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.

Amid the worst of the pandemic, 

our mad king rages only about himself

Here's the truth of the matter.

Trump is engaging in U.S. history’s deadliest-ever sulk

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.

Trump digs in on baseless election claims even as legal options dwindle

And this.

Trump blocks Biden’s incoming staff in unprecedented ways

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.

Trump fights to keep a job he shows no interest in performing

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.

Trump skips Asian summits as China set to expand influence

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.

Trump skips Southeast Asia summit for third year in a row

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

Trump Wanted to Start a War With Iran in the Final Weeks of His Presidency

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

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.

On his way out, Trump salts the earth behind him

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.

The longer Republicans cower to Trump, the more damage they do to democracy

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

Republicans are trying to jam through Judy Shelton. 

She has no business working at the Fed.

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?

Congress in gridlock over COVID-19 relief aid 

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.

Links:

Either elected leaders the world over are wrong about the pandemic, or Scott Atlas is

Biden’s main political opponent — right-wing misinformation — remains unvanquished

The most significant rebukes of Trump’s voter fraud claims

How Mitch McConnell Flouts the Will of the American People

Trump makes one last effort to cut Social Security

Trump's coronavirus chief urges Americans to gather for 'their last Thanksgiving'

Joe Biden has had enough, makes it clear that Trump should concede now, before more lives are lost

Great News Day Yesterday!

The last 12 to 24 hours have brought some pretty fantastic news, frankly, and on two fronts. First, out of the Koreas, North and South.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has agreed to suspend nuclear and missile tests while engaged in negotiations with South Korea, Seoul's government announced Tuesday morning. According to the office of South Korean president Moon Jae-in, Kim has agreed to hold an inter-Korean summit on the border between the two Koreas in late April, the first of its kind since 2007.

South Korea also said that Kim expressed willingness to begin talks with the United States about "denuclearization and normalizing relations"; President Trump has said that North Korea must be willing to denuclearize before negotiations begin.

"The North Korean side clearly stated its willingness to denuclearize," Moon's office said. "It made clear that it would have no reason to keep nuclear weapons if the military threat to the North was eliminated and its security guaranteed."

Now we just need our President to not exacerbate the situation with any tweeting or comments. Good luck to us all and God help us on that. It's starting to look like, of the two, our President Trump and their Kim Jong Un, Mr. Un is the sane one. Let's hope they both are.

Then there is this, regarding the Russia investigation of this President and his White House.

Former Trump campaign aide Sam Nunberg spent much of Monday on a media tour, granting interviews to CNN, MSNBC, NY1, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and other outlets as he declared his intention to ignore a subpoena from special counsel Robert Mueller.

The subpoena, which Nunberg supplied to multiple outlets and then held in his hand as he appeared on television, demanded he turn over all documents he had from November 1, 2015 to the present that related to President Trump and former Trump campaign officials Carter Page, Corey Lewandowski, Hope Hicks, Keith Schiller, Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Roger Stone, and Steve Bannon.

In his multiple interviews, Nunberg said that it would take too much time to sort through that "ridiculous amount of documents," and that he would ignore the subpoena's demands and an order by Mueller to appear before a grand jury on Friday.

"Screw that," he said on CNN. "Why do I have to go? Why? For what?" Nunberg essentially dared Mueller to hold him in contempt of court and jail him. "Let him arrest me," Nunberg told the Washington Post.

But by Monday night, the ex-Trump aide had begun to change his tune. Nunberg told the Associated Press that he is "going to end up cooperating" with the special counsel, although he would like Mueller's team to narrow the subpoena's scope of inquiry. After a day of publicly proclaiming his intent to defy Mueller, Nunberg appeared to back away from his plan to fight.

Here are just a few of the quotes from Mr. Nunberg yesterday:

• "Trump may well have done something during the election with the Russians."
• "You know [Trump] knew about [his son's Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer]. He was talking about it a week before. ... I don't know why he went around trying to hide it."
• "I was told that [Russian pop star Emin Alagarov] had offered to send women up to Trump's room [while he was in Moscow] but Trump didn't want it. He's too smart for that."
• "I believe [former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser] Carter Page was colluding with the Russians. ... Carter Page is a weird dude."

Finally, this.

Cochran to resign from Senate next month

Another Republican, Senator Thad Cochran, is to resign from Congress. Unfortunately, it's because of poor health which I would wish on no one but hey, at least another Republican will be out of office. That's the upside to an otherwise unfortunate situation.

Incredible. An incredible--and good--day.

Maybe great, even. Here's hoping it continues.

Link:

Wake Up To Politics

We Are, As a Nation, Normalizing the Insanity and Irresponsibility That Is Donald J Trump

Lots of us swore we would not, could not let this happen. That is, we swore we would and could not possibly let the normalization of Donald J. Trump and all his petulance and non-logic and emotionalism and rantings and ravings and tweets and self-centeredness and narcissism. We were sure we wouldn't all "go there."

But it's happening. Sure as he's called President, to this day, it's happening.

An example?

This past week.

Donald Trump's last 7 days are just 

mind-bogglingly bad

And then, today, there's this.

Trump calls negotiations with North Korea a waste of time, says U.S. will ‘do what has to be done’

He has no idea, I expect, that he's flirting with some sort of nuclear disaster, at minimum, if not out and out nuclear war.

Bravado is one thing when you're in the locker room and disrespecting women. God knows that's bad enough. But as President of the most ridiculously powerful nation on the planet to, again, flirt with nuclear warheads being rained down on some part of the planet--anywhere, really--is just outrageously stupid, even childish but certainly irresponsible.

We, the United States, can't allow, hell, exist with this, again, irresponsible dolt as leader.

The planet can't, either.

No exaggeration.

What We've Come To

Where we are now, thanks to this Presidency.

And thanks fo the Republicans and those who voted for and supported this candidate. 

This petulant, unthinking, irrational, emotional, greedy dolt of a man-child.

Links:

Welcome to the "It's All About Me" Presidency

Republicans, The Next Four Years Are All On You

An Open Letter to the World

Dear Planet Earth,

We Americans are sorry.

At least, those of us who knew better, we, the educated and aware who didn't in any way vote for or support Donald J. Trump and any part of his political campaign, let alone a Trump presidency, are sorry.

We're sorry this happened.

We're sorry for you, we're certainly sorry for ourselves and for our nation.

A lot of us can still hardly believe there were enough of us who went for his misogyny and racism and ugliness and ignorance and denial of science and all that entailed, all he entails, and still voted for him. We honestly didn't think there were enough people in our nation who were not educated in college to vote for this guy.

A lot of us, myself included, are still stunned.

So honestly, we're sorry. We apologize.

We apologize for him, we apologize he was elected, heck, we apologize for legalizing bribery, calling it "campaign contributions" and then making those unlimited in quantity with our Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling a few years ago.  We know better, lots of us, but this has all gotten way, way out of control.

We're hoping intelligent, responsible people in our nation and government can help keep him in check, that they can keep him from doing even one of the deeply ignorant, scary things he described while running for this office.

So, again, citizens of our planet, please forgive us. Bear with us. Help us, even, to, again, keep him restrained. If any of your national leaders can get close to him, please, please, for the sake of the planet and all that is good, please try to talk common sense and intelligence into him. It's no small task, we know, and it's not your responsibility but this is a huge job and we likely can't go this alone.

God help us all.

The United States---the Actual Big Problem in the World?

I've said it here before. I'll say it again.

The United States is the world's warmonger.

We spend more on war and what we call "defense" than any other nation in the world, far and away. Here's 2009 alone.

We're in more nations, with more bases and more weapons and more bombs and tanks and planes and ships and more of everything else's than any other nation, bar none.



Look at the last big wars of the past 5 decades. What were they and who was in them? Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan is where they were and we started them. We keep saying we're saving someone from something so we go over and blow 'em up real good.

Then there's weapons manufacturers as a nation. Guess who's making more weapons, by country, than any other nation and putting those out in the world. I think you see where this is going.

(H)ere is the list of the world’s top 10 arms exporters, along with their respective shares of global exports between 2010 and 2014, from SIPRI:

1. United States: 31%
2. Russia: 27%
3. China: 5%
4. Germany: 5%
5. France: 5%
6. U.K.: 4%
7. Spain: 3%
8. Italy: 3%
9. Ukraine: 3%
10. Israel: 2%

See the entire study from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

And those two are external. Now let's consider ourselves internally.

I think we know which nation on the planet has more weapons, for civilians, than any other, don't we? Sure we do. It's the good old, USA, once again, bar none.

We, as a nation, as a people, need to both stop thinking of ourselves as a "peace-loving people" and nation, we need to stop kidding ourselves and we need, badly, to do something about it. More people are being killed on this planet, both inside and outside the US.

We need to cut down on the weapons. There are a lot better ways to "do business" on this planet than by creating and selling and profiting from weapons.

We need to get started.

We need to give peace a chance.

The world--our own and the rest of it--will be a lot better place for our having done it.

Link: Ceasefire in Yemen Faces Collapse as U.S. Continues Weapons Sales to Saudi Arabia, Fueling Civil War

Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945

Here's a fascinating video representing every nuclear explosion since 1945.

As long-time friend and now Facebook friend Brian Rock pointed out, did you know there were 2 in Mississippi?



Missi--freakin'--ssippi?

One of the things about this that is especially illuminating to me---pun no way intended--is that so many of these blasts were tested by the US, the then Soviet Union and England on our own/their own land. England doing them in Australia.

It seems the height of irresponsibility and possible danger, to me.

Seems the more you learn of what we humans do to the Earth and one another, you get amazed we're still here.

This Could Rattle Your Day. Or Week. Or Month.

I just saw this article:

The Center for National Security and Arms Control at Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, N.M.

Nuclear weapons labs hit with sizable fines for new security violations

Just a couple details:

A classified material was missing for years before anyone noticed, and a lab official's public slides included bomb design data

You're in charge of the nations nuclear weapons and you can't keep track of the inventory?

And check this out from that same article:

In 2004, the laboratory’s director suspended the lab’s operations to fix problems that included the loss of classified computer disks, and in 2006, police responding to a domestic violence call at an employee’s home discovered thumb drives from the lab that contained classified information, along with illicit drugs.

That's enough to make you feel all warm and fuzzy, there, isn't it?

Try to have a great weekend, campers.

America, Our Nuclear Warheads and What We Need to Know and Do

More people need to know more of these details.

And then contact our Congressional representatives about them.

America's 2nd Iraq War, our war of choice

Quote of the day

"The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five." --Carl Sagan

On this day...

On this date in 1945, the first atomic bomb was successfully tested near Alamogordo, New Mexico.

More reasons to appreciate this President

It's nice to have a President doing some "heavy lifting", after the 8 year, minimum, hiatus we had.

"President Obama is having the largest group of world leaders collected in one place since the founding of the United Nations in 1945. Leaders from 47 countries are here at his invitation to discuss ways to fight what is easily arguably the biggest security issue for the planet--that of the spread of nuclear weapons and nuclear materials."

"Obama wants world leaders to confront the threat of nuclear arms falling into the hands of terrorists — a specter he labels 'the single biggest threat to U.S. security.' And he's looking at the high-profile security forum here to help him reach his goal of ensuring that all nuclear materials worldwide are secured from theft or diversion within four years."

What a nice change of pace.

And you know what? This is what you get for having an "elitist" run your government and country.

And it's a great thing, thank you very much.

So, down this same train of thought comes Russian President Dmitri Medvedev:

"In a veiled jibe at Bush, Medvedev said during an exclusive interview with ABC News on Monday that the new US President Barack Obama is a 'thinker' unlike 'other people.'"

Yes, Dmitri, we know.

And we're pretty proud of it and him, too, thank you.

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