Friday, January 27, 2017

Morning Reading


A few things to look at this morning. As always, please check out the entire articles at the links (our emphasis throughout).

Catherine Rampell on neo- fascist incompetent Donald "Rump" Trump's "management" style:
If this is what “running government like a business” looks like, it’s no wonder President Trump’s companies kept going bankrupt. 
One week into the presidency, we’ve gotten a taste of Trump’s management style. And so far it’s been plagued by many of the bad habits common to poorly run businesses.  
From what we had years to observe, Rump was a con artist, a fraud, an incompetent, and a world- class narcissist.  That he would be a teetotal disaster bringing those "skills" and temperament to the presidency was not lost on a majority of the voters. (And the incompetence trickles down, as they say.)

Adam Gopnik on why George Orwell would recognize Rump's America, with Rump's "voter fraud" witch snipe hunt as an example:
... Watch: there will be a “commission” consisting of experts borrowed from Breitbart; it will hold no hearings, or hold absurdly closed ones; or hold ones with testimony from frequent callers to “The Alex Jones Show”—and this clownish commission will then baldly conclude that there is, indeed, widespread evidence of voter fraud. And Trump will reassert the lie and point to his commission’s findings as his evidence. 
Meanwhile, the Republicans in Congress, thoroughly intimidated, fear shining from one eye and cupidity from the other, will exploit the “question” of voter fraud to pursue policies of actually suppressing minority voters. 
Speaking of Congressional Republicans, Infidel asks of those who are whispering about Rump's unbalanced behavior:
My question to those "Republican officials" who are now suddenly so alarmed, though, is this -- have you been living in a cave for the last year and a half?  Trump didn't suddenly start behaving like this six days ago.  Throughout the whole primary and general-election campaign, he displayed the mental stability of a foul-mouthed, bad-tempered toddler.  Why didn't you stop him?  The Republican establishment's anti-Trump efforts are already going down in history as the epitome of fecklessness and cowardice.  "Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world," with H-bombs on standby yet, and now all of a sudden you've noticed that this guy is too unstable and impulsive to occupy the position you helped him get "elected" to?
Opinion writers and us bloggers are one thing. But reporters at the once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle are possibly joining us in the reality- based world (several months too late), if you can judge by how their ledes are, for now, being written. Here's today's example.

Ashley Parker and Sean Sullivan have a "reality check" for Rump:
Many of the sweeping actions President Trump vowed this week through his executive orders and proclamations are unlikely to happen, either because they are impractical, opposed by Congress and members of his Cabinet, or full of legal holes. 
The reality — that yawning gap between what Trump says he will do and what he actually can do — underscores his chaotic start, which includes executive actions drafted by close aides rather than experts and without input from the agencies tasked with implementing them.
We'll be keeping an eye on the new articles and media reports to see how well and how long they keep pointing to Emperor Rump's lack of clothes and his catastrophic Russo- Republican administration.

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