“Look mommy, look what I did in school today.” As Bill Maher said the other night, Trump looks like he wants his mommy to put it up on the refrigerator so everyone can see it. It’s like Show and Tell.
Fucking doofus. Its absolutely Horrifying.
…i.e he’s cornering the market on foreign moneys… Or monopolizing .
Reshuffling NSC, BANNED LOBBYING (sort of) - burying the lead as always. Hard to pick out individual turds in a complete shitstorm - Bannon stratergizing.
My point being that NSC is THE story - the lobbying bullshit is just Styrofoam cake with petroleum product frosting.
I could actually agree with this. The problem, of course, is that he’s already loaded the chicken coop with his foxes. So again it’s meaningless. Just another photo op.
The sad part, however, is that roughly a third of the population swallows this crap.
An Executive Branch lobbying ban is useful, but not substantial. Congress controls the budget allocation process: if monies aren’t allocated in the budget, the executive agencies have a difficult time shifting money to favor particular entities. (Difficult does not impossible.) Executive Branch lobbyists earn their oatmeal by influencing the President’s budget proposal and getting money spent once it is allocated.
Congressional lobbying is the crucial point in the process. We need a ban on former 'critters and former senior staff lobbying in Washington. They can take their skills back to their home state.
So, among all the things TOM has done in the last eight days, this is the closest thing to useful, but it really isn’t that big a deal.
Besides which, it’s got a loophole big enough to sail an aircraft carrier through: Trump can waive the ban for his chums.
And, of course, for whatever random relatives might show up.
<img src="/uploads/default/original/3X/b/a/ba8aeee1036bdce65006e3e883bae10dcb237103.jpg" width="378" height="209">
"Look, folks, I signed my name. And these 3 x 5 pages make
my hands look yuge!"Trump is a puppet who is in way over his head. Bannon is his controller and must be close to pull Donald’s strings when necessary.
Why is there nothing in this story about the removal of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from the NSC? This is serious. There’s a statutory position for the Joint Chiefs of Staff as the military advisor to the NSC. What do Bannon and Flynn want to hide from the military? IANAL but can these monsters even do this with an EO?
The NSC as it is statutorily laid out:
Chair : President of the United States
Statutory Attendees[5]: Vice President of the United States,Secretary of State,Secretary of Defense,Secretary of Energy
Military Advisor: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Removed of permanent status on the Principals Committee on 28 January 2017)
Intelligence Advisor: Director of National Intelligence (Removed of permanent status on the Principals Committee as of 28 January 2017.)
Drug Policy Advisor: Director of National Drug Control Policy
Regular Attendees: National Security Advisor, White House Chief of Staff, Deputy National Security Advisor, Attorney General
Additional Participants: Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of Homeland Security, White House Counsel, Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, Ambassador to the United Nations, Director of Office of Management and Budget, Homeland Security Advisor, White House Chief Strategist (Added on 28 January 2017.). (From WikiPedia)
Trump, Pence, Bannon, Flynn, Sessions, Mattis, Tillerson, Rick Perry, Nikki Haley, Preibus, but no Military - Every one feeling like we’re in safe hands now? Did you get your gun yet?
I really don’t understand how removing the DNI and JCS isn’t making bigger headlines. This is freaking scary.
Thanks for that - you just answered one of my biggest questions about all this.
Tell me that you do not already feel safer now that this human filth is on the council instead of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
Because it didn’t generate a response from thousands of angry Americans and that is the story this morning.
I think we’ll get there. 
Lobbying ban is pure kabuki. It’s another bit of the “folk wisdom of democracy,” like “term limits”. Get rid of Citizens United, restore the Fairness Doctrine and publicly service requirements of MSM. Then, I might take time to notice.
Makes his 26% wee themselves in delight for nothing,
If you enlarge the photo enough you can see the gold star and the smiley face from Steve up in the left hand corner which makes his creature happy and let’s him know he has done well.
Wheewww …
I feel better now —
More meaningless than you suggest. He crows that his five-year ban improves on Obama’s two-year ban, but Obama’s was a ban on lobbying any part of the government; Trump’s is a just ban on lobbying the specific agency the employee worked for. But it sounds impressive to gullible reporters and “low-information” voters – while (as @birdford says just above you) distracting from the alarming, gravely important story of the reorganization of the NSC. Bannon’s more dangerous than Cheney was.
I’m really beginning to wonder what the scuttlebutt is within the military about this. It’s a given that they would not be happy — if not ragingly pissed— about losing a place at the table, so to speak. But the question is how unhappy are they?
Before the election I saw many articles along the following lines:
Spend enough time with a service member, and the topic of Trump comes up, always unsolicited. It is far less political than it sounds. Trump’s attack plans for the so-called Islamic State widely known as ISIS—his call to ban Muslims from the United States, his suggestions that cutting off the flow of information through the Internet can protect the homeland—many said, are an affront to the values they vowed to die to defend.
Each one of them took an oath to defend the Constitution, which protects freedom of speech and gives Congress, not just one person, the power to send the nation to war. They also swear to “obey the orders of the president of the United States.”
While it’s no secret Comrade Coir Coif polled better among the military than Hillary, there was still a healthy minority that rejected him. Now that he’s pulled this stunt, as well as blacking out the Military Family Support page on the White House website, saying “the military is in shambles,” essentially calling the Top Brass stupid (“I know more than the generals,” he said), calling service members with PTSD pussies, saying he likes war heroes that don’t get captured, etc., it makes one wonder. It’s not like that stuff just sails past them, that they “forgive and forget” the many slights and insults he’s delivered.
Officer level active military are notoriously tight-lipped about their personal feelings for the Commander in Chief, not only because they have a proud tradition of being apolitical, but it’s also be a sure-bet career-ender if they aired their feelings publicly.
Of course that doesn’t apply once they leave. There were a number of ex-Top Brass who spoke out against Drumpf during the campaign. Here’re just two:
“Mr. Trump is a potential disaster as commander-in-chief—uninformed, volatile, poor judgment,” says Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star Army officer. “Hard to believe this is the candidate of a major political party.”
“Trump is unexpectedly increasing my enthusiasm for Hillary,” adds retired general Merrill McPeak, who served on the Joint Chiefs as the Air Force chief of staff. “What he is saying is not based on facts: it’s based on immaturity, bad judgment and ignorance, and I think it’s going to be hard for people in uniform who are thoughtful about this, to vote for him.”
And there were others. Some were of the marginally dubious variety, like McCaffrey, but there were some really, really smart people; Lawrence Wilkerson comes to mind.
As I started to think about it it occurred to me: This is getting a hell of a lot scarier from a lot of different directions than I first realized. To wit, what if there were mass resignations within the military, leaving only people who are of the mind that “Well, you know, Bannon’s not so bad.” That coupled with the fact that the head of the DOD is no longer a civilian, the placement of people like Flynn, etc. Essentially, will there soon be no one to keep these fascist asshats in check?
Are there any former military folks out there that would like to take a moment and comment, maybe talk me down off of this ledge?
Thanks.
My apologies for the length of this post.
I’m with you. Why does this doofus have to keep holding up every f’ing executive order he signs? It’s not like he wrote or thought about one single item actually in the document. Not to mention the fact that executive orders were all a big bad no no just weeks ago. IOKIYAR.