More Chaos, Partial Gov't Shutdown. Now We Know Dotard Takes Orders From Right Wing Puppeteers & Putin

"Yes, sir, Mr. Limbaugh! I am takin' orders on the wall from you and Fox 'n Friends!  Now, I gotta go shine Mr. Putin's boots!"


"Every day since this man has taken over, there has been some terrible event that has afflicted the country. ..When you pull back the curtain what you realize is that he is a puppet for Fox News and he's a puppet for Putin, for the Saudis and for the dictators".  - Former Sen. Barbara Boxer, last night on 'All In'

 "I believe this man is afflicted by a seriously sick psyche such that the provisions of the Constitution that transferring his powers to the Vice President should now be brought to bear."-  Former Sen. Gordon Humphreys, last night on 'All In'

Well, a partial government shutdown has occurred, even as the screeching buffoon called Trump tries to foist the blame onto the Dems.  But do not be deceived by the fog of Right wing or Trumpite baloney, this is all on the "reckless and dangerous" Dotard Donnie.   And no matter how much this deranged nutcase yelps about blaming the Dems this is all  on him, and his Reeptard cheering section in the Reich media. Let us recall he openly admitted ownership for it before the press in an Oval Office meeting last week with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, see e.g.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-CuAbbZUoI

How the hell did this all unfold given the Senate had completed a CR (continuing resolution) to keep the government going at least into the new year and originally had Dotard's tacit buy-in?  Well, what happened is that Dotard Donnie again succumbed to his FOX TV watching addiction (which is mostly what he does each day, besides tweeting) and happened to hear and see a bevy of right wingers (Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Fox and Friends)  teeing off on him, calling him assorted names ("gutless") , and not following through on his promises re: the wall.  Re: Fox and Friends, The Guardian newspaper once said the show “manages to serve as a court sycophant, whispering in the ear of the king, criticizing his perceived enemies and fluffing his feathers." 

This odious sycophant chorus was then amplified by two House Tea Baggers, Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan,  who pushed the vote to kill the CR.   It then went to the Senate, where 60 votes were needed - given this is a budgetary issue - but they weren't there. There are only 51 Republicans currently after all. So given the lack of votes to support any idiotic border wall, the CR failed as well and here we are.  700,000 government workers now with no money coming in, and just before the Christmas holiday.

Let's also be clear as glass, that as I'd written in an earlier post (Dec. 12) , all this bullshit about the "wall" has nothing to do with Trump actually wanting a real wall or any "border security".   Trump could have had $25 b in the summer  toward his wall but decided to crap all over the deal because it included at least something for Democrats: protecting the DACA folks.  No, all Trump and his minions are about is posturing for the Reeptardo base and doing a big show.   The frightening aspect is we have a "resident" who is incapable of analytical evaluation, won't read his daily briefs, and is hostage to cable TV - from which he takes instructions from whatever nitwit is barking at him at a given time.

As political commentator  Ezra Klein made clear (on Dec 11, 'All In') about Trump's motivations in his earlier antics  i.e. in a White House meeting with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer:

"Give Pelosi and Schumer credit for putting him in a corner, What struck me so deeply about that meeting is that Donald Trump doesn't himself want the wall.  That is not the meeting you want if you want the wall. The difference in what he wants in funding and what he's currently got in funding is about $3.7 billion.  That is nothing in the federal budget. 

If he wanted that wall he would not have put that meeting in front of the cameras, and he'd be willing to give them something for it.....But the thing about Trump is he doesn't want the wall, he wants the fight over the wall. So I don't think they exactly know what to do about a president who doesn't want his policies because he doesn't care about policy. What he wants to do is have fights with Democrats about policy or about policy ideas or words that sound like policy ideas. And have those fights on camera.

The fact those fights don't redound well for him, the fact he's not in a popular position doesn't seen to really bother him. Trump runs his presidency as if the ratings on the television show he's starring on are good and the punches are seen. And today was a good day in the Trump Show."

 As Schumer related yesterday:

“The Senate UNANIMOUSLY passed a bipartisan solution to avoid a shutdown. Then you threw another temper tantrum and convinced the House to ignore that compromise,”

But this is what happens when you have a narcissistic, psychologically warped, dyspeptic imp befouling the highest office in the land and who willingly takes marching orders from a clique of right wing extremist assholes.  Oh, but he's also taking orders from Vlad Putin and Turkey's autocrat Recip Tayyip Erdogan  -  after ordering all U.S. troops out of Syria from a spontaneous brain fart....errr... random tweet.

Look, let's back up a tad here.   I was never for barging into Syria in the first place because of the obvious risk of accidental confrontation with the Russians (and indeed, at least one incident did happen in which dozens of Russians were killed).  But as geopolitical strategist Ian  Bremmer put it three days ago  (CBS Early Show interview) , there is a right and wrong way to pull out of a country.

Trump, using a random tweet did it exactly the wrong way, the chaotic way, leaving thoussands of Kurds exposed now to Erdogan's backlash. Already 10,000 Kurds have lost their lives and more stand to - victimized by the Turks and likely the Russians too. Recall the U.S. fighting ISIS and Kurd partnership dates to 2014 (during Obama's tenure) when the Kurds mounted an inspired last ditch defense of Kobani against the ISIL vipers.  The Kurds could have stood down and instead consolidated their own gains, but instead fought on against ISIS at U.S. urging.   Now that has been for naught, as Trump has tossed them to the wolves, and likely enabled ISIS  resurgence.

But let's go back to the ways of a traitor again, or as former Republican Sen. Gordon Humphreys put it last night on All In, "treasonous actions".  This latest move has all the earmarks of yet another gift to Putin, perhaps made as early as the 2016 campaign -but delayed as a head fake to the press. Why?  Because. without U.S. forces to humbug his Syrian- Mideast aspirations, Putin can consolidate Russian expansion from his base at Latakia on the Mediterranean.  No more risking dogfights with U.S.  jets for control of air space, and no more U.S. attacks on Russians on the ground.  No wonder Putin was ecstatic (as much as this poker-faced guy can be) at  his Moscow  press conference two days ago, e.g.

US Syria pullout draws Kurdish condemnation and Putin's praise ...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/.../syria-kurds-trump-troop-withdrawal-isis-turkey

Putin likely was especially pleased Wednesday when Dotard Donnie babbled on Twitter, the chosen medium of five-year olds:

"Now we've won -- it's time to come back. They're getting ready. You're going to see them soon....So our boys -- our young women, our men -- they're all coming back, and they're coming back now. We won. And that's the way we want it."

The fool then pointed up to the sky and blabbed: "And that's the way THEY want it."

Who "they" is we don't know and cannot say.  Perhaps Reptilian aliens  from a planet in Zeta Reticuli?   E.g.


As over 10 million followers of the Reptilian gov't conspiracy meme believe.

What we do know is that Pentagon officials have subsequently  confirmed that planning is underway to withdraw troops.

In the words of analyst Nick Patton Walsh, this was a big win for Putin's interests in the region. adding:

"Without the US in the ring, Russia is the main military force in the post-war Syria. However you divine it, Trump seems to have few qualms about doing things that will please Putin."

Of course, because just as he's FOX and Rush Limbaugh's puppet, he's also Putin's. He's basically  an empty suit, a sock puppet- with no brains, no honor and no hint of a moral compass.  The only thing that matters to him is "winning" in a fictitious way, by grifting, lying and selling snake oil to his foolish,  kool aid drinking followers, e.g



As to Trump's claim that ISIS is "defeated" in Syria, Martin Chulov, a Middle East reporter for The Guardian, responded:

The long fight against Islamic State looks good on a map, but it is yet to be decisive on the battlefield. The terror group has lost more than 95% of the territory it claimed in 2014 and the juggernaut that threatened to shred the region’s borders has been battered back to where it all began for the group’s earliest incarnation – a sliver of land along the Euphrates River, bordering Iraq and Syria.  

There, Kurdish-led forces, backed by US air support, have been fighting it out with diehard extremists in towns and villages in Syria’s far eastern Deir ez-Zor province.
At least 2,500 Isis fighters remain, all survivors of routs to the east and west of their last redoubt. Colossal ruin lays in their wake on both sides of the river. But the group retains the capacity to do even more damage, especially if let off the hook now."

And as the Kurds now face blowback from Tayyip Erdogan's forces there is no strategic way they can hold back the ISIS vermin - who will gradually metastasize like an out of control cancer.

Meanwhile, WaPo political commentator Max Boot. wrote:

"Why would Trump do this now? Who knows? Given that he is acting at odds with his advisers, this is clearly not the result of a normal policy-review process. This is the Trump Doctrine in operation: Trump does whatever he wants. It could be based on what he had for breakfast — or there could be something more sinister going on."

The departure of Gen. Jim Mattis has all our allies in a state of nervous meltdown, as it should. It ought to have us all in a similar state, given there is now no adult in the room minding the overgrown five year old with his paws near the nuclear football.   And no, Gen.  'Mad Dog' Mattis didn't leave just because of the sudden Syria pullout, he left after a slew of Dotard misfires,  with Syria the culmination.  These included, as Gen, Barry McCaffrey spelled out two nights ago ('All In'):   Trump's defense of White Nationalists, Nazis back in August, 2017;  his caging of immigrant children this past spring, summer;  his bowing and scraping to Putin - taking blame for "American transgressions"  at the Helsinki conference in July;  dispatching 5,000 troops to the border before the midterms as a political stunt to egg his stupid base to the polls; and the impulse decision to suddenly pull troops out of Syria leaving  the Kurds to Erdogan, ISIS and Putin's tender "mercies"  - or not.

All who've read Gen. Mattis' letter - at least those in the top brass- interpret it as a signature "sign of distress" like "flying the flag upside down" or indicating  national emergency.  That theme of national emergency has come up before, like after Helsinki, when historian Michael Beschloss stated on July 16th,, (Maddow):

"We are living in a national emergency. We may not have known it twenty-four hours ago. We do now. You know, I have been studying and writing about U.S. Presidents since I was twenty years old. I never thought I would live to say this, but this is a president who now has demonstrated that he deserves suspicion as acting on behalf of another country over his own."
 See e.g.  Michael Beschloss: “We are Living an a National Emergency” - Daily Kos

Gen. Jim Mattis' departure confirms that ominous take, and now it's not only Americans - but the whole damned world - that had better wake the hell up to the fact we have a lunatic at the helm of the most awesome destructive power ever assembled by one nation.

See also:

P.M. Carpenter

Article Tools E-mail | Print Comments (1)

Democrats | Government

In Shutdown Mode, Democrats Must Hang Tough

A Nation On The Verge Of A Crackup? Not If We Get Rid Of Dotard ASAP

Most sentient citizens are now aware the state of our Union has descended to an inherently uncivil cesspool riven with crudity and coarseness - and no bottom appears to be in sight. One would have thought a presidential candidate who bragged about grabbing women's genitals was rock bottom - but no, we've passed through even more degrading lows, the latest disrespecting the widow of one of the fallen. 

The alarm has now reached into the Senate with Republicans who are as revolted by the downward drift as the rest of us. Let us agree then that one of the roles of a President is to project decorum and respect for this office, and from this office to the world - and to his fellow citizens. It is essentially from his example that the standards of the nation become manifest. If then the person in charge is deranged, unstable and disrespectful of anything and anyone - even those in his own party- we are at a major transition point.  That transition is indicative of a malignant cancer on the highest office which now must be removed for the good of the whole, the body politic.

This brings us to Barton Swaim's WSJ piece, 'A Country On The Verge Of A Crackup' (Oct. 20-21) making a kind of case that the pretender playing a president has the nation approaching a "crackup". He even quotes one genius who claims Trump is A-ok,  it's the nation that's losing it.  Trump is just carrying on like "normal" for his personality type.  If this is normality we are in dangerous waters indeed, or to quote the psychologist Steve Mason:  "One of the ways I know a guy is wacko is if he claims everyone else is crazy.".   Indeed.   So let's chuck that nonsense right away. This is not to say that-the deranged con man with his fingers near the nuclear codes and showing all the signs of a narcissist sociopath isn't having deleterious effects on the rest of us. But these angry reactions and yes, judgments,  are simply the expected reactions of normals to one who is profoundly abnormal - i.e. a mutant in their midst.

  For example, former Republican Sen. Gordon Humphreys take on Dotard is spot on, e.g.

http://crooksandliars.com/2017/10/former-nh-gop-senator-gordon-humphrey-we


When Humphreys depicted Dotard as "so reckless, careless and cruel in the conduct of his office as to be vile and corrupting of the American system." - he was describing an anomaly- not something normal or merely a variant of style.  Let's get that straight once and for all that we are  not parsing any "style" here because grabbing pussies and disrespecting the family of the fallen is not style in any normal society's lexicon.  Only a degraded society, an uncivilized and uncivil one, would refer to Trump's "style".

Let us also emphasize one time, as Sen. Jeff Flake did yesterday, that calling out a twitter troll pretender who isn't qualified to run a toxic dump is not a "crack up" reaction. As Sen. Flake clearly stated:

"We must never allow ourselves to lapse into thinking that that is just the way things are now. We must stop pretending that the degradation of our politics and the conduct of some in our executive branch are normal.  Reckless, outrageous, and undignified behavior has become excused and countenanced as ‘telling it like it is’ when it is actually just reckless, outrageous, and undignified.”

Sen. Flake added that such behavior was “dangerous to our democracy” and projected not strength but a “corruption of the spirit”. He then asked his colleagues: “When the next generation asks us: ‘Why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t you speak up? What are we going to say?’

Is Sen. Flake's reaction to the filth and swine vermin occupying the Oval Office a sign of paranoia or over the top nutso? No, his reaction to a clearly malevolent and unfit, unstable goon shows the Republic still possesses citizens of sane perception and the moral mettle to call out the obvious when they see it.  That includes Sens. Bob Corker and John McCain who have also called out the  resident turd who pretends to be a leader but can't craft a more comprehensive thought than 140 characters allows.

Hence the new book, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists And Mental Health Experts Assess A President, edited by Bandy X. Lee, is worth a read.  She is part of the "Duty To War" movement of mental health professionals who - like Jeff Flake - see this disgraceful bastard con man as the danger he is, as he assaults all traditions and institutions while polarizing the nation into a state of near civil war.

As Dr. Lee explains: "The public trust is violated if the profession fails in its duty to alert the public when a person who holds the power of life and death over us all shows signs of clear, dangerous mental impairment."

And contrary to Swaim's take, i.e. that it's  "delusional to believe you're warning Americans" when "so many believed our political culture needed a shock" - nothing in the remarks of Sen. Flake's or former Sen. Humphreys is disproven. Those deranged imps who voted Dotard in for that "system shock"  reason also need to be put on the psychiatrist's couch. Or to quote my psychologist niece, "They're all fuckin' nuts!" Indeed!  But that subset of "nuts" who inserted this  "hyperactive agitator" into office are not the whole nation, They were only a minor faction of its voters -roughly 46 % - and less than 22% of the proportion of all eligible voters.

And the vileness of Dotard, as Sen. Gordon Humphreys noted, surely goes far beyond Swaim's claim that he "sometimes says things that are obviously untrue, or flatly contradict his own previous statement". No, this happens all the time.  Consider his bald faced compulsive lies about Obama wiretapping him, then barely a week ago the phone call to LaDavid Johnson's widow Myeisha and how he disrespected her - not even knowing her husband's name and then saying "he knew what he signed up for" - then denying it. It took John Kelly to get up and  confirm Dotard's words, though in a hyperbolic manner, while savagely attacking a black congresswoman.

Swaim also makes a big deal out of the book's authors "differing in their diagnoses" but as Shayl pointed out to me, that's "natural because many diagnoses overlap" . Also, many disorders can exist simultaneously. For example, borderline personality disorder can exist along side schizoid personality disorder, as psychologist Judith Cauwels pointed out in her book, 'The Borderline Personality'. These pathologies then are not necessarily mutually exclusive.  Hence, two seemingly different diagnoses might be given for the same mental malady, especially for a detached, approximate diagnosis.

Then there is the beef:  'How do they know what is going on if they don't actually have him in for analysis?' This is ridiculous too.  If I see some mangy, orange-haired character slogging down  Uintah Street grabbing pussies every step of the way as he calls out nonsense and then threatens bystanders with tweets I don't need to get him on a psych couch to know he's "fuckin' nuts", as Shayl puts it.  You just have to look at his behavior and what he says, including the twitter taunts at a guy with his own missile arsenal - Kim Jong Un.

In the case of Trump there isn't a coherent, sane or rational element in his being. Neither is there any element of basic decency or civility, hence his lying reaction to the widow of  warrior LaDavid Johnson.  Donald Dotard's a total misfit and a loser besides. Read Naomi Klein's most recent book, 'NO Is Not Enough', to see how this asshole really made his riches. Hint: It was all about classic con-man deals and rip offs - like using half baked seminars on real estate and then calling the random set "Trump University".

Another point Swaim misses is that the extremes of behavior or thought are not necessary to deem a person unfit or unstable.  As Gordon Humphreys makes clear,  one needn't be absolutely stark raving mad to pose a threat. One really only needs an agitated, chaotic personality occupying the highest office and with access to the nuclear codes. Also one, as WSJ's Gerald Seib pointed out in his piece two days ago, who's become so unpredictable nothing he says can be trusted, so governance itself is undermined.  This is what Sen. Flake meant by "dangerous to democracy."

Recall also barely two weeks ago Sen. Corker warned that Trump’s rhetoric and threats, especially toward North Korea, could set the nation “on the path to World War III”.  This followed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson  calling Trump a “fucking moron” and considering resigning.

In a separate interview with CNN yesterday , Sen. Corker went even further, stating of the president: “I don’t know why he lowers himself to such a low, low standard and debases our country in that way but he does.”

Coupled with Flake’s scathing remarks on the Senate floor, the growing list of Republicans sounding the alarm over Trump’s presidency marks a potential watershed moment within the party.  That watershed moment has long since arrived in the rest of the nation where we contend that the removal of his piece of trash from office is now the highest priority. (Curiously, Sen. Flake said in a CBS interview this morning the 25th amendment "wouldn't work" to remove Trump, but I beg to differ - as do many hundreds of others including Constitutional and legal scholars like Richard Painter.)

There are also darker sentiments expressed, especially by average blokes on media forums. To quote one commenter on a political forum in The Financial Times after word spread about Gabe Sherman's piece regarding White House staff fearing Trump might make a "rush for the nuclear football":  "Why hasn't the CIA offed him yet when they took out JFK for much less?"

A more sober and powerful take is provided in the following passage from Michael Gerson's WaPo piece ('Republicans, It's Time To Panic') . It puts our situation in the most cogent perspective:

"It is no longer possible to safely ignore the leaked cries for help coming from within the administration. They reveal a president raging against enemies, obsessed by slights, deeply uninformed and incurious, unable to focus, and subject to destructive whims. A main task of the chief of staff seems to be to shield him from dinner guests and telephone calls that might set him off on a foolish or dangerous tangent. Much of the White House senior staff seems bound, not by loyalty to the president, but by a duty to protect the nation from the president. Trump, in turn, is reported to have said: “I hate everyone in the White House.” And also, presumably, in the State Department, headed by a secretary of state who apparently regards his boss as a “moron.”

Adding:

"The security of our country — and potentially the lives of millions of people abroad — depends on Trump being someone else entirely. It depends on the president being some wise, strategic, restrained leader he has never been.

The time for whispered criticisms and quiet snickering is over. The time for panic and decision is upon us. The thin line of sane, responsible advisers at the White House — such as Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson — could break at any moment. Already, Trump’s protests of eternal love for Kelly are a bad sign for the general’s future. The American government now has a dangerous fragility at its very center. Its welfare is as thin as an eggshell — perhaps as thin as Donald Trump’s skin. "

One hopes more Repubs see it and also read the recent book on Dotard's mental state. The sooner they remove this bag of filth from office the better for us all.

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/john-feffer/75884/the-crack-up-donald-trump-and-the-fourth-great-shattering