Trumpocalypse Thread - The End Is Now
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xerxes @ Sun Jan 22, 2017 1:55 am
$1:
PRESERVE, PROTECT, AND DEFEND
By David Remnick January 19, 2017
On September 17, 1787, as Benjamin Franklin was leaving the deliberations of the Constitutional Convention, at Independence Hall, in Philadelphia, a woman called out to him, saying, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”
“A republic,” Franklin said, “if you can keep it.”
The ratification of the Constitution, H. W. Brands, one of Franklin’s biographers, writes, marked the conclusion of “the revolutionary period in American history” and the climax of Franklin’s improbably long public life. What ratification could not do is guarantee the Constitution’s endurance and health. That is the constant work of citizens, collectively and individually, and Franklin’s weary caution remains essential—particularly now, with the Inauguration of Donald Trump as the forty-fifth President of the United States.
Since Election Night, as the arrow of electoral favor wandered from Hillary Clinton to Trump and stayed there, Americans have been counselled and admonished, by voices sincere and mocking, earnest and derisive, that despite losing the popular ballot by three million votes, despite every extenuating and unnerving circumstance, “Donald Trump is our President now.” “He must be given a chance.” “We are all Americans.” And so on. Under normal circumstances, there is truth in these civic homilies. In a divided country, no side is going to win every election.
But how can these circumstances count within the bounds of normal? Many of those same soothing voices allowed that, sure, Trump had been full of outrageous abandon as a campaigner, he’d say just about anything, you know the Donald; and yet, they argued, the gravity of office would soon occur to him, settle and focus him, make a serious, tolerant man of him. Trump would surround himself with competent, knowledgeable, steady, ethical, decent counsellors; he would plunge into his briefing books and acquire a keener sense of the issues and the world; he would recognize the incompatibility of his business entanglements and the ethical demands of the Presidency; he would concentrate, reach out, embrace, replace the limited language of Twitter with the fuller rhetoric of conciliation, complexity, and selflessness. He would become someone else.
As if wishing would make it so.
Where is the slightest evidence of this magical transformation? Where are all the sober counsellors, the newfound ethics? Where is the competence, the decency, and the humanity? The reality is that the Donald Trump of birtherism, of Mexican “rapists,” of Muslim registries, of “grab them by the pussy,” of bankruptcies and lawsuits and colossal conflicts of interest—this is the same Donald Trump who, with his hand on Lincoln’s Bible, is taking the oath of office, vowing to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.
The reason so many people are having fever dreams and waking up with a knot in the gut is not that they are political crybabies, not that a Republican defeated a Democrat. It’s not that an undifferentiated mass of “coastal élites” is incapable of recognizing that globalization, automation, and deindustrialization have left millions of people in reduced and uncertain circumstances. It is not that they “don’t get it.” It’s that they do.
Since Election Day, Trump has managed to squander good faith and guarded hope with flagrant displays of self-indulgent tweeting, chaotic administration, willful ignorance, and ethical sludge. Setting the tone for his Presidency, he refused, or was unable, to transcend the willful ugliness of his campaign. He goes on continuing to conceal his taxes, the summary of his professional life; he refuses to isolate himself from his businesses in a way that satisfies any known ethical standard; he rants on social media about every seeming offense that catches his eye; he sets off gratuitous diplomatic brushfires everywhere from Beijing to Berlin. (Everywhere, that is, except Moscow.)
His appointees, in the meantime, are too often amateurs in the fields they now pretend to lead or determined opponents of the realms they are intended to safeguard: civil rights, the global environment, public housing.
Each morning, the earnest desire to “give him a chance” dies a little more. This morning, in the Times, we learned that Rick Perry, when he was appointed by Trump to head the Department of Energy, “gladly accepted” and assumed that what the job entailed was “taking on a role as global ambassador for the American oil and gas industry.” It was only later, the paper’s sources said, that he learned that, no, “in fact, if confirmed, he would become the steward of a vast national security complex he knew almost nothing about, caring for the most fearsome weapons on the planet, the United States’ nuclear arsenal.” It might also be recalled that Perry, in a 2012 Presidential debate, called for the department to be abolished, though he could not remember its name. (“Oops,” he said.)
Maybe Perry will read up on nuclear weapons. Maybe Ben Carson will school himself on housing. Maybe Michael Flynn will, as national-security adviser, learn to soothe his volcanic temper and be rid of his penchant for conspiracy theories.
And maybe Scott Pruitt, who filed countless lawsuits against the Environmental Protection Agency before being asked to run it, might come to recognize that fragility is hardly limited to political freedom; it extends to the habitability of the planet. Two days before the Inauguration of a man who has dismissed climate change as a Chinese hoax “in order to make U.S. manufacturing noncompetitive,” scientists announced that the Earth reached its highest temperatures in 2016—the third year in a row. Can the planet wait for Pruitt and Trump to come to their senses?
But, while we go on waiting for such miracles of personal and intellectual evolution, there is every reason to be on guard against a President whose attachment to constitutional norms seems episodic at best. The Presidency has hardly been free of mountebanks and worse. Richard Nixon, though infinitely more prepared for higher office, ran a criminal operation out of the White House. The combined forces of a free and fearless press, public opinion and protest, the courts, and, eventually, Congress brought him to his reckoning. Maybe the day of transformation will come soon and Trump will be nothing more than a bumptious, vulgar, ideologically unpredictable, utterly survivable conservative. But are you betting on it? Did the months of transition promise anything of the kind?
Six decades after the Constitution was ratified, in Philadelphia, Walt Whitman, the author of “Leaves of Grass” and “Democratic Vistas,” issued a warning similar to Franklin’s. “There is no week nor day when tyranny may not enter upon this country, if the people lose their supreme confidence in themselves, and lose their roughness and spirit of defiance,” he wrote, in the Brooklyn Eagle. “Tyranny may always enter, there is no charm, no bar against it—the only bar against it is a large resolute breed of men [and women].”
In other words, the Constitution is not by itself an insuperable barrier against the authoritarian temptation. As Obama pointed out in his final press conference, there is a distinct difference between debates over policy and moments when “core values may be at stake.” A President can at least try to constrain freedoms, issue racist decrees, intimidate, coerce. And, if that becomes the case, it will be on us, resolute citizens, to protect the republic—to demand, as Franklin said, that we keep it.
By David Remnick January 19, 2017
On September 17, 1787, as Benjamin Franklin was leaving the deliberations of the Constitutional Convention, at Independence Hall, in Philadelphia, a woman called out to him, saying, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”
“A republic,” Franklin said, “if you can keep it.”
The ratification of the Constitution, H. W. Brands, one of Franklin’s biographers, writes, marked the conclusion of “the revolutionary period in American history” and the climax of Franklin’s improbably long public life. What ratification could not do is guarantee the Constitution’s endurance and health. That is the constant work of citizens, collectively and individually, and Franklin’s weary caution remains essential—particularly now, with the Inauguration of Donald Trump as the forty-fifth President of the United States.
Since Election Night, as the arrow of electoral favor wandered from Hillary Clinton to Trump and stayed there, Americans have been counselled and admonished, by voices sincere and mocking, earnest and derisive, that despite losing the popular ballot by three million votes, despite every extenuating and unnerving circumstance, “Donald Trump is our President now.” “He must be given a chance.” “We are all Americans.” And so on. Under normal circumstances, there is truth in these civic homilies. In a divided country, no side is going to win every election.
But how can these circumstances count within the bounds of normal? Many of those same soothing voices allowed that, sure, Trump had been full of outrageous abandon as a campaigner, he’d say just about anything, you know the Donald; and yet, they argued, the gravity of office would soon occur to him, settle and focus him, make a serious, tolerant man of him. Trump would surround himself with competent, knowledgeable, steady, ethical, decent counsellors; he would plunge into his briefing books and acquire a keener sense of the issues and the world; he would recognize the incompatibility of his business entanglements and the ethical demands of the Presidency; he would concentrate, reach out, embrace, replace the limited language of Twitter with the fuller rhetoric of conciliation, complexity, and selflessness. He would become someone else.
As if wishing would make it so.
Where is the slightest evidence of this magical transformation? Where are all the sober counsellors, the newfound ethics? Where is the competence, the decency, and the humanity? The reality is that the Donald Trump of birtherism, of Mexican “rapists,” of Muslim registries, of “grab them by the pussy,” of bankruptcies and lawsuits and colossal conflicts of interest—this is the same Donald Trump who, with his hand on Lincoln’s Bible, is taking the oath of office, vowing to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.
The reason so many people are having fever dreams and waking up with a knot in the gut is not that they are political crybabies, not that a Republican defeated a Democrat. It’s not that an undifferentiated mass of “coastal élites” is incapable of recognizing that globalization, automation, and deindustrialization have left millions of people in reduced and uncertain circumstances. It is not that they “don’t get it.” It’s that they do.
Since Election Day, Trump has managed to squander good faith and guarded hope with flagrant displays of self-indulgent tweeting, chaotic administration, willful ignorance, and ethical sludge. Setting the tone for his Presidency, he refused, or was unable, to transcend the willful ugliness of his campaign. He goes on continuing to conceal his taxes, the summary of his professional life; he refuses to isolate himself from his businesses in a way that satisfies any known ethical standard; he rants on social media about every seeming offense that catches his eye; he sets off gratuitous diplomatic brushfires everywhere from Beijing to Berlin. (Everywhere, that is, except Moscow.)
His appointees, in the meantime, are too often amateurs in the fields they now pretend to lead or determined opponents of the realms they are intended to safeguard: civil rights, the global environment, public housing.
Each morning, the earnest desire to “give him a chance” dies a little more. This morning, in the Times, we learned that Rick Perry, when he was appointed by Trump to head the Department of Energy, “gladly accepted” and assumed that what the job entailed was “taking on a role as global ambassador for the American oil and gas industry.” It was only later, the paper’s sources said, that he learned that, no, “in fact, if confirmed, he would become the steward of a vast national security complex he knew almost nothing about, caring for the most fearsome weapons on the planet, the United States’ nuclear arsenal.” It might also be recalled that Perry, in a 2012 Presidential debate, called for the department to be abolished, though he could not remember its name. (“Oops,” he said.)
Maybe Perry will read up on nuclear weapons. Maybe Ben Carson will school himself on housing. Maybe Michael Flynn will, as national-security adviser, learn to soothe his volcanic temper and be rid of his penchant for conspiracy theories.
And maybe Scott Pruitt, who filed countless lawsuits against the Environmental Protection Agency before being asked to run it, might come to recognize that fragility is hardly limited to political freedom; it extends to the habitability of the planet. Two days before the Inauguration of a man who has dismissed climate change as a Chinese hoax “in order to make U.S. manufacturing noncompetitive,” scientists announced that the Earth reached its highest temperatures in 2016—the third year in a row. Can the planet wait for Pruitt and Trump to come to their senses?
But, while we go on waiting for such miracles of personal and intellectual evolution, there is every reason to be on guard against a President whose attachment to constitutional norms seems episodic at best. The Presidency has hardly been free of mountebanks and worse. Richard Nixon, though infinitely more prepared for higher office, ran a criminal operation out of the White House. The combined forces of a free and fearless press, public opinion and protest, the courts, and, eventually, Congress brought him to his reckoning. Maybe the day of transformation will come soon and Trump will be nothing more than a bumptious, vulgar, ideologically unpredictable, utterly survivable conservative. But are you betting on it? Did the months of transition promise anything of the kind?
Six decades after the Constitution was ratified, in Philadelphia, Walt Whitman, the author of “Leaves of Grass” and “Democratic Vistas,” issued a warning similar to Franklin’s. “There is no week nor day when tyranny may not enter upon this country, if the people lose their supreme confidence in themselves, and lose their roughness and spirit of defiance,” he wrote, in the Brooklyn Eagle. “Tyranny may always enter, there is no charm, no bar against it—the only bar against it is a large resolute breed of men [and women].”
In other words, the Constitution is not by itself an insuperable barrier against the authoritarian temptation. As Obama pointed out in his final press conference, there is a distinct difference between debates over policy and moments when “core values may be at stake.” A President can at least try to constrain freedoms, issue racist decrees, intimidate, coerce. And, if that becomes the case, it will be on us, resolute citizens, to protect the republic—to demand, as Franklin said, that we keep it.
Jabberwalker @ Sun Jan 22, 2017 1:56 pm
andyt andyt:
Jesus Christ, the shit you guys find to argue about - the dresses the women were wearing? Have you no shame?
Have you nothing better to put on than that old shift?
BeaverFever @ Sun Jan 22, 2017 7:49 pm
What a deplorable piece of shit. Not a good day to be Trump fan!
$1:
After Promising To Release His Tax Returns, Trump Aide Says He Won’t Because ‘People Didn’t Care’
Seventy-four percent of Americans want Trump to release his tax returns.
7 hours ago
Paul Blumenthal Money in Politics Reporter, The Huffington Post
WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump will not release his tax returns because “people didn’t care” about it during the election, one of his top aides said Sunday.
“He’s not going to release his tax returns. We litigated this all through the election. People didn’t care,” White House advisor Kellyanne Conway said on ABC, two days after Trump took the oath of office.
POLITICS
After Promising To Release His Tax Returns, Trump Aide Says He Won’t Because ‘People Didn’t Care’
Seventy-four percent of Americans want Trump to release his tax returns.
7 hours ago
Paul Blumenthal Money in Politics Reporter, The Huffington Post
WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump will not release his tax returns because “people didn’t care” about it during the election, one of his top aides said Sunday.
“He’s not going to release his tax returns. We litigated this all through the election. People didn’t care,” White House advisor Kellyanne Conway said on ABC, two days after Trump took the oath of office.
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Conway’s statement not only echoes Trump’s Jan. 11 assertion that only reporters care about his tax returns, but goes further in stating that he simply won’t release the returns at all. She was answering a question about a White House petition for Trump to release his tax returns that had received over 200,000 signatures, a total that necessitates a White House response. An ABC poll from Jan. 12-15 found that 74 percent of the public wanted Trump to release his returns.
During the presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly stated his taxes had been under a routine Internal Revenue Service audit since 2009 and that he could not release them until the audit was finished. He further promised that he would release his tax returns once the audit was completed.
“I don’t mind releasing,” he said during his first president debate with Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. “I’m under a routine audit. And it’ll be released. And as soon as the audit’s finished, it will be released.”
The IRS has already stated that there is nothing preventing Trump from releasing his returns while they are under audit. The government agency, which is now under Trump’s control, further stated that Trump’s tax returns prior to 2009 are not even under audit at all. Trump claimed during the campaign that his lawyers didn’t want him to release the returns.
Trump handed over his tax returns when they were under IRS audit to state officials in Pennsylvania and New Jersey as part of the legal process to apply for casino licenses in the states.
Conway’s insistence that Trump’s election negates any need for transparency is similar to a statement from Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, during the campaign that his father should not release his tax returns because it would not help him politically.
“Because he’s got a 12,000-page tax return that would create probably 300 million independent financial auditors out of every person in the country asking questions that would distract from his main message,” Donald Jr. said.
Every president since Richard Nixon, save Gerald Ford, has released their tax returns either during the campaign or upon taking office (Ford released a summary when he ran in 1976). Nixon even released his tax returns when they were under IRS audit in the midst of the Watergate scandal.
“Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns shows contempt for the public that elected him, and suggests that President Trump will fall short on even basic questions of public accountability,” said John Wonderlich, the executive director of the pro-transparency nonprofit Sunlight Foundation.
The decision to not release his tax returns, against his promise to do so, has already angered Trump’s allies at WikiLeaks.
[wikileaks tweet]: "Trump's breach of promise over the release of his tax returns is even more gratuitous than Clinton concealing her Goldman Sachs transcripts."
9:15 AM - 22 Jan 2017
4,949 RETWEETS8,435 LIKES
Trump’s returns would help answer numerous questions about how much he has paid in taxes ― which the public knows little about ― and his currently obscure business ties and debts.
The New York Times reported before the election that Trump claimed a $916 million loss in 1995. When used as a tax deduction, this declared loss could have meant that Trump did not pay taxes for 18 years.
At the moment, the public has almost no information regarding how much the president of the United States has in debts to banks, either foreign or domestic.
The personal financial disclosure Trump is required to file under the Ethics in Government Act is woefully inadequate in helping to explain Trump’s business debts. The disclosure law only requires the filer to list debts they personally owe and not debts held by corporate entities to which they are beneficiaries. Trump’s wealth is largely tied up in an interlocking set of privately held limited liability companies, many of which hold large, undisclosed debts.
In addition, there is limited information about where Trump is engaged in business. His tax returns could detail what other countries he has sought business in recently or what assets he claims that are not listed on his mandatory but less transparent financial disclosure.
Trump has avoided talking about his numerous conflicts of interest and refused to divest himself from his business empire. Instead, he put his two adult sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, in charge of the Trump Organization while failing to file the proper paperwork to give them control of the company. He will still benefit financially from every action his two sons take while he sits in the Oval Office.
Both Donald Jr. and Eric were appointed to the executive committee of their father’s presidential transition team.
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5884e ... d8cad32f89
Jabberwalker @ Sun Jan 22, 2017 7:57 pm
That will either slow down the impeachment process or spur it on. Someone will spill the beans eventually or hack them, somehow. Even the hardest core Republican must really wonder about this guy.
BeaverFever @ Sun Jan 22, 2017 7:58 pm
How can any of these Deplorable idiots keep supporting such a liar with his false promises? We are only on DAY TWO people and haven't even had a weekday yet. I guess this is the kind of humiliation America needs to go through in order to change course from the past 30 years of political and cultural decay. 
Thanos @ Sun Jan 22, 2017 8:01 pm
The bigger nightmare will result from the promises he keeps, not the ones he breaks. 
BeaverFever @ Sun Jan 22, 2017 9:23 pm
N_Fiddledog N_Fiddledog:
Melania Trump channels Jackie Kennedy in Ralph Lauren outfit
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/20/politics/ ... ress-trnd/
But wait...what are those on Jackie's hands![[?]](./images/smilies/confused.gif "Confused")
Surely not...could they be...GLOVES???
Even at the inaugural ball. Had you no shame woman.
$1:
Her look drew comparisons to the outfit Jackie Kennedy wore to her husband's inauguration in 1961.
Ralph Lauren also did many of former first lady Hillary Clinton's suits.
The brand declined to comment on how the Ralph Lauren Collection came together, whether they offered the powder blue skirt ensemble or if Trump chose it herself.
Ralph Lauren also did many of former first lady Hillary Clinton's suits.
The brand declined to comment on how the Ralph Lauren Collection came together, whether they offered the powder blue skirt ensemble or if Trump chose it herself.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/20/politics/ ... ress-trnd/
But wait...what are those on Jackie's hands
Surely not...could they be...GLOVES???
Even at the inaugural ball. Had you no shame woman.
Also Ralph Lauren? How elitist! Why wasn't she dressed in Walmart fashion like a "real American"?
N_Fiddledog @ Sun Jan 22, 2017 10:49 pm
Hey!
There it is...
I know that dress.
That used to be a carpet in my man cave.
Always wondered where that got to. 
N_Fiddledog @ Sun Jan 22, 2017 10:52 pm
BeaverFever @ Sun Jan 22, 2017 11:21 pm
How poor does your track record with women have to be for you to consider Eastern European Escorts mail order brides who marry rich men old enough to be their dads "real ladies"?
herbie @ Sun Jan 22, 2017 11:31 pm
Q #1
Who do you know that was audited because Income Tax suspected they paid too much?
They audit you cuz they think you may have cheated.
rickc @ Sun Jan 22, 2017 11:37 pm
How about everyone show a modicum of decency and leave the family members out of the mud slinging bullshit!
BeaverFever @ Sun Jan 22, 2017 11:38 pm
The Conspiracy Files: Putin, The FBI and Donald Trump - the fifth estate
the fifth estate
BeaverFever @ Sun Jan 22, 2017 11:40 pm
rickc rickc:
How about everyone show a modicum of decency and leave the family members out of the mud slinging bullshit!
Fair enough but he started it!
N_Fiddledog @ Mon Jan 23, 2017 12:04 am
This Presidency is going to be entertaining:
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