Hope the President does a good job for USA

[monarch64]

Mon
Let me ask you...who would you like to nominate to represent the Dem. party in 2020?

Every single FEMALE candidate who is qualified. And I would REJECT every single qualified MALE.

That's it. Call me sexist/ageist/whatever. You've no leg to stand on because...200+ years of discrimination!

 

[Calliecake]

LOL!!!! @monarch64

 

[Matata]

In the new book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” mental-health experts unpack the mortal danger of the President’s mind.
The question is not whether the President is crazy but whether he is crazy like a fox or crazy like crazy. And, if there is someone who can know the difference, should this person, or this group of people, say something—or would that be crazy (or unethical, or undemocratic)?

Jay Rosen, a media scholar at New York University, has been arguing for months that “many things Trump does are best explained by Narcissistic Personality Disorder,” and that journalists should start saying so. In March, theTimes published a letter by the psychiatrists Robert Jay Lifton and Judith L. Herman, who stated that Trump’s “repeated failure to distinguish between reality and fantasy, and his outbursts of rage when his fantasies are contradicted” suggest that, “faced with crisis, President Trump will lack the judgment to respond rationally.” Herman, who is a professor at Harvard Medical School, also co-authored an earlier letter to President Obama, in November, urging him to find a way to subject President-elect Trump to a neuropsychiatric evaluation.

Lifton and Herman are possibly the greatest living American thinkers in the field of mental health. Lifton, who trained both as a psychiatrist and a psychoanalyst, is also a psychohistorian; he has written on survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan, on Nazi doctors, and on other expressions of what he calls “an extreme century” (the one before this one). Herman, who has done pioneering research on trauma, has written most eloquently on the near-impossibility of speaking about the unimaginable—and now that Donald Trump is, unimaginably, President, she has been speaking out in favor of speaking up. Herman and Lifton have now written introductory articles to a collection called “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.” It is edited by Bandy X. Lee, a psychiatrist at the Yale School of Medicine who, earlier this year, convened a conference called Duty to Warn.

Contributors to the book entertain the possibility of applying a variety of diagnoses and descriptions to the President. Philip Zimbardo, who is best known for his Stanford Prison Experiment, and his co-author, Rosemary Sword, propose that Trump is an “extreme present hedonist.” He may also be a sociopath, a malignant narcissist, borderline, on the bipolar spectrum, a hypomanic, suffering from delusional disorder, or cognitively impaired. None of these conditions is a novelty in the Oval Office. Lyndon Johnson was bipolar, and John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton might have been characterized as “extreme present hedonists,” narcissists, and hypomanics. Richard Nixon was, in addition to his narcissism, a sociopath who suffered from delusions, and Ronald Reagan’s noticeable cognitive decline began no later than his second term. Different authors suggest that America “dodged the bullet” with Reagan, that Nixon’s malignant insanity was exposed in time, and that Clinton’s afflictions might have propelled him to Presidential success, just as similar traits can aid the success of entrepreneurs. (Steve Jobs comes up.)

Behind the obvious political leanings of the authors lurks a conceptual problem. Definitions of mental illness are mutable; they vary from culture to culture and change with time. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is edited every few years to reflect changes in norms: some conditions stop being viewed as pathologies, while others are elevated from mere idiosyncrasies to the status of illness. In a footnote to her introduction, Herman acknowledges the psychiatric profession’s “ignominious history” of misogyny and homophobia, but this is misleading: the problem wasn’t so much that psychiatrists were homophobic but that homosexuality fell so far outside the social norm as to virtually preclude the possibility of a happy, healthy life.

Political leadership is not the norm. I once saw Alexander Esenin-Volpin, one of the founders of the Soviet dissident movement, receive his medical documents, dating back to his hospitalizations decades earlier. His diagnosis of mental illness was based explicitly on his expressed belief that protest could overturn the Soviet regime. Esenin-Volpin laughed with delight when he read the document. It was funny. It was also accurate: the idea that the protest of a few intellectuals could bring down the Soviet regime was insane. Esenin-Volpin, in fact, struggled with mental-health issues throughout his life. He was also a visionary.

No one of sound mind would suspect Trump of being a visionary. But is there an objective, value-free way to draw the very subjective and generally value-laden distinction between vision and insanity? More to the point, is there a way to avert the danger posed by Trump’s craziness that won’t set us on the path of policing the thinking of democratically elected leaders? Zimbardo suggests that there should be a vetting process for Presidential candidates, akin to psychological tests used for “positions ranging from department store sales clerk to high-level executive.” Craig Malkin, a lecturer at Harvard Medical School and the author of “Rethinking Narcissism,” suggests relying on “people already trained to provide functional and risk assessment based entirely on observation—forensic psychiatrists and psychologists as well as ‘profilers’ groomed by the CIA, the FBI, and various law enforcement agencies.” This is a positively terrifying idea. As Mark Joseph Stern wrote in Slate in response to last December’s calls for the Electoral College to un-elect Trump, it “only made sense if you assumed as a starting point that America would never hold another presidential election.”

Psychiatrists who contributed to “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” are moved by the sense that they have a special knowledge they need to communicate to the public. But Trump is not their patient. The phrase “duty to warn,” which refers to a psychiatrist’s obligation to break patient confidentiality in case of danger to a third party, cannot apply to them literally. As professionals, these psychiatrists have a kind of optics that may allow them to pick out signs of danger in Trump’s behavior or statements, but, at the same time, they are analyzing what we all see: the President’s persistent, blatant lies (there is some disagreement among contributors on whether he knows he is lying or is, in fact, delusional); his contradictory statements; his inability to hold a thought; his aggression; his lack of empathy. None of this is secret, special knowledge—it is all known to the people who voted for him. We might ask what’s wrong with them rather than what’s wrong with him.

Thomas Singer, a psychiatrist and Jungian psychoanalyst from San Francisco, suggests that the election reflects “a woundedness at the core of the American group Self,” with Trump offering protection from further injury and even a cure for the wound. The conversation turns, as it must, from diagnosing the President to diagnosing the people who voted for him. That has the effect of making Trump appear normal—in the sense that, psychologically, he is offering his voters what they want and need.

Knowing what we know about Trump and what psychiatrists know about aggression, impulse control, and predictive behavior, we are all in mortal danger. He is the man with his finger on the nuclear button. Contributors to “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” ask whether this creates a “duty to warn.” But the real question is, Should democracy allow a plurality of citizens to place the lives of an entire country in the hands of a madman? Crazy as this idea is, it’s not a question psychiatrists can answer.

• Masha Gessen has written several books on Russia, including “The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia.”
  
  

 

[OreoRosies86]

Matata from where I sit, the problem is that the insanity is met with so much complacency because people just assume the advisors, cabinet members, department heads, all of them are going to somehow swoop in at the last minute and keep him from doing something irreversibly stupid. "Sure, I wish he wouldn't tweet so much, but if it came down to it so-and-so would intervene." Rome is already on fire and sane people are sick of the fiddling.

 

[Matata]

Matata from where I sit, the problem is that the insanity is met with so much complacency because people just assume the advisors, cabinet members, department heads, all of them are going to somehow swoop in at the last minute and keep him from doing something irreversibly stupid.

I have to keep hoping that all those people you mention will take action if he brings us to the brink of nuclear war but I'm also aware that I'm perilously close to this by merely making that statement. As long as republicans make inroads for their agenda (and they are unfortunately doing so), they won't do anything about him.

 

[ksinger]

Jay Rosen, a media scholar at New York University, has been arguing for months that “many things Trump does are best explained by Narcissistic Personality Disorder,” and that journalists should start saying so. In March, theTimes published a letter by the psychiatrists Robert Jay Lifton and Judith L. Herman, who stated that Trump’s “repeated failure to distinguish between reality and fantasy, and his outbursts of rage when his fantasies are contradicted” suggest that, “faced with crisis, President Trump will lack the judgment to respond rationally.” Herman, who is a professor at Harvard Medical School, also co-authored an earlier letter to President Obama, in November, urging him to find a way to subject President-elect Trump to a neuropsychiatric evaluation.

Hahahahaha! Now who was delusional?

Lifton and Herman are possibly the greatest living American thinkers in the field of mental health. Lifton, who trained both as a psychiatrist and a psychoanalyst, is also a psychohistorian; he has written on survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan, on Nazi doctors, and on other expressions of what he calls “an extreme century” (the one before this one). Herman, who has done pioneering research on trauma, has written most eloquently on the near-impossibility of speaking about the unimaginable—and now that Donald Trump is, unimaginably, President, she has been speaking out in favor of speaking up. Herman and Lifton have now written introductory articles to a collection called “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.” It is edited by Bandy X. Lee, a psychiatrist at the Yale School of Medicine who, earlier this year, convened a conference called Duty to Warn.

Contributors to the book entertain the possibility of applying a variety of diagnoses and descriptions to the President. Philip Zimbardo, who is best known for his Stanford Prison Experiment, and his co-author, Rosemary Sword, propose that Trump is an “extreme present hedonist.” He may also be a sociopath, a malignant narcissist, borderline, on the bipolar spectrum, a hypomanic, suffering from delusional disorder, or cognitively impaired. None of these conditions is a novelty in the Oval Office. Lyndon Johnson was bipolar, and John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton might have been characterized as “extreme present hedonists,” narcissists, and hypomanics. Richard Nixon was, in addition to his narcissism, a sociopath who suffered from delusions, and Ronald Reagan’s noticeable cognitive decline began no later than his second term. Different authors suggest that America “dodged the bullet” with Reagan, that Nixon’s malignant insanity was exposed in time, and that Clinton’s afflictions might have propelled him to Presidential success, just as similar traits can aid the success of entrepreneurs. (Steve Jobs comes up.)

Behind the obvious political leanings of the authors lurks a conceptual problem. Definitions of mental illness are mutable; they vary from culture to culture and change with time. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is edited every few years to reflect changes in norms: some conditions stop being viewed as pathologies, while others are elevated from mere idiosyncrasies to the status of illness. In a footnote to her introduction, Herman acknowledges the psychiatric profession’s “ignominious history” of misogyny and homophobia...

As an aside: Hmmm. Whence the biomedical "brain chemical imbalance" model of mental illness when we've just admitted to mutable "diagnoses" that vary from culture to culture and change every few years? Still, NPD, while I might not think it's a diagnosis in the same sense as something measurable rather than observational (my A1C is a 9 = diabetes vs my dog just died / I'm a really good actress = clinical depression), is a pretty good descriptive for...something...that in this case doesn't actually take an advanced degree to see. Just a willingness. I prefer to keep it simple and call it a flavor of evil. I know, very old-fashioned, but evil as a concept still has its uses.

...is there an objective, value-free way to draw the very subjective and generally value-laden distinction between vision and insanity?
Put simply, no.

Psychiatrists who contributed to “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” are moved by the sense that they have a special knowledge they need to communicate to the public. ........., they are analyzing what we all see: the President’s persistent, blatant lies (there is some disagreement among contributors on whether he knows he is lying or is, in fact, delusional); his contradictory statements; his inability to hold a thought; his aggression; his lack of empathy. None of this is secret, special knowledge—it is all known to the people who voted for him.

Knowing what we know about Trump and what psychiatrists know about aggression, impulse control, and predictive behavior, we are all in mortal danger. He is the man with his finger on the nuclear button. Contributors to “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” ask whether this creates a “duty to warn.” But the real question is, Should democracy allow a plurality of citizens to place the lives of an entire country in the hands of a madman? Crazy as this idea is, it’s not a question psychiatrists can answer.

Again, psychiatrists flatter themselves too much. The danger is pretty easy to see. Their commentary doesn't add much to the seeing. But hey, at least most people on both sides who are more than a micron deep, are pretty much in agreement on the details, just not what they mean. Or how important they are. It's back to that willingness again.

Elliott, it's not complacency, it's wanting to live what is left of our lives in some semblance of normalcy. Doing a mini stroke-out daily right up until a bomb hits is not going to change the fact that individuals can do virtually nil. We're all gonna have to ride this baby to the end, and maybe into the dirt. No psychiatrists can save us at this point. We've dodged quite a few bullets before (one that was missed above was Wilson. That dude was scary as hell), but this time, we almost certainly won't be so lucky. It may not be nuclear, but it's going to be lasting, whatever happens.

 

[t-c]

No proof on Russian hacking yet. Maybe it is time to change the voting rule then my vote will count in Ca.

You should get this right: there is proof of Russian hacking and interfering with the election. What you may still question is whether there is proof of the Trump campaign working with the Russians to affect the election. The difference is important and everyone should be clear of this.

 

[t-c]

This is an interesting summary of the Steele dossier and what parts have gotten support from information that have been disclosed since it was written. From the Guardian:

The Trump-Russia dossier: why its findings grow more significant by the day
by Julian Borger

... But as every passing month brings more leaks, revelations in the press, and more progress in the investigations, the Steele dossier has generally gained in credibility, rather than lost it. ... [read more here.]

 

[Matata]

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entr...2b3e4b00377980b25b4?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009

We have returned to the Dark Ages.

 

[Calliecake]

We sure have @Matata Do people not realize these protections were put in place to protect THEM. The stupidity of this country is astounding.

 

[Tekate]

To you Elliot that is one of the funniest retorts EVER. and true.

 

[Matata]

Those who reman hopeful the amoral dotard will do a good job for the USA probably think his appearance at this meeting is to build bridges across the divide.....

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2017/10/1...2&tse_id=INF_ea80cb60af1611e7952ec9abf6008d70

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump-to-speak-at-value-voters-summit-on-friday/article/2637160

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/family-research-council

 

[Calliecake]

John Kelly is talking at a press conference right now, defending Trump. He said Trump's tweets don't make his job harder.

 

[House Cat]

Is he talking about the executive order he signed today that will help to dismantle Obamacare?

 

[MaisOuiMadame]

I'm looking at Trump in disbelief and fear from Europe. I just wanted to give all the regular posters here a heads up that your intelligent analyses and discussions of the various situations ARE making me feel better everyday. There is a sane and extremely self reflected majority in the U.S. Don't give up. HANG in there!

 

[AGBF]

I know that all of you know that Trump does not understand The Constitution or the way America works. I also know you all have probably already heard or read this. I thought it should be documented in one of our threads, however. The Moron, as we have been affectionately calling him lately, has said so many outrageous things that it is hard to document even the most egregious of them. We all have to keep on our toes if we want to do it!

Here is his latest:

“It’s frankly disgusting the way the press is able to write whatever they want to write,” Trump said. “And people should look into it.”

Yes, a free press is, indeed, very destructive to democracy. Somebody should put some constraints on the press or there will be no order!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...6288544af98_story.html?utm_term=.4f61f2e10ee8

Deb

 

[Calliecake]

@House Cat. He didn't say much regarding the health care executive order. A new healthcare bill will not be introduced until probably next spring. This executive order is to take care of people in the meantime.

Kelly said he and Trump are frustrated with the media.

Kelly said he is not quitting or being hired. He is not thinking of leaving.

Kelly said his job isn't to control Trump.

Kelly said we should be concerned about North Korea. Hopefully this can be resolved with diplomacy.


He was obviously there to try to calm things down. He made it sound like they all get along in the White House. Trumps tweets were just defending himself against Corker. @House Cat would you expect anything else from this administration?

I had two phone calls when the conference was on. I need to go read up on everything that was said,

 

[AGBF]

I suspect dotard-in-chief is silent about Puerto Rico because he doesn't know it's a US territory....

Well, he has fixed this. Thank goodness he has turned his attention to Puerto Rico!

"Trump’s Latest Outrage Against Puerto Rico"

(excerpted from "The New York Times")

"You know something is wrong when Wall Street loan sharks show more heart than the president of the United States.

Last week, some of the companies that hold Puerto Rico’s $74 billion in debt and had been suing to force payment, no matter the consequences, started talking about cutting the island a break after Hurricanes Irma and Marie.

One firm said it was dropping its lawsuit (at least for now). A top executive of a mutual fund admitted that Wall Street miscalculated the risk of buying all those unsustainable tax-free bonds from Puerto Rico in the first place and may actually have to lose some money on the deal.

After all, said Dan Fuss, vice chairman of Loomis Sayles & Co.: 'They are U.S. citizens. We are U.S. citizens. We have an obligation to help.'

In one of his deranged early-morning Twitter rants, Trump said on Thursday that Puerto Rico’s 'infrastructure was disaster before hurricanes.' He said Congress, which he knows perfectly well can’t do much of anything, has to 'decide how much to spend' and warned that he 'cannot keep' federal disaster relief officials and the military in 'P.R. forever!'

He quoted a public-affairs show host for the right-wing Sinclair Broadcast Group as saying the financial crisis in Puerto Rico is 'largely of their own making.'

Puerto Rico’s government and business bear a responsibility for the financial crisis there, but even more so do American bankers and Congress, which dragged its feet on the issue for far too long.

Trump must be aware that Puerto Ricans are citizens of the United States, even though they have always been treated as second-class citizens. After all, he was just there recently, tossing rolls of 'beautiful, soft' paper towels into a crowd with that familiar smug look on his face.

Trump must know that he has made no threat to withdraw aid from Texas — which, unlike Puerto Rico, he considers part of his constituency — and that federal disaster aid and recovery efforts often take years.

He also possesses detailed, highly technical knowledge about Puerto Rico. He knows, for example, that it 'is an island, surrounded by water. Big water. Ocean water.'

But the president’s handling of the disaster in Puerto Rico has been shameful from the start. He heaped scorn on San Juan’s mayor for appealing for help to what she assumed was his humanity. And he whined that Puerto Ricans had 'thrown our budget a little out of whack,' because of course they must have planned the hurricane.

He also congratulated Puerto Ricans during his recent visit on having suffered only 16 deaths from the hurricane, unlike a 'real catastrophe.'

(Shortly after Trump left, the office of Gov. Ricardo Rosselló announced that the death toll was more that twice that, which Trump and Rosselló had to know when they met. It beggars belief that 19 more bodies were discovered while Trump was climbing the stairs to his airplane.)

As usual, it’s impossible to divine Trump’s precise motivations.

Maybe he was trying to distract attention from all the other ways he is harming American citizens by gutting Obamacare, advocating a huge tax break for rich folks like him, threatening nuclear war, trying to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement, shredding environmental protections and, well, it’s too long a list for this column.

Maybe he heard something on a politically friendly TV show and decided to regurgitate it on Twitter.

Or maybe he just believes, as so many other American politicians sadly do, that Puerto Ricans are inferior and that they are freeloaders.

...

"​

 

[House Cat]

@House Cat. He didn't say much regarding the health care executive order. A new healthcare bill will not be introduced until probably next spring. This executive order is to take care of people in the meantime.

Kelly said he and Trump are frustrated with the media.

Kelly said he is not quitting or being hired. He is not thinking of leaving.

Kelly said his job isn't to control Trump.

Kelly said we should be concerned about North Korea. Hopefully this can be resolved with diplomacy.


He was obviously there to try to calm things down. He made it sound like they all get along in the White House. Trumps tweets were just defending himself against Corker. @House Cat would you expect anything else from this administration?

I had two phone calls when the conference was on. I need to go read up on everything that was said,

Bloomberg just reported that this executive order will cost "the government" $194 Billion dollars. I keep seeing reports that it will dismantle? I'm feeling confused.

I overthink everything...so this is how the Kelly stuff went in my head this morning.. I imagined Trump walking up to Kelly and coercing him into saying everything he said during the press conference. Trump, standing way too close to Kelly and breathing on him in some nauseating way while Kelly squirmed or ate it up...who the frick knows?

What motivates a person to want to support such incompetence and foulness? Maybe Kelly thinks he's protecting the country by acting as a buffer? This is my only hope.

There will be so many books written by the people of this administration.

 

[Calliecake]

@House Cat, I just read the same Bloomberg article and was coming here to post. It sounds like older and/or sick Americans will be stuck with much higher premiums. I also read last night that this would negatively impact hospitals, especially those in rural areas. My hope is these changes will negatively impact Trump supporters. They asked for this, lets see how they feel about the reality. I have no idea why it is so hard for people to understand that when everyone pays into the pool, we get better healthcare. Very few of us get thru life without having a severe illness at some point.

I agree with your thoughts on John Kelly. This was all smoke and mirrors to try to convince us they all get along in the White House. Trumps friend of 30 years Thomas Barrack gave an interview with I believe The Washington Post the other day. He stated he was shocked and stunned by Trump's comments and rhetoric. He basically said the complete opposite yesterday on Trump. In 24 hours he completely changed his story.

 

[AGBF]

"The New York Times" has a good editorial on the new low Trump brought to his handling of the Puerto Rican disaster, although I do not think that even they can do justice to his inhumanity.

Link...https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/12/...-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

 

[E B]

What motivates a person to want to support such incompetence and foulness? Maybe Kelly thinks he's protecting the country by acting as a buffer? This is my only hope.

There have been plenty of credible whispers about this and it's what I believe. If not Kelly, it'd probably be someone as crazy/corrupt as Trump. I believe that there are good people willing to destroy their careers if it means protecting us from him. I have to.

 

[E B]

Trump is such a raging narcissist, anyone who criticizes him (even constructively,) will get the boot. IMO: No amount of law-breaking will matter if you're loyal (hello, Joe Arpaio!), but if you criticize, well, you see what he does. Good people have to walk on eggshells in order to protect us. It sucks, but that's reality with who we have as president. I'm putting hope in Mattis and Kelly being good guys. The corrupt bootlickers like Price, Mulvaney, Mnuchin, etc. (remember all that 'draining the swamp' talk ) are pretty obvious, but I think a lot of the (non-classified) leaks are coming from those desperate to leave but stay because they know they'll be replaced with far worse.

 

[Dee*Jay]

Newsweek article: http://www.newsweek.com/robert-reich-unraveling-donald-j-trump-684213

Two caveats: This is published as an *opinion piece* and it uses an unamed source -- a "former member of congress." I'm putting this out there in the very beginning so no one feels the need to go bananas over the fact that this is not a fact.

Now, for your reading pleasure...

ROBERT REICH: THE UNRAVELING OF DONALD J. TRUMP

Last week, Senator Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, charged in an interview with the New York Times that Trump was treating his office like “a reality show,” with reckless threats toward other countries that could set the nation “on the path to World War III.”

Corker said he was concerned about Trump. “He would have to concern anyone who cares about our nation,” Corker said, adding that “the vast majority of our caucus understands what we’re dealing with here … the volatility that we’re dealing with and the tremendous amount of work that it takes by people around him to keep him in the middle of the road.”

Corker’s interview was followed by a report from Gabriel Sherman of Vanity Fair,who wrote that the situation has gotten so out of control that Trump’s chief of staff, John Kelly, and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis have discussed ways to stop Trump should he order a nuclear attack.

Kelly has tried to keep Trump focused by intercepting outside phone calls to the White House and restricting access to the Oval Office. Many of Trump’s advisors believe he is “unstable” and “unravelling” quickly.

Is Trump really unraveling? Are Republican leaders ready to pull the plug?

I phoned an old friend, a Republican former member of Congress who keeps up with what’s going on. I scribbled notes as he talked:

Me: So what’s up? Is Corker alone, or are others also ready to call it quits with Trump?

He: All I know is they’re simmering over there.

Me: Flake and McCain have come pretty close.

He: Yeah. Others are thinking about doing what Bob did. Sounding the alarm. They think Trump’s nuts. Unfit. Dangerous.

Me: Well, they already knew that, didn’t they?

He: But now it’s personal. It started with the Sessions stuff. Jeff was as loyal as they come. Trump’s crapping on him was like kicking your puppy. And then, you know, him beating up on Mitch for the Obamacare fiasco. And going after Flake and the others.

Me: So they’re pissed off?

He: Not just that. I mean, they have thick hides. The personal stuff got them to notice all the other things. The wild stuff, like those threats to North Korea. Tillerson would leave tomorrow if he wasn’t so worried Trump would go nuclear, literally.

Me: You think Trump is really thinking nuclear war?

He: Who knows what’s in his head? But I can tell you this. He’s not listening to anyone. Not a soul. He’s got the nuclear codes and, well, it scares the hell out of me. It’s starting to scare all of them. That’s really why Bob spoke up.

Me: So what could they do? I mean, even if the whole Republican leadership was willing to say publicly he’s unfit to serve, what then?

He: Bingo! The emperor has no clothes. It’s a signal to everyone they can bail. Have to bail to save their skins. I mean, Trump could be the end of the whole goddam Republican party.

Me: If he starts a nuclear war, that could be the end of everything.

He: Yeah, right. So when they start bailing on him, the stage is set.

Me: For what?

He: Impeachment. 25th amendment.

Me: You think Republicans would go that far?

He: Not yet. Here’s the thing. They really want to get this tax bill through. That’s all they have going for them. They don’t want to face voters in ’18 or ’20 without something to show for it. They’re just praying Trump doesn’t do something really, really stupid before the tax bill.

Me: Like a nuclear war?

He: Look, all I can tell you is many of the people I talk with are getting freaked out. It’s not as if there’s any careful strategizing going on. Not like, well, do we balance the tax bill against nuclear war? No, no. They’re worried as hell.

They’re also worried about Trump crazies, all the ignoramuses he’s stirred up. I mean, Roy Moore? How many more of them do you need to destroy the party?

Me: So what’s gonna happen?

He: You got me. I’m just glad I’m not there anymore. Trump’s not just a moron. He’s a despicable human being. And he’s getting crazier. Paranoid. Unhinged. Everyone knows it.

I mean, we’re in shit up to our eyeballs with this guy.

 

[Matata]

I had hoped to spend one day this week not in tears or enraged about what 45 has done and is continuing to do to destroy this country and I should have ignored news media to achieve that goal but like a gawker at an accident scene, I looked when I should have just driven on by. Note the look of vapid stupidity and arrogance on Ben Carson's face.

 

[AGBF]

I had hoped to spend one day this week not in tears or enraged about what 45 has done and is continuing to do to destroy this country and I should have ignored news media to achieve that goal but like a gawker at an accident scene, I looked when I should have just driven on by. Note the look of vapid stupidity and arrogance on Ben Carson's face.

Wow. She was excellent! I am so glad you posted that, Matata, as I had missed it. It was worth seeing that disgusting pig Carson's face to hear the Congresswoman's eloquent tirade against Trump.

 

[E B]

Remember when Obama was referred to as ‘Golfer-in-Chief’? Or when Trump said he’d never have time to golf, he’d be so busy winning? Those were the days.

 

[t-c]

Who are these idiots?! Clearly they have no understanding on the human cost of war in the Korean Peninsula -- or they're horrible enough to not care.
Almost half of Republicans want war with North Korea, a new poll says. Is it the Trump Effect?
By Aaron Blake, October 15
There was a pretty striking finding in Thursday's Quinnipiac University poll: Fully 46 percent of Republicans — a plurality — said they would support a preemptive strike against North Korea.

That's nearly half of President Trump's party that is ready for war — today — with Kim Jong Un, his nuclear weapons and all. (Forty-one percent said they opposed a preemptive strike.)
...
It’s difficult to believe that Republican support for a preemptive strike suddenly rose by 16 points over the past two weeks, given that all of Trump’s comments noted above came before both polls — and given that there haven’t been many other developments of late. More likely, it seems, the truth lies somewhere between the two polls, with the questions’ wording affecting how people responded.

But it’s also true that the president is a politician who is very focused on what his base likes. He has proved he can affect its views and priorities. So perhaps it’s no surprise that the GOP is at least somewhat more ready to strike North Korea today than it was back in 2006. And either way, it’s still a substantial proportion of the party. [read more here]

 

[E B]

Did anyone catch Jeff Flake's speech just now? Blistering (to Trump, the complicit GOP) and important. It'll play over and over-- be sure to watch.

It's a shame these congresspeople are only able to speak the truth when they announce they will no longer run.

 

[ABKIS]

Found it in another thread. Listening to the speech now. LOVE IT!!! Here's the link:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ment-speech-annotated/?utm_term=.28816dffaccc

 

[Matata]

Did anyone catch Jeff Flake's speech just now? Blistering (to Trump, the complicit GOP) and important. It'll play over and over-- be sure to watch.

Flake threw down the gauntlet. Cheeto is gonna blow up Twitter over this. Flake must know that cheeto will try to destroy him. I hope he's strong enough to survive the assault from cheeto and from those within his own party.