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Tuesday, November 17, 2020

The Devolving Insanity of This Excuse for a President

It's difficult to even keep up with both how little and how much this sorry excuse for a leader or President is doing since he got his election defeat. I'll try here, now. Here's the first.

Trump officials rush to auction off rights to Arctic National Wildlife Refuge before Biden can block it

Officials aim to sell drilling rights to the pristine wilderness’s coastal plain before the president-elect takes office

Forget that there is a huge glut of oil on the markets, the international markets and there has been ever before the international pandemic struck but now, with this COVID, there's even MORE oil on the markets because we all are driving so far less.  The world doesn't need more oil and likely won't for at least some time, if ever, given the push, however slow, to go electric and sustainable.

Ultimately, it seems this is all he's doing, however, these last few weeks, at least.


Here's the truth of the matter.


President Trump will be remembered for many things. For the audacity of his mendacity. For his ready recourse to prejudice. For his savant’s ability to rile and ride social resentment. For his welcoming of right-wing crackpots into the Republican coalition. For his elevation of self-love into a populist cause. For his brutal but bumbling use of force against protesters. For his routinization of self-dealing and political corruption. For his utter lack of public spirit and graciousness, even to the very end. And, to be fair, for the remarkable achievement of winning more than 73 million votes without an appealing message, without significant achievements and without a discernible agenda for the future.

But though Trump will be remembered for all these things, he will be judged for one thing above all: When the pandemic came and hundreds of thousands of Americans died, he didn’t give a damn.

Where we stand now with the Orange Man. This, basically, is what he IS doing.


And this.


Trump’s stonewalling of the incoming administration is leaving even some in his own party concerned

For the first time in more than half a century, an outgoing administration is stonewalling an incoming one at every level — with no intention of relenting.

President Donald Trump hasn’t called President-elect Joe Biden. The Trump campaign hasn’t reached out to the Biden campaign. The White House and federal agencies haven't briefed the Biden transition team...

There are no briefings being given about coronavirus, troop drawdowns in Afghanistan and Iraq, or aggression by China and Iran. No background checks being done for job applicants. No security clearances being conducted for potential Biden staffers.

The silence could continue into December, when states must certify their results to Congress, according to several Republicans familiar with the expected plans. Until then, they said, Trump and his team will continue to assert the election was fraudulently stolen from them, using unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud to file lawsuits and recounts challenging the results.

It’s a situation without parallel since at least 1963, when a federal law implemented modern presidential transition procedures, mandating the sharing of office space and the spending of money for the process.

The posture threatens to leave Biden’s team unprepared in January when it takes over a millions-strong federal workforce, according to officials who worked for Republican and Democratic presidents and lawmakers of both parties. And, they added, it sends a message to the world that the United States, generally a model across the globe, is vulnerable and unable to administer a seamless transition of power.

Here's the irony, too, added to this insanity.


I mean, really, what the heck? He's trying, fighting to deny he lost the election, seemingly fighting to stay President but HE'S NOT DOING THE JOB. For another example of proof of this, check this out.


He always touted and flouted he was "tough on China" but he doesn't attend this Southeast Asian conference?  Not only that but this is far from the first time, too, that he skipped it.


This, however, is the absolutely most frightening thing that did at least occur to him.


But hey, last Sunday?  He got in his golf, let there be no doubt.

President Trump is shown at Trump National Golf Club in Sterling on Sunday.

Mr. "You Won't See Me Out There Playing Golf" did, in fact, do just that.

One more thing he's doing, to the nation, to us, to the people and to Democracy, our Democracy.


This was probably the way we should have expected President Trump to finish his time in the White House: whining, lying, ignoring the duties of his office, desperate to keep his scam going and focused only on himself. But that Trump is being Trump should not for one second blind us to what is happening right now and how damaging it is. The destruction of the past four years was apparently not enough for him. So on his way out the door, Trump is salting the earth behind him.

It has been nearly two weeks since the election. President-elect Joe Biden won the electoral college by 306-to-232. His lead in the popular vote is 5.6 million and growing. Republican efforts to get courts to shut down counting and invalidate huge numbers of votes are being laughed out of court. This is over.

And what is the president doing? Complaining on Twitter.

He will not prevail, and everyone knows it. The White House staffers desperately spinning on his behalf know it. The Fox News hosts propagating conspiracy theories about stolen votes know it. Every elected Republican knows it. The only ones who don’t know it are the millions of Trump voters who are the targets of this noxious propaganda campaign, the ones being told that American democracy is worthy of nothing but contempt.

This was this morning.

Kyle Griffin
@kylegriffin1
Pool report: "The president has nothing on his public schedule today. He also has not posted any falsehoods on Twitter about winning the election or fraud or anything else, for that matter, in more than 11 hours. The day, however, is young."

His political party is no help, either, far from it.


Not done there, his political party members in Congress are trying to do their own partisan damage, too.


Republican lawmakers are about to start an arms race politicizing a government institution critical to the country’s functioning, one that spent decades painstakingly establishing its credibility as a neutral, apolitical body of professionals.

The Senate is expected to vote as soon as this week on Trump’s nomination of Judy Shelton to the Fed. Simply put, Shelton is a demonstrably unqualified partisan quack who has no business working at the world’s most powerful central bank. Her nomination has been condemned by hundreds of economists and Fed alumni, including prominent Republicans and at least seven Nobel laureates. The senators poised to confirm her appear to know she is unfit; ahead of February hearings, a former Republican Senate Banking Committee aide said that “the idea of even calling her as a witness for something was beyond the pale” not long ago.

It's not bad enough we have a non-functioning, non-leading President that's sulking, doing nearly nothing but thrashing about, the people in his political party set up, first, another extreme Right Winger on our Supreme Court and now want to do the same on the Federal Reserve.

But help Americans? During the worst, most killing, deadly international pandemic in the last more than 100 years?


One of the most important things you'd think this Congress could and should do is pass COVID relief aid just now. People's livelihoods and work and homes all depend on it, given our current national situation. The pandemic is spreading and wildly across the nation. It's exploding in cases and deaths, both, and Congress is doing seemingly nothing to help us. It seems it should be issue one for them just now.

So what can we say now except "Thanks, Mr. President! Thanks, Republicans!" You're doing so much for us.

Not.

The other thing we can say?

Bring on inauguration day.

#Throwthebumout 

God help us all.

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