Misadventures of a minority-elect President

This will be an ongoing series that appears regularly and will include information about minority-elect President Trump and the rest of the miscreants that make up his administration.

Trump lost the majority vote to Hillary Clinton more than 2.8 million votes – more than 11 million votes when you add those that didn’t vote for either establishment candidate – and has no mandate whatsoever. But that hasn’t stopped him from illegally pushing his immoral agenda on the rest of us. This series of posts will serve as a reminder of that.

Sidney Blumenthal: 5 Ways to Measure Trump’s Illegitimacy article from AlterNet. –
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/donald-trump-illegitimate

“Not since The Wizard of Oz has anyone proclaimed himself to be so great and powerful as Donald Trump.

He knows more than the generals, the spies and the senators. He knows more than the Federal Reserve, the State Department and the scientists.

He often tells us that he is “a smart person.” Explaining why he does not need to pay attention to intelligence briefings, he said, “I’m, like, a very smart person.”

Comparing himself to George Will and Karl Rove, he said, “I’m much smarter than them. I think I have a much higher I.Q. I think I went to a better college—better everything.”

He has said his mind works at “super genius stuff.” He has said that Vladimir Putin “called me a genius,” which he did not, though he did call him “talented.” Trump has said, “I have the world’s most selective memory.””

Make America Ungovernable article from TruthDig. –
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/make_america_ungovernable_20170205

“Donald Trump’s regime is rapidly reconfiguring the United States into an authoritarian state. All forms of dissent will soon be criminalized. Civil liberties will no longer exist. Corporate exploitation, through the abolition of regulations and laws, will be unimpeded. Global warming will accelerate. A repugnant nationalism, amplified by government propaganda, will promote bigotry and racism. Hate crimes will explode. New wars will be launched or expanded.

And, as this happens, those Americans who remain passive will be complicit….”

When the Fire Comes article by Paul Krugman from the New York Times. –
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/10/opinion/when-the-fire-comes.html

Be prepared for a False Flag from the Trump administration. His administration will be no different than the two before him.

Tomgram: Engelhardt, It’s a Bird… It’s a Plane… It’s The Donald in the News! article from Tom Dispatch. –
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176240/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_it%27s_a_bird…_it%27s_a_plane…_it%27s_the_donald_in_the_news%21

“Crimes of the Trump Era (a Preview)
The 25/8 News Cycle Is Already Rolling, But the Looting of America Hasn’t Really Begun
By Tom Engelhardt

It started in June 2015 with that Trump Tower escalator ride into the presidential race to the tune of Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World.” (“But there’s a warnin’ sign on the road ahead, there’s a lot of people sayin’ we’d be better off dead, don’t feel like Satan, but I am to them…”) In a sense the rockin’ has never stopped and by now the world, free or not, has been rocked indeed. No one, from Beijing to Mexico City, Baghdad to Berlin, London to Washington could question that.

Who today remembers that, in those initial moments of his campaign, Donald Trump was already focused on the size of his first (partially hired) crowd? (“This is beyond anybody’s expectations. There’s been no crowd like this…”) And he’s been consistently himself ever since — less a strong man than a bizarrely high-strung one. In the process, while becoming president, he emerged as a media phenomenon of a sort we’ve never seen before…”

Trump in Freefall as Disapproval Rate and Support for Impeachment Soar article from Common Dreams. –
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/02/10/trump-freefall-disapproval-rate-and-support-impeachment-soar

“‘Support for impeaching Trump has crept up from 35 percent two weeks ago, to 40 percent last week, to its 46 percent standing this week’

Two new polls reflect poorly on President Donald Trump’s brief tenure in the Oval Office, with one showing his administration is tarnishing Americans’ view of U.S. popularity around the world, and another finding voters are already evenly divided on the issue of impeaching the president…”

Donald Trump’s Coming Police State: We Have a President Who Wants Unlimited Power and Won’t Respect the Rule of Law article from AlterNet. –
http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/donald-trump-police-state

“It would appear that some of the folks who were hoping that Donald Trump was actually an isolationist “jobs” president, rather than the authoritarian white nationalist with imperial ambitions he clearly showed himself to be on the stump, are now being forced to face reality. Everything he has done since he was inaugurated proves him to be dead serious about unleashing the military and the police to enact his agenda, and he wants the other branches of government to understand that if they obstruct him he’s going to make sure his rabid followers know who to blame.

According to Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker, legal scholars of all stripes, even the torture advocate John Yoo, whom I wrote about on Tuesday, are disturbed by Trump’s executive actions and what he’s saying about them. Pretty much across the board, they anticipate that Trump will blame the courts , the media and the political opposition in the event of an attack. They believe he is anxious to use an attack as an excuse to “take the gloves off” in whatever way he deems necessary…”

‘Explaining Hitler’ Author Breaks Silence: Trump Uses ‘Mein Kampf Playbook’ to Normalize Tyranny article from AlterNet. –
http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/how-trump-normalized-tyranny

“Historian Ron Rosenbaum spoke out this week about how President Donald Trump is using Adolf Hitler’s “playbook” from Mein Kampf for undermining democracy.

In a recent column for Los Angeles Review of Books, the author of Explaining Hitler breaks his silence about the recent U.S. election, and about how the “normalization” of Trump is strikingly similar to the Nazi Party’s march to power.

“What I want to suggest is an actual comparison with Hitler that deserves thought,” he writes. “It’s what you might call the secret technique, a kind of rhetorical control that both Hitler and Trump used on their opponents, especially the media.”

According to Rosenbaum, Trump is using the Mien Kampf “playbook” to throw the media off balance and to normalize actions and statements that would have been unthinkable just months ago…”

CBS News: Trump is ‘divorced from reality,’ saying things that are ‘imaginary or fabricated’ article from the Daily Kos. –
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/2/7/1630984/-CBS-News-Trump-is-divorced-from-reality-saying-things-that-are-imaginary-or-fabricated

“Whether it’s “alternative facts” or millions of people voting illegally for Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump’s team of insane white supremacist fascists are living in a made-up world. CBS News’ Scott Pelley had this to say last night. (The best part is that Pelley speaks in a more classic nightly news meter, with one of those great old-time broadcaster-style voices.)…”

Why Trump Wants to Disempower Institutions That Protect the Truth article from AlterNet. –
http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/trump-against-judiciary-truth

“President Trump is attacking the very institutions that are meant to expose lies: universities, the media and the judiciary. Democracy is impossible without them.

Donald Trump is hardly the first president to lie. But what distinguishes Trump from previous presidential fibsters are his meta-lies. These claim that the very institutions empowered in a democracy to expose lies are themselves corrupt, dishonest and lying. In spreading his meta-lies, Trump poisons the well of democratic discourse.

The great political thinker Hannah Arendt once dryly observed: “Lies have always been regarded as necessary and justifiable tools … of the statesman’s trade.” Arendt writes that what distinguishes democratic from authoritarian regimes is not the greater honesty of democratic politicians. The saving grace of democracies is the existence of neutral, politically-independent institutions capable of safeguarding truth from the politics of prevarication.

It is precisely these institutions that are the target of Trump’s most persistent lies and calumny…”

Trump’s Deregulation Boondoggle; “One Shitty Deal” article from Counter Punch. –
http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/02/10/trumps-deregulation-boondoggle-one-shitty-deal/

“Donald Trump wants to rip up the financial rule book and let the bankers go hog-wild. But haven’t we tried that before?

Last Friday, the president announced a plan to scrap the rules that were put in place in 2010 to prevent another financial meltdown. Trump wants to return to the ‘good old days’ when the financial services industry could rip off clients with impunity, pile on the red ink, and operate trillion dollar brokerage houses on mere slivers of capital. Naturally, Wall Street applauded the president’s ‘bold idea’ by sending all three major stock indices soaring into record territory. The investor class knows a good deal when they see it.

Flanked by his crony friends for an après-announcement photo op, the billionaire president said he was going to roll back the toothless provisions in the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform bill so the banks and other financial institutions could resume the destabilizing and predatory activities that vaporized the financial system, wiped out an estimated $14 trillion in capital, forced 9 million homeowners into foreclosure, and left the global economy in a smoldering pile of rubble. According to Trump, the benefits of ditching the rules far exceed the risks which, of course, will be shouldered exclusively by the blue collar working stiffs who naively supported Trump’s bid for president thinking he had their best interests at heart. Hopefully, these people will realize that President Silverspoon has allied himself with the same thieving scoundrels who precipitated the 2008 financial crash and whose sole ambition in life is to feed their voracious appetite for more money.”

List of Executive Actions by Donald Trump archive from Wikipedia. –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_executive_actions_by_Donald_Trump

A Malignant Attack on American Values article from Common Dreams. –
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/02/08/malignant-attack-american-values

“Lies. Conflicts of interest. Refusals to share tax returns. Nepotism.

The country is reeling from an ethical cancer that is overtaking the new administration, its cronies, and supporters who are willing to forgo standards of ethics in order to win victories on a slate of issues. This lapse in ethical standards may lead to far greater changes than just a policy platform. The road to a modern-day form of fascism starts with manipulating the media and dismissing election results—just as President Donald Trump has done.

The ethical lapses are everywhere. A recent headline read “Trump Repeats Lie About Popular Vote in Meeting with Lawmakers.” Trump claimed 3-5 million illegal immigrants voted for Hillary Clinton. He lied repeatedly about the size of the crowd attending his inauguration ceremony. When the media exposed these lies, the Trump administration responded by calling the media “liars” and the “opposition party.””

Is Trump’s Agenda Starting to Show “Shades of Brown”? The Million Dollar Question article from Information Clearing House. –
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46342.htm

“Where is Mr. Trump coming from and where is he going to? What is really on his agenda, what is trustworthy, and what is sheer farce and eventually killed by its own weight of controversy? – While out there, the different agenda items are spun around by the presstitute as anti-Trump and pro-establishment propaganda.

Left and right do no longer exist. The so-called liberal elitist intellectual ‘left’ has sold its soul to the neocons, they may not even realize to what extent. The benefits they cash-in have blinded them to the disaster politics being propagated by the globalist-Atlantists. They are now fully in the realm of the Neocon crony directed western mass-media. After all, the lush western comfort zone is difficult to leave – while it lasts; key sentence – ‘while it lasts’. Thereafter the deluge – which may mean eradication of life on earth as we know it.

In comes Trump, thinking he doesn’t need the establishment; a multi-billionaire who doesn’t need the approval or the money from the establishment. In a symbolic gesture, he renounced his salary as President of the United States. – If it only were that simple.”

The Trump-Bannon government: Rule by decree article from the World Socialist Web Site. –
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/01/30/pers-j30.html

“The Trump administration’s order to halt the admission of refugees into the United States and bar entry to visitors and returning residents from seven countries—all majority-Muslim, all the targets of US military aggression or economic sanctions—underscores the unprecedented nature of the new government.

This is a government that will not be constrained by laws or the Constitution. Notwithstanding the fact that Trump is a minority president, his administration intends to utilize its control over the state to the maximum, operating on the principle that “possession is nine-tenths of the law.” It has already established a pattern of rule by decree.”

Ex-Breitbart Alt-Nazi promoter Steve Bannon is author of Trump’s executive orders article from the Daily Kos. –
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/1/27/1625663/-Ex-Breitbart-Alt-Nazi-promoter-Steve-Bannon-is-author-of-Trump-s-executive-orders

“Steve Bannon has no previous government experience. Steve Bannon is not an attorney. But Steve Bannon is apparently now the author of the fiats from on high that are tumbling out of the Trump White House like a pile of rocks smashing their way down a hill.”

Led By Bannon, Right-Wing Power Grab Gaining Steam in Executive Branch article from Common Dreams. –
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/01/31/led-bannon-right-wing-power-grab-gaining-steam-executive-branch

“President Donald Trump, chief strategist Steve Bannon, senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, and a select few others are consolidating significant power in the White House, observers warn—setting the stage for what some describe as a coup d’état.

As evidence, many are pointing to the weekend’s news that former Breitbart News chair Bannon had been appointed to the National Security Council’s (NSC) “principals committee”—while the director of national intelligence as well as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were demoted to attend NSC meetings only on an as-needed basis.

That move, “politicizing the process for national security decisions, suggests Mr. Bannon is positioning himself not merely as a Svengali but as the de facto president,” the New York Times wrote in a damning editorial published in Tuesday’s paper.”

Steve Bannon Is Making Sure There’s No White House Paper Trail, Says Intel Source article from Foreign Policy. –
https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/01/30/steve-bannon-is-making-sure-theres-no-white-house-paper-trail-trump-president/

Stephen Bannon, the real radical in the White House article from The Week. –
http://theweek.com/articles/677165/stephen-bannon-real-radical-white-house

“We’re less than two weeks into a new presidency, and a ruthlessly ambitious, potentially very dangerous man is consolidating his power in the nation’s capital. All Americans, but especially those who oppose the agenda of the administration, need to study this man and learn about the way he thinks. That’s the only way to devise a way to thwart his plans.

I’m talking about the president’s senior counselor and chief strategist Stephen Bannon.

Bannon has received a lot of press attention since mid-August, when he stepped down as executive chair of Breitbart News to become Donald Trump’s campaign chief. That attention intensified as he helped guide the campaign to its implausible victory and got himself named a senior adviser to the incoming president. Now in the early days of the Trump administration, the focus on Bannon has become relentless, with his influence on the president’s most controversial policies obvious to all, and the president’s faith in his counselor’s judgment verified by the highly unusual decision to have him appointed to the “principals’ committee” of the National Security Council, a position usually reserved for generals.”

How Steve Bannon’s ‘bible’ explains Trump’s first 2 weeks as president article from Yahoo! News. –
https://www.yahoo.com/news/how-steve-bannons-bible-explains-trumps-first-2-weeks-as-president-141238816.html

Here’s Why Twitter Is Raging Against Steve Bannon article from the Huffington Post. –
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/twitter-steve-bannon-hashtag_us_588f4b90e4b0176377956409

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