Presidential Memorial Day Open Thread

24 thoughts on “Presidential Memorial Day Open Thread”

1. how bout our elected reps in DC who have taken a (D) behind their name push back on "I inherited a mess", "the press is the enemy" including BBC, CNN, etc……news outlets who have inconveniently covered Donald Trump's fondness for Vladimir Putin seen at (11:52) here: 

   "If our country got along with Russia that would be a great thing."

   "Wouldn't if be a wonderful thing, frankly, if we got along with Russia?" 

   "Wouldn't if be nice if we actually got along with Russia?" 

   "Wouldn't if be a wonderful thing, frankly, if we got along with Russia?" 

   "Wouldn't if be nice?"

   "Wouldn't if be wonderful?"  

   or any other selected Lies coming from the president every hour or so?

    

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2. How did Trump happen?  I'm think it is because there is virtually nothing required of us to be an American.  At present, there are only three duties:  show up for jury duty; be available for a draft; and, pay taxes.  Well, few of us actually serve on a jury (and, if so, only after all efforts to be dismissed have failed).  There is no draft.  And, taxes are mostly paid by mandatory wage withholding.  

   When you have no skin in the American game it's easier to elect someone who says he wants to change everything because our country is a "disaster".   With no skin in the game you don't need to be an informed voter, or even vote at all.

   My discussions with conservatives are yielding a surprising consensus that some form of National Service requirement is needed.  In addition to doing something to help the country, you would be forced to interact with others different than yourself.  I used to resist this idea largely because it seemed unfair for an old guy like myself to say those young people should do something that I didn't do.  But, maybe even I should be included.  Perhaps I should document a certain number of community service hours to meet my responsibility.  

   American National Service is an idea whose time has come.

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   1. +100.

      re: taxes: Republican theory among many is that taxes are an "illegal taking" from individuals (and corporations) and the government should just say no. (Imagine your Doug Bruce/Somali backwater government here that can actually enable citizens and businesses to grow and thrive and that makes America great. Ha!)

      How else did it happen?

      Democrats who think they have to vote against their base and against principle on a regular basis to show something.

      Well, with the invaluable aid of Democratic Senators Heidi Heitkamp and Joe Manchin, Scott Pruitt was confirmed by a "bipartisan vote" of 52-46 a little after one o'clock this afternoon.

      The vote was preceded by a Democratic effort to extend debate in order to study the document deluge that resulted from the court ruling in Oklahoma. If Heitkamp and Manchin wanted to demonstrate any resistance to Pruitt's nomination, this was a quick and easy way to do that. 

      So we must assume that two Democratic senators think that having a climate denialist in charge of national environmental policy is a good deal. 

      It's friggin' stupid and United States Senators, at the least, should have the intelligence not to fall for that false positive.

      And quit playing by Republican rules while they are screwing you and the horse you rode in on.

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      1. Let's celebrate all the great presidents who have served with distinction today.  What a wonderful way to remember our nations heritage and roots.

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   2. Trump happened because those of us who have "skin in the game" are tired of elected officials  enriching themselves at the expense of the people. It didn't hurt that Hillary was like listening to fingernails on a chalkboard.

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      1. Someone get a paper towel; the cat coughed up a hairball again.

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         1. You heard Hillary too.

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      2. So you vote for a guy that is working on using a YUGE amount of taxpayer money living at Mar-a-Lago on the weekends, still controls businesses that directly benefit from his government position, is appointing cabinet members who also have conflicts of interest that they're not divesting in, and wants to enact policies that would enrich him and his buddies even more?

         Now THAT's logic for you.

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         1. I voted for the President, you voted for the not-president. She deserved to loose bigly.

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3. and not let President Donald Trump* and the Professional Liars he's hired color history with their barrage of lies, chaos, incompetence, obfuscations, slanders, threats, and whatnot:

   Trump put his anti-press venom on display again last Thursday in a wild press conference, during which he doubled down on claims that the press is out to get him and traffics in “fake news.”

   “This is a new level of bashing the press,” Yale University history professor David Blight said shortly after the press conference ended. “It’s a complete disaster. All he is doing is daring the press to keep hunting.”

   Blight is among several historians and veteran D.C. correspondents who spoke to Media Matters about how Trump’s first month in office compares to those of his predecessors. They painted a picture of Trump’s first weeks as an unprecedented mix of chaos and mounting scandals.

   “In all the administrations I've observed, and all the ones I've studied, I've never seen such confusion and internal tension so early as in this one,” H.W. Brands, a presidential historian who has written books on Andrew Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Ronald Reagan, said via email. Referencing the recent resignation of national security adviser Michael Flynn, Brands added, “I can't recall a top adviser being forced out so soon. The knives are out; more casualties seem likely.”

   According to Brands, “This administration, with very little experience of Washington — and with often expressed contempt for Washington's ways — has had a rougher start than any in living memory.”

   William H. Chafe, a Duke University history professor and former president of the Organization of American Historians, called Trump’s early weeks “totally unprecedented.”

   “There’s been so much instability, so many scandals, and no legislation,” Chafe said. “By this time, Obama had already passed his stimulus package in Congress. You are talking about a completely unprecedented situation.” 

   It's not a well-oiled machine and he didn't inherit a "mess". He's a Liar and everyone is going to have to point it out as much as humanly possible. 

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4. Yes, let's consider the greatness and guidance of some of our past Presidents on this day, and wait (no doubt not for long) for the current President's craziness to create another disaster.

    

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5. We've had many great presidents in the last 218 years, along with the expected middling-good ones, and a few real clunkers.  But now we mourn the fact that we have hit a new and abrupt low with Donald Trump, who seems to be heralding the Age of Idiocracy about 490 years earlier than expected.

   Whether Trump is knowingly lying at any given moment, honestly believing things that are not true or making assertions without caring whether they are true is impossible to know.

   Other times, he has made suggestions so patently preposterous that it’s difficult to imagine he could have thought them true. During the campaign, he suggested Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s father had been involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy ― and cited a National Enquirer story as his proof.

   And for years Trump pushed the conspiracy theory that former President Barack Obama had not been born in the United States, despite clear evidence that he had.

   During the presidential campaign, because Trump displayed a lack of knowledge on any number of topics, it was sometimes unclear whether his inaccurate statements about undocumented immigrants “pouring” across the border, increasing murder rates, or trade deficits were intentional falsehoods or simply a function of that ignorance.

   In other cases, though, the untruths appeared to be purposeful. Over the period of a few days last summer, for example, Trump falsely claimed that the NFL had sent him a letter complaining about the fall debate schedule (it had not), that the billionaire Koch brothers had tried to meet with him to offer their support (they had not), and that he had seen a video showing hundreds of millions of dollars in cash being unloaded from a plane in Iran (no such video existed).

   “No matter how clever they think it is to attack the very notion of truth itself, a time will come when they want people to give the president some kind of credit for being truthful when the evidence is not in front of us,” said Cohen, who now teaches at Johns Hopkins University. “That they will not get.”

   “Sometimes, he’s going to say something, and he means it, and it is factual, and it’s important, and people aren’t going to believe him,” Brinkley said.

   Fellow Republican Rick Tyler, a consultant who worked for Cruz during the campaign, wonders how so many in his party have come to accept Trump’s dishonesties as normal.

   “It’s a really disturbing and unsettling time when the truth doesn’t seem to matter. If Nixon did what he did in today’s context, I don’t think he would have been impeached. What did he do, break into the DNC and cover it up?” Tyler quipped. “What’s the big deal?”

   And I have no doubt that our resident GOP trolls, along with a large percentage of their party colleagues would agree, "What's the big deal?" SAD!

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   1. 

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      1. I've heard they're planning on putting the Donald's head up there, as soon as they can figure out how to put Putin on the other side with his hand up going his ass.  

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6. Well apparently we found out what it takes to get Republicans to stop loving Milo:

   Racism: nope
   Misogyny: nope
   Transphobia: nope
   Muslim-bashing: nope
   Raping boys: we have a winner!

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   1. Ding! Ding! Ding!  Who'd have thunk? The Brietbartians actually do have a line they'd rather not cross.  In this case there was no dog to eat the evidence, but there was this…

      He conceded that his comments were inappropriate and said he was "certainly guilty of imprecise language."

       

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      1. One has to wonder how imprecise language leads to endorsement of paedophilia.

         “No, no, no. You’re misunderstanding what pedophilia means,” Mr. Yiannopoulos says on the tape, in which he is talking to radio hosts in a video chat. “Pedophilia is not a sexual attraction to somebody 13 years old who is sexually mature. Pedophilia is attraction to children who have not reached puberty,” he adds, dismissing the fact that 13-year-olds are children.

         The notion of consent, he says, is “arbitrary and oppressive.”

         Oops!  I meant to say, "Of course kids like hamburgers.  They're the best!"  Sorry for the imprecise language.

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         1. Don't forget that Steve Bannon, Trump's Minister of Propaganda, hired Milo Yiannopoulos to succeed him as Breitbart's editor,  knowing full well what a horrible human being Milo was.

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   2. Where is Sarah Palin screaming about how his First Amendment rights have been infringed!

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7. Mike Littwin at ColoradoIndependent.com points out this excellent speech that should be bookmarked for future reference:

   You’re not likely to read a better piece on Donald Trump and his war on both the media and the truth than this from conservative Wall Street Journal foreign affairs columnist Bret Stephens. In a speech honoring the legacy of Danny Pearl, Stephens says those conservatives who think supporting Trump is the pragmatic road to take are “hitching a ride with a drunk driver.” Via Time.

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   1. Thanks, Davie. That is a great piece, which sums up the War Against Journalism.

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8. As much as I think The Screaming Yam is way out of his league in this job, It's Pence who really scares me. Here's why:https://www.autostraddle.com/i-was-trained-for-the-culture-wars-in-home-school-awaiting-someone-like-mike-pence-as-a-messiah-367057/

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9. Would somebody break it to Muddy & Co that once you get a government founded upon libural policy, this is what you get.  

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   1. Meanwhile in South Dakota, the Governor there promises a veto of industrial hemp legislation moving through the chambers because that old slippery slope thing. Next it'll be heroin for babies.  Can you fix stupid?  (rhetorical question for our trolls) 

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