his country in order to try to protect his own personal interests...

And for this reason above all others, the controls have to be wrestled away from the pilot...

He has to go...

[Lord Jim]

Regular readers of this space will also know that I am generally very reluctant to take seriously, and usually am ridiculing of, conspiracy theories...

As my old sigline used to say, I am a firm believer in the axiom, "Never ascribe to a 'conspiracy' that which can be explained equally well by sheer human stupidity"....

I don't think Donald Trump deliberately set out to become a traitor...

I believe that (as Sue detailed quite well in an earlier post) the available evidence suggests that he got in over his head in financial obligations to Putin and his oligarch friends, and now he feels that he has no choice but to do their bidding...

(That's KGB 101 stuff for grooming an agent of influence; something that former KGB Colonel Vladimir Putin knows quite well)

He never expected to win the election, so now, with the spotlight of publicity on his every move regarding Russia, he's desperately trying to walk a tightrope to avoid offending Putin and his other Russian paymasters to the point that they would "out" him, and publicly release what he owes them, while still trying to "act" like a President Of The United States who cares about the well being of the United States...

But even if he didn't deliberately set out to be a traitor, and he never really expected to become President, that doesn't make this situation any more acceptable...

He has to go...

[RayThom]

... But even if he didn't deliberately set out to be a traitor, and he never really expected to become President, that doesn't make this situation any more acceptable...
He has to go...

Follow the money.

[Burning Petard]

I commend to you the column by Charles Blow in today's NY Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/27/opin ... inion&_r=0

and I quote the opening:

"In the movie “Iron Man 2” (yes, superhero films are my guilty pleasure, so just bear with me) the villain, a rogue Russian scientist, informs the hero, Iron Man, of his theory on how easily he could be brought down:
“If you could make God bleed, people will cease to believe in Him. There will be blood in the water, and the sharks will come. All I have to do is sit here and watch, as the world will consume you.”
The point is clear: Invincibility is an illusion constructed by false assurances. Puncture the fantasy, expose the mortal, and the dispirited faithful will destroy the false deity.
Last week, the House Freedom Caucus made the fabricated God of Chaos bleed."

There are various data points indicating the heart of Trump's voters, those who like the frogs in Aesops's pond, wanted a new King, are now reconsidering their position that radical change was needed. For example, 'The Benedict Option' by Rod Dreher, advocating real Christians withdraw from this sinful world is getting lots of traction among Evangelicals.

snail gate

[Bicycle Bill]

-"BB"-

[Econoline]

[Econoline]

[Crackpot]

Hope for the future?

Overheard at work: a Russian and a Muslim engineer taking the piss out of eachother over who could get who in the most trouble in the current climate (for not acquiescing to the others side on thier mutual engineering dispute)

[Econoline]

[Scooter]

[Guinevere]

OMG, fotomat

[Scooter]

Trump appoints Ivanka to head anti-nepotism task force

CBC Comedy · March 27

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Vowing to get serious about the many allegations of nepotism in government he has been hearing about recently, President Donald Trump appointed his daughter and her husband Jared Kushner to investigate this, and find out how the practice of giving family members jobs could be put to a halt.

"Obviously most, if not all, of the problematic policies that people have complained about in my administration were actually originally implemented by my predecessor," said Trump in a press conference this morning. "That includes drones, golfing, and the outrageous nepotism that he practiced, which I am trying my best to root out."

"As far as I understand it, and stay with me because this is pretty crazy, Barack Obama's entire immediate family lived with him in the White House, which is absurd. I've got Melania and Barron living in Trump Tower in New York, as you all know. And that's not because my wife would rather be alone all day than be forced to live in the same house as me, and certainly not because I don't want them to see what I'm getting up to," said Trump. "It's because of school or something, I can't remember; whatever I said it was a few months ago is still what it is. But Obama. Wow. Now that's bad behaviour folks, I'm pretty disappointed."

"He even had a dog," continued Trump. "I don't mean a dog he shot on safari in Africa and mounted on a wall, which you'd maybe understand. A dog that lived with them, like a member of the family! So that's already five individuals by my count."

"I've asked Ivanka and Jared to look into this," said Trump, "and they may ask some other people around the White House to help, like say Donald Jr. and Eric, who they will ask not because they are family, but because they are government insiders. Plus they've got a lot of expertise working for all my businesses; they know how a business is run, and business is just a government with more casinos."

"Don't want to be accused of relying too heavily on family, though, which is why I'll leave my daughter Tamara out of this," said Trump. "Tiffany, I mean. I believe Tiffany is the name; I know it's a double-T situation, anyway."

At press time, Trump was outraged upon learning that Democrat John F. Kennedy had fathered a child while in the White House, saying that he would never invent new family to give jobs to as long as he was living in the White House, though he would probably gradually give existing family even more jobs in the government than they currently have.

[BoSoxGal]

Obama had TWO dogs! Scandalous.

[Econoline]

CBC Comedy · March 27

I was going to make a comment about this being published 5 days early, but then I realized that we're all now permanently stuck on April Fools Day...sort of like "Groundhog Day" but everywhere at once... and without Sonny & Cher....

[Lord Jim]

We've got a situation heating up with North Korea, and what is our President focused on this morning?

Donald J. Trump‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump

Did Hillary Clinton ever apologize for receiving the answers to the debate? Just asking!

Donald J. Trump‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump 1h1 hour ago

Was the brother of John Podesta paid big money to get the sanctions on Russia lifted? Did Hillary know?
4,693 replies 4,787 retweets 15,932 likes

Donald J. Trump‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump 2h2 hours ago

Such amazing reporting on unmasking and the crooked scheme against us by @foxandfriends. "Spied on before nomination." The real story.

Donald J. Trump‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump 23h23 hours ago

The real story turns out to be SURVEILLANCE and LEAKING! Find the leakers.

Yes, find the leakers and while your at it, find out who stole the strawberries...