Driving circles in my mind trying to figure out what the hell is going on with this executive branch, mostly. Maybe talk me into a straight line is more apt.
So check it. Let's pretend the president is John McCain. There's blood in the water over some damn mass shooting or other and the money (because McCain loves the money) wants a muslim ban. The process goes something like this: - Conservative think tank does push-polling on a muslim ban - talking heads hit the sunday shows to talk about the necessity of a muslim ban - left-wing outrage is parried as unpatriotic and harmful to the country and Good Strong Men say Brave Things to journalists - President McCain addresses the nation about the need to "secure our borders" - Democrats say impassioned, eloquent things about Muslims - Muslims say impassioned, eloquent things about the freedom of religion and how great the United States is - Congress argues about a resolution for weeks and/or months - The ACLU, the NAACP, the ADL and everyone else goes on a media blitz to try and prevent this dark stain from besmirching the cloth of our great nation - Congress votes along party lines and the resolution narrowly passes - Liberal groups demand everyone call President McCain - McCain signs it anyway - Liberal groups immediately launch six challenges in court - the ban maybe goes into effect 18 months later, maybe doesn't, depending on what squirrels there are to chase Count how many groups there are. Count how many decision-makers have been enrolled. Count how much of the process happened where the people that can stop it either failed to fair and square or were convinced to go along to get along. Measure the sheer inertia of the process there. Then measure its momentum. That's a tough thing to get started. That's a tough thing to get stopped. Compare and contrast: "surprise! Muslim ban!" Except I deliberately gave you the wrong link because that link goes for like eighteen months and ends in August 2016. no, no. The real timeline says shit like "approximately 10:18 PM" on it. Again, celebrating, not denegrating: Here's a heartwarming picture of an Iranian college professor who was detained for two fucking hours by DHS. What's going on is that either the Trump administration didn't think the free world would lose their shit over the entire legislative process being bypassed or didn't care. Either way, it demonstrates that they are not good at this.Hamed Hosseini-Bay, an Iranian researcher at Tufts, reunites with family after a more than two hour delay at Boston Logan.
Shit is wack in a general way. Firing a democrat appointed acting attorney general who just majorly dissed you seems like one of the more lucid things Trump has done. There will be no straight lines for a while, gird your loins for cognitive dissonance and frustration.
It's not so much the action as much as the official statement (assuming this isn't fabricated in any way). https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/826255624610729985 The following quotes are my own emphasis:...has betrayed the Department of Justice...
...weak on borders and very weak on illegal immigration.
It is reasonable and necessary to protect our country.
...until Senator Jeff Sessions is finally confirmed by the Senate, where he is being wrongly held up by Democrat senators for strictly political reasons.
A democratic transition of government is happening. You know the kind that happens ever 4-8 years. One party's swamp people are being replaced by another's. All the sensational headlines and click baity bullshit is getting you freaked out. Stop reading WA-po and focus on something else for a while. Your life will be better that way. There is literally nothing you can do about the bs in Washington and luckily for you it probably won't afftect you one way or the other (except piss you off)
It's an unusually rancorous transition (historically so I believe) that is hollowing out a good deal if institutional understanding and skill. It's not business as usual. And of course click bate and page views rule the media and a good deal of focus on what's really happening is lost to hysteria.
This, of course, has nothing to do with the administration branding the media "the real enemy" and choosing to communicate via tweetstorm. Make no mistake: I'm on Donald Trump's mailing list. It's nothing but pleas for money: We’re so close to hitting our Party’s end-of-month goal. All we need is $124,639 in the next 14 hours until we hit our January budget. So important! Will you be the one that helps put us over, KB? I'm on Trump's Facebook page. It's nothing but gripes, lies and shit the media has already been told: I know you really, really, really want this to be an either or situation, but you chose the wrong horse. Hugo Chavez was a better communicator and a more effective politician.Signal to noise ratio is poor
KB,
I will announce my pick for the United States Supreme Court tomorrow night at 8pm from the White House.
The Democrats are delaying my cabinet picks for purely political reasons. They have nothing going but to obstruct. Now have an Obama A.G.
When will the Democrats give us our Attorney General and rest of Cabinet! They should be ashamed of themselves! No wonder D.C. doesn't work!
Is it, though? 'cuz the ranking member of the National Security Council went on record as telling the press to shut the fuck up. I would argue that we're well beyond "sensational headlines and click baity bullshit."A democratic transition of government is happening.
That's a false equivalence. I agree that every administration does shady things, but (1) the current administration's are much worse from my value system, and (2) just because one side didn't get called on it like they should've doesn't mean we should give the other a free pass.
I've posted...3...WaPo articles in the past 500+ days, and have shared probably a proportionately larger amount considering my post/share ratio and typically don't read it much. I appreciate your assumption given our differences in politics, though. Thanks for the reminder on this.You know the kind that happens ever 4-8 years.
Actually the Wapo reference is because for some reason that shit finds itself into my news feed all the time. I've found myself reading something that seems crazy bad then googling it to find the original source is Wapo, doing more research and finding out that this is something that has historically happened during transition of power. I was thinking that might be happening to you as well and the situation seems worse than it is. Also keep in mind that bush/Obama was essentially one 16 year president. That's a really long time so any transition is gonna seem chaotic in comparison. I'd like to caveat this by saying that trump is doing some undesirable things with his first 100 days but the at least to me don't seem more than 1std deviation bad.
This is an ignorant and insane statement. Right. Because Obama's campaign manager put gay marriage bans on the ballots in 11 states in 2004 while Bush hailed same sex marriage in 2015. Obama launched wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and Bush drew them down. Obama pushed for regime change in Cuba while under Bush, Jet Blue flew to Havana. You can want your statements to be true? But you can't defend them.Also keep in mind that bush/Obama was essentially one 16 year president.