Monthly Archives: May 2017

As the Experiment continues.

Soon it will be 120 days into President Trump’s administration, the great Political Science experiment into having someone with no political experience as President.  Not only does Pres. Trump not have any kind of expreance in politics, either Gran or  Petite we are just becoming aware of just how limited his business expreance is.  I have just read that his business expreance is quite limited too.  I wonder show many of  Pres. Trump’s base is aware that he has never once worked in, much less run a publicity held corporation?  That none of his much touted business ‘ come close to the size and complexity of the United States?

As strange as it may seem from what limited information I have been able to gather all of his business’ were/are what is called “closely held” with many of them being considered a “small business” even though most were worth millions or billions of dollars.  Stop and think about this, this is like making someone a captain of the largest luxury cruise liner whose only ‘captain’ a high powered cigarette boat.  Fortunately for us, unlike the aforementioned ‘captain’, the President is just leader of one of three co-equal branches of our government.   In case of fact there are people in the executive branch who’s it is their swarn  duty to tell him “no” when he try’s to do something that would put the ship of state in harms way.

In the next few weeks, while Pres. Trump is on his  foreign trip, this nation is facing what maybe it’s greatest diplomatic crisis’ since  Vietnam.  If the news reports of Pres. Trumps itinerary are accurate he will be meeting first to the Saudi’s over the weekend where his should be giving a speech.  This speach is proported to be about combating radical ideology and his vision for a ‘peaceful’ Islam.  Given his past performances I do not hold out much hope that the President will stay on script.  Indeed, I fear he will go badly off script and, as anyone with Even a casual  acquaintance with the sensitivities of Saudi’s about Islam it will take a very deft hand to avoid the landminds.  Like any devout people the Saudis do not take kindly being lectured about their fath by a nonbeliever.

Following his stay in Saudi Arabia the President is scheduled to move on to Israel where he as already managed to put his foot into it twice already.  First the Whitehouse seems to have a hard problem with dealing with the tricky issues of the Holly sites like the West Wall, that and the President doesn’t seem to know that this wall is, in fact, in Jerusalem.  I wonder if he even knows what the West Wall is a wall of? His next little  foo paw just came out today with his canceling his visit to Missada because he can’t land his  helicopter on the actual site.  But then, I’m sure he has no idea just why this is such an important place to the Jews of the world as he most like slept thru any Roman history class’.

Pres. Trump will next move on to a meeting of all the NATO heads of state and my mind totally breaks down here on just how many people he will manage to totally piss off.  I guess we will all have to wait and see and pray he doesn’t get his hands on the Illudium PU-36 Explosive Space Modulator

The Tzar and Trump

It may just be the SciFi fan in me but somehow I can’t help but see the irony of what is happening now with Pres. Trump and what happened a hundred years ago in Saint Petersburg.  What is different is that the GOP has the opportunity to keep the government from falling with the leader.  Let me be clear that I feel that Pres. Trump will go the way of Tzar Nicholas II, I don’t.  I’m not even willing to say Pres. Trump will go the way of Pres. Nixon.  Flatly, I don’t have nearly enough information yet to make that prediction.

Pres. Trump like Tzar Nichols II is someone who should have never had the job.  The difference is that Nicholas didn’t ask for the job and Trump did.  It should be obvious to all who have eyes that see that Donald J. Trump has no clue how to be President.  He is doing exactly what he told us he would do, he is trying to run the United States like a closely held company.  A company where the Boss/Owner gets to do what ever he wants, anyway he wants.  The problem is, the United States is not a company, neither closely held nor public.  The boss doesn’t get to do or say what ever he wants when ever he wants to ever he wants.  There are other people with nearly as much power as the President and there are organizations of equal power that can and will oppose the President if need be. The President is not an autocrat and can not long act like an autocrat before other people in positions of power will bring this to his attention.  Otero in a most forceful and unkind manner.

What’s worse is Pres. Trump doesn’t seem to understand that the one thing the President can not do is make the Presidentcy loose its dignity.  POTUS is not just another owner/operator of a company.  He is not just the face of a company, he is not even the face of the government.  POTUS is first and foremost the head of state of the United States of America.  POTUS must not only be dignified but be seen to be dignified.  An one thing dignity requires is loyalty to those who work for you.  You must always show respect for those beneath you and the work they do.  You can not send them out to say one thing, one day, and then publicly say the exact opposite the next day.  This is not dignity, this is arrogance.

 

 

Trump and the Myth of the Lost Cause

Every  person who has studied the American Civil War knows the great myth of “The Lost Cause” therefore it should come as no surprise that President Trump knows it not.  There are many parts to this myth but one of the more prominent is the contention that if Lincoln had not been elected the war would not have been fought.  Almost before the first shoots were loaded, much less fired, the south has been saying everything would have been just fine if the north had just not elected that Black Republican Lincoln as President.

It should be noted here that even if Lincoln had not gotten the Republican nomination it would have most assuredly gone to William H. Seward.  Seward was even more unexceptable to the Cotten states than Lincoln ever was as his position on the Abolition of Salvery was well and widely known.  That the Republican Party, at this time, was strongly Abolitionist is one of the accepted facts of history so the chance of anyone who’s position on Slavery would be exceptable to the Deep South is highly unlikely.  Therefore what is being said that not electing Lincoln means not electing a Republican, that is electing a Democrat.

That our dear President is totally ignorant of this fact is not surprising, too many people in this country have only the sketchiest idea of the election of 1860.  Few know that there was not one, but two Democratic nominees, Stephen Douglas, for the Northern Democatic Party,  John Breckinridge, for the Southern Democatic Party.  There was also John Bell who was running on the Constitutional Union Party, giving us a grand total of four candidates running.  Add to this that not one of these candidates was on the ballot in every state.  Given this there was little to no chance of a Not Republican candidate winning out right.  In fact in many places it was hope that no one candidate would get a majority of Electoral College votes and thus through the election to the House where it was hoped that someone acceptable to all sides of the Slavery issue would miraculously appear to save the union.

Now we come to dear President Trumps contention that if Andrew Jackson had been President the Civil War would not have happened.  Strangely enough this has some validity, in a perverse kind of way.  Let us forget that Pres. Jackson died some 16 years before the Civil War.  Instead lets hypothesize a Jacksonest candidate, what would he be?  First he’d be a Democrat, why, because Andrew Jackson was a founder of the Democratic Party.  Next he’d be a southerner, most likely from one of the more northern and western slave states.  Finally he’d be of the Plantation  Aristocracy a slave holding self made man.  This would be a man who not only supported Slavery in the States but most likely would look favorably on it’s expansion into the territories, something not to be look on with favor in the Free States.

So, just what is our dear President, in is maladroit way, saying?  If I was generous I’d say “The Civil War could have been averted if we could have elected someone who could bring the nation togeather.”  The problem is that this is a pious but impossible wish.  Just read any of the great histories on the Civil War, read Catton, or Foot or even McPherson and you will soon see that anyone acceptable to one side of the issue of Slavery would be, by being acceptable to that faction, totally unacceptable to the other.  Neither side was in the mood to compromise both equally convinced of the righteousness of there cause and equally convinced of the evilness of the other.

Since I am not feeling generous I’ll just say I believe that dear President Trump has been listening to one of hisSouthron cabinet members again.