Misadventures of a minority-elect President 24

One semi-coherent speech does not make a President great, protesters have already scored victories against Trump’s policies, liberal elites are Donald Trump’s best friends, bizarre Trump eruptions to deflect attention from his malfeasance, delusional ‘school choice’ plan pushes religious fundamentalism at taxpayer expense, Trumpcare – unsurprisingly – is a bad joke, Trump is panicking because he knows the Feds are closing in on him, Trump’s closest brown shirt friend in the US Congress, so much for Trump being Presidential, incorrectly – again – blaming President Obama for something he didn’t do, simply follow the money to get to the bottom of Trump’s Russia scandal, Park Service releases photos contradicting Trump’s inauguration claims, where alternative facts fail, White House officials reveal their ignorance over Trump’s false wiretap claims, the pending Trump disappointment, information on Trump’s illicit deals and ties coming to light, Trump’s claims about Obama could be grounds for impeachment if it turns out their baseless accusations, White House whines about no one believing them over former President Obama, bets have begun on how long the Trump administration will survive and more.

Poll: Few See Trump’s Address To Congress As A Pivot article from the Huffington Post. –
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/poll-few-saw-trumps-address-to-congress-as-a-pivot_us_58bd9b05e4b033be1467101d

How activists have already scored victories against Trump’s policies article from the Guardian. –
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/07/trump-activists-anti-progressive-policies

Donald Trump’s Greatest Allies Are the Liberal Elites article from Truthdig. –
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/donald_trumps_greatest_allies_are_the_liberal_elites_20170305

“The liberal elites, who bear significant responsibility for the death of our democracy, now hold themselves up as the saviors of the republic. They have embarked, despite their own corruption and their complicity in neoliberalism and the crimes of empire, on a self-righteous moral crusade to topple Donald Trump. It is quite a show. They attack Trump’s “lies,” denounce executive orders such as his travel ban as un-American and blame Trump’s election on Russia or FBI Director James Comey rather than the failed neoliberal policies they themselves advanced.

Where was this moral outrage when our privacy was taken from us by the security and surveillance state, the criminals on Wall Street were bailed out, we were stripped of our civil liberties and 2.3 million men and women were packed into our prisons, most of them poor people of color? Why did they not thunder with indignation as money replaced the vote and elected officials and corporate lobbyists instituted our system of legalized bribery? Where were the impassioned critiques of the absurd idea of allowing a nation to be governed by the dictates of corporations, banks and hedge fund managers? Why did they cater to the foibles and utterings of fellow elites, all the while blacklisting critics of the corporate state and ignoring the misery of the poor and the working class? Where was their moral righteousness when the United States committed war crimes in the Middle East and our militarized police carried out murderous rampages? What the liberal elites do now is not moral. It is self-exaltation disguised as piety. It is part of the carnival act.

The liberal class, ranging from Hollywood and the Democratic leadership to The New York Times and CNN, refuses to acknowledge that it sold the Democratic Party to corporate bidders; collaborated in the evisceration of our civil liberties; helped destroy programs such as welfare, orchestrate the job-killing North American Free Trade Agreement and Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, wage endless war, debase our public institutions including the press and build the world’s largest prison system.

“The truth is hard to find. The truth is hard to know. The truth is more important than ever,” reads a television ad for The New York Times. What the paper fails to add is that the hardest place to find the truth about the forces affecting the life of the average American and the truth about empire is in The New York Times itself. News organizations, from the Times to the tawdry forms of entertainment masquerading as news on television, have rendered most people and their concerns invisible. Liberal institutions, especially the press, function, as the journalist and author Matt Taibbi says, as “the guardians” of the neoliberal and imperial orthodoxy…”

Every Bizarre Trump Eruption Is a Rehearsal for When It Really Matters article from AlterNet. –
http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/every-bizarre-trump-eruption-rehearsal-when-it-really-matters

“His accusation that Obama tapped his phone is crazy. But look at it closely to see why we should really be worried…”

6 things you should know about Trumpcare article from Think Progress. –
https://thinkprogress.org/gop-obamacare-replacement-plan-6878fd85a8fd#.fjr5ki87y

The White House Copied Exxon’s Press Release in a Statement Praising Exxon from TIME on Yahoo! News. –
https://www.yahoo.com/news/white-house-copied-exxon-press-002649501.html

When Team Trump and Big Oil are (literally) on the same page article from Rachel Maddow on MSNBC. –
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/when-team-trump-and-big-oil-are-literally-the-same-page

Trump’s ‘School Choice’ Plan: Religious Fundamentalism at Taxpayer Expense article from AlterNet. –
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trumps-school-choice-plan-religious-fundamentalism-taxpayer-expense

Trump Knows the Feds Are Closing In on Him article from Foreign Policy Magazine on Yahoo! News. –
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-knows-feds-closing-him-221816189.html

“It didn’t last long.

Immediately before and after his well-received speech to a joint session of Congress on Feb. 28, President Trump curtailed his use of Twitter. “For precisely four days, eight hours and five minutes, Trump refrained from tweeting anything inflammatory,” the Washington Post noted. “That’s 6,245 consecutive minutes!”

That self-restraint began to break down on the evening of March 2, just two days after his big speech, when Trump accused Democrats of having “lost their grip on reality” and engaging in a “total ‘witch hunt.’” Just before 1 p.m. the next day, he tweeted a picture of Vladimir Putin and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) having coffee and donuts, lifted directly from the Drudge Report, accompanied by the mock demand for “an immediate investigation into @SenSchumer and his ties to Russia and Putin. A total hypocrite!” Then a few hours later came a picture of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in 2010 underneath the caption: “I hereby demand a second investigation, after Schumer, of Pelosi for her close ties to Russia, and lying about it.” (It took the president with the “very good brain” three tries to spell “hereby” correctly, having first tried “hear by” and “hearby.”)…”

Donald Trump’s most important friend in Congress article from Rachel Maddow on MSNBC. –
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/donald-trumps-most-important-friend-congress

Because it’s important for a wannabe dictator to have many brown shirts to help you in Congress.

So Much for Trump Being ‘Presidential’ article from Vanity Fair. –
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/03/trump-presidential-twitter-conspiracy

“President Trump’s speech to Congress prompted the press to act like a parent rewarding a toddler for not throwing up at the dinner table. It set the bar rather low, as he reminded the world over the weekend.

It was just last Tuesday night that Van Jones of CNN cited one part of the speech and announced how Trump “became president of the United States in that moment, period.”

Until a few days later, when Trump badmouthed President Obama and offered no evidence for a charge that he was wiretapped during the campaign. (@realDonaldTrump) It appeared he was responding to implications in a Breitbart News story, which then prompted Breitbart to assert that we should all blame The New York Times. (Breitbart)

Yes, defending itself by saying it had merely aped that paragon of the evil mainstream media, The New York Times. Like Trump, it appears to crave validation by the same media it reflexively derides…”

Trump incorrectly blames Obama for freeing ‘vicious’ Gitmo detainees — most released by Bush article from Yahoo! News. –
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-incorrectly-blames-obama-for-release-of-vicious-gitmo-detainees-mostly-released-by-bush-161333010.html

Park Service photos challenge Trump on inauguration article from the AP on Yahoo! News. –
https://www.yahoo.com/news/park-photos-challenge-trump-inauguration-232938194–politics.html

Trump & Russia: Follow the money article from the Huffington Post. –
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-russia-follow-the-money_us_58bcab3be4b0fa65b844b52b

This is where alternative facts fail article from Yahoo! News. –
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/this-is-where-alternative-facts-fail-183829889.html

“There’s a vigorous debate underway in America about whether facts matter. Here’s why they do and always will.

You might be able to win a Twitter battle with alternative facts, as President Trump has arguably demonstrated. Trump’s latest dubious assertion is that President Obama ordered the phones tapped at the Trump campaign’s headquarters last year. People who ought to know say that didn’t happen, but Trump seems to have used the self-generated controversy to deflect attention from criticism of his attorney general and other controversies. Don’t expect him to back down.

The use of alternative facts helped Trump win the presidential election last year, and as president he has continued to lie about nonexistent voter fraud, an escalating murder rate that’s actually declining, terrorist attacks that didn’t happen, the “biggest electoral college win since Ronald Reagan” (except for five others), and of course a record inauguration crowd that wasn’t.

These aren’t accidents or mistakes. Trump plainly believes he can say whatever he wants and his supporters won’t care. Trump defenders back that up, to some extent, saying it’s a mistake to interpret Trump literally. Instead, they praise Trump’s vow to dismantle the broken establishment and say his methods don’t really matter. Trump, for his part, seems to realize that every public lie he utters intensifies his conflict with the know-it-all fact-checkers in the media, which boosts his standing among core supporters who view the media as part of the problem…”

This is the single worst quote in the entire Trump wiretapping mess article from the Washington Post. –
https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/the-fix/wp/2017/03/07/this-is-the-single-worst-quote-in-the-entire-trump-wire-tapping-mess/

“There’s a lot not to like in President Trump’s weekend Twitter rant regarding alleged wiretapping of Trump Tower ordered by his predecessor in the heat of the 2016 campaign. For one, there’s been no evidence offered to support Trump’s claim. For another, accusing President Barack Obama of using the tools of the intelligence community for purely political means is a very big accusation to level, particularly when there’s no proof.

But, the worst thing that came out of this whole wiretapping mess is this quote from a White House official, reported by Mike Allen of Axios (boldface is mine):

“The president just has a great nose for these things. Even if it turns out not to be true that they surveilled Trump Tower, he will have a very good point to make about the level of sabotage coming from Obama holdovers.”

Even. If. It. Turns. Out. Not. To. Be. True…”

Trump and Saving Capitalism article from Counter Punch. –
http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/03/06/trump-and-saving-capitalism/

Richard Wolff on the pending Trump disappointment.

Sketchy Trump deal eyed for potential corruption, ties to Iran video from Rachel Maddow on MSNBC. –
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/sketchy-trump-deal-sparks-calls-for-another-investigation-891672643515

Information on Trump’s illicit deals and ties coming to light.

Noah Feldman: Trump’s wiretap tweets raise risk of impeachment article from the Salt Lake Tribune. –
http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/5022138-155/noah-feldman-trumps-wiretap-tweets-raise

Donald Trump spokeswoman complains everyone believes Barack Obama but no one believes White House article from the Independent on Yahoo! News. –
https://www.yahoo.com/news/donald-trump-spokeswoman-complains-everyone-170000976.html

Could it possibly be because Trump has done nothing but lie from the start of his campaign and has not stopped?

Senior GOP aide calls Trump’s wiretapping claim a helpful distraction for GOP’s ObamaCare repeal article from the Week. –
http://theweek.com/speedreads/684327/senior-gop-aide-calls-trumps-wiretapping-claim-helpful-distraction-gops-obamacare-repeal

Rachel Maddow Explores Trump’s Shady Dealings with Azerbaijan’s Corrupt Officials article from AlterNet. –
http://www.alternet.org/investigations/rachel-maddow-busts-trumps-business-cartoon-caricature-corruption

One of many reasons Trump is worried about probing into his contacts.

RESIST DAY $47: What You Can Do Today article from Common Dreams. –
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/03/07/resist-day-47-what-you-can-do-today

Donald Trump May Not Last the Year, Betting Website Says article from AlterNet. –
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/betting-site-says-trump-wont-last-year

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