Running the Government like his Casino (ODT)
via Trump Pilfers Billions from cyber-security, Puerto Rico in Pentagon Budget for Great White Wall
Category: Trumpland Revealed
There’s only a Year to go and we are watching the panic set in. Trump said the USA was “making” money out of the Tariffs whose advising this idiot non-savant ? (ODT)
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday warned he would be “tougher” on Beijing in a second term if trade talks dragged on, compounding market fears that ongoing trade disputes between the United States and China could trigger a US recession.
US stocks fell on Tuesday as data showed factory activity contracted for the first time since 2016 in August, while the benchmark 10-year US Treasury yield fell to its lowest since July 2016.
via Donald Trump warns China against dragging its feet in trade talks
MAKE AMERICA WHITE AGAIN- ONLY TRUMP CAN (ODT)
via Trump Shares Fan Video Featuring White Nationalist Logo | Crooks and Liars
President Trump and his aides are sending two simultaneous, contradictory messages about the economy: That it is booming, and everything is fine. And that it is time for emergency measures to keep this boom going.
It’s also certainly quite interesting that Team Trump, in private meetings with wealthy donors, is warning that a recession is coming. Meanwhile, on social media—where the regular people who like him get their information—Hair Twitler said the economy is “very strong.” You know that when the shit does hit the fan, Trump’s donors are going to end up much better off than his average Twitter follower.
via Trump Is Just Plain Bad at Managing the Economy | The Smirking Chimp
Other advocacy efforts worked to grow the dark underbelly of American paranoia. American Future Fund was one of several groups that received over $10 million in 2010 from a Koch-financed nonprofit to run attack ads, including spots that spread the bigoted lie that a victory mosque was planned near the former World Trade Center.
Trump has put US companies on alert that he might force them to withdraw from China, where they have $256 billion invested. He says he is given this power by the 1977 law called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA.
The Republican Party has spent over a century warning against government involvement in the private sector, but now their leader is doing it big time. Trump ordering companies around about where they can invest is a form of fascism or rightwing national socialism. Left socialism is about public sector economic activity for the good of people. National socialism is the state usurping economic resources on behalf of a small corporate and high-official elite.
The US Congress has given up many of its constitutional prerogatives over the years to the imperial presidency, something connived at by major party leaders such as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Trump should not have the ability to set tariffs on foreign countries by tweet. The regulation of interstate commerce is a congressional prerogative.
via China: How the Republican Imperial Presidency Led to Trump’s Trade Socialism
This ruse of pitting us against each other is one corporate fat cats and their political hacks go back to time and time again. Trump is counting on it, too — even if that means emboldening white nationalists.
If we let it happen again, we’ll get taken to the cleaners by abusive insurance companies, big pharma, and tax-dodging CEOs.
Instead of taking the bait, we should come toward each other.
If we unite to take on the real cause of economic decline — a corporate class intent on becoming ridiculously rich at the expense of the rest of us — we have the power to create the change we so desperately need.
Then we can begin to bring back good jobs, expand affordable and quality health care, protect our air and water, and so much more.
via Trump’s Re-election Strategy: Pit Us Against Each Other | The Smirking Chimp
In Australia, that surge came with the election of Tony Abbott the promotion of Islamophobia and the widespread cry from News Corp supporting groups like Reclaim Australia and the UPF with the accompaying message from the likes of Alan Jones Andrew Bolt, Rowan Dean Chris Kenny broadcasting the words “who let them in”. Bolt, in particular wildly generalising from the specific to whole communities with negative stereotyping. Hypocritically claiming he’s an individualist. Bolt daringly challenged people to push back in order to cry “I told you so” Basically he could be regarded as a recruiter for extreme action as much as those social media radicalisers of extreme Islam and ISIS. Yet he an extreme right-wing clarion was allowed to do it on the basis of “free speech” when others weren’t merely because he was employed by the Murdochracy. (ODT)
via The Trump Administration Owns the Surge in White Nationalist Violence
There’s one thing studio execs probably didn’t count on: Fox News.
Reporting that followed the film’s cancellation illustrated just how afraid the studio is of right-wing media and their followers.
That exact scenario played out nearly word-for-word last week — only with the sides neatly reversed. Buckling under pressure from outraged conservative media and Trump, Universal Pictures first paused promotion of an upcoming movie and then scrapped it altogether. The brief, bizarre controversy was an instructive example of how right-wing media outlets are waging the culture war under Trump, all while constantly claiming that it’s liberals who promote outrage culture.
The truth is that our society has an extremely asymmetric view of outrage culture, and that’s largely thanks to the ever-efficient right-wing feedback loop. To combat this one-sided perspective, journalists at mainstream news organizations need to start looking at complaints and popular outrage in a much more macro context. Until they do so, Fox News and others will continue to utilize selective political outrage to advance their agenda unchecked.
What will be revealed is that Trump has had little to do with the booming economy handed him by Obama and has no control over a recession if it comes. Trump is the true “nowhere man living in a nowhere land” of his mind and selling it with Murdoch’s help.
He’s a real nowhere man
Sitting in his nowhere land
Making all his nowhere plans for nobody
Sitting in his nowhere land
Making all his nowhere plans for nobody
He’s as blind as he can be
Just sees what he wants to see
Nowhere man, can you see me at all
Nowhere man don’t worry
Take your time, don’t hurry
Leave it all till somebody else
Lends you a hand
Just sees what he wants to see
Nowhere man, can you see me at all
Nowhere man don’t worry
Take your time, don’t hurry
Leave it all till somebody else
Lends you a hand
Doesn’t have a point of view
Knows not where he’s going to
Isn’t he a bit like you and me?
Nowhere man please listen
You…
Knows not where he’s going to
Isn’t he a bit like you and me?
Nowhere man please listen
You…
Unite the poor by fighting racism
According to the Poor People’s Campaign, there are 140 million Americans living in poverty or near poverty. Those living near poverty are low income workers who are one paycheck away from “official” poverty (which is set at a ridiculously low standard). About half of those in or near poverty are white — although poverty is significantly higher percentage-wise among the Black, Latino and Native populations. The total breakdown of poor people in the country is 66 million white people, 26 million Black people, 38 million Latinos, 8 million Asian Americans and 2 million Native people.
What is needed in the United States is to promote a class-wide rebellion of the working class that lives in or near poverty. This is not only possible but it is an imperative need. Racism and white supremacist ideology is the most potent and nurtured weapon of the ruling class to retain power. It is the principal obstacle to such a class wide rebellion to end poverty. To dislodge the capitalists from power requires a fighting movement that promotes the rise of a genuine popular democracy that puts state power in the hands of the poor and working class. Central to such a movement and to its eventual victory is an uncompromising war against any manifestation of racism.
via Trump the Magician: The Real Function of Racism and Xenophobia
The national debate over gun violence prevention is a divisive issue with many legitimate policy arguments. But the notion that Jews could have saved themselves from the Nazi onslaught but for gun regulations in Nazi Germany is not one of them. This argument is historically inaccurate and deeply offensive, especially to Holocaust survivors and their families. We have long asserted that it is absolutely wrong to bring the Holocaust into this debate where it simply does not belong.
via On Sinclair, Sebastian Gorka compared gun regulation to the Holocaust | Media Matters for America
The administration’s rollbacks, which sparked a torrent of public opposition, come just months after a dire United Nations report warned that human activity has pushed a million plant and animal species to the brink of extinction.
400 million guns
With more than one gun for each of the 330 million Americans, the issue is plain. The easy access to guns places America as the world’s outlier in gun violence; the easy resort to firearms means the killings will continue on any day, in any city.
El Paso is also in Texas, where Governor Greg Abbott in 2015 said he was “embarrassed” that Texas had fallen behind California in gun purchases.
Only last week, days after the California massacre, at his rally in Cincinnati, Ohio — the state where nine would die two nights later — Mr Trump said:
“We will defend privacy, free speech, religious liberty, and the right to keep and bear arms. And just remember, with the Democrats, there is no Second Amendment. You can forget about ‘keep and bear arms’.”
In raw numbers, 40,000 Americans die from guns each year.
THE SHOOTER STANDS WITH TRUMP
The 8chan document under investigation by Texas law enforcement described a gun attack that was intended to be “a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas”.
The document includes expression of support for the Christchurch gunman, whose attack on peaceful worshippers in New Zealand left 51 people dead in March. The alleged Christchruch gunman also described immigrants of color as an “invasion”.
Trump has continued to refer to migrants at the United States’ southern border as an “invasion”, including in the immediate wake of the Christchurch shooting.
via El Paso shooting: 21-year-old suspect ‘posted anti-immigrant manifesto’ | US news | The Guardian
Shooting records broken on Trump’s watch and by kids. Trump has really enabled Americans to just go out and shoot each other. Trumpland is the paranoid State of the Union (ODT)
Trump is engaged in political triage. He doesn’t bother campaigning in areas of the country where he’s disliked by the majority. He directs federal funding as much as possible to areas dominated by his supporters. He insults his blue state opponents with electoral impunity. It’s sobering to learn that, according to an analysis in the Cook Political Report, Trump could lose by five million votes — nearly twice the margin of the popular vote in 2016 — and still win the presidency via the Electoral College. Now that is a disgusting mess.
Bolt’s Cultural Racism helps divide the class divide in America which is absolute structural and real. Black American unemployment is still X2 that of white and hasn’t changed one iota since Trump came into office. Trump’s family investments is into poverty stricken areas as Slumlords so yes he knows only too well how to exploit the poor in his rat-infested Baltimore. (ODT)
As per his narcissism, Trump went off his prepared remarks during his speech and had to lie, bragging about his “role” at Ground Zero.
“Many of those affected were firefighters, police officers and other first responders,” Trump said.
He continued, “And I was down there also. But I’m not considering myself a first responder. But I was down there. I spent a lot of time down there with you.”
As Brad Reed writes, “There is no evidence that Trump helped search for survivors at Ground Zero, and retired New York City Fire Department Deputy Chief Richard Alles told Snopes last year that he never heard of a group of rescuers hired by Trump to help out. Additionally, Alles said that additional help from private responders was not necessary.
You have to be a pretty sick individual to constantly lie about the role you played during the 9/11 attacks.
But as for his right-wing media, supporters and political operatives, defending this liar makes you just as bad.
The whole Republican Party is complicit.
UPDATE: Here is video of Trump saying he was at ground zero with the first responders when he was, in fact, four miles away:
via Trump Lies To First Responders About Being At Ground Zero On 9/11 | Crooks and Liars
The U.S. economy grew by only 2.1 percent in the second quarter of 2019, according to new data by U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.
“The deceleration in real GDP in the second quarter reflected downturns in inventory investment, exports, and nonresidential fixed investment,” the bureau found. In other words, business investment is lagging — which is exactly what the GOP’s 2017 tax cuts were supposed to stimulate. But there was never much evidence to suggest that the tax cut would actually supercharge growth — it was a vain hope of Republicans who see lower taxes as the solution to everything.
At the same time, U.S. manufacturing is in a “technical recession.”
“Seems pretty notable that the president can no longer claim even one year of 3+% growth, with last year’s GDP numbers revised down to 2.5%,” she said. “After all the tax cuts and deregulation, growth is still plugging along about where it was under Obama.”
But we can conclusively say that if the economy isn’t soaring, then the president hasn’t caused the economy to soar. The president and his defenders have sold him as some sort of King Midas with the power to will economic prosperity into existence. And it’s just not true.
via The Myth of the ‘Trump Economy’ Is Going down in Flames | The Smirking Chimp
The New America (ODT)
President Donald Trump slammed one of his leading congressional opponents, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), in a Saturday morning Twitter rant calling him a “brutal bully” and berating his majority-black Baltimore district as a “rodent infested mess.”
It’s the latest in a series of attacks in which the president has used language widely condemned as racist to insult a nonwhite member of Congress, this time prompted by Cummings’ comments about inhumane conditions at the southern border.
via Trump Attacks Elijah Cummings As ‘Brutal Bully’ From ‘Rodent Infested’ District | HuffPost Australia
Trump keeps trying to hypnotize people by saying “No collusion, no obstruction,” and saying that Mueller exonerated him. Since so few Americans and so few in Congress will actually read the Mueller report, he thinks he can get away with the Big Lie.
Mueller explicitly denied yesterday that he had exonerated Trump. So that’s a Trump lie.
The Mueller report contains ample evidence that Trump attempted to obstruct the Mueller investigation. In fact, we know that Trump tried as hard as he could to simply fire Mueller for the purpose of obstructing the Mueller report.
via Yes, Obstruction; Yes, Collusion: The Mueller Report Proved the one and Gave Evidence for the Other
In this media-fabricated ecosystem, agency can only find its purpose and meaning in the coordinates of hate and anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies. Under Trump, reality has become a toxic melodrama played out through a relentless display of hypermasculinity, ultranationalism and a culture of utter cruelty that accelerates the death of the unwanted.
White nationalism is now being delivered nationally via emotional taunts parading as spectacle, entertainment and manufactured drama. The making of politics as theater opens up a new connection between contemporary fascist politics and a fascist past. Ilhan Omar was right in calling Trump a fascist.
via As Ilhan Omar Said, Trump Is a Fascist — and His Rallies Prove It | The Smirking Chimp
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
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