There’s so much going on that it’s hard to keep up. Like, oh, Trump issuing a de facto ban on Muslim immigrants on Holocaust Remembrance Day. So here’s an open thread to discuss all things Trump and Trump-related. No Trolls or Trump fans allowed.
The gif below pretty much captures what it’s like to live in this new weird world.
me + all my friends gathering around the bad news trough for another day of terrible bad news pic.twitter.com/d2yhE87IWP
— Anna Swartz (@Anna_Snackz) January 26, 2017
The one thing missing from this gif, of course, is the massive resistance that is growing to fight against the source of so much of this bad news.
Sometimes, though, the best thing for us resisters to do is to turn off the news for a day or two to keep ourselves healthy enough to resist, so here’s a non-Trump open thread for all your non-Trump needs.
It’s only been a week?
Crud! It feels like months of this crap.
I’m loving the @RoguePOTUSStaff twitter account.
Just one week and 2017 is already feeling like it should be half over by now because of all this.
But still, I feel like I’m facing the year like this:
http://68.media.tumblr.com/a88559c6dfb2fb98f3c44a9633e323d1/tumblr_inline_ohohbknpGu1rqml7u_1280.png
Donald Trump: Child rapist, treasonist, omnicidal dictator and now possible double murderer.
Oh, but we called a group that deifies Hitler and wants to exterminate DA JOOZ “Nazis,” so, y’know, both sides yadda yadda fart.
Every day, a new horror and it’s only week one of a four year prison term
Margaret, I’m still hoping that it’ll be less than 4 years, that Trump’s popularity goes so low that even the most cravenly opportunistic Republicans desert him and he gets impeached for his many ethical lapses or for being a Russian agent or whatever.
That would leave us with President Pence, which would be terrible in itself but a lot less terrifying than the present mess.
The other day I was actually discussing what could be done if President Cheeto actually gave the order to launch a nuclear weapon. Like would everyone just be screwed or is there a way that everyone could just refuse to obey him.
@ jayne
The protocol is that in all but the most dire emergencies (incoming missiles sort of thing) the Secretary of Defence has to also give authority for launch.
It is a bit weird thinking “Phew, thank goodness there’s someone called ‘Mad Dog’ in the loop”; but it’s that sort of universe now.
@Alan
I’ve given up trying to think of the universe as reasonable these days.
Trump issuing a de facto ban on Muslim immigrants on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
And yet there’s this. Trump’s immigration ban just happens to miss countries where Trump has businesses. http://m.dailykos.com/stories/1625863
A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”
–Stephen Crane
@Kupo
Thank you so much for the link! Very good read.
Probably my favorite
https://twitter.com/RoguePOTUSStaff/status/824482563242815488
I estimated it had been a week and a half, holy shit.
We need to put the breaks on the nationalism train NOW.
No sitting on our asses like we did/are doing with climate change, everyone needs to keep momentum going.
All I do all day is read about Trump and the latest bit of horror that’s been unleashed. If you really want to go deep, start reading about the arrests of the Russian intelligence agents and the Carter Page/Rosneft deal, which was also referred to in the kompromat dossier. (I know, there’s so much else going on, it’s hard to remember all the Russian connections, especially since the press scrambles to cover every tweet, but it’s still kinda important, I think.)
Twitter is alive with the comments from Pence and Ryan about how a Muslim ban is anti-American, but now that they’ve got real power, screw all that high-falutin’ stuff about ideals and principles (like we didn’t know it was just lip-service pandering, anyway).
Climate change and LGBT rights have been “disappeared” from gov’t websites like they were Latin American labor leaders.
Remember that garbage about the difference between taking Trump literally vs. seriously? Well, all that stuff that we weren’t supposed to take literally happened IN THE FIRST WEEK!
As an added bonus, relations with Mexico are on the rocks and European intelligence agencies have talked about not sharing info because they’re afraid it will be leaked to Putin. And those countries are our ALLIES!
I knew it would be bad, but I didn’t imagine it would be this bad, this fast.
A message from Occupied America: Day 8
@ David
I’m aware that this may make me look like a conspiracy theorist, but I can’t help suspecting this: Cheeto Mop’s presidency may be temporary, and considering what’s been happening within the first week with him still not out yet despite numerous violations of the rules, it looks like this is all according to a plan. The Republicans use Trump to sign the worst bills that Pence wouldn’t (because he actually has a bit more foresight with public opinion, even though he’s still a bad person), and then once they’ve gotten what they wanted with Trump, they will finally let the impeachment happen and rule with Pence and the bigoted officers Cheeto Mop had already appointed.
Just a theory.
@BritterSweet
I’ve been hearing that theory for a good year now and it seems plausible.
@SFHC
I clicked through to the Palmer Report. Holy fuck.
I’ll click through to USA Today, etc., later.
If this has legs, it’s very serious indeed.
@ kupo
Oh, so others have thought of it too. Glad I’m not the only one.
On a less serious note, thank you Mea, for that link. Some of the comments to it are building up into a parody of the song from Disney’s Robin Hood.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRnGRAXPGpI
And wouldn’t you know it, some of the comments on the video are making the comparison too! Will we eventually get a full version?
This is my life now.
http://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z284/oblongman7/Scrubs/th_b6488ee3.gif
That RoguePOTUSStaff twitter account actually gave me chills. I had to stop reading because I started to feel sick at heart. I mean, I sort of always do now, but it was reaching critical mass.
How did I not know about this? Have all of you seen this? Baby Animals Rant the News!
https://twitter.com/BabyAnimalsRant/status/825037596912869376
This one calls out Trump. Hee! Things seem almost okay when a baby fox is saying them.
AthVeg34F: the countries targeted by the stupid new ban are the countries that the US has in the past said are terribad evil places. The others are our close allies, and would never do anything too horribly wrong. How a country rates largely an accident of history.
It’s not a new trump thing, or even particularly a partisan thing. The entire Western world is chummy with Saudi, Egypt, and Turkey. Iran is universally considered mean, though only the US fantasizes about invading and puts us quite such heavy sanctions.
I’m fairly certain that the reason we’re targeting countries that trump doesn’t do business with is that we’re targeting the same countries as always, and it’s long been illegal to do business in those countries, whereas it’s legal — encouraged, even — to do business in the others.
It has been months of this crap. The election may have ended, but The Election never did.
BritterSweet – I think your theory has merit. I don’t think it could have been planned too much ahead of time, but once they saw what was happening that was their way of making the ‘best’ out of a bad deal. No establishment Republican would want anything other than a real establishment Republican, but since that’s not what they got they might as well use Trump as much as they can. Those who aren’t on the Trump train know that he cannot but help to commit impeachable offences. The first time he speaks in Congress, he’ll be lying to Congress.
I suspect most of them are too much the free-traders, real-politikkers to be anything than utterly horrified by the diplomatic shambles we’re seeing, but they’ll take the opportunity to grab the shitty domestic policy they’ve always dreamed of.
BritterSweet:
There’s another way of interpreting their apparent haste. The GOP leadership will know more than we do about Trump’s real state of health, both physical and mental. Perhaps they have reason to believe that he won’t last long, for health reasons.
Either way, I don’t think he’ll still be in place in four years’ time. The party would probably like him to survive for two, because then Pence could get 2.5 terms. But two years is looking like an awfully long time right now…
The 2020 Republican primary will be a tight race between Mike Pence, the incumbent with party support behind him, and Steve Bannon, arguing that Trump’s policies would have totally improved working class economy 1000% if he’d been allowed to stay in office a little longer.