I'm Back. Let's talk about Cheetolini

welcome back snood, i was hoping you weren't gone for good

Trumps a weird one, i tend to just mock politics, not really caring who's in power

the Obama years were rough, he was hard to mock, though the right seemed to find lots of stuff, but most of it was just infantile personal attacks, politically i saw him as pretty white bread, rather dull in the make funnable department

Trump is exactly the opposite, the jokes just kind of write themselves, or more specifically Trump and his helper monkeys write them themselves on twitter

it's gonna be a helluva trip, keep your head and arms inside the vehicle at all times, good to have you on board

Many of my online "friends" no longer react to me in the same way, if at all. I lost a number of friends on Facebook. It was a tough election and the aftermath will resound for many years. It may create a "boomerang effect" with the mid term and next presidential, but we can't count on that. The non stop calling out Trump and ridiculing him only works with left leaners and some wavering fence sitters. It causes many teabaggers to hunker down and become all the more in his corner. One bright spot, many Republicans are dismayed by him. Trump would rule by decree, except that's illegal. He is removing as many of the law abiding as possible. The last judge to halt his illegal executive order is being called a friend of Obama's that did drugs with him.

I agree with this, to a degree:
"...non stop calling out Trump and ridiculing him only works with left leaners and some wavering fence sitters. It causes many teabaggers to hunker down and become all the more in his corner."
But calling Trump out and ridiculing him is both a coping mechanism and a practical necessity, as far as I'm concerned. As I've been saying from halfway through the last election, he has the potential to do irreparable harm to the country and the world. I think it's important to stay focused and not sleep on the insanity as it unfolds.

Welcome back, Snood!

A lot has changed in the political landscape for certain and not for the better. Personally, my life has changed dramatically (for the better) as I've travelled overseas for the first time. I was away on vacation for 3 months. 2 months in NZ ( north and south islands), Australia (Perhaps for 5 days) and SA (4 weeks with a side trip to Victoria Falls in Zambia).

During this time as I spoke candidly with so many people they invariably asked what is wrong with USA that such a man could be elected. I said I was just as stumped as they were. I felt ashamed of such a political system and that feeling pervades. I'm stymied and know I need personally to be more active personally and am on that track now.

Back to the point, your voice and presence has been missed here by many others as well as by me. High 5!

You can't possibly be so naive as to think that this is a new phenomenon.

Thank you Sir. The shame about a political system that could produce such a president for me is mixed with dismay and distrust at my neighbors, friends and acquaintances who could see what kind of person this man is, and still think he belongs in the seat of greatest power. As I said, this has changed forever the way I think of this country and the people in it, both of which I thought I had a pretty useful understanding of - until now.

Activists and activism seems to be the best or most positive antidote to Trump chaos and tone deaf amorality. Too many Democrats and Progressive leaners stood back and thought they didn't need to get out the vote, thinking Hillary would win. They were lulled into a false sense of security by misguided media and those incompetent political pollster reports that indicated a Clinton victory was probable. And then there was those minorities who gave up and resigned or refused to vote as they felt disenfranchised or possibly the voting process had been made difficult by the powers-that-be.

Concur.

I feel like a stranger in a strange land.

Don't misunderstand. We have to alaways call him on his lies and incompetence. And keep pressure on congress and all branches of government to resist the destructive acts he is bent on forcing. I only meant that if it sounds like nothing more than name calling, it could work against us. There is plenty to work with calling out the lies and nefarious nature of his administration, from top to bottom.

So glad to see you. You have a lot of company, quite a few people I know being similarly knocked out by the incredible changes.

Do you remember Thomas on a2k? he hasn't been here for a while. He moved back to Germany, where he is from, but has taken his vacation traveling around the US and visiting old a2k friends. He'd been to Albuquerque a few times before, and Diane and Butrflynet and I got to see him and talk, yesterday and this morning. We had other things to talk about than our political despair, but understood each other. It was good to connect.

Why just Trump, Edgar?

Simply because he's the biggest liar and has the most impact.

Trump is simply the most gregarious, the stupidest of liars. His motor mouth has no connection to his brain, so he utters these lies with what seems to be wild abandon. But he is no different than Obama or Bush, or Clinton, or Bush or Reagan, or ... .

Obviously Bush2's lies have had much more impact - the millions dead, hundreds of millions of lives destroyed, the countries ruined, the poor refugees, terrorism being made the new commie boogeyman, the ... .

He is certainly greatly differentiated from those that you mentioned. He's the singular example of incompetence and the Peter Principle where the quality standards are now at the lowest level in history for the Presidency. The impact of this will affect us domestically and internationally for decades.

Wotsits are more popular here than Cheetos, they're why Cheetos never caught on, they look the same, but I think wotsits taste better. And I'm not alone, the only place you can get Cheetos is specialist Polish shops.

Anyway, that explains some protest signs.





Some protests are different from others.



Follow the link to a load of peculiarly British protest signs.

http://metro.co.uk/2017/01/31/the-most-british-protest-placards-from-anti-trump-demonstrations-6416663/

Welcome back.

Since many Democratic voters are educated, did any one question if the Democratic tent included those rural folks who feel left out and forgotten? Maybe the Democrats should re-evaluate who their constituency should include? We were not electing a mayor, where popular voteing counts. The Electoral College is the name of the game, and guess who lives in those red states, let alone the rural parts of the swing states. Someone forgot to include them in the polling algorithm, perhaps? I predicted his win back in the summer, because I did not discount those that may not have voted in the prior two elections, but were sure to come out to vote now.

Thanks Izzy! LOL! Very educational.

The House and Senate intelligence committees said they saw no evidence for President Trump’s wild claim that President Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower, and Britain protested that the White House falsely alleged that British intelligence was involved. White House press secretary Sean Spicer has been arguing that Trump didn’t mean wiretapping when he said Obama had Trump’s “wires tapped.” Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway suggested that eavesdropping could have been accomplished using microwave ovens.

Trump’s fellow Republicans pronounced his budget dead on arrival in Congress — “draconian, careless and counterproductive” were the words used by Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), former House Appropriations Committee chairman — because it recklessly cuts (slashing the State Department by nearly a third and targeting Meals on Wheels for the elderly) yet still adds to the debt Trump promised to eliminate.

Legislation to replace Obamacare stalled in Congress and had to be rewritten because of a rebellion within Trump’s own party.

A judge halted Trump’s second attempt at a ban on travel from several Muslim countries.

And Republican lawmakers probing Trump’s ties to Russia threatened subpoenas over the executive branch’s stonewalling.

In one of the presidential debates, CNBC’s John Harwood asked Trump if he was running “a comic book version of a presidential campaign.” Now Trump seems to be running a cartoon version of a presidency, and he’s Elmer Fudd. His proposals could, if successfully implemented, be ruinous. But so far, at least, Trump has been mercifully incompetent.

He and the GOP-controlled Congress have been on the job two months, but he has signed only nine bills into law, none major. The only law so far this month: a bill naming the Veterans Affairs facility in Butler County, Pa. A McClatchy-Marist poll last month found that a 58 percent majority of Americans reported being “embarrassed” by Trump. For good reason:

Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, lasted just 24 days on the job after misrepresenting his contacts with Russia. Attorney General Jeff Sessions falsely testified that he’d had no contacts with the Russians, forcing his recusal from Russia investigations once the truth came out.

Trump’s nominee to be labor secretary withdrew in the face of broad opposition. His education secretary, who suggested that schools need guns to defend against grizzlies, was confirmed only when the vice president broke a tie vote.

Trump blamed a “so-called” judge for striking down his first travel ban and proposed blaming the court system if there was a terrorist attack; his own Supreme Court nominee called such remarks disheartening.

Trump conducted sensitive diplomacy over a North Korean missile launch with the Japanese prime minister surrounded by diners at his Mar-a-Lago country club, one of whom posted online a photo of the man carrying the nuclear football.

Trump, after inflating the crowd size at his inauguration and embracing a conspiracy theory that 3 million to 5 million Americans voted illegally, falsely accused the media of not covering terrorist attacks. The White House then produced a badly spelled list of attacks, most of which had been covered. Conway invented one attack, the “Bowling Green massacre.”

Conway pitched Ivanka Trump’s fashion line on Fox News. Taxpayers have subsidized millions of dollars’ worth of expenses related to Mar-a-Lago and the Trump sons’ foreign travel.

Trump marked Black History Month with remarks suggesting he thought abolitionist Frederick Douglass was still alive.

Trump opened a rift with Australia in an angry phone call with that ally’s prime minister. He provoked the Mexican president to cancel a trip to Washington, and he baffled the Swedes by alluding to fictitious refugee-related violence “last night in Sweden.” Britain postponed a visit from Trump in hopes that anti-Trump protests would cool.

Trump’s closest aides have leaked several accounts of him raging about the White House. His team is frequently caught off guard by his Twitter attacks, which have included shots at Arnold Schwarzenegger and Nordstrom and misinformation Trump heard on Fox News.

This tragicomedy adds irony when you consider that the main character is the same one who campaigned by saying “they laugh at our stupidity” and “we are led by very, very stupid people” and “I have the best words, but there’s no better word than ‘stupid.’ ”

Now the world has reason to laugh at us — because we’re with stupid.

Twitter: @Milbank

I disagree with one statement in the article I just posted. I read in context the Trump remark about Frederick Douglas and concluded it was a poor choice of wording but not necessarily a claim the man is still with us.