All,
JANUARY 20, 2017: NATIONAL DAY OF RECKONING
Here comes the straight up evil
agenda of the incoming neofascist administration led of course by the trolling
billionaire sociopath. And if you don't think that this incredibly wealthy,
greedy, selfish, bigoted, cruel, dishonest and ignorant gang of mercenary
demagogues and pathological liars (for verification do your own research check
of exactly who these people are and what they have actually done throughout
their careers for the ugly evidence), are not going to relentlessly try to do
every single thing that their "Fearless Leader" promised (and more)
then you are seriously deluding yourself. The very disturbing truth is that
this bunch of swaggering far rightwing bullies are going to be far worse than
they are depicted in this article (which is reprehensible enough), and the
fallout from the draconian policies they will propose and enact are going to
have a devastating impact on not only the millions who voted against this
administration and everything it stands for but will also adversely affect many
of their resentful and scapegoating supporters as well. If you don't believe me
just WATCH AND SEE...Stay tuned because the worse is yet to come...for
real...
Kofi
Politics
Trump Nominees Make Clear Plans to Sweep Away Obama Policies
by MICHAEL D. SHEAR
January 19, 2017
New York Times
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald
J. Trump’s cabinet nominees, while moderating some of their stances, have made
it clear during two weeks of hearings that they intend to work hard to sweep
away President Obama’s domestic policy by embracing a deeply conservative
approach to governing.
In dozens of hours of testimony, Mr.
Trump’s nominees told senators that they favored less regulation, a smaller
federal government, more state control over policy decisions and taxpayer
money, and greater personal responsibility by Americans across the country.
The sometimes contentious hearings
continued up until the day before the inauguration, as Mr. Trump triumphantly
arrived in Washington on Thursday to kick off three highly choreographed days
that will usher Republicans back into full political power in Washington for
the first time in more than a decade.
After arriving at Joint Base Andrews
on a military plane that will become Air Force One the next time he steps
onboard, Mr. Trump visited the Trump International Hotel before making an
appearance at the Lincoln Memorial, where thousands watched an inaugural
concert.
The Trump White House
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“All over the world they are talking
about it. All over the world,” Mr. Trump told the crowd before a fireworks
display over the National Mall. “And I love you folks, and we’re going to work
together. And we are going to make America great again.”
That work will be shaped by the new
president’s cabinet, which is coming under scrutiny as lawmakers from both
parties press the nominees about their fealty to Mr. Trump’s campaign promises
and their adherence to their own long records.
Many of the nominees sought to shave
the sharp edges off Mr. Trump’s more provocative campaign promises and their
own past decisions and statements. Some backed away completely from past
assertions, making clean breaks with Mr. Trump on climate change or the need to
build a wall at the Mexican border.
Others remained vague about their
commitment to the most divisive proposals in their policy areas, leaving a veil
of uncertainty over what they would do to lead their departments if confirmed.
Ben Carson, the housing secretary
nominee, told lawmakers that “safety net programs are important.” But he did
not disown past statements about the failure of government interventions and his
belief that poverty was “really more of a choice than anything else.”
PHOTO: Ben Carson during his
confirmation hearing to lead the department of housing and urban development
last week. Credit Al Drago/The New York Times
Scott Pruitt, the Environmental
Protection Agency nominee, told senators that he now believed that “climate
change is not a hoax.” But he also forcefully advocated a far smaller and more
restrained agency, while criticizing federal rules established by Mr. Obama’s
administration to protect air and water and tackle climate change.
Betsy DeVos, a longtime supporter of
charter schools, pledged to work for “common ground,” but did not back down on
the use of federal money for private and religious schools. Senator Jeff
Sessions of Alabama, the attorney general nominee, vowed to be “impartial and
enforce laws that I didn’t vote for,” while holding firm to a decades-long
conservative approach to immigration and civil rights.
Several Democratic lawmakers
appeared exasperated as they sought to pin the nominees down on the actions
they intended to take in office.
“Will you insist upon that equal
accountability in any K-12 school or educational program that receives federal
funding whether public, public charter or private?” Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat
of Virginia, asked Ms. DeVos.
“I support accountability,” she
said, repeating that phrase three times in response to Mr. Kaine’s efforts to
extract a more detailed answer.
But there is no doubt that Mr.
Trump’s nominees collectively will lead an effort to undermine the legacy of
Mr. Obama on the environment, health care, immigration, civil rights and
education.
In his remarks to lawmakers,
Representative Tom Price of Georgia, the nominee for secretary of health and
human services, promised to lead an effort to repeal and replace the Affordable
Care Act. Representative Ryan Zinke of Montana, the nominee to lead the
Interior Department, said he supported drilling, mining and logging on federal
lands. Mr. Sessions came to the defense of police departments, saying officers
had been “unfairly maligned and blamed” for the actions of a few in cases
involving the deaths of young black men.“There’s a great deal of reform coming
to Washington,” Sean Spicer, the president’s incoming press secretary, said
during his first on-camera briefing on Thursday. “These are amazing individuals
that have a commitment to enacting an agenda of change.”
Taken together, the congressional
testimony reflects a domestic policy agenda that is still evolving. The
president-elect recently said he wanted his nominees to “be themselves and
express their own thoughts, not mine!” On Friday, he will have an opportunity
to sketch out a broad vision during his inaugural address from the steps of the
Capitol.
During his campaign, Mr. Trump was
often contradictory in laying out a domestic policy blueprint.
On immigration, he talked about the
mass deportation of 11 million undocumented workers, then later said he was
focused on getting “bad dudes” out of the country. He also proposed, then
backed away from, a total ban on Muslim immigration to the United States.
PHOTO: Betsy DeVos arriving for her
confirmation hearing to be secretary of education on Tuesday. Credit Al
Drago/The New York Times
Mr. Trump at times called for having
guns in classrooms, but other times said he opposed that policy. He said he was
against a “first-strike” policy on the use of nuclear weapons, but also said he
could not “take anything off the table.” He said in one interview that he would
criminalize a woman’s decision to have an abortion; in another, he said the
opposite.
As his nominees faced lawmakers
during the past two weeks, many of them took a similar approach, responding to
questions about their records with less hard-edge language even as they
declined to accept Democrats’ approaches.
The hearing for Mr. Price was one
example. Mr. Price, an orthopedic surgeon from an Atlanta suburb, sought to
reassure senators that he and Mr. Trump did not want to let people “fall
through the cracks” as they overhauled the nation’s health care system.
“Nobody’s interested in pulling the
rug out from under anybody,” Mr. Price said. “We believe that it’s absolutely
imperative that individuals that have health coverage be able to keep health
coverage and move, hopefully, to greater choices and opportunities.”
But any Democrats who heard those
comments as a kind of concession in the fight to unravel Mr. Obama’s health
care law are likely to be disappointed.
Mr. Price insisted that “states know
best” in caring for Medicaid beneficiaries. He said the government should not
dictate care to patients. And he vowed that Mr. Trump and his administration
would put in place “a different construct” for providing health care to every
American.
Wilbur Ross, the billionaire
investor who will serve as commerce secretary if he is confirmed, also tried to
reassure senators on issues like trade, even as he echoed some of Mr. Trump’s
more incendiary promises of economic warfare with other nations.
Like the president-elect, Mr. Ross
lashed out at China, accusing it of being “the most protectionist country of
the very large countries — they talk more about free trade than they actually
practice.”
But he also declared that he was
“not anti-trade” and declared as unworkable Mr. Trump’s proposal of a 35
percent tax on American companies that manufacture goods overseas and try to
sell them in the United States.
Shortly after arriving in Washington
on Thursday, Mr. Trump toasted his cabinet nominees, telling a luncheon
audience at his Pennsylvania Avenue hotel that there had never been better
ones.
“We have by far the highest I.Q.,”
he said, “of any cabinet ever assembled.”
A version of this article appears in
print on January 20, 2017, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline:
Trump Arrives, Set to Assume Power. Order Reprints| Today's Paper
Related Coverage:
Steven Mnuchin, Treasury Nominee,
Failed to Disclose $100 Million in Assets JAN. 19, 2017
Nominee Betsy DeVos’s Knowledge of
Education Basics Is Open to Criticism
JAN. 18, 2017
Trump Budget Nominee Did Not Pay
Taxes for Employee
JAN. 18, 2017
‘Learning Curve’ as Rick Perry
Pursues a Job He Initially Misunderstood
JAN. 18, 2017
PHOTO: Scott Pruitt arriving for his
confirmation hearing to be administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency
on Wednesday. Credit Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times
Over two weeks of hearings, Donald
J. Trump’s cabinet picks have strongly embraced a deeply conservative approach
to governing. nytimes.com
All,
If you think this speech
by the billionaire sociopath and everything it both says and connotes is in any
way whatsoever a sane or rational understanding of political, social, and
economic reality in either this country or the rest of the world in the 21st
century you are as clinically braindead and arrogantly delusional as he
is...Look out folks because here comes the catastrophe...
Kofi
Donald Trump full
inaugural address as 45th President of United States
United States
President Donald Trump spoke to the nation for the first time as
Commander-in-Chief Friday afternoon moments after taking the oath of office to
become the 45th President.
United
States President Donald Trump spoke to the nation for the first time as
Commander-in-Chief…
A BLAST FROM THE (VERY RECENT) PAST...
"WHAT'S PAST IS
PROLOGUE..."
The Post's View
The clear and present danger of Donald Trump
by Editorial Board
September 30, 2016
The Washington Post
IF YOU
know that Donald Trump is ignorant, unprepared and bigoted, but are thinking of
voting for him anyway because you doubt he could do much harm — this editorial
is for you.
Your
support of the Republican presidential nominee may be motivated by dislike of
the Democratic alternative, disgust with the Washington establishment or a
desire to send a message in favor of change. You may not approve of everything
Mr. Trump has had to say about nuclear weapons, torture or mass deportations,
but you doubt he could implement anything too radical. Congress, the courts,
the Constitution — these would keep Mr. Trump in check, you think.
Well,
think again. A President Trump could, unilaterally, change this country to its
core. By remaking U.S. relations with other nations, he could fundamentally
reshape the world, too.
Of
course, in many areas Mr. Trump would not have to act unilaterally. If he won,
chances are Republicans would maintain control of Congress. GOP majorities
there would be enthusiastic participants in much of what Mr. Trump would like
to do: gutting environmental and workplace regulations, slashing taxes so that
the debt skyrockets, appointing Supreme Court justices who oppose a woman’s
right to have an abortion. In areas where Republican officeholders such as
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
(Ky.) imagine themselves acting as a brake on Mr. Trump’s worst instincts,
skepticism is in order. If these supposed leaders are too craven to oppose Mr.
Trump as a candidate, knowing the danger he presents, why should we expect them
to stand up to the bully once he was fully empowered?
But say
they did — or imagine, also improbably, that Mr. Trump faced a Democratic
Congress. The president would appoint officers — a budget director, an attorney
general, a CIA chief — who were disposed to let him have his way. And in the
U.S. system, the scope for executive action is, as we will lay out in a series
of editorials next week, astonishingly broad. At times we have questioned
President Obama’s sweeping use of those powers even when we agreed with his
goals, such as his broad grant of amnesty to millions of undocumented immigrants.
Mr. Trump could push it much further.
The
Washington Post explores the origins of Donald Trump's transformation from a
businessman to political candidate. (McKenna Ewen, Whitney Shefte, Dalton
Bennett/The Washington Post)
Could he
tear up long-standing international agreements? Round up and expel millions of
longtime U.S. residents? Impose giant tariffs? Waterboard terrorist suspects?
Yes, yes, yes and yes — all without so much as an if-you-please to Congress.
Could he bar the media from covering him? To a large extent, yes. Could he use
the government to help his businesses and, as he has threatened, injure those
he perceives as enemies? Yes, he could.
Given Mr.
Trump’s ever-evolving positions, and the apparent absence of fundamental
beliefs other than in his own brilliance, it would be foolish to make flat
predictions of how he would behave. Nor do we underestimate the resilience of
the U.S. system or the devotion that U.S. government workers bring to the rule
of law.
But it
would be reckless not to consider the damage Mr. Trump might wreak. Some of
that damage would ensue more from who he is than what he does. His racism and
disparagement of women could empower extremists who are now on the margins of
American politics, while his lies and conspiracy theories could legitimize
discourse that until now has been relegated to the fringe. But his scope for
action should not be underestimated, either. In our upcoming editorials, we
will examine some arenas where Mr. Trump has been relatively clear about his intentions
— and where presidential powers are mighty. We hope you will read them before
you vote.
The
damage Mr. Trump could do:
A President Trump could end the era of American global leadership
A President Trump could wreck progress on global warming
A President Trump could destroy the world economy
How much damage could a President Trump do? We can only begin to imagine.
PHOTO:
Donald Trump at a rally in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on Wednesday. (John
Locher/Associated Press)
The first in a series of editorials
on the damage he could wreak unilaterally as president.
