Bits & Pieces #84

Well, it was a rocky start. The amateurs have taken over the White House and they spent the first two days proving that they need all the help they can get. Trump’s inaugural address was nothing short of a disaster, a nasty, snarling attack on the world, filled with dictator-like rants of America First, which must have terrified our allies and sent joy through the hearts of our enemies.

The President followed that up with an even more disastrous speech in front of the Wall of Honor at the CIA, a self aggrandizing mess filled with obvious lies, attacks on the media and ego boosting boasts about how many time he’s been on the cover of Time. This was followed by sending Sean Spicer out to lie to the press and then do it himself about nonsense like how many people were on the mall at any given event.

Someone got his ear on Sunday and he tried to walk back a lot of what had been said, but it’s now prime time and you don’t get to walk your mistakes back anymore. You just get to make them and eat them. Ask any real President.

One thing is obvious. There are two warring factions in a White House that needs desperately to have unison. Trump has to decide which one to listen to and get rid of the other one.

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Yes, it’s true, the clown you have elected to run the greatest country in the world spent his time last night battling about how many people came or did not come to the National Mall to watch the ceremonies and whether or not he had out drawn Obama in 2009. Which he did not! That’s what Trump has to worry about? Boy, are we in trouble!

This guy managed to convince 27% of registered voters in this country to vote him into office. He immediately began stabbing them in the back. He promises to create jobs but every nomination he has made to his cabinet has been a bow to Wall Street or to the fossil fuel industry both of which have been more destructive to job creation than anyone in the business world.

Trump described his cabinet the other day as the likes of which has never been appointed before. He may be right although not the way he thinks, but whether right or wrong that’s not the point. The point is that he doesn’t seem to realize that he is now President of the strongest nation in the world and that what he says now means something. He can’t just go on lying and making stuff up to satisfy his ego. He can’t just go on talking and tweeting just to hear the sound of his own voice and see his mangled thoughts on the Internet.

He attacked Wall Street and Goldman Saks and now has stocked his pathetic cabinet with billionaires and has nominated a typical stock market cheater, Steve Mnuchin as Secretary of the Treasury. This is a scumbag who foreclosed on a 97 year-old woman who owed his bank less than a dollar. Mnuchin is typical of what Trump promised his misguided followers that he would get rid of and now he wants to put him in charge of the economy.

He has appointed Scott Pruitt, butt boy of the Oklahoma oil industry to run the EPA. How is that going to create jobs? How is it going to solve climate change when this moron doesn’t even know that we live in a climate. So let’s talk about jobs: 6.4 million Americans work in the renewable energy field. That more than in gas, oil or coal combined. This year we added 300,000 jobs in renewable and lost jobs in fossil fuel. We did it without adding carbon to the atmosphere, something that fossil fuels have never done. So if Trump wants to create jobs all he has to do is stick it to his buddies in the oil business and build more solar and renewables. But that’s not what he will do because he isn’t draining the swamp he’s feeding the alligators with those he doesn’t agree with. He is a destructive force that will do its best to weaken our great nation, not for a functioning goal but simply to gratify the twisted ego of a man who is not only intellectually challenged but proud of it.

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Rex Tillerson, Trump’s pick for Secretary of State passed the vote by the investigatory committee this week. The fact that he had problems is surprising considering most of the worthless nominees that are his mates. Tillerson has a lot of problems but he has been a successful businessman and has extensive knowledge of what goes on in the world. This as opposed to most of the morons who Trump is trying to stuff into his cabinet. Sure Tillerson has done extensive business with Russia and has known Vladimir Putin for years, but so what. That was his job and he obviously did it very well. Yes, in the course of doing his previous job he fought against clean air legislation, but he did that as part of what he was, the fossil fuel industry. I don’t really expect that he will completely reverse course now that he is Secretary of State but I would expect that he would try his best to do as good a job for the American people as he did for Exxon. That will mean an adjustment in his view of renewables and their place on the scene.

It  would seem that the things Tillerson is being attacked about were business related positions and not ideological ones. That’s a good thing because it’s the true believer, the fanatic like Mike Pense, that we really have to worry about. Most successful businessmen are pragmatic, that’s what allows them to change course in order to make the adjustments that make their businesses successful. Tillerson is definitely one of those; definitely not a true believer and it’s because of that that this blog believes that he will possibly be a successful Secretary of State.

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Watching Trump and his overwhelmed team try to understand what’s important and what’s not would be hysterical if they weren’t supposed to be running the country. Yesterday, Kellyanne Conway and Sean Spicer were both thrown to the wolves by their boss’s penchant for avoiding the truth. The frozen smile that is Conway’s trademark is now overwhelmed by weary eyes, that wilt in exhaustion, and shine in terror. She has accepted a job where she is forced to hide the egregious lies of a man who doesn’t know what the truth is. She is locked in a job that simply cannot be done. The deer of explanation and avoidance is stuck directly in the headlights of her boss’s inability to tell the truth and his need for constant ego gratification. In an interview on Sunday, George Stephanopoulos tried to agree with her on a number of points while pointing out that Trump had lied on each and every point. It was more than she was up to and one almost felt sorry for the comically fixed smile and the spiraling eyes.

Spicer, rather than trying to use Conway’s strategy of conciliation, made a full frontal attack on the press at his first Press Conference, taking no questions but opening up with both barrels to put them on notice that he will not accept truth as any kind of criterion during this administration. It was a pathetic display and one that will surely hurt any progress that this already crippled and pathetic administration can hope for in the future.

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Lindsay Graham in an interview with John Dickerson made some very valid points. His strongest and maybe most important was that we need to spend money around the world on influence not just on bullets. In that he sided with Trump’s appointees to his defense cabinet although not necessarily with Trump. Trump wants to cut most foreign aid, which will be catastrophic. One schoolhouse in Afghanistan will do us more good than a plane full of bombs. Trump doesn’t seem to get this.

Just as important is that we must stand up to Russia or Putin, like any bully, will keep pushing until he pushes us off the cliff or into nuclear war. Standing up to our enemies is more important than anything else we can do because it will avoid the big fight. Putin doesn’t want a war any more than we do but right now he has the guts to make it look like he does. We must stand up to him, to the Ayatollahs, to North Korea and to China or they will roll right over us. It’s all schoolyard stuff, people. It’s all about the bully and the kid who stands up to him and tells him to back off or fight. It’s the only way to survive.

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I wrote about Kellyanne Conway in another piece in this blog but then I watched as she had the same argument with John Dickerson and Chuck Todd as she did with Stephanopoulos. All three reporters quizzed her on the decision of Trump to send out his Press Secretary, in his first Press Conference, to lie about something as insignificant as the crowd size for a public event. At a time where there are so many important agendas at play, to lie about something so provable to the entire press corps and then to attack them about the fact that they are calling in your lies, is the epitome of stupidity and un-Presidential behavior.

So, called on this, Kellyanne went on the same rant with each interview, raving like a maniac about anything but the answer to the question, babbling like a mad dog, practically salivating into the camera. Yes she has a terrible job, trying to make this lunatic look like an acceptable President, but it’s a job she chose and one, at which she is failing miserably. Is there any job that is worth the abuse to which she is being subjected, simply because she serves such a lying egomaniac? Trump is the most un-presidential man in Washington and this poor dumb woman is tasked with making him look just the opposite. God, couldn’t do this job. Of course God, doesn’t have Trump’s ego.