via The Politics of Fear is intended to make us Dumb and Tribal, if we Let it
Category: Trumpland Revealed
Less than two hours after Donald Trump claimed that he was “not happy” with supporters who chanted “Send her back” during his scripted rant against Rep. Ilhan Omar on Wednesday night, the president praised the same baying mob.
“These are people that love our country,” Trump said, echoing his defense of the white supremacists in Charlottesville who chanted “Jews will not replace us” as “very fine people.”
Conclusion: Bigot in Chief
The media and the corporate Democrats are going after Trump and passing meaningless resolutions in the House condemning him for his racist tweets. There is actually a far larger point at play here, and it shows how truly dangerous Trump is.Consider briefly the definition of the word bigot: a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudice. Related terms include doctrinaire, fanatic, sectarian.
All of these terms have one thing in common: proponents lack that quality which being President of the United States most requires: mental flexibility
This is what makes Trump so dangerous: not his racism, not the fact-free nonsense he spouts on a daily basis, but his simplistic, dogmatic and rigid world view. His inability to learn, to change, to adapt. For all the vile crap he has said in and out of office, look beyond that and see the true danger: the man in charge of the largest military in human history is not capable of learning anything.
via The Bigot in Chief: Trump’s Intolerant Past – » The Australian Independent Media Network
If you look at that kind of identity politics, the Squad constituencies are similar in size to Trump’s core of evangelicals and the upper middle class and the rich. But the parents of these women were blue collar or service workers, and that is the real point. That’s 85% of the country. That is what this is really about. If they unite workers across race, the Squad could deprive Trump of one of his constituencies. Only 14% of blue collar workers who voted for Obama switched and voted for Trump. He promised them health care and better jobs. He hasn’t delivered. The Squad is appealing to them.
via Top 4 Ways the Squad of young Congresswomen represent more Americans than Trump
This guy also partied with Epstein privately and 28 other guests (ODT)
Republicans Are The New Confederacy, Part Infinity | Crooks and Liars
Most recent news on the U.S. economy has been upbeat and triumphant but the reality, as Alan Austin reports, is different.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP’S ceaseless bragging about the U.S. economy being “the best in the World and in our Country’s history” has gained traction.
Many “news” outlets spruik record jobs, record economic growth, record government revenue, record stock market levels and a record economy overall. Sounds like extraordinary boom times for the USA.
The reality is virtually the opposite. When Trump won office, America’s economy ranked 23rd in the world and 15th in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). That’s the club of 36 wealthy developed capitalist economies.
Today, the U.S. economy ranks outside the world’s top 40 and outside the OECD’s top 20. That is almost certainly its lowest ranking ever.
Riding on Obama’s shoulders Trump’s Record (ODT)
We’re 16 months away from the 2020 presidential election. It’s likely that the U.S. economy will weaken. Trump will be responsible. HIs approval rating will decline.
The whole point of messing with the Census was a political scheme to facilitate the Republican gerrymandering of the United States Congress, state legislatures, and local governments nationwide. This is a mission critical for a dying party that can survive only by cheating democracy. So it is that while Donald Trump’s attempt to add a citizenship question to the Census failed, the mission continues.
this administration still has the same poisonous political motivations that drove them to undercount communities of color for partisan gains, and we need to remain vigilant to protect our democracy.”
via Trump Wants to Use ‘Citizenship Data’ to Gerrymander Democracy | The Nation
Trump tore up the deal with Iran and is now insisting they did it (ODT)
‘How dare Iran break the nuclear deal we tore up a year ago?’ – Lee Camp — RT USA News
Trump’s “cleanest water in the world” (ODT)
As fishermen deep in the Louisiana bayou, Kindra Arnesen and her family have faced their share of life-altering challenges in recent years.
First came Hurricane Katrina, the 2005 monster storm that devastated her small fishing community in Plaquemines Parish before roaring up the Gulf Coast, killing more than 1,800 people and destroying $125 billion in property. Five years later, BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded 40 miles offshore, spewing nearly 200 million gallons of crude. The fisheries have not fully recovered more than nine years later, nor has her family.
But this year may be worse. A historic slow-moving flood of polluted Mississippi River water loaded with chemicals, pesticides and human waste from 31 states and two Canadian provinces is draining straight into the marshes and bayous of the Gulf of Mexico — the nurseries of Arnesen’s fishing grounds — upsetting the delicate balance of salinity and destroying the fragile ecosystem in the process. As the Gulf waters warm this summer, algae feed on the freshwater brew, smothering oxygen-starved marine life.
via There’s An Environmental Disaster Unfolding In The Gulf of Mexico | HuffPost Australia
Murdoch’s Man in America a Roger Ailes Creation (ODT)
He cages children, he holds a military parade, he muses about being president for life. Yet we fail to see him for what he is
Even if it’s not on the census, you can bet he’ll insist it’s there so he can intimidate people from filling it out.
via Trump Demands DoJ Include Citizenship Census Question Judge Shot Down | Crooks and Liars
And as Trump biographer Michael D’Antonio explained in a CNN op-ed, which referred to Ivanka’s performance as part of a “ridiculous show,” there’s nothing new about this behavior from Trump.
“Anyone who followed the clan as I did when it operated a string of businesses, understood that being a Trump was the main qualification that Donald Jr., Ivanka, and their brother Eric brought to their positions as top executives in the organization,” D’Antonio explained. “A President operating without many real experts, making every decision by himself, is a problem for the world but it’s just as Donald Trump has always liked it.”
The fireworks going off in Washington on Fourth of July night aren’t only for a celebration of liberty. They symbolise the explosion of dignity that has taken place in the White House, and the man who lit the fuse.
There’s no denying that US President Donald Trump is, and always has been, a showman.
After years of appearing on American television in the reality program The Apprentice, he kicked off his presidential campaign four years ago by gliding down the gilded escalator in Trump Tower on New York’s Fifth Avenue.
He’s staged multiple photo-ops with Korean dictator Kim Jung-un, the latest being last weekend, when he became the first US President to set foot in North Korea.
And now, Mr Trump is going to get a show of his own on America’s biggest patriotic holiday, the Fourth of July.
The Trump administration has stopped promoting government-funded research into how higher temperatures can damage crops and pose health risks.
via Agriculture Department buries studies showing dangers of climate change – POLITICO
Lesson’s taught by Abbott/Morrison/Dutton gifted to Trump (ODT)
Do you smell something? That’s the stench of freedom dying, and it’s coming from America’s southern border, where refugee children seeking U.S. asylum as they flee murder, rape and degrading conditions in Central America have instead been tossed into a growing gulag of squalid concentration camps, created by an administration desperate to cling to four more years of power.
Under these circumstances, there is no way Iran can make a bomb without everybody knowing it is trying. It would have to kick out the UN inspectors, build thousands more centrifuges under the gaze of US satellites, etc., etc.
So if what Trump wanted was no Iranian nuke, he had that when he was sworn into office in 2017. By breaching the treaty and refusing to reward Iran’s good behavior by ceasing sanctions, Trump put the US on a war footing with Iran.
He has stopped Iran from selling its oil, a form of blockade that probably amounts to an act of war. He is also stopping European concerns from investing in Iran.
It is frustrating that Trump is dancing on the brink of a war for a purpose that had already been attained. This is why it is bad to elect people to high office who have mental health problems.
The American Coup threat or reality? (ODT)
Trump’s ominous tweet about how his supporters might “demand” that he stay in office for more than two terms is the latest proof that his authoritarian ideology has little regard for the law. The tweet also reflects Trump’s strong desire to use threats of violence, if necessary, to reshape the political landscape and mode of governance.
via Let’s Shut Down the Authoritarian Machine | The Smirking Chimp
We’re there again. In some very real ways, in fact, we never got out of it.
Over the past five years, if there had not been a multitrillion-dollar increase in government, corporate, and individual borrowing, the U.S. economy would have contracted, rather than grown.
All of our national economy’s growth has been on borrowed money for all of Trump’s presidency: there’s quite literally no “there” there.
This is not how a healthy economy is supposed to work; instead, Trump is maintaining and inflating an economic Potemkin village, a pretend economy made out of cardboard, chicken wire and bubble gum that will collapse in the face of the first stiff economic wind.
If Trump and his collaborators can hold back the winds until November of next year, the GOP has a chance in the elections.
via Can Donald Trump Hold Off an Economic Crash Until the Election? | The Smirking Chimp
He is the most unpopular president in modern American history, with poll approval ratings consistently in the low-to-mid-40s.
Mr Trump has successfully trashed the institutions of accountability — especially Congress and the mainstream press — so that he can keep his balance and control of his narrative.
The Republican congressional leadership has collapsed into a spineless, subservient heap at Mr Trump’s feet, even as he alters the party’s DNA on balanced budgets, tax reform, American exceptionalism, free trade, immigration, the promotion of democracy and opposition to dictatorships.
When Trump said “there isn’t anything wrong with listening; if somebody called from a country, [Russia, China, Ukraine], [and said] ‘we have information on your opponent’ — oh, I think I’d want to hear it,” he was advertising more than his intention to collude in 2020. He was, effectively, confessing his impeachable malfeasances of 2016. It is beyond belief that Trump’s collusive sentiments are merely recent.
via This Week, Trump Confessed to (Past) Collusion | The Smirking Chimp
via 
Just Lie like I do says Trump
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders over President Trump 51 – 42 percent;
California Sen. Kamala Harris ahead of Trump 49 – 41 percent;
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren tops Trump 49 – 42 percent;
South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg edges Trump 47 – 42 percent;
New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker by a nose over Trump 47 – 42 percent.
Trump Instructs Staff To Lie About Poll Numbers, Really! | Crooks and Liars
Trump is calling for free dirt. He’s openly inviting collusion and will help obstruct any investigation into the matter. His sons are online and ready to assist in any way the can. Failing that they can contact Trump allies Guilliani Conway Hannity etc (ODT)
via Trump Broadcasts Free Ad via Disney to Thuggish Regimes, requesting Hacked Dirt on Dems
Mussolini’s Dream is a step closer in America (ODT)
Trump admits to his view of Life, and Elections all’s Fair so that’s why there is no Collusion or Obstruction. Unless you get caught and even then you plead NOT GUILTY (ODT)
President Donald Trump said that he would accept information from a foreign government on his opponents in the 2020 presidential election and suggested during his interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos that he also wouldn’t need to alert the FBI.
Trump’s remarks to ABC are alarming considering the special counsel’s Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
Stephanopoulos reminded Trump that FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress during a hearing that the FBI would want to know if a foreign government was trying to influence a U.S. election.
However, Trump disagreed with Wray.
“The FBI director is wrong because, frankly, it doesn’t happen like that in life,” he said.
Trump Says He Would Accept Dirt On 2020 Opponent From Foreign Government | HuffPost Australia
So in fact, Trump’s (and Hewitt’s) much-ballyhooed “Great Tariff Avoidance” of last week was just another Trumpian scam.
It was Trump who surrendered, not Mexico.
He was laboring under tremendous pressure from “global leaders, business executives, Republican and Democratic lawmakers, and members of his own staff” to cancel his economically devastating tariff threats. And he finally caved — but first he had to magically convert what was indeed an embarrassing defeat into another Trumpian victory.
The swindling just never ends.
Trump made clear in an interview with CNBC his frustration with a system that provides political independence for America’s central bank – something most economists see as vital to its credibility. Trump noted that China’s president, by contrast, is essentially also head of the Chinese central bank.
via ‘They made a big mistake’: Trump growing frustrated with ‘destructive’ US Fed
Mexican authorities bear no responsibility for what’s going on. International law protects the rights of refugees and asylum seekers. So does the 1980 US Refugee Act, a statutory basis for granting them asylum.
Unwanted aliens of the wrong race and ethnicity, along with Muslims from the wrong countries, are unwelcome in Trump’s America.
His immigration policy blocks them from entering the US — notably individuals fleeing repressive US-supported regimes in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, three of the world’s most violent nations.
via Trump’s Mexico Deal: Hostage-Taking Over International Rules – Stephen Lendman
Domestic Politics comes first over any International event (ODT)
The ceremony that commemorates the 75th anniversary of D-Day was all set to go at 11 AM local time in France but was pushed back 15 minutes because Trump just had to give another fluff and negative interview to a Fox news host.
To Trump, his state-sponsored propaganda network (Fox News) is more important than honoring the sacrifices that were made by the men and women in World War II. The RNC chair has confirmed that the priority of this trip is to honor Donald J. Trump.
via Donald Delays Normandy Ceremony To Smear Americans On Fox News | Crooks and Liars
via 
Another week, another couple of trade wars — one with India (“The Trump administration announced on Friday that it was stripping India of a special status that exempts billions of dollars of its products from American tariffs; The South Asian country could now move forward with its own tariffs”) and another with Mexico. Of the two, Trump’s muttonheaded decision to disrupt supply chains with our largest trading partner — Mexico — has rattled Wall Street and American companies either already doing business there or were on the precipice of moving their manufacturing from China to our southern “ally.”
Nonplussed Catherine Rampell sputters that “[Trump’s Mexico] decision is so mind-bogglingly stupid, it’s hard to keep track of all the reasons it’s dumb.” She manages to come up with 10 of them, however, from “Americans are paying these tariffs” to “It will also damage our ability to negotiate with China (and the E.U. and Japan) because it proves, once again, that Trump can’t be trusted to keep his word, including in the form of a signed international agreement [Nafta 1.1].”
Trump orchestrated the deaths of his mate Kims advisors and now he’s playing the same game Kim has played with the West all these years. The game of “you can’t trust me even when I do agree” It’s the same game he’s played with banks asking nations to finance him and up their risk not his in unsecured loans to the USA. He’s spending money on weaponising America both internationally and domestically and promoting insecurity of the planet.(ODT)
The Most Comprehensively Destructive President Ever | The Smirking Chimp
“Bottom line: Trump likes (tariffs) and will always look for an excuse to levy them,” Guajardo tweeted. “No country should delude itself thinking they can appease him to avoid them.”
How Trump treats ASYLUM SEEKERS
“This is insane. Not only can they not move, they can’t breathe, they can’t eat, they can’t do anything like this. Children have died and will continue to die if this is not stopped now.”
A not-yet released report by the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General, reported CNN on Friday, has found “dangerous overcrowding” and unsanitary conditions at an El Paso, Texas, Border Patrol processing facility following an unannounced inspection. (Photo: Department of Homeland Security/IG Office/via CNN)A federal immigrant detention facility in El Paso, Texas is so unsanitary and overcrowded that migrants held by the Trump administration were forced to wear “soiled clothing for days or weeks” at a time and stand on toilets to find breathing space in their cells.
A disgruntled US city employee “indiscriminately” opened fire at the municipal centre in Virginia Beach, Virginia, on Friday afternoon, killing 11 people and wounding at least six others before he was killed himself, the city’s police chief has said.
