monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Members of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers — themselves desperately afraid of being downsized — are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.

At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking for a strongman to vote for — someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots.

So they let thieving bankers off (which caused a financial crises) the hook but make low level drug users do the maxium time under the law? Typical.

This may be hard to believe, but we’re only two weeks into the new year, and halfway through January, Donald Trump has generated a year’s worth of provocative headlines.

Consider an overview of the presidential developments we’ve seen so far in 2018:

Jan. 1: Trump blasts Pakistan in a New Year’s Day tweet, condemning the country’s “lies and deceit,” and suggesting an end to U.S. aid, and blindsiding his own administration’s officials.

Jan. 2: Trump taunts Kim Jong-un’s “nuclear button” and effectively dares North Korea to demonstrate its nuclear capabilities.

Jan. 2: Trump suggests imprisoning Huma Abedin and James Comey, pressuring the Justice Department to pursue charges against his perceived domestic enemies.

Jan. 2: Trump seeks credit for safe commercial air travel.

Jan. 3: Trump’s lawyers threaten Steve Bannon, the former chief White House strategist, with “imminent” legal action.

Jan. 3: Asked directly about Trump’s “mental fitness” during a press briefing, the president’s press secretary responds by changing the subject.

Jan. 4: Trump’s lawyers try to block publication of a book the president doesn’t like.

Jan. 4: Trump appears in the White House press briefing room, but only through a pre-recorded video in which he talks about how impressed he is with his own tax plan.

Jan. 6: Trump assures the world that he’s a “very stable genius.”


Jan. 6: Months after publicly committing to talking to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Trump refuses to say whether he’s still prepared to answer Mueller’s questions.

Jan. 6: After publicly insisting “talking is not the answer” when dealing with North Korea, Trump, asked about direct diplomacy with Kim Jong-un, says, “Sure. I always believe in talking.”

Jan. 8: Trump says at the American Farm Bureau’s annual convention, “Oh, are you happy you voted for me. You are so lucky that I gave you that privilege.”

Jan. 8: Trump appears to not know the words to the National Anthem.

Jan. 9: Trump briefly and accidentally endorses the Democratic position on DACA protections for Dreamers. A House Republican quickly reminds the president of what his position is supposed to be.

Jan. 10: Trump’s administration gives a special deal to Florida on coastal oil drilling, singling out Gov. Rick Scott (R), Trump’s preferred Senate candidate, for gushing and excessive praise.

Jan. 10: Trump, displaying an alarming lack of self-awareness, demands changes to American libel laws. “You can’t say things that are false, knowingly false. and be able to smile as money pours into your bank account,” he declares.

Jan. 10: Trump urges his Republican allies in Congress to “take control” of the investigation into the Russia scandal.

Jan. 10: Trump points to letters (which don’t exist) from television anchors (who also don’t exist) who told him he hosted “one of the greatest meetings they’ve ever witnessed.”

Jan. 10: Trump boasts about selling jets to Norway that don’t exist.

Jan. 11: Confused by a Fox News segment, Trump criticizes a surveillance law his administration strongly supports.

Jan. 11: Trump accuses FBI officials of “treason.”

Jan. 11: Trump refuses to say whether he’s spoken to Kim Jong-un or not.

Jan. 11: Trump insists “there’s a big difference between DACA and Dreamers,” despite the fact that DACA was the policy that created protections for Dreamers.

Jan. 11: Trump makes racist comments about “shithole countries.”

Jan. 12: Trump cancels London trip and blames Barack Obama for reasons that don’t make any sense.

Jan. 12: The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump’s private attorney paid a former porn star shortly before the 2016 election in order to stop her from discussing a sexual encounter with Trump.

Jan. 14: After putting Dreamers’ future in jeopardy, and rejecting bipartisan compromises, Trump says DACA is “probably dead” – and insists Democrats are to blame.

Jan. 14: Following decades of provocative racial controversies, Trump tells reporters, “I’m not a racist.”

TWO PARTIES.
ZERO RESULTS.
IT'S TIME TO FIX THE EQUATION.

How to Turn a Red State Purple (Democrats Not Required)
A tiny group of political renegades is transforming one of the reddest states in the country through a surprising strategy: ignoring their own party. Could it work elsewhere?

In the five years since Kreiss-Tomkins’s upset victory, a most unusual thing has happened: Alaska—which elected Sarah Palin governor and has not supported a Democratic presidential candidate since Lyndon B. Johnson—has turned from red to a bluish hue of purple. Throughout the state, unknown progressives, like the kind Kreiss-Tomkins once was, have been winning. Before the elections of 2012, conservatives controlled all the major seats of power in Alaska: the governorship, both houses of the Legislature, and the mayoralty and city assembly of Anchorage, where 40 percent of the state’s 740,000 residents live; now, progressives and moderates control all of those offices but the state Senate, which has been gerrymandered beyond their control. More than half of the 40-member Alaska House of Representatives has been newly elected since 2012, most of them Democrats or independents; together with three moderate Republicans, they have remade the Democratic-independent caucus into a 22-18 majority.

Not all of these newcomer state legislators are typical progressives—“the NPR-listening liberals hunt, fish or camp here,” says Joelle Hall, political director of the Alaska AFL-CIO—but in defeating more conservative candidates, they accomplished something that didn’t happen anywhere else in November 2016: In a state that went for Trump by 15 points, they flipped a red legislative chamber to blue.

interesting political work in Alaska by a new generation of politicians

Florida Rep. Frederica Wilson added her name to a growing list of Democratic lawmakers who say they are fed up with President Trump and will boycott his State of the Union address at the end of the month.

Wilson, who was elected in 2010 and made headlines last year for fighting with Trump over his telephone call to the widow of a fallen soldier, cited the president’s “recent racist and incendiary remarks about Haiti and African nations” for reasons why she wouldn’t be attending the Jan. 30 speech.

“For the first time since I began serving in the U.S. House of Representatives, I will not be attending the president’s State of the Union address,” Wilson said in a statement late Sunday. “I have no doubts that instead of delivering a message of inclusivity and an agenda that benefits all Americans, President Trump’s address will be full of innuendo, empty promises and lies.”

Wilson joins Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif.; Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga.; and Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., in boycotting the event.

“Why would I take my time to go and sit and listen to a liar?” Waters said on MSNBC over the weekend. “Someone who lies in the face of facts, someone who can change their tune day in and day out. What does he have to say that I would be interested in? I don’t appreciate him and I wouldn’t waste my time sitting in that house listening to what he has to say. He does not deserve my attention.”

Lewis made his announcement Friday, citing reports that Trump had referred to some African countries as “s---holes” in a conversation with lawmakers about immigration.

“I cannot in all good conscience be in a room with what he has said about so many Americans,” Lewis said on MSNBC Friday. “I just cannot do it. I wouldn’t be honest with myself.”

Blumenauer said he would be skipping the event before Trump’s remarks became public, but said it would be a waste of time and that he was staying home.

"Rather than listening to another destructive, divisive speech by Trump, I will not attend this year’s annual address to Congress," Blumenauer said in a statement. "Instead, like I did during his inauguration, I'll be working at home listening to Oregonians about what they think about the State of the Union."

On Sunday, the president addressed the people who are accusing him of being a racist.

“I’m not a racist,” Trump told reporters. “I am the least racist person you have ever interviewed. That I can tell you.”

The State of the Union boycott isn’t the only protest planned by Democrats.

Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., said she is planning on wearing black in order to stand in solidarity with victims of sexual harassment, while other House lawmakers say they are planning on inviting victims of sexual assault to attend the president’s first State of the Union address.

“Some members will be bringing survivors of sexual assault and advocates as their guests,” an aide to Florida Rep. Lois Frankel told NBC News.

Other ideas that have since been nixed include holding mock trials with the women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct.

Trump has denied any claims of sexual misconduct.