Sound The TRUMPets! A Thread for Presidential Pondering 2016-2020(?)

[Karl Henning]

Too much of a 'coincidence' dont you think?

Wicked!

[Karl Henning]

Well . . . welcome to the Sickening White House.

The White House Response to Rob Porter's Resignation Is Sickening

Porter is not the victim here.

The domestic-violence accusations against Rob Porter are credible and despicable — and the White House's attempts to diminish them are sickening.

In case you've been living under a rock, the White House staff secretary was recently accused of domestic violence by two of his ex-wives. These weren't just random, baseless accusations, as some detractors would have you believe. Colbie Holderness (his first wife) released a photo of a black eye she said Porter had given her, and Jennifer Willoughby (his second wife) obtained an order of protection against Porter from the police after he smashed through the glass of her front door when they were separated.

[Karl Henning]

Oops.  Good thing we gave all the fat cats the tax giveaways!

Republicans Begin a Spending Spree

[Karl Henning]

Well, as a ray of sunshine for the Tuperos, here is an Op-Ed from the Washington Post:

[El Tupé's] obstruction of justice is far more extensive than Nixon's

Congressional Republicans are all in on defense of party over country. They are determined for temporary political gain to prop up a leader who is a rogue, a constitutional menace, and yes, a criminal no less than Nixon. They have lost all sense of constitutional duty. If they do not find a way to regain it, history will judge them harshly.

[Mahlerian]

Well . . . welcome to the Sickening White House.

The White House Response to Rob Porter's Resignation Is Sickening

Porter is not the victim here.

The domestic-violence accusations against Rob Porter are credible and despicable — and the White House's attempts to diminish them are sickening.

In case you've been living under a rock, the White House staff secretary was recently accused of domestic violence by two of his ex-wives. These weren't just random, baseless accusations, as some detractors would have you believe. Colbie Holderness (his first wife) released a photo of a black eye she said Porter had given her, and Jennifer Willoughby (his second wife) obtained an order of protection against Porter from the police after he smashed through the glass of her front door when they were separated.

Moral preening is in fashion today.

- This Todd post automatically generated by Toddbot, to save him time and effort

[SimonNZ]

Which is scarier — that Trump doesn't read his daily intel briefing, or that Jared Kushner does?

"It is hard to tell what should be more worrisome: the fact that the commander in chief doesn't bother to read his daily compilation of the nation's most urgent intelligence, or the fact that his son-in-law — who has been unable to obtain a security clearance — does.

Those two stories were three pages apart in Saturday's print edition of The Post.

On the front page, my colleagues Carol D. Leonnig, Shane Harris and Greg Jaffe reported that Donald Trump is the first president since Richard M. Nixon not to regularly review the document known as the President's Daily Brief, the distillation of information picked up around the world by U.S. intelligence agencies.

And there on Page A4 was the other one, under the bylines of Matt Zapotosky, Josh Dawsey and Devlin Barrett.

Jared Kushner's inability to get a permanent security clearance, for reasons that are not entirely clear, has become a source of vexation at the White House. But in the meantime, he has a temporary status that allows him to "see materials, including the President's Daily Brief, that are among the most sensitive in government," they wrote.

There are two sets of issues to be concerned about here. The more serious one, of course, is whether the president is getting the information he needs to keep the country safe — or alternatively, whether his handlers may be dumbing things down to avoid overtaxing his attention span or challenging his preconceptions.

In the case of Kushner, there is a potential security risk but also the more immediate question of how appropriate is it for him to have access to the material under any circumstances. That takes us back to the fact that the 37-year-old real estate scion has no credential to merit holding his current White House job, outside of whom he married.

It is hard to miss the irony of it all: Wasn't the main driver of the scandal surrounding Hillary Clinton's emails the fact that it suggested she was careless in handling the nation's secrets?"

[amw]

https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/963190234199592960

Wow can't believe this ultra principled Republican senator who is a man of great integrity and honour would ever renege on his decision to retire. Who could have possibly seen this coming.

[BasilValentine]

Jared Kushner's inability to get a permanent security clearance, for reasons that are not entirely clear, has become a source of vexation at the White House. But in the meantime, he has a temporary status that allows him to "see materials, including the President's Daily Brief, that are among the most sensitive in government," they wrote.

Some of the reasons are clear. His family's business is in vast amounts of debt, he has had secret business meetings with sanctioned Russian bankers who are friends of Putin, and he perjured himself several times on applications for security clearance. I'd be really surprised if he isn't under active investigation right now.

[André]

The exploding gozillian US debt, courtesy of its clown in chief.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/president-trump-has-finally-released-his-comic-book/2018/02/12/18cfb848-1045-11e8-9065-e55346f6de81_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-b%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.b3d77c34728c

[Que]

I was under the impression that  Republicans didn't like debt? 

I mean, apart from spending more than 1 trillion $ on a war that led to entire countries being set ablaze and stimulated global terrorism....

BTW Spending 18 billion $ on a wall to keep people out that are already in, wow..... 

Q

[Karl Henning]

I was under the impression that  Republicans didn't like debt? 

A necessary consequent to trimming the 1%'s tax burden!  It's a in a great cause!

[Karl Henning]

A necessary consequent to trimming the 1%'s tax burden!  It's a in a great cause!

And look what I just found . . .

[El Tupé] hates deficits — unless they help rich people

[Florestan]

And look what I just found . . .

[El Tupé] hates deficits — unless they help rich people

Well, at least WaPo hates deficit, period. Without subscription one can't read anything on their website. 

[Karl Henning]

Well, at least WaPo hates deficit, period. Without subscription one can't read anything on their website. 

Here's a start:

When are deficits good?

When they fund tax cuts for donors and rich people.

When are deficits "dangerous"?

When they fund health care for poor people and children, training for workers, and infrastructure and other long-term investments in our economy.

That is the worldview of late of the Trump administration, based on the budget proposal it released Monday and recent comments from its chief budget honcho, Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney (who also happens to be working part-time dismantling the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau).

On "Fox News Sunday," Mulvaney touted the virtues of the newly passed Republican tax cuts, which punched a $1.5 trillion-size hole in the budget over the coming decade. This is a plutocratic law that primarily benefits the wealthiest Americans (and foreigners, for that matter), with more than 80 percent of tax cuts going to the top 1 percent by 2027, according to the Tax Policy Center.

It's also incredibly ill-timed, given that it amounts to a major fiscal stimulus when the economy is doing well. Normally, you pass a stimulus when the economy is underperforming — as was the case back in 2009, when Mulvaney railed against President Barack Obama's stimulus proposals.

Of course, Mulvaney had a different take.

"This is not a fiscal stimulus," Mulvaney insisted on Fox. "It's not a sugar high. It's not the same thing as what President Obama did."

"If we can keep the economy humming and generate more money for you and me and for everybody else," he added, "then government takes in more money, and that's how we hope to be able to keep the debt under control."

Oddly enough, not a single independent forecaster agrees with Mulvaney's glowing characterization. Even relatively generous assumptions have this bloated tax cut adding just a tenth of a percentage point to economic growth each year over the next decade, and nearly $2 trillion to our federal debt, according to the Penn Wharton Budget Model.

[Florestan]

Here's a start:

Thanks. Looks pretty bad.

"If we can keep the economy humming and generate more money for you and me and for everybody else," [Mulvaney] added, "then government takes in more money, and that's how we hope to be able to keep the debt under control."

This looks like let's cut a $1.5 trillion-size hole in the budget over the coming decade, which in turn will generate more money for everybody, ergo more money for the government and that's how we'll be able to fund the hole. Doesn't make any sense to me.

But then again I'm not a financial expert so I might be wrong.

What is interesting on a general note is that people who campaigned on reducing government's power over society use it liberally to impose governmental policies on society. 

[Karl Henning]

What is interesting on a general note is that people who campaigned on reducing government's power over society use it liberally to impose governmental policies on society. 

It was a campaign, and now is a government, built on naked hypocrisy.  And there is a core of electorate support who won't let that fact, nor any fact (come to that), dissuade them.

[Karl Henning]

[El Presidente Tupé] has finally released his comic book

In a Republican presidential debate in the fall of 2015, moderator John Harwood of CNBC asked Donald Trump about some of his more outlandish claims, such as making another country pay for a border wall and enacting huge tax cuts that wouldn't increase the deficit.

"Let's be honest," Harwood memorably said. "Is this a comic-book version of a presidential campaign?"

Harwood got a lot of grief for that from Trump and his supporters, but — Great Caesar's ghost! — would you look at this? President Trump's comic book came out on Monday, in the form of his budget proposal. It is quite a marvel. In fact, we haven't seen a comic like this in D.C. in ages.

Remember Trump's boast that he would "get rid of the $19 trillion in debt . . . over a period of eight years"?

Odin's beard! He just hammered that promise to pieces. His budget would add $7 trillion to the debt over a decade — $2 trillion in the next two years alone — and even those numbers are based on the peculiar assumption that the economy will never again go into recession.

Remember Trump's promise that "I'm not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid" and his boast about being "the first and only potential GOP candidate to state there will be no cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid"?

That promise has gone up, up and away. Trump proposes to cut more than $500 billion together from Medicare — health care for old folks — and Medicaid, which provides health care to the poor.

Remember Trump's constant "Mexico will pay for the wall" vows?

Cowabunga! His budget made quick work of that promise, requesting 18 billion American dollars for that wall.

And remember just two months ago when the administration said the tax cut would pay for itself and the Treasury Department said it would actually increase tax receipts by $300 billion over 10 years?

Shazam! Quick as a flash, the administration now says tax receipts will be $314 billion lower in 2018, $400 billion lower in 2019 and even $200 billion lower in 2027 when the plan was supposed to be paying for itself.

But, the Tuperos here will trumpet the "tax reform" as a Tupé success!  Look at him negotiate tough deals!

[Florestan]

By the way: who would you say has been the US president who lied the least during campaigning, ie the one who made good the most of his electoral promises?

[Karl Henning]

By the way: who would you say has been the US president who lied the least during campaigning, ie the one who made good the most of his electoral promises?

That is a great question; and I leave it to others more competent to answer.

But, lest we permit this to serve as a deflection (a favorite El Tupé tactic, incidentally) I wonder if anyone will seriously argue that here we have a President who promised outright, unrealistic absurdities (only one facet of his sociopathic untruthfulness), yet enjoys the support of a substantial population who care nothing for the facts, either, and who still faces no substantial accountability.

Rogues and enablers, rogues and enablers.

[Florestan]

here we have a President who promised outright, unrealistic absurdities, yet enjoys the support of a substantial population who care nothing for the facts, either, and who still faces no substantial accountability.

Substitute "parliamentarian majority and their government" for President and the above fits Romania to a tee. I certainly understand your anger and frustration.

But I harbor no illusions and hopes whatsoever about politics, politicians, parliaments and majorities, whoever they are and whatever they promise. Changing a politician with another or a majority with another is not a long-term solution. It's politics and the political system itself which are ireedemably rotten to the core. I vote not because I believe my vote will do any good but because I hope it will limit the evil.