Trump's America, March 2017: Using His Inside VOICE

New justify-your-existence executive order released.

was thinking about that last night, couldn't really come up w a way to stop it tbh. reverse it once he's out of office, maybe, but ugh.

i) whether some or all of the functions of an agency, a component, or a program are appropriate for the Federal Government or would be better left to State or local governments or to the private sector through free enterprise;

Goodbye SNAP and WIC.

wow, i hadn't heard of the EO until now. how is this not headline news? or is just that new?

it's such a fine feeling to be on the leading edge of terrible news

I saw it last night and it was issued yesterday - since its immediate effects aren't entirely clear it's probably getting buried. Obviously has the potential for a lot of bad shit. I'm not entirely clear on how Congress figures into that. I mean if they fund a program in the budget, the President can't unilaterally say that a department won't implement it.

In developing the proposed plan described in subsection (c) of this section, the Director shall consult with the head of each agency and, consistent with applicable law, with persons or entities outside the Federal Government with relevant expertise in organizational structure and management.

let me go ahead and fix that

In developing the proposed plan described in subsection (c) of this section, the Director shall consult with the head of each agency, but mostly with people from the Heritage Foundation, ALEC, and whoever is on tv that night

xpost

I'm not entirely clear on how Congress figures into that. I mean if they fund a program in the budget, the President can't unilaterally say that a department won't implement it.

it does say that "The proposed plan shall include recommendations for any legislation or administrative measures necessary to achieve the proposed reorganization."

but yeah, they can't just shut down an agency without congressional approval.

dems should be making hay of this even on apolitical "doesn't this sound like hell" grounds? like imagine you got a new boss at work and he requires everybody to stop what they're doing for weeks and explain why, yes, it's necessary to do cook the burgers the way you've been doing, and enumerate alternative means of cooking and flipping them and explain why each would not be preferable to the currents system and then you have to have a series of meetings with his dumbshit business school friends who've all skimmed a few issues of food, beverage and hospitality biweekly and have bold new ideas on the burger-flipping method trends that are going to revolutionize the industry and AUGHHHHHHH and actually underneath all this is his desire to see you fail completely at burger-flipping so he can fire the entire department and turn the whole place into a room full of malfunctioning vending machines - "we're really going to save on food cost around here!"

sorry, got lost in a bad flashback of the one self-styled 'chef' at my second holiday inn job who took me aside in the dry storage room to lay out his vision for retooling the restaurant into a high-concept destination burger joint, tentatively titled (now, i'm asking everybody for their feedback on this) ... Buns.

That's awesome.

Anyway https://newrepublic.com/article/141272/trump-russia-story-not-diversion

government should be run like a business!

Heer is otm that responsible, well-informed, factual reporting of the Trump camp's supposed ties to Russia are a good and important thing but idk if anyone thinks that is what Gessen, Taibbi, etc are objecting to. I don't know who would object to it other than Trump partisans. The problem has been that so little of the reporting actually meets that mark.

Hamilton (Ontario) church volunteers denied entry to U.S. so they wouldn't 'steal American jobs': http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/hamilton-church-volunteers-denied-entry-to-u-s-so-they-wouldn-t-steal-american-jobs-1.4022969

Girl Guides of Canada cancelling trips to the U.S., citing travel concerns: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/girl-guides-of-canada-cancelling-trips-to-the-u-s-citing-travel-concerns-1.4022985

Sooner or later the tourism industry is going to start grousing about the impact of all this shit. Let's see whether avarice or racism is a bigger driver of Trumpism.

Nice interview with Rick Perlstein about his piece in the Baffler and what happens when you write off people who don't vote for you as "dumb"(and thus how fortunate you don't have to expend effort on persuading):

https://soundcloud.com/user-253233419/experts-baffledepisode-1-professional-snobbery

Sooner or later the tourism industry is going to start grousing about the impact of all this shit. Let's see whether avarice or racism is a bigger driver of Trumpism.

I'm amazed this hasn't happened already.

is his name really Jeet Heer? I mean, really?

ah nevermind i should have done two seconds of googling first, i thought he was a white dude, nm.

when 70% of the eligible population doesn't vote, I have a hard time believing that convincing opposing ideologues is both a moral obligation and a more effective vote-getting strategy than expanding the voting base to include people who don't usually vote. To wit: The GOP spends absolutely zero time appealing to me and my demo's needs or interests. Instead, they focus on shrinking the electorate to secure greater power for their loyal voting base. Being an inclusive coalition rather than an exclusionary cabal, the Dems can't really do this because none of the various minorities that make up the coalition are actually big enough in their own right to pull off such a strategy - but historically when they expand the electorate (whether by expanding the voting franchise - to women, or african americans, or organizing Irish/Italian immigrants, etc. - or having a "cool" candidate that attracts the youth vote like Obama), liberals have benefited and their legislative priorities advanced.

xp

ie, we can probably peel some votes off in the margins ("Independents" lol) but fighting over the same 5% is not a winning strategy. Figuring out how to get more ppl who *do* agree w liberal priorities to actually vote is the better strategy.

Jeet Heer? would be a better name for Doc Casino's boss' burger place than Buns.

Xps

I'm probably going to a university recruitment conference in LA in June (assuming Immigration let me in) and it's going to be interesting to see how badly institutions think Trump and the perceived increase in physical danger are going to hit the multi-billion Dollar study travel sector. Idk how much Trump cares but the for-profit colleges he is so fond of are going to be hit hard if things do go through the floor.

@SenJohnMcCain
My @washingtonpost op-ed w/ @LindseyGrahamSC today: "Why we need more forces to end the stalemate in #Afghanistan"

@ggreenwald
This war has been raging for 15 1/2 years. The US has escalated multiple times under 2 Presidents. This war-loving duo wants more that.

To wit: The GOP spends absolutely zero time appealing to me and my demo's needs or interests

OTM. Fuck the GOP.

JiC / Οὖτις OTM

Instead, they focus on shrinking the electorate to secure greater power for their loyal voting base. Being an inclusive coalition rather than an exclusionary cabal, the Dems can't really do this because none of the various minorities that make up the coalition are actually big enough in their own right to pull off such a strategy - but historically when they expand the electorate (whether by expanding the voting franchise - to women, or african americans, or organizing Irish/Italian immigrants, etc. - or having a "cool" candidate that attracts the youth vote like Obama), liberals have benefited and their legislative priorities advanced.

otm

what i still can't get over is how weird it was that james comey made so much noise about hillary nine days before the election, even while michael flynn was a paid turkish lobbyist and roger stone was tweeting guccifer, among 911 other impossible to imagine even five years ago shenanigans that were going down

yea as strange as this was at the time it's like five times stranger now

have we lol'd at this yet: http://www.sfgate.com/news/politics/article/Marco-Rubio-criticizes-Snoop-Dogg-over-Trump-video-11000072.php

conservatives vs rappers, a tale as old as time

i thought he had some biggie in his spotify playlists tho

lol

Rubio has a core of a point here but in order for it to make sense, the video would need to have had an actual person standing in for Trump who actually got shot. As it stands, Snoop is encouraging people to shoot toy guns at effigies, which on balance is exactly what you want IF that type of thing has to exist.

Rubi Smalls

hey listen he calls him "Snoop," not "Mr. Broadus."

He's struggled to address a broad us audience historically tbf

steve king, again

Rep. Steve King (R-IA), of newfound "somebody else's babies" infamy, said on Monday that black and Hispanic populations "will be fighting each other" before outnumbering the population of white people in the United States.

"They're dividing people, they're pitting people against each other," King said on WHO radio's "The Jan Mickelson Show" in Des Moines.

King referred to Univision anchor Jorge Ramos' remark on Fox News that "the white population will become a minority." Ramos used the point to argue that the United States is a multiracial country.

"Jorge Ramos' stock in trade is identifying and trying to drive wedges between race," King said. "Race and ethnicity, I should say, to be more correct."

He said that "accentuating the differences" will result in "people that are at each other's throats."

"And he's adding up Hispanics and blacks into what he predicts will be in greater number than whites in America," King said. "I will predict that Hispanics and the blacks will be fighting each other before that happens."

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/steve-king-hispanic-black-people-turn-on-each-other-before-outnumbering-whites

truly an enlightened soul

Burrito stall

King's district in Iowa is 95% white, lol?

grover norquist should be in jail

https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-03-14/trump-s-counties-lose-out-to-clinton-s-in-gop-health-tax-cuts

fabulous quote:

"It pisses me off, but my wife pisses me off, too, and we’re still married,” said Dan Peuschold, 62, as he shared a $13 pitcher of beer with friends Saturday afternoon at the Hiawatha Bar & Grill in the Wisconsin village of Sturtevant.

Other Trump voters in Racine County say they don’t like that the wealthy may be first to secure a tax cut, but they’re giving the new president the benefit of the doubt that they’ll eventually see lower taxes, too.

“You would think they would be more for the lower-income people,” said David Fiskum, 62, a retired small business owner dining at a hamburger restaurant in the city of Racine. “I wish they had a better bill than what they’ve proposed.”

why would you think this

because you are a gullible moron

As if on cue:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/steve-bannon-and-the-making-of-an-economic-nationalist-1489516113

The introductory story's been told before but I still can't get over Bannon thinking "There was an injustice and the rich people got away with things in 2008! So I'll repeat that in 2017."

the free market shall save us from the free market

so is barron behind the breitbart assaults on trumpcare or has breitbart turned on its former boss?

yeah there's a hole in bannon's worldview a mile wide. the gop isnt going to give you your precious nazi style public work program for the common man. they dont give a fuck. sorry dude.

the rift between breitbort and the GOP over Trumpcare is kind of hilarious

Bannon's not in charge of Beetbort anymore

dunno why anyone's surprised that groups whose sole reason for existence is opposition (Freedom Caucus, Beetbort etc.) are reverting to form