The Watering Hole, Saturday, April 29, 2017: Presidenting Is Hard

In an interview with Reuters, Donald J. Trump, the man who did not win by the largest electoral vote total for a Republican (even since Reagan), actually said, “This [being president] is more work than in my previous life. I thought it would be easier.” This may be because Trump did not know that the entire White House staff would have to be replaced when he took office. He learned this when he sat down with President Obama after winning the election. Apparently no one on his campaign staff knew that either, including his future Chief of Staff and RNC Chairman Reince Priebus.

So I want to send a great big “FUCK YOU!” to every American who voted for this ignorant, egomaniacal, narcissistic, xenophobic, misogynistic, white nationalist, dictator-loving shit stain on the fabric of our society. Read a fucking book! Try to learn exactly what the government is responsible for doing and how it’s done. Learn about the three branches of government and how they interact with each other. Then try to understand why it is so important to put people in those positions who know what the fuck they’re doing! Try to understand why, no, you don’t want an “outsider” elected to the highest public office in the land for his first job as a public servant. Especially when he surrounds himself with similarly inexperienced people who want nothing but to destroy the liberal framework of our society. You idiot Trump supporters elected a man who is going to take away many of the government services upon which most of you depend. (Read that last sentence back to yourselves a few times. The sentence structure may look funny, but it’s what we call “grammatically correct.”) In other words, your lives are about to take a sharp turn for the worse. That’s the price you’re going to pay for your stupidity. Your only hope is to learn. Somehow.

This is a tweet by the Rogue POTUS Staff account, which is generally accepted to be real inside people tweeting about real inner workings in the White House, so there’s a good chance this is not entirely made up stuff. It will make you laugh, but it should unnerve you a little and make you want to get him out of there legally and as soon as possible. He certainly needs mental health treatment, so it’s a good thing Obamacare covers that.

This is our daily open thread. Fell free to leave a cathartic rant upon any subject you wish.

The Watering Hole, Monday, April 24th, 2017: The Boob Tube Prez

In the same troubling vein as the recent Time Magazine interview with President trump, here’s a few disturbing articles about trump’s overriding fascination with all things TV.
A recent Raw Story article demonstrates the incompetence of both trump and his aides, and shows that trump’s is a presidency without anything resembling an “administration”:

“Some of President Donald Trump’s top aides worry that too much of his time is unsupervised, which — in the past — has led to serious unforced errors that undermine him and his administration.”

Yeah, not to mention the entire country, and world stability.

“And while some advisers support the president’s unconventional approach to the job, others worry that these holes in the president’s schedule are where he goes awry and “watches too much TV”, gets overexcited and posts inflammatory — frequently inaccurate — rants online or speaks by phone with people who encourage his worst instincts.”

What trump’s advisors SHOULD primarily be worrying about is the fact that there are so many “holes in the president’s schedule.” His aides should be scheduling tutors in remedial civics, the Constitution, presidential protocol, history, geography, oh, hell, EVERYTHING he doesn’t seem to have a clue about when it comes to the U.S. government. Maybe if they tried teaching him via videos on a big-screen TV – and kept referring to it as “Reality TV” – they might get him to learn something.

From a second Raw Story article:

“The Washington Post said Sunday that in addition to fretting over what the president will do if left alone too long, Trump’s aides and advisers struggle to keep the president from consuming too much TV or watching things that will upset him and cause him to erupt on Twitter.”

Yes, the President of the United States, the most powerful person in the world, needs a babysitter. I think it would be more helpful if they hired a boot camp drill instructor.

A few excerpts from the Washington Post article by Ashley Parker and Robert Costa:

““President Trump is someone who comes to the White House with a sophisticated understanding of how to communicate, the power of television, the power of imagery, the power of message, and how message, messenger and delivery all work together,” said Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president.”

Although Kellyanne managed to actually string words together that made a somewhat coherent sentence, her seeming point that trump’s TV savvy makes him better qualified as a president is ridiculous. The crudeness and ignorance of the actual content of trump’s communications, messages and delivery overshadow any “sophisticated understanding” of the medium used.

“He is also a natural showman. During the campaign, he riveted viewers with his raucous rallies, where he often spoke for more than hour without any notes or teleprompters. And in TV interviews, he sometimes offers tips on matters including lighting and chair placement, with an intuitive sense of what makes for good TV.”

Being a “natural showman” is all well and good for magicians, game-show hosts, carnival barkers, and snake-oil salesman, but again, it is not the top qualification for running a working government. And trump’s speeches where he rambled for “more than [an] hour without notes or teleprompters” are infamous for their non-sequiturs, weird tangents, and outright made-up bullshit.

“During a small working lunch at the White House last month, the question of job security in President Trump’s tumultuous White House came up, and one of the attendees wondered whether press secretary Sean Spicer might be the first to go.

The president’s response was swift and unequivocal. “I’m not firing Sean Spicer,” he said, according to someone familiar with the encounter. “That guy gets great ratings. Everyone tunes in.”

Trump even likened Spicer’s daily news briefings to a daytime soap opera, noting proudly that his press secretary attracted nearly as many viewers.

For Trump — a reality TV star who parlayed his blustery-yet-knowing on-air persona into a winning political brand — television is often the guiding force of his day, both weapon and scalpel, megaphone and news feed.”

This is a president for whom “ratings” and appearance are more important than honesty and integrity. A president who is superficial, crass, and so limited in his ability to learn or mature that, at 70, he still bases decisions as president on what he sees on cable TV, particularly Fox, his favorite propaganda network. A frightening concept, right?

What I find almost as frightening is that the Washington Post article isn’t screaming “THIS PRESIDENT IS TOTALLY FUBAR”, or even “THIS PRESIDENT IS INCOMPETENT”, let alone “THIS IS NOT NORMAL!”

This is our Open Thread – say anything you want.

The Watering Hole: Sunday, April 16th, 2017: Easter Sunday Roast

The Tappan Zee Bridge, which crosses the Hudson not very far to the south of us, has just been equipped with a live-feed Peregrine Falcon camera. So now that April the giraffe has calved, one can switch gears and watch for a hatching and subsequent hatchlings.

Peregrine chicks are cute little balls of white fluff:

It’s hard to believe that those adorably ungainly hatchlings eventually turn into such impressively majestic birds of prey:

And for those who celebrate Easter, here’s the Easter Rat to wish everyone a Happy Easter!

This is our Open Thread – just go with it.

The Watering Hole, Saturday, April 15th, 2017: Eve of Destruction? Enjoy the View

If we’re lucky, trump and/or Kim Jong-Un won’t blow up the planet this coming week. Unless something insane happens during the imminent fly-by of asteroid 2014 JO25, on April 19th, at a distance of 1.1 million miles, we could get through the week.

And if we’re really lucky and make it safely through these fucked-up times, and humankind is still around ten years from now, another asteroid will be visiting us at approximately 236,000 miles, about the same distance away as our moon. If the scientists are off a bit in their calculations, who knows, perhaps 1999 AN10 will be merciful and finish us off.

In the meantime, enjoy these glorious pictures of a wide variety of places on this planet we call home.

This is our Open Thread-say anything.

The Watering Hole, Monday, April 10, 2017: Open Thread

Oh, and in case you missed the anti-trump 6-part series by the L.A. Times Editorial Board, here’s a link to Part I, “Our Dishonest President”. Links to the rest of the series are included at the top of the first piece. Caveat: I have not read all of them, as they are difficult to read when one’s outrage level keeps going up to eleven.