(For a background on this type of linkdump, see my introductory paragraphs on Trump clump #1 back in August. Here's some of what I've bookmarked since then...
“I would rarely leave the White House because there’s so much work to be done,” Trump, 69, tells ITK. "I would not be a president who took vacations. I would not be a president that takes time off.” (quotation from June 2015)
Counterpoint (from back in August) to the statement that "I'll choose the best people for my administration."
Repositioning on "the wall."
An editorial from Der Spiegel about Trump after the Charlottesville incident: "Trump is a racist. He is a preacher of hate. Those who pretend he is not, those who portray him as merely being an unpolished, somewhat chaotic old man, as a person who explicitly sought to avoid becoming a slick politician, are merely enabling him... When the president of the United States says that the victim is just as responsible as the murderer, or that the counterdemonstrator is just as guilty as the Nazi waving the swastika flag and shouting, "Jews will not replace us," and when Trump's own party doesn't drop him even now, then Duke and Trump have already achieved a key goal. Tolerance, empathy, kindness and diversity of opinion are all disparaged as political correctness. It becomes OK to say anything else, and if you can say it, it becomes easier to justify violence. The wheel of civilization has made a turn in reverse."
Trump's command of the English language is not good: “We have a lot to discuss, including the fact that there is a new and seems to be record-breaking hurricane heading right toward Florida and Puerto Rico and other places,” he told reporters. “We’ll see what happens. We’ll know in a very short period of time. But it looks like it could be something that will be not good. Believe me, not good.” Here’s a list of other things Trump has said were “not good.” [list follows]
In a September interview, John le Carré drew parallels between Donald Trump and the rise of fascism in the 1930s. “These stages that Trump is going through in the United States and the stirring of racial hatred … a kind of burning of the books as he attacks, as he declares real news as fake news, the law becomes fake news, everything becomes fake news. “I think of all things that were happening across Europe in the 1930s, in Spain, in Japan, obviously in Germany. To me, these are absolutely comparable signs of the rise of fascism and it’s contagious, it’s infectious. Fascism is up and running in Poland and Hungary. There’s an encouragement about.” Even today, Le Carré said, Ang Sang Suu Kyi is speaking of “fake news” in Burma. “These are infectious forms of demagogic behaviour and they are toxic.”
A Harvard psychiatrist rejects the "Goldwater Rule" (that health professionals should not publicly discuss public figures) and labels Donald Trump a sociopath: "Everybody lies some of the time, but in this instance we mean people who lie as a way of being in the world, to manage relationships and also to manage your feelings about yourself. People who cheat and steal from others. People who lack empathy . . . the lack of empathy is a critical aspect of it. People who are narcissistic... It is not just bad behavior that people have to lie and cheat the way he does, it is an incapacity to treat other people as full human beings. That is why his focus is on humiliating others to aggrandize himself... Lying and cheating and humiliating others and grinding them into dust in order to triumph is not just bad behavior. It is a serious mental illness."
Donald Trump on Twitter June 2014: "Are you allowed to impeach a president for gross incompetence?"
"On a weekend in early March, during one of seven trips by Trump and his White House entourage to the posh Palm Beach property since the inauguration, the government paid the Trump-owned club to reserve at least one bedroom for two nights. The charge, according to a newly disclosed receipt reviewed by The Washington Post, was $1,092... “The choice to stay there and have the government pay the $546-a-night rate seems imprudent,” said Kathleen Clark, a Washington University law professor who specializes in ethics issues. “If it were not owned by the president, it would still seem problematic. The fact that it’s owned by the president makes it doubly problematic.”
"President Trump delivered a brief speech to African leaders Wednesday at the United Nations, and in the span of about 800 words, he twice conjoined the names of two countries, Namibia and Zambia, creating the nonexistent nation of “Nambia,” and told the leaders that many of his friends go to Africa to “get rich.”"
George Clooney takes umbrage at Trump's disparaging of the "Hollywood elite": Here’s the thing: I grew up in Kentucky. I sold insurance door-to-door. I sold ladies’ shoes. I worked at an all-night liquor store. I would buy suits that were too big and too long and cut the bottom of the pants off to make ties so I’d have a tie to go on job interviews. I grew up understanding what it was like to not have health insurance for eight years. So this idea that I’m somehow the “Hollywood elite” and this guy who takes a shit in a gold toilet is somehow the man of the people is laughable... "I just look at it and I laugh when I see him say 'Hollywood elite,'" he said. "Hollywood elite? I don’t have a star on Hollywood Boulevard, Donald Trump has a star on Hollywood Boulevard! Fuck you!""
September: "President Donald Trump will kowtow to New York's elites at a private dinner Tuesday, with donors willing to shell out up to $250,000 for an opportunity to sit next to the commander in chief. Some of the most prominent names in finance and real estate are set to attend the event at Manhattan's Le Cirque restaurant to raise money for the Republican National Committee... Now the president seems eager to accept the money of coastal elites, even though he has masqueraded as a populist looking out for the common man..."
On the same topic: "The rich and clueless spent $35,000 per couple to eat some of the priciest food in the world with the most unhinged President of the century. This as hundreds of thousands of American children and babies were crying and begging their helpless parents for something — anything — to eat in the Apocalypse that is Puerto Rico. The rich and clueless paid an unimaginable $250,000 per couple last night to sip $10 bottles of water in a city with perfect tap water at that dinner's even more exclusive round table with the commander-in-chief as millions in Puerto Rico remained without safe drinking water for five days."
October:
"Trump's Fascistic, un-American rantings about NFL players kneeling in protest during the playing of the National Anthem are offensive and repugnant. But they're also probably illegal, carrying a possible penalty to Trump of disqualification from public office, fines, and up to 15 years in prison. "(explanation of the legalities at Boing Boing: There's a specific statute at play, and it's 18 U.S.C. sec. 227....)
"Last week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) quietly voted along party lines to eliminate its “main studio rule,” which mandated that local news stations maintain offices within the communities they serve. Without the main studio rule, Sinclair is free to consolidate and centralize local news resources in its roughly 190 stations across the country, eliminating the “local” element of local news as much as possible. This move is just the latest in a thriving symbiotic relationship between the openly conservative Sinclair and the Trump FCC, a relationship that seems to benefit all parties but the American public. And there’s more to come.
"Carrier Corp., the HVAC manufacturer that had
planned to move its operations to Mexico before President Trump staged a much-heralded intervention, is gearing up for a final round of layoffs.
Less than four months after it laid
off nearly 340 employees at its Indianapolis factory, Carrier said
Tuesday that 215 employees will be terminated on Jan. 11."
[Trump] put his ignorance on display for the Japanese people, when he made the following statement while visiting their country:
"Try building your cars in the United States instead of shipping them over. Is that possible to ask? That's not rude. Is that rude? I don't think so."That statement had to be puzzling for the Japanese carmakers, because they have been making many of their cars in the United States for years now. Nissan makes 9 of their autos here, Toyota makes 9 of their autos here, and Honda makes 11 of their autos here. These Japanese auto makers have created thousands of jobs in the United States. If there were any Japanese who didn't realize we elected a moron with massive ignorance to be our president, then this has probably removed any doubt.
"Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago club has received permission to hire 70 foreign workers to fill out its staff during its upcoming busy season, after managers attested there aren't enough Americans qualified and willing to do the work."
There is now a plug-in you can use to display Trump's tweets in a font resembling a child's handwriting:
After Trump attacked Marshawn Lynch's behavior at an NFL game and then opined that he should have left the UCLA shoplifters in a Chinese jail, Snoop Dog didn't pull any punches. Text at the link is abundantly Bowlderized with asterisks.
The man who tripled the price of insulin has been nominated by Trump to be in charge of regulating the price of insulin.
After the mass shooting in California, Trump tweeted this:
Trump's criticism of Obama for blocking the Keystone pipeline ("good for the environment, no downside!") paired with the CNN headline about the Keystone pipeline leaking 210,000 gallons of oil in South Dakota.
In a ceremony honoring Native American codetalkers from WWII, Trump disparaged Elizabeth Warren by calling her Pocohantas.
Via for mass shooting cartoon. Via for golf photoshop. Via for paper towel photo. Via for the mass shooting tweet. Via for cycling cartoon.
I'm glad to get this done. I'll try to ignore Trump in the blog for the next three months or so, and then regurgitate the news equivalent of another hairball.
Oh, and the comments are closed for this post. Lets all move on to other matters.
