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The Official Paracast Political Thread! — Part Three

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Isn't it interesting how Trump complained and complained and complained again about Obama signing executive orders. So what's he been doing since becoming President? Signing executive orders when he's not making up stories about voter turnout and the turnout to his inauguration.
 
Gene Steinberg said:
...when he's not making up stories about voter turnout and the turnout to his inauguration.
Click to expand...

The last few days have eliminated any doubt that Trump is missing a few gears upstairs. These were members of Congress that Trump was telling his delusions to. If it had been a bunch of people wearing Trump caps it could be argued that Trump was just a sharp huckster trying to convince the gullible. But if he has any grasp of reality he should realize that in telling it to members of Congress he is just embarrassing himself and further eroding the opinions they have of him.

And Trump draining the swamp? Here is his Treasury Secretary, Goldman Sachs Steve Mnuchin, the “widow foreclosure king”.

 
He must have gotten the wrong list on potential Cabinet members. He mistook the one listing those not to appoint for the ones to appoint.

Now about sanity:

Keith Olbermann: Donald Trump Is Not Of Sound Mind And Must Resign | The Huffington Post

Obviously, that's not from a psychiatrist.

Other than impeaching him, it is possible, under the 25th amendment, for the Cabinet to vote to transfer the powers to a Vice President or the person next in line if the Vice President is not available. Some still feel — or hope — Trump will just resign and pronounce himself successful. But that's hardly expected to happen.
 
Gary Johnson is looking pretty good now.


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I have to agree with these articles. Watching Melania, one cannot shake a sense that she is in trouble. :(

We should be kind to America's First Victim — Melania Trump
The wife of the bully-in-chief speaking out against online harassment could be seen as a desperate, veiled cry for help.
LINK: We should be kind to America's First Victim — Melania Trump
TEXT Excerpted: "When Melania speaks, more than any of Trump’s adoring female entourage, she looks like someone with a gun discreetly pointed at her back [with] that rictus smile that never reaches her eyes.

"That smile is strangely familiar. [...] It's the smile you give someone who you're afraid of, someone who might hurt you if you make them feel bad. The lines of that smile are etched into Melania's face under the makeup, and now she's training it on the world. I would have a crumb of respect for Trump if he were married to someone equally ruthless and conniving — a Claire Underwood figure, perhaps, a Lady Macbeth for the digital age who we’d all love to hate. That’s not how Trump wants his women. Trump will not be talked back to. His women do what he says, or else. His women must not get old, put on weight, or step out of line. What will happen to Melania if she starts to show her age?

"Imagine being in her position. Imagine being married to that man, having to live with him, back him up, soothe his ego, deal with his tantrums. Her marriage will be under relentless scrutiny for the rest of her life, just as her body has been since she did her first catwalk at the age of five, but if anyone raises the alarm, we'll be told it's music and ordered to dance. Do we think that the ham-faced, race-baiting, woman-hating monster about to waltz into the White House respects his third wife as a person? This is a man who slut-shames and humiliates any woman who stands in his way, who is on record boasting about 'grabbing women by the pussy', whose first divorce was granted on grounds of 'cruel and inhuman treatment'. In the gauntlet of horrific appointments to the new cabinet — an oil magnate and alleged friend of Russia as Secretary of State, a hero of the alt right movement as Chief Strategist, and Cruella De Vil presumably overseeing Animal Welfare — Trump’s history of violent misogyny seems to have slipped from view. But we must not forget it.

"No, Mrs Trump is not the most unfortunate woman in America right now. She will be unaffected by many of the more venal policies of her husband’s cronies, and as the mother of an ex boyfriend once told me, if you must cry, it's nice to be able to cry in the back of a Porsche. But there are all sorts of cages you can keep a woman in — ask the wife of any Saudi Prince — and this, now, is what American girls are being taught to aspire to. Costlier chains. Shinier bars.

"It’s not that the third Mrs Trump never had any choices. Those who dismiss her as a trophy wife miss the point: of course she knew the deal she was making. She has worked harder than most men could ever understand to get to this position, growing up in poverty in the former Yugoslavia, using the only tools of escape available to her in an unequal world that still pays top dollar for its sexist aesthetic. No, it's not a choice I'd make, but I grew up at a different time, in a different place, and while I can't respect or admire the path Melania has taken, I can certainly sympathise. This is a woman who has played the Master’s game expertly, and who now has to live in the Master’s house, raising his child, doling out platitudes about abuse as her husband sets about gaslighting the entire world. You might see that as karma. I see it as tragedy. Treating Melania as a real human being, rather than an empty symbol, is one more way of opposing everything her husband stands for.

"It will reportedly cost the city of New York a million dollars a day to provide security for the next First Lady, who will live in the Trump Tower with her son, Barron, until he finishes school next year, yet another sentence which makes me wonder if I'm writing a political column or a teen vampire romance. New Yorkers are taking exception to this, in part because the extortionate security bill is plainly unnecessary: Melania Trump was kidnapped long ago. She is now the walking, very occasionally talking, embodiment of the Stockholm Syndrome suffered by a growing cadre of the American political class. It’s an ugly thing to watch.

"Attacking any woman in order to hurt her husband is lazy sexism, and doing it by way of her figure or fashion choices is lazier and more sexist still. This puts me and any other writer with feminist principles at a disadvantage, because at first glance there’s nothing else to Melania: over the years, she has been systematically stripped of all personality signifiers whatsoever beyond her body and what she puts on it. This is how Trump wants his women: as 'pieces of ass', to use a favourite phrase. She drifts in the Donald's wake like a fibreglass mannequin, a woman commentators regularly declare 'a mystery', despite the fact that her background, private life and, indeed, most of her body are available to inspect at the click of a button.

"None of which, incidentally, speaks less of her. It is galling to watch left-wing men, in particular, muster to fling mud at a woman who clearly has, in her own way, very few choices, and is very publicly starring in the reality-television adaptation of American Psycho. We should be better than this.

"I am frightened for Melania Trump. This is a person who cannot put a foot wrong, ever. This is a person whose nude photos and immigration status are the subject of ridicule by those who should know better, because of what these facts supposedly say about her husband. Patriarchy is not a game any woman can win, and Melania is playing it on nightmare mode, in the version where you have to sleep with the end-level boss. The man she is married to has a thug’s understanding of consent and every intention of screwing the world, violently if necessary. How we treat his First Victim sets the tone for the fight to come. Be kind."​
 
And then this.....:( Only those who have been in an abusive relationship, or witnessed one, will recognize what we are seeing. Trump is not a healthy man. As Keith Olbermann states: this goes beyond politics. Interestingly, I am currently teaching Roman History - in Rome the transition into being governed by a series of madmen (the Roman Emperors) strikes too close to home in our current mess. We really are in a pickle - that only a few people in significant positions can remedy by legal means. Will they act? It feels like the whole country is rising up in outrage.

Melania, Are You Okay?
LINK: Melania, Are You Okay? | The Huffington Post
TEXT Excerpted: "There’s nothing funny about seeing a woman imprisoned in her own abusive marriage. No one, no matter who she marries, deserves to be treated with cruelty. The only punchline here is a bitterly ironic one: Melania’s husband is planning to make dramatic cuts to federal programs dedicated to ending violence against women."​
 
Isn't that interesting... Maybe it's a message to him to get his act together. That's hardly likely to happen for a 70-year-old man.
 
Gene Steinberg said:
Isn't that interesting... Maybe it's a message to him to get his act together. That's hardly likely to happen for a 70-year-old man.
Click to expand...
The thought occurs to me that the behavior being observed by not only staff but his appointees and other sundry personages (like members of Congress) is so alarming that they are moving to replace him. This is the first foray into preparing the ground for that. Just a speculation.
 
Came through my feed - To recap the last 5 days:
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the DOJ’s Violence Against Women programs.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the National Endowment for the Arts.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Minority Business Development Agency.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Economic Development Administration.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the International Trade Administration.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Manufacturing Extension Partnership.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Legal Services Corporation.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Environmental and Natural Resources Division of the DOJ.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Office of Electricity Deliverability and Energy Reliability.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
* On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Office of Fossil Energy.
* On January 20th, 2017, DT ordered all regulatory powers of all federal agencies frozen.
* On January 20th, 2017, DT ordered the National Parks Service to stop using social media after RTing factual, side by side photos of the crowds for the 2009 and 2017 inaugurations.
* On January 20th, 2017, roughly 230 protestors were arrested in DC and face unprecedented felony riot charges. Among them were legal observers, journalists, and medics.
* On January 20th, 2017, a member of the International Workers of the World was shot in the stomach at an anti-fascist protest in Seattle. He remains in critical condition.
* On January 21st, 2017, DT brought a group of 40 cheerleaders to a meeting with the CIA to cheer for him during a speech that consisted almost entirely of framing himself as the victim of dishonest press.
* On January 21st, 2017, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer held a press conference largely to attack the press for accurately reporting the size of attendance at the inaugural festivities, saying that the inauguration had the largest audience of any in history, “period.”
* On January 22nd, 2017, White House advisor Kellyann Conway defended Spicer’s lies as “alternative facts” on national television news.
* On January 22nd, 2017, DT appeared to blow a kiss to director James Comey during a meeting with the FBI, and then opened his arms in a gesture of strange, paternal affection, before hugging him with a pat on the back.
* On January 23rd, 2017, DT reinstated the global gag order, which defunds international organizations that even mention abortion as a medical option.
* On January 23rd, 2017, Spicer said that the US will not tolerate China’s expansion onto islands in the South China Sea, essentially threatening war with China.
* On January 23rd, 2017, DT repeated the lie that 3-5 million people voted “illegally” thus costing him the popular vote.
* On January 23rd, 2017, it was announced that the man who shot the anti-fascist protester in Seattle was released without charges, despite turning himself in.
* On January 24th, 2017, Spicer reiterated the lie that 3-5 million people voted “illegally” thus costing DT the popular vote.
* On January 24th, 2017, DT tweeted a picture from his personal Twitter account of a photo he says depicts the crowd at his inauguration and will hang in the White House press room. The photo is curiously dated January 21st, 2017, the day AFTER the inauguration and the day of the Women’s March, the largest inauguration related protest in history.
* On January 24th, 2017, the EPA was ordered to stop communicating with the public through social media or the press and to freeze all grants and contracts.
* On January 24th, 2017, the USDA was ordered to stop communicating with the public through social media or the press and to stop publishing any papers or research. All communication with the press would also have to be authorized and vetted by the White House.
* On January 24th, 2017, HR7, a bill that would prohibit federal funding not only to abortion service providers, but to any insurance coverage, including Medicaid, that provides abortion coverage, went to the floor of the House for a vote.
* On January 24th, 2017, Director of the Department of Health and Human Service nominee Tom Price characterized federal guidelines on transgender equality as “absurd.”
* On January 24th, 2017, DT ordered the resumption of construction on the Dakota Access Pipeline, while the North Dakota state congress considers a bill that would legalize hitting and killing protestors with cars if they are on roadways.
* On January 24th, 2017, it was discovered that police officers had used confiscated cell phones to search the emails and messages of the 230 demonstrators now facing felony riot charges for protesting on January 20th, including lawyers and journalists whose email accounts contain privileged information of clients and sources.
* On January 25th, 2017, the wall and a Muslim ban.
 
Arguably, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists are on to something, as the last time the “Doomsday Clock" was this close to midnight, (bye-bye time), was in 1953.

“In announcing that the Doomsday Clock was moving 30 seconds closer to the end of humanity, the group noted that in 2016, “the global security landscape darkened as the international community failed to come effectively to grips with humanity’s most pressing existential threats, nuclear weapons and climate change.”

“But the organization also cited the election of President Trump in changing the symbolic clock.”

The Doomsday Clock just advanced, ‘thanks to Trump’: It’s now just 2 ½ half minutes to ‘midnight.’

Doomsday Donald is on the march ...
 
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