Trump and Japanese PM Shinzō Abe’s EPIC handshake. pic.twitter.com/NdFY2qFhqr
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) February 10, 2017
A little something to ease us into the weekend:
- Ways and Means adds reform to gas tax proposal — That’s what I’ve been waiting to see. But before I can make up my mind, I need to see details. Below, in the comments, is a release about what Ways and Means did. Here’s The State‘s story, which barely touches on the reform part.
- Court deals blow to Trump, maintains freeze on travel ban — This is old now, but I missed it when I posted the Open Thread early yesterday. And it’s yuge. Yay, Constitution! The most telling fact in the case is that the administration has NO evidence that anyone from any of those countries posts a threat to the U.S. As Charles Krauthammer notes, “Not a single American has ever been killed in a terror attack in this country by a citizen from the notorious seven.” If you want to know just how unhinged Trump is from reality, you might start there.
- As Trump Backs Off on Taiwan, China Gains Upper Hand — In other words, he lost face in China by going all in-your-face, then backing down to the default One-China policy. That’s another thing about Trump. Even when he does the consensus, conventional thing, he manages to do it in a context where the U.S. loses. What worries me is that if this story’s right, he may never walk back a confrontational position again.
- All Ruth’s cheese spread packed at SC plant recalled — In SC, this is a crisis. As for me, that’s it. I’m never eating a bite of pimento cheese again.
Related Posts
I really liked Trump’s “See you in court” tweet. That made me laugh. Presumably, he’s telling that to the lawyers who filed the action against the EO.
Although it rarely happens, I love it when opposing parties say “I’ll see you in court!” in a real threatening tone.
Typically, the best retort is something along the lines of “Since I’m a lawyer, that’s where I work. So meeting you there will be very convenient for me. Thanks!”
At the moment, I’m confused. First he tweeted that. Then, he hinted that next week he’d unveil some other approach. I think.
I don’t know. I sort of doubt HE knows…
Oops! I started cracking up over that Abe-Trump clip, and forgot to give you this:
As for the handshake… as I was putting this thread together, I was thinking “There’s been no big news out of the meeting with Abe… Maybe our new president managed to have a normal interaction with a world leader!”
Then I saw the handshake.
You really should watch the whole clip, and be sure not to miss Abe’s eye-roll at the end…
Have you been following these Republican congressional town hall meetings with lots of angry folks? Could this be the beginning of the scales falling from the eyes of working people who got suckered by the Trumpster, posing as a champion of the working class but in most ways just your ordinary tax-breaks-for-the-rich-to-hell-with-the-47% Republican?
Sounds like many of these people are realizing that Republicans’ plan for “replacing” Obamacare was always going to be simply a return to the GOP philosophy on health care for nearly four decades now: Be rich and be able to afford the best health care possible, and if you’re not rich, then you’re a “taker-not-a-maker,” ergo a failure in the winner-take-all-American-lottery and a drain on society, so just drop dead.
It’s not upset Republicans, it’s people from outside the district only there to disturb the meeting. Several congressmen have caught on and taunt them with phrases like “Hey how about Betsy DeVos though? You like her?”.
One of the mistakes these outsiders are making is showing up and not realizing that half the cars in the parking lot have out of state plates.
The way districts are gerrymandered for safe Republican seats, “outsiders” may be the only folks motivated and geared-up to provide alternative voices to these reps. When they are only able to pass laws that affect just their districts, I suspect the “outsiders” will leave them to hear only from their own echo chambers. As it now exists, they can’t hide and preach only to their own choir.
Have you looked at Jim Clyburn’s district lately?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Carolina's_6th_congressional_district#/media/File:South_Carolina_US_Congressional_District_6_(since_2013).tif
So what’s your excuse for those out of state protestors attending these townhall meetings? When is the last time North Carolina or Georgia protesters went to a Jim Clyburn townhall meeting with the intention of disrupting the meeting?
You’ve pointed out a big part of the problem. District 6 was carved out to ensure that a black rep could finally be elected in the early 1970’s. It made the other surrounding districts so safe for Republicans, that nobody even slightly moderate can get elected since the Republican primary is always dominated by either right-wingers or whatever is Republican orthodoxy at the time. North Carolina and Texas have been skewered by the courts for minority-diluting gerrymandering. In the 40s to 60s South, race-baiting Democrats did much of the same to keep Republicans at bay.
I have no excuse for anybody attending a town hall or demonstrating. I don’t think any is needed. If they are out-of-order, that’s another matter. I attended “town halls” during the TEA party heyday. I saw speaker after speaker railing against the Affordable Care Act – none of whom had ever shopped for health insurance on the private market – mostly government retirees and medicare recipients carrying on talking points about a system that didn’t even affect their ongoing “government health care.”
I especially like the Columbia annexation, how side is that corridor… 100 feet wide?
Yeah, I read about that this morning. I’m not sure I have a complete picture of what’s happening, though. It appears to be a mix of people who would protest against Trump anyway, and some Republicans. It’s an interesting trend to keep an eye on.
I was intrigued by the parallel the story drew to the situation the Democrats found themselves in in 2010. I’m not sure the analogy works, but maybe it does…
Brad, maybe you wrote this before the news broke but you didn’t mention 2 very big stories – The Nordstrom debacle and, perhaps the biggest story of the year, The Flynn phone call. Kellyanne Conway clearly and unambiguously violated federal law that stipulates no federal government employee can promote any specific product brand when she urged Fox News viewers to purchase Ivanka Trump clothes. Shockingly even Republicans found this to be wrong as reported in the Huffington Post and elsewhere: “Conway’s statement was so clearly out-of-bounds that Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, actually denounced her.”
Then there is the matter with Flynn. It seems we are closing in a smoking gun that connects the Trump campaign to the Russian hacking incident: From Huffpo: “Democrats on Friday began calling for the removal of Michael Flynn, Donald Trump’s national security adviser, over reports he discussed sanctions and cooperation with Russia’s ambassador to the United States before President Donald Trump was sworn in to office.” Both the Times and the Washington Post are reporting this with as many as 9 credible sources confirming the authenticity of the charge.
There is a whole smorgasbord of corruption to address with the current administration. Ironic that so many voters chose Trump because he would “drain the swamp” and that Hillary was so corrupt. The marketing power of the Trumpublican Party is remarkable that they were actually able to pull this off. Sad.
My oldest daughter points out that the Ivanka stuff, though outrageous is just a sideshow. Those issues distract from the hurtful issues of voter suppression (watch the moves as they happen), taxation, Social Security and Medicare “fixes,” school vouchers, environmental degradation, banking system deregulation, and xenophobic immigration and travel restrictions.
The Nordstrom stuff is minor. The Flynn story is big. But in the spirit of the Doug Ross rule unless something tangible that has a negative impact on someone then we really shouldn’t be concerned.
I agree. I think the Nordstrom issue is a gaffe. Flynn and the Russians is nefarious. I suspect Graham and McCain will be on this, though not necessarily out front. They both know what a loose cannon he is – and a loose cannon in state and military matters is dangerous and potentially deadly.
You be concerned bud. I’ll stick to real issues.
I’m happy Trump is possibly ramping up deportation of illegals convicted of felonies. The more the better.
I am concerned with real issues. Separating families who are peacefully going on with their lives and making positive contributions to their adopted country is an example of actual, needless harm inflicted just to satisfy an irrational paranoia satisfies the Doug Ross rule. Besides if we’re going to make violating the law the standard to judge this administration on then the Kellyanne Conway “promotion” incident qualifies and you should be calling for her head. I’ll let that violation go in exchange for allowing peaceful, industrious families to stay together.
” peaceful, industrious families to stay together.”
You misspelled “convicted felons who have no legal right to be in this country”. As soon as they are arrested and identified as illegal, they should be placed on the next bus out of the country. They are only victims of their own illegal behavior. Too bad.
I’ll deal with Kellyanne Conway after she’s convicted.
If anyone wants to see where not vetting or allowing everyone to cross the border illegally, just look at Sweden and their influx of migrants. Rape is up 1.472%.
Hey, even one rape is certainly too many. But I have to say this: How is a 1.472 percent increase in ANYTHING an “epidemic?” Or was that supposed to be a 1,472 percent increase? That would be more like an epidemic…
When you say, “The Nordstrom debacle” to me, I think of Nordstrom putting that store of theirs in place of my favorite store in the world!
Give ’em heck, Mr. President. They’ve got it coming…
The Trump being discussed is the Trump I have been familiar with since 1989 through business contacts in Manhattan who did know him on a personal and business level. They didn’t trust him and for good reason. He hasn’t changed. He won’t change. If anything, he will become more Machiavellian. Definition: using clever lies and tricks in order to get or achieve something : clever and dishonest. Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
Many of my posts may seem to be in defense of Trump but they are not. I believe strongly in being fair even if one of the parties is anything but fair. I don’t believe in hypocrisy even if one side has right on their side. That is when hypocrisy makes the right a moot point to the ones supporting the hypocrite and the ultimate goal is to change their minds. Letting Trump continue to charge headlong into matters of state and the nation he doesn’t understand will in due time, sooner than expected I predict, become evident to the most ardent supporter and he will drive most away. When his critics continue to pound away with antics, all it does is reinforce his supporters and they continue to believe he is right.
I am not a member of the media or entertainment industry but if I were, my message would be to have faith in our checks and balances and call him out but do so in a civil manner. Print the facts without much commentary and challenge his supporters with as much reason and logic as possible. It won’t bring everyone around but it have an impact on enough so Trump can be held in check.
Most of us don’t like to be corrected or challenged but when an honest argument is presented with facts without injecting a condescending attitude, one will be more prone to listen and the presenter of facts will gain more traction with most reasonable people. It took a while for me to convince someone very close to me that Trump is potentially very dangerous and the way he is conducting himself in office is a travesty.
I pray almost every night for this country and our leaders at all levels of government. That along with trying to be reasonable when discussing Trump is the course I am taking. What others do, I have no control over.
Funny how tea party demonstrations and other forms of resistance on the right back in 2010 were considered to be “the democratic process in action,“ but similar activities today are dismissed as mere “antics.”
How many businesses were burned in the tea party protests?
I know that’s a rhetorical question Doug but even you have got to be amazed at the astonishingly low number of violent incidents involved given the millions of anti Trump protestors world wide.
I’m amazed that they are protesting, essentially, nothing. Plenty of time apparently to protest things that haven’t happened.
The women’s marches accomplished what exactly?
I’m told by folks in Japan that Trump’s mucho macho big bully handshake with Abe will be considered highly humiliating for the prime minister. And Abe is an a-hole whom it’s hard to feel sorry for.
Maybe Trump should have skipped the hand shake and bowed to him like Obama did. Abe came to the US, the US tradition is a handshake. If Abe is upset, he should have not extended his hand and bowed to Trump. The two sure seemed to spend a lot of time together and worked out agreements for someone who had just been publicly humiliated by Trump.
It’s amazing how much energy is expended to analyze every detail of Trump’s life. If Trump is a narcissist, you all are feeding into that. You don’t get it — he THRIVES on the attention. If you want to bring him down, ignore him.
Haven’t thought about Trump or politics much lately. Been working hard on an interesting/complicated legal case. Also started coaching my five-year-old son’s tee ball team. I had originally indicated that I was willing to be an assistant, but the league impressed me into service as a head coach. All y’all can refer to me as Coach Caskey from here on.
How about it we call you the “Head Bull Coach?”
That fits, as I am sort of making up as I go along. Luckily, no one was impressed onto the boat so all have a happy attitude. Anytime they look restless, I have them run the bases.
Yesterday, we worked on identifying the bases. They’re a green crew, but they are enthusiastic. I hope to not to have to rig the grating too much.
I have a dependable lieutenant (Assistant Coach) along with a fine boatswain (Team Parent), and we aim to have a happy, able crew. We will be exercising the great guns every Sunday at 4:00PM at Satchel Ford until the season starts on March 11.
You will be in my prayers. I was a coach when tee ball first started and had a group of kids 5 – 6 years on the team. When the ball was hit to the outfield, every player on the team went after it including the catcher. This was after spending several days teaching or I should say “trying” to teach them the basics. And they got into wrestling matches over the ball a couple of times. By the end of the season, they had stopped trying to chase the ball down en masse. Some of the best and most fun times I ever had with my son and his team. It was priceless.
When my son was about 6-7, he played on a coach’s pitch team. At one practice, the coach had the dads swap and play catch with a kid other than his own. After a few minutes, the guy who was playing catch with my son came over to me and whispered “It’s so fun to play catch with someone who can actually catch it and throw it”.
It WAS fun until he reached high school and was throwing a low 80’s lefthanded fastball.
And if you want a REAL challenge, try coaching 8 year old girls basketball.
OK, I’ll share a T-ball story.
I coached my two oldest kids on a co-ed team in Jackson, Tennessee, back in the early 80s. That was a special time because it was my last afternoon paper I would ever work on, so it was the last time I would have afternoons free to do such things with my kids. I’m thankful I had that time with them, time I would regret not having with my younger kids, since on morning papers I always had to work into the night.
But this story involves a coach rather than the kids.
My lieutenants weren’t that dependable, so on one occasion I recruited my good friend Richard Crowson, our cartoonist at the paper, to come out and help me.
It helps to know Richard to appreciate this. Richard was a let’s-all-get-along, noncompetitive kind of guy. He was always saying some of us at the paper should get together and play softball, but not keep score. I don’t think we ever did that, but it was so like Richard to suggest such a thing. (Compared to the more-or-less Republican Robert Ariail, Richard is the sort of liberal that laypeople think all journalists are. I think maybe he thought there was something oppressive about keeping score.)
Anyway, not having kids and therefore not normally having such opportunities, he was happy to come out and help me coach, and I was happy to have his help. I put him on third base, on the off chance that someone might actually put the ball into play, and a runner MIGHT reach 3rd.
Those of you who aren’t familiar with T-ball might not realize this, but a kid actually knocking the ball out of the infield was a fairly rare event. At least, it was in that league. And when it happened, that was the cue for everyone on base to run like crazy until they were home, because there was NO chance of their getting thrown out.
And with T-ball, even under those conditions, you needed someone coaching third, because the idea that they should keep going until they were home was in no way obvious to the players (nor was the direction home necessarily something they grasped) — they needed an adult to tell them to do so.
Well, on this one occasion we had some little ducks on the pond, and one of the kids really smacked a line drive deep up the middle. It was time to skedaddle. I’m there on the sidelines yelling “Keep going! Keep going! Come ON-N-N!”
And then I become aware that my 3rd-base coach is saying to the runners, in a gentle, soothing voice, “OK, now… You can keep going if you want to, or if you don’t feel like it, you can just stop here. Either way is fine; whatever you feel like doing. You can go home, or if you’re tired, you can just…”
And I exploded, “WHAT are you TELLING them?!?!? Stop saying that! What are you trying to teach these kids?!? It’s not a personal choice!!! Keep them moving; keep them moving; wave them on! They can ALL score on this!!!”
I kinda lost it.
I wish we had video of the incident. I wasn’t exactly at my best at that moment, but it would probably be pretty funny to see after all these years…
And you say you’re not a sports guy….
Oh, I like sports. I differ from millions of my fellow Americans in these respects:
But I like sports, qua sports…
It’s sad that you don’t get football. The pageantry, excitement, ecstasy and above all the community spirit of like minded people who gather together in a common cause is a uniquely American experience that should be embraced and celebrated not derided. I suppose your obsession with all things military is comparable in fervor. The difference is such an obsession is both dangerous and expensive. Football, conversely, is just plain old Red, White, and Blue fun.
I sort of get football — as just another sport, it has its moments.
What I don’t get, and feel alienated from, is the cult that surrounds it. People care way, way, WAY too much about it.
When “signing day” and the NFL draft are major events themselves, anticipated with bated breath for weeks, everyone should be able to tell that the thing’s gone over a cliff…
I’m dying laughing. That’s hilarious.
I do understand how rarely the ball goes to the outfield because that’s where I played on my tee ball team. There were frequently bumble bees around in the weeds in the outfield grass near me, and they were far more interesting than the distant game. Since I was busy watching bees, when the ball occasionally did come to the outfield, I usually had to chase it to the fence. I believe I may have had one or two anxiety induced daydreams wherein a fly ball whacked a bee and made it mad, and it commenced to come after me. Luckily that never actually happened.
Trump is going to be in Charleston supposedly on Friday to visit the Boeing plant. How many of the haters on here will travel down there to protest in person?
Say what? Who are you talking about? Protest how?
I don’t know… Stand with a sign expressing your disapproval. Block the road. Get arrested to show your frustration. Go beyond typing on a blog. I mean, it is all about the end of democracy as we know it, right? Surely that requires some action… but, you know, it’s a Friday.. got some dinner plans.. gotta do some Netflix and Chill… and then maybe tweet out some anti-Trump vitriol in between episodes.
You’re joking, right? You DO know the low opinion I have of street protest, right? That’s like saying if I were SERIOUS I would go to a football game or something. Like, who are you talking to, here?
But thanks for again telling me how pointless you think words are. I’ve only devoted my life to them.
And that’s precisely why I don’t like street protest. What, I’m supposed to encapsulate what I think on a sign in four or five words, and hope maybe somebody sees it — if I make enough of a fool of myself to get someone to look — and somehow that person will magically intuit exactly what I mean from that wholly inadequate expression? Or I’m supposed to join in some stupid rhyming chant that grossly oversimplifies the situation?
Think about this if you will, Doug: I’ve written who knows how many words about the problem with Trump, and you’re a smart guy, but you don’t get what I’ve been saying YET. You’re still saying, “Why are these people upset? Why don’t they wait until something bad happens?” And no matter how many times I tell you, or in what detail, you don’t grok the fact that it’s already happened, and it keeps happening every day!”
And somehow, walking up and down like a wind-up toy with a five-word sign is suddenly going to communicate it better? That’s going to prove that I really mean it? How?
Rosa Parks disagrees. Never read a word she wrote.
Go make a speech. Stand on a soapbox. Rally the people. Expand your base beyond the dozen or so regulars here.
If it means that much to you, do something about it.
I retire in 2 weeks. Maybe I will. It’s good exercise all that marching.
Doug you may be on to something. Your approach worked great to get President Johnson elected last year. Maybe Brad and I can adopt some of your highly “effective” strategies.
I donated money to Johnson’s campaign. How much did you or Brad donate?
If you didn’t donate anything to Hillary and all you did was post on this blog, then you can accept some of the blame for Trump winning. Anyone who was so opposed to Trump but didn’t feel it was worth putting his money where his mouth (or keyboard) is, was just blowing smoke.
Doug, you shouldn’t donate money to politicians. It just encourages them. 🙂
Hey, my guy did as well as Hillary — both were losers. Only my guy spent 1% of what Hillary spent. Imagine spending a billion dollars and losing. You have to be a special kind of loser to accomplish that.
Ooops. I was wrong. It wasn’t a billion dollars. It was 1.2 billion.
https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-presidential-campaign-fundraising/
Twice as much as Trump. And in typical Democrat fashion, she spent pretty much all of it…