monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

I just read that the Trump administration has filled only 22 of the 553 key positions that require Senate confirmation. This makes me worry that the administration will not have enough manpower to produce the same volume and standard of incompetence that we’ve come to expect so far.

Granted, in its first few months the administration has produced an impressive amount of ineptitude with very few people.

On his worst days Sean Spicer can produce more errors than 10 normal men on their best days. Kellyanne Conway can flail her way through television confrontations 24/7 and still have the stamina to lose to the Teletubbies on Saturday morning.

The White House staffing system is successfully answering the question, How many scorpions can you fit in a bottle? And in general, the personnel process has been so rigorous in its selection of inexperience that those who were hired on the basis of mere nepotism look like Dean Acheson by comparison.

The Gulf war was a major error

Cernovich is far from the only person on the right pushing a “false flag” message. His argument has been echoed by a variety of accounts that are loosely ideologically similar, such as the website Infowars, which shared a story suggesting that the attack was staged by groups funded by billionaire philanthropist George Soros, who supports liberal political causes.

..Just in the past week, both Donald Trump Jr. and White House counselor Kellyanne Conway have praised Cernovich — Trump's son suggested that Cernovich should win a Pulitzer. President Trump has praised Infowars, telling Jones during an interview last year that his reputation was “amazing” and that “I will not let you down.” At a campaign rally, he said, “I love WikiLeaks.”.

Terrible jobs report just reported. Only 98,000 jobs added. Bombshell! It's going the wrong way folks.

Confronting his first foreign policy crisis, Trump relied on seasoned military experts rather than the political operatives who had dominated policy in the first weeks of his presidency and showed a willingness to move quickly, officials involved in the deliberations said.

On Thursday afternoon, Trump ordered the launch of a barrage of cruise missiles against the Shayrat air field north of Damascus, which the Pentagon says was used to store the chemical weapons used in the attack.

"I think it does demonstrate that President Trump is willing to act when governments and actors cross the line ... It is clear that President Trump made that statement to the world,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters.

Senior administration officials said they met with Trump as early as Tuesday evening and presented options including sanctions, diplomatic pressure and a military plan to strike Syria drawn up well before he took office.

“He had a lot of questions and said he wanted to think about it but he also had some points he wanted to make. He wanted the options refined,” one official said.

On Wednesday morning, Trump's military advisers said they knew which Syrian air base was used to launch the chemical attack and that they had tracked the Sukhoi-22 jet that carried it out.

Trump told them to focus on the military plans.

First images of damage at Assad’s burnt-out airbase emerge

Today smoke was billowing from al-Shayrat more than 12 hours after it was targeted with 59 missiles in retaliation for the Syrian leader's horrific chemical weapons attack on Idlib.

Syria's state TV is showing footage of the U.S. missile strike, showing a fast sequence of orange flashes that lit the dark sky in the distance before the crack of dawn.

In a different sequence after day break, the Syrian TV station al-Ikhbariyah showed another short clip of smoke billowing in the distance, hovering over a raging fire, the tip of which emerges and a forest of trees is in the foreground.

Syrians have been celebrating the strike after the horrific chemical weapons attack. One wrote on Facebook: 'I've worked my tail off for six damn years to see this moment. This is the first time in almost half a century that the Assad regime has been held accountable for a crime they committed. Only Syrians will fully understand what this means. I'm choking back tears.'

Another said: 'For those of us who have campaigned tirelessly for humanitarian intervention for 6 years today is a surreal and momentous day. 'I can't even truly express how I feel, the devastating war is still years from ending, but for a brief few moments Syrians got to taste what justice feels like, even if that is only a smokescreen, the jubilation I am witnessing is very real.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4389754/First-images-damage-Assad-s-burnt-airbase.html

Syrian Army officials described the attack as an act of 'blatant aggression',

As far as I am concerned, no president I could name was worth a crap in that part of the world. Each one compounds the mistakes of the last.

You guys were r anting and raving before the election that Hillary would start a nuclear war if she was elected. Now, less than 100 days in, Trump has launched 50 missiles against Syria, a Russian ally. The Russians have promised retaliation (unspecified) if the US takes military action agains Syria. Trump, apparently with NO foresight or forethought has done just that. Seems apparent that the real threat of war was never from Hillary, but from Trump. When will the first Russian cruise missile take out the White House?