Day: September 6, 2018

Is It Internal Strife?

There is something for everyone……how much chaos can be generated by one op-ed?

The biggest news was not the hearings but rather the op-ed published in the WaPo about the subversion of the Trump White House….and as one might expect Our Dear Leader is raging mad and as usual taking to Twitter…..

There is a “quiet resistance” within the Trump administration that is working to curb some of the president’s “worst inclinations.” That’s according to the author of an anonymous op-ed published by the New York Times on Wednesday. The writer, identified as a senior official in the administration, counts himself or herself as a member of this resistance. But the writer notes that this is not the “popular ‘resistance’ of the Left” and goes on to praise the administration for achievements in areas such as deregulation, tax reform, and a robust military. “But these successes have come despite … the president’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty, and ineffective,” the writer concedes.

While seeking to assure Americans that there “adults in the room,” who are steering the administration “in the right direction until—one way or another—it’s over,” the writer also provides a behind-the-scenes glimpse into Trump’s presidency. The president is amoral and lacks guiding principles, the administration official writes. Meetings “veer off topic” as Trump rants—”his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed, and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.” But most worrisome, according to the writer, is the loss of civility that has accompanied Trump’s presidency. Read the whole piece here. The AP describes it as “a striking anonymous broadside,” and says Trump responded by calling the editorial “really a disgrace” and tweeting, “TREASON?” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called on the “coward” author to resign.

Now would be a good time to read the op-ed in its entirety….

My readers know where I stand on this person….but now it is time for all the secrecy to end and these anonymous people to stand up and take their place in the resistance…..by the way it is NOT treason to criticize the president….however it is Treason to allow a foreign entity to invade our political process…….

Coward?  If anyone would recognize a coward it would be that Huckabee woman who takes lying to a new high.

Just a thought.

But sports fans there is so much more…..as always Trump went on his typical yada yada tour and told lie after lie…….

“TREASON?” tweeted President Trump after the New York Times published an op-ed from an anonymous administration official who described his leadership style as “impetuous” and “adversarial” and spoke of a “resistance” inside a deeply unstable administration. In a follow-up tweet, the president told the newspaper to reveals the author’s identity, if it wasn’t a “phony source,” the Guardian reports. “If the GUTLESS anonymous person does indeed exist, the Times must, for National Security purposes, turn him/her over to government at once,” Trump said, adding: “I’m draining the Swamp, and the Swamp is trying to fight back. Don’t worry, we will win!” More:

  • “I don’t like them.” Speaking at a meeting of sheriffs from around the country Wednesday afternoon, Trump described both the source and the Times as “failing,” CBS reports. “When you tell me about some anonymous source within the administration, probably who is failing and probably here for all the wrong reasons—and the New York Times is failing—if I weren’t here, I believe the New York Times probably wouldn’t even exist,” he said. They don’t like Donald Trump and I don’t like them,” he said of the Times.

People “stunned” within the Times. The Times‘ newsroom is separate from its opinion department, and sources tell Vanity Fair that people within the paper were “totally stunned” to read the “cry for help” from inside the administration. “It’s a parlor game. Everybody’s trying to figure out who it is, including the Washington bureau,” one senior journalist says. “It feels like a crazy moment.”

  • Sanders wants an apology. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told the Times it should apologize for the ” pathetic, reckless, and selfish op-ed.” She also said the source is a “coward” who should resign. “He is not putting country first, but putting himself and his ego ahead of the will of the American people,” she said.
  • “Volcanic” anger. In the White House, the hunt for the op-ed’s author is on, insiders tell the Washington Post. The sources say Trump reacted with “volcanic” anger to the op-ed and said he suspects the official either works in the Justice Department or on national security issues. Aides are analyzing language patterns in an effort to find the author, insiders say. They say aides have been texting each other the phrase: “The sleeper cells have awoken.”
  • The guessing game. The AP looks at the “guessing game” people are playing to determine the author. Among the clues: The word “lodestar,” frequently used in Mike Pence’s speeches; could the author be someone close to him, or was it used to throw people off? The Times says the author was described as a “he” by somebody unaware of the author’s identity, meaning it isn’t necessarily a man.
  • Defending anonymity. The Times is defending the controversial and “exceedingly rare” decision to grant anonymity to the author of the op-ed. “It was clear early on that the writer wanted anonymity, but we didn’t grant anything until we read it and we were confident that they were who they said they were,” says op-ed editor James Dao. He says the author set out a “very principled position that deserved an airing.”
  • Is Trump in his element? With the op-ed, the Robert Mueller investigation, and Bob Woodward’s new book, Trump may seem embattled, but his critics should remember that he has “skirted calamity” many times in his career before and gone on to brag about surviving the crisis, writes Michael Kruse at Politico. He says Trump ally Roger Stone told him the “fearless” president makes even Richard Nixon look like a “cream puff.” “Nixon was smarter,” he quotes Stone as saying, “but Trump is tougher.”

People talk about the number of “crises” this administration has had…..maybe it would be easier to keep up with the number of days that there has been no crisis.

0800 hrs…..Hi-ho, Hi-ho It is off to the Docs I go!

See ya seen….chuq

SCOTUS–Day Two

The big story of the week is the hearings to determine if Kavanaugh is suitable to be the next justice for the Supreme Court……and after two days what do we have?

After the “chaotic” first day of Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination hearing, Wednesday saw the 53-year-old appellate judge bombarded with questions from senators. The AP describes him as “treading carefully,” and highlights some of the biggest issues raised during the second day of the hearing. Kavanaugh “didn’t show his hand” when questioned about abortion rights, for example, though he did call Roe v. Wade “important precedent” that has “been reaffirmed many times over the past 45 years.” (The AP also notes that Sen. Dianne Feinstein “vastly overstated” the number of deaths from illegal abortions in the decades before Roe v. Wade; it has a fact-check here.) More from the hearing, which is expected to extend into the late evening hours of Wednesday:

  • Kavanaugh said it was like a “gut punch” to learn that multiple women had accused one of his mentors, Judge Alex Kozinski, of sexual misconduct, and that it highlights the broader need for a better system of reporting workplace harassment; he said he was not aware of the allegations until they were made public. Fox News has more.
  • The New York Times, which offers live updates on the hearing, highlights questions from Sen. Patrick Leahy bringing up two Bush-era scandals. Kavanaugh worked as an associate White House counsel in the Bush administration, and Leahy suggested he may have been aware of the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program as well as the infiltration of Democrats’ confidential internal files regarding Bush’s judicial nominees, both of which he has denied knowing about. More details at the Times, which calls the exchange “tantalizing but incomplete.”
  • The Washington Post also has live updates; among its highlights: President Trump weighed in on the confirmation hearing, saying Kavanaugh has an “outstanding intellect.” “I have watched his remarks, I have watched his performance, I’ve watched his statements, and honestly, they’ve been totally brilliant,” Trump told reporters Wednesday. “I think the other side is grasping at straws.”
  • ABC News offers five key questions Kavanaugh was asked Wednesday and his responses to each one. Among those: Can a president pardon himself? Kavanaugh declined to answer, saying it was a hypothetical question.
  • Kavanaugh cited the “Ginsburg rule” when declining to answer hypothetical questions; Fox News explains what that is.
  • Protesters have again interrupted the hearing; the AP has more on the protests here.
  • Also Wednesday, Jon Kyl was sworn in to fill the late John McCain’s Senate seat through the end of the year; he will have the opportunity to weigh in on Kavanaugh’s confirmation, the AP notes.
  • Speaking of votes, Susan Collins is a key swing vote, and the Intercept reports that activists have raised more than $385,000 so far that will be given to the campaign fund of a future opponent running against the Republican senator should she vote for Kavanaugh’s confirmation. If she votes no, the pledges will be canceled.

Kavanaugh was accused of ignoring a Parkland parent’s attempt at a handshake during Tuesday’s hearing.

This is as I thought it would be a contentious hearing at times…..but so far there has been nothing one could call a bomb thrown against the nominee…..but a few “we shall see” moments……IMHO.

For me….I would not vote for this guy because his hair looks like the hair of a Baptist preacher and I do not trust preachers….but that is just me.

It’s All About Trade

As no doubt you are aware Our Dear Leader has been on a tear for a couple of months about trade….he has pulled out of some agreements and imposed tariffs that have started a bit of a trade war (oh joy as if the American worker did not have enough problems)

The newest proposal is the threat of the US pulling out of the WTO…of which I have written…..https://lobotero.com/2018/09/03/if-it-is-monday-it-must-be-wto/

Dear Leader has started attacking NAFTA (again) and even has some vague words about a revised NAFTA……sadly it sounds like a scam…..keep in mind that I basically agreed with Trump on NAFTA…I think it was a barbaric thing to do to American worker……that aside…I was saying a “scam”?

If the renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement were good for working people, its content wouldn’t be hidden. Just what the Trump administration and the Mexican government of Enrique Peña Nieto have cooked up we do not know, but given the proclivities of both it is not likely to be good.

That the hurried-up deal appears to be intended to force Canada, which has the strongest regulations among the three NAFTA countries, into signing on disadvantageous terms, provides all the more reason to be skeptical. And, finally, a study of the United States Office of the Trade Representative’s “fact sheet” leaves no doubt that any new NAFTA will be a windfall for multi-national corporations, at our expense.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/08/31/revised-nafta-shows-every-sign-of-being-another-trump-scam/

Trump is doing what has become his trademark style….he goes in kicks over all the furniture and then rearranges …in other words he tries to ax an agreement and then with a little success he can claim ultimate victory…..which it is not.

It is always about appearance not results.

And then there is China….you remember them right?

It is 10 years in September since Lehman Brothers went bankrupt bringing global capitalism to the point of collapse.  Although the crash did not finally lead to a total meltdown, it triggered a slump of 1930s proportions and for most economies the last decade has been a lost decade of low growth, low investment, low productivity, marked by debt and deficit, with virtually no improvement in real incomes for the 90 per cent.

The stand-out story of the period has to be the continuing rise of China. Initially, the economy was also badly hit by the crisis, but China was able to recover rapidly to emerge today as a major economic power, moving steadily closer centre stage in the global order.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/08/31/the-decade-of-a-rising-china-10-years-after-the-financial-crisis/

Keep in mind that China is our world competitor….is it really a good idea to start a trade war with them?

Something else to consider…..with all the games played by Our Dear Leader with US trade we still had a deficit……

The US trade deficit widened for the second straight month in July, reaching the highest level since February, as imports hit an all-time high. The deficit in goods with China and the European Union set records, reports the AP. The Commerce Department said Wednesday that the deficit in goods and services—the difference between what America sells and what it buys from other countries—rose to $50.1 billion in July from $45.7 billion in June. Exports slipped 1% to $211.1 billion, while imports increased 0.9% to a record $261.2 billion on increased purchases of trucks and computers. The deficit rose despite President Trump’s efforts to bring it down by renegotiating trade agreements and imposing taxes on imports.

So far, Trump’s aggressive policies have had little impact on trade numbers. The goods deficit with China rose 10% in July to a record $36.8 billion. The EU gap shot up 50% to a record $17.6 billion and with Canada nearly 58% to $3.1 billion. The July deficit with Mexico, though, plunged 25% to $5.5 billion. So far this year, the trade deficit is up 7% from January-July 2017. Trump views trade deficits as a result of bad trade deals and abusive behavior by America’s trading partners, but mainstream economists blame an economic reality that can’t be changed much by trade policy: Americans spend more than they produce, and imports fill the gap, particularly as a strong US economy encourages Americans to buy more foreign products.

Maybe things will look up next month……

This will be one of few posts of the day….I must endure about 5 to 6 hours of medical tests and doctors visits….I shall return later…..