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Donald Trump's disfunctonal American government....EXCELLENT NEWS

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Author Topic: Donald Trump's disfunctonal American government....EXCELLENT NEWS  (Read 124 times)
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Kiwithrottlejockey
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« on: August 18, 2017, 09:20:04 pm »


from the Los Angeles Times....

As he coddles neo-Nazis, Trump's political isolation increases

By DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM PDT - Thursday, August 17, 2017



PRESIDENT TRUMP retreated to one of his private golf courses on Wednesday night amid the uproar over his sympathetic words for neo-Nazis and white nationalists. Trump needs his safe spaces, now more than ever, because he is becoming increasingly more isolated, politically and personally.

In a news conference at Trump Tower on Tuesday, the fake president taunted the “fake news” reporters and doubled down on his contention that anti-fascist demonstrators were as complicit as the fascists themselves for the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, last weekend that left one young woman dead and many more injured. Reportedly, Trump has no regrets about the things he said. Apparently, he is very pleased with himself for delivering a belligerent defense of all the “very fine people” among the openly anti-Semitic, racist demonstrators. That perception was reinforced by his hyper-nationalist political advisor, Stephen K. Bannon, who enthusiastically declared the news conference “a defining moment” for Trump’s presidency.

And, indeed, it was a defining moment. It made crystal clear the truth that Donald Trump cannot shake his warm feelings for “blood and soil” racists who see him as their ally. White nationalist leader Richard Spencer is absolutely on target with his contention that, though Trump may not be ideologically in lock step with the movement, the president has a “psychic connection” with the alt-right.

So, Trump has the support of Spencer, Bannon and a bunch of pudgy, pugilistic, socially awkward men in polo shirts carrying torches and Confederate flags and raising their arms in Nazi salutes. Elsewhere, though, his support is shrinking. His poll numbers hit a new low this week — 34%, according to Gallup. Given that a quarter of Americans consistently prove their looniness by subscribing to preposterous conspiracy theories like birtherism and Pizzagate, that poll number indicates Trump is getting ever closer to being the president only of fools and fascists.

On Wednesday, Trump rushed to dissolve two highly-touted business advisory councils before all the CEOs on those panels quit. Business leaders had been bolting for the exits like an audience in a burning circus tent after Trump failed to make a distinction between the Nazi sympathizers who invaded Charlottesville and the people who showed up to protest their vile philosophy. On Tuesday, Trump slammed the departing CEOs as “grandstanders” and said he could easily replace them, but, by Wednesday, the president must have realized no prominent businessman in his right mind now wants to ruin his reputation by colluding with him.

In another dramatic move, five top military leaders — the chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and National Guard — made strong statements condemning racism and Nazism. The Army chief of staff, General Mark A. Milley, sent out a tweet that said, “The Army doesn't tolerate racism, extremism or hatred in our ranks. It's against our values and everything we've stood for since 1775.” Such pointed comments from the military's top brass are highly unusual and are a sharp, if indirect, rebuke to the commander in chief.

Several conservative pundits and Republican activists expressed outrage at Trump's defense of the white nationalists. On Fox News, Charles Krauthammer branded Trump's comments “a moral disgrace”. Most GOP elected officials shied away from criticizing Trump so directly, even as they issued their own condemnations of bigotry. Some, though, did take Trump on, including Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who said the president was wrong for not assigning all the blame for the Charlottesville tragedy to white supremacists. “We cannot allow this old evil to be resurrected,” Rubio tweeted.

Reportedly, some members of Trump's Cabinet and White House team were upset by the president's comments, too. As Chief of Staff John F. Kelly stood off to the side of Trump during the Tuesday news conference, he exuded the body language of a man who realizes he has sold his soul to the devil. The media is now abuzz with speculation about how long these people can work for a man with such a skewed moral compass before self-loathing impels them to resign.

Seven months into his four-year term, Trump is fast becoming as politically isolated as Richard Nixon in his final days in office. He feels no sense of loyalty to anyone, except, perhaps, members of his family. He insults allies, demeans his own appointees and treats even well-meaning critics as enemies. Trump is a man without real friends in Washington. In the rest of the country, a majority of people now see him as incompetent, if not a clear and present danger to the republic.

But Trump still has his base. And he will cling to them and coddle them, even if some among them are Nazis and white supremacists. It is a twisted neediness that makes Donald Trump blind to obvious evil.


__________________________________________________________________________

Related to this topic:

 • Racist extremists, no ‘many sides”, brought terror to Charlottesville


http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-coddle-nazis-20170817-story.html
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Kiwithrottlejockey
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« Reply #1 on: August 18, 2017, 09:20:19 pm »


from the Los Angeles Times....

With Trump and Congress increasingly at odds,
hopes for Republican legislative agenda fade


By LISA MASCARO | 3:40PM PDT - Thursday, August 17, 2017

In February, when President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell shook hands during a White House ceremony, they had high hopes for their legislative agenda. — Photograph: Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press.
In February, when President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell shook hands during a White House ceremony,
they had high hopes for their legislative agenda. — Photograph: Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press.


REPUBLICANS in Congress have tried to stick with President Trump in hopes that despite politically damaging outbursts from the White House, his pen would ultimately be able to sign their legislative agenda into law.

But in the aftermath of Trump's controversial response to the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that promise seems ever more distant.

Congressional Republicans are now coming to grips with the reality that they are increasingly on their own, unable to rely on the president to helm their party, but without having powerful enough congressional leaders to bring bickering factions together.

That has dimmed prospects of passing big-ticket items such as tax reform, an infrastructure package or a new healthcare law.

At best, when lawmakers return to work next month, they hope to agree to keep the government funded past the end of the fiscal year on September 30th and not provoke a financial crisis with a prolonged standoff over raising the limit on federal debt, which the government will hit sometime in early October.

"The president has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence that he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful,” Senator Bob Corker (Republican-Tennessee) told reporters on Thursday after a meeting at the Chattanooga Rotary Club.

“I do think there need to be some radical changes," Corker said. “We need for him to be successful.”

The latest Trump outbursts solidified the gloomy assessment from many Republicans.

“It codified it: This administration has no hope of accomplishing any major policy goals,” said longtime Republican strategist Rick Tyler, a former top advisor to Newt Gingrich and to Senator Ted Cruz's presidential bid.

“We don't have to wonder about it. It's like driving your car past empty — the motor's going to stop, and it's not going to go forward anymore,” Tyler said. “These are the laws of physics, and legislation's very much the same."

Trump has emerged less a partner to the Republican majority in Congress than an unpredictable bystander, welcoming lawmakers to lunch one day, bashing them on Twitter the next.

Several senators got the latest taste of that on Thursday, when Trump swiftly turned on them after they critiqued his response to the neo-Nazi demonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Trump attacked both Senators Lindsey Graham (Republican-South Carolina) and Jeff Flake (Republican-Arizona) on Twitter during Thursday morning — assigning a derisive nickname, “Flake Jeff Flake”, to the Arizonan and praising one of the candidates lining up to run against him, Kelli Ward, a former state senator who last month predicted that John McCain, the state's senior senator who is being treated for cancer, would die soon and said that she should be appointed to replace him.

The praise for Ward marked an extremely rare presidential intervention into a primary against an incumbent of his own party — a move almost certain to increase tensions.

Graham's response was swift.

“You are now receiving praise from some of the most racist and hate-filled individuals and groups in our country,” Graham tweeted, referring to the congratulatory messages Trump received from former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.

“For the sake of our Nation — as our President — please fix this. History is watching us all.”

Rank-and-file Republicans, and other party leaders, are less likely to be as sharply critical. Many remain hopeful Trump — or his legislative team members, who are close to Vice President Mike Pence — can still help push parts of their agenda to passage.

But the payoff Republicans counted on when they backed Trump for president — large-scale legislative victories with GOP control of the House, Senate and the White House — has not happened.

Trump has blamed Congress. He said the collapse last month of Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act was the fault of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Republican-Kentucky) and other Senate Republicans. He lashed out several times at McCain for his no vote.

But Republican lawmakers and their staffs say the president's own performance was lacking. Trump's shifting views on the legislation and his unwillingness or inability to convince lawmakers — and the public — to rally around a preferred option was as much, if not more, to blame, they say.

A similar dynamic is unfolding on a tax overhaul bill. Republicans in the House and Senate are struggling to draft legislation that can meet the demands of both conservative and centrist Republicans. Trump has said taxes are a top priority, but has made no effort so far to sell the public on a proposal.

On Wednesday, he was supposed to tout his infrastructure plans, but instead, blotted out any discussion of that topic by his defense of the marchers in Charlottesville, who, he said, included many “very fine people”.

On Thursday, the White House said that plans to form a White House advisory council on infrastructure were being shelved.

Presidents and congressional leaders always have some tensions. But the current rift is extreme. To make things harder for Republicans, McConnell and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Republican-Wisconsin) have not shown they are able to muscle through their priorities as effectively as the Democratic leaders, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, did during the opening period of the Obama administration.

Trump's 30% approval rating isn't helping either. It leaves the president without the political capital he needs to move Congress to action.

“When the country's on board, the Congress moves. That's the way it works. It's not a mystery,” said Tyler.

Despite their unhappiness, however, the Republican Congress is unlikely to take the sort of action against Trump that Democrats and outside groups on the left are demanding, such as a resolution to censure the president for his statements.

“There's an imperative right now in the country to make clear Trump is not speaking for the country when he defended Nazis and supremacists,” said Jesse Ferguson, a former top aide to Democrat Hillary Clinton. “The only way to do that is to have the co-equal branch of government say it.”

But even with Trump's sagging approval nationwide, the president remains popular in many states and congressional districts that elected Republicans to Congress. Lawmakers remain reluctant to put themselves crosswise with voters many will need in next year's mid-term elections.

Moreover, Republicans in Congress know that for better or worse, their political fates are hitched to Trump's popularity, which stems in part from his disruptive and racially tinged tone. That hitch was fixed in place last year when GOP lawmakers rallied around Trump as their nominee for president.

Doug Heye, a former spokesman for the Republican National Committee and GOP leadership in Congress who opposed Trump for president, said that dynamic isn't likely to go away.

“As long as Trump remains popular with their primary voters,” he said, “I don't see things changing.”


• Lisa Mascaro covers Congress in Washington, D.C. for the Los Angeles Times. She writes about U.S. policy, economics and political culture. A Los Angeles-area native, she has reported across Southern California, edited, traveled the States and worked in Texas. While the Washington correspondent for the Las Vegas Sun, she contributed as the paper won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. An economics and political science graduate of UC Santa Barbara, she also studied in Budapest, Hungary.

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-gop-20170817-story.html
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Kiwithrottlejockey
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« Reply #2 on: August 18, 2017, 09:23:17 pm »


I think it's really good that the Republicans control both Congress and the Senate, yet because of their infighting and a narcissistic, moronic, fascist president, they are all-but paralysed and cannot even pass any of the big-ticket items of legislation.

China will be laughing as they become the world's new superpower to replace the stupid Americans.

Yep....Donald Trump is the best thing ever to happen to the world....he is trashing America.

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aDjUsToR
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« Reply #3 on: August 18, 2017, 10:46:29 pm »

What did you do with yourself while Bazza O was on the throne?  😁
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Donald
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« Reply #4 on: August 19, 2017, 07:11:24 am »

Ktj....."Yep....Donald Trump is the best thing ever to happen to the world"

....good to see you have come to your senses.....long may it continue😉
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