Trump Presidency and the Consequences

My opinion, yes, but of value nonetheless. You claim to be a seeker of truth but know little to nothing about economics, much less our political system, specifically how debt is assumed. Therefore I suggest that you do your homework before offering what are essentially value judgments.
 
Lewis: People want leadership, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand.

Andrew: Lewis, we've had Presidents who were beloved who couldn't find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight. People don't drink the sand 'cause they're thirsty. They drink the sand 'cause they don't know the difference.

--The American President
 
WASHINGTON – The Republican leader of the United States Senate was asked last week if he believed the Republican president’s denial that his campaign colluded with the foreign power that was trying to help him win.

Mitch McConnell’s answer: “I have no idea.”

His office later said that McConnell misunderstood the question ― that he thought he was being asked if he personally knew whether Trump’s campaign had colluded with Russia. Regardless, McConnell’s four words represent the new president’s problem in a nutshell. Having made falsehoods a staple of his public discourse, Donald Trump now faces enormous hurdles in getting even his presumptive allies to put their names behind his credibility.

Trump has made untrue statements about the size of his inauguration crowd, the “standing ovation” he received at CIA headquarters, the “millions” of “illegal” votes cast in the November election, the murder rate, the news coverage given to terror attacks, and, just Saturday at his Florida “campaign” rally, about the amount of vetting refugees trying to enter the country must undergo and about a nonexistent terror incident in Sweden.

That’s just a partial list, and he’s only been in office a month. (more)
 
The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie—a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days—but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows.

And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.

--Hannah Arendt
 
Are the following qualities recognisable in Trump?
Honour
Integrity
Tolerance
Calm reasoned debate/discussion/explanation
Understanding complex issues and the intelligence, judgment and wisdom to try and solve them.
Rational well thought out decisions
The powers afforded him by the Constitution and the relevance of the judiciary and press and the role and importance they play in the stability of the republic.
Understanding of the role of President and the significance of the office itself and never bringing it into disrepute.

I'm asking these questions about the present incumbent, not about any previous presidents.
 
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A raging bull seeking freedom from a slaughterhouse ran wild in Jamaica, Queens, Tuesday, only to die after being tranquilized by police, officials said.

There's a moral here, if one thinks about it.
 
President Trump has taken to saying that no one cares about his taxes. And it’s true that he was able to win office while thumbing his nose at the transparency norm of releasing his tax returns while running for the White House. But the drumbeat of interest in them is not going away, and now the White House petition site registered a new milestone, the pro-transparency Sunlight Foundation noted Monday: The petition to “Immediately release Donald Trump’s full tax returns, with all information needed to verify emoluments clause compliance” passed more than 1 million signatures since it was launched on Inauguration Day. White House petitions need to draw more than 100,000 signatures within 30 days to be considered for an official response from the White House. The previous record holder was a 2012 petition to recognize the Westboro Baptist Church as a hate group, with more than 387,000 signatures, according to a Pew study of the White House petition site.

--Garance Franke-Ruta
 
A Boeing 777 was carrying passengers on India's Jet Airways from Mumbai to London this week when the pilots lost contact with air traffic controllers based in Cologne Germany. With a suddenly out-of-reach jet cruising through its airspace, Germany quickly hustled Typhoon fighter jets to intercept the airliner. The 777 streaks across the sky solo. First one Typhoon and then a second pull up alongside the plane to make sure all is well. This plane mishap story has a happy ending. The Typhoons helped the airliner reestablish communications.

If only we'd been this alert sixteen years ago . . .
 
BEIRUT (AP) — France's far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen refused to don a headscarf for a meeting with Lebanon's top Sunni Muslim cleric on Tuesday and walked away from the scheduled appointment after a brief squabble at the entrance.

Classy.
 
We wish we could say we didn't see this coming.

It was easy to predict that the UIL's insensitive rules regarding transgender student-athletes would create an environment of confusion and dismay, with gut-wrenching consequences.

Mack Beggs, a 17-year-old junior who wrestles at Euless Trinity, is taking testosterone while transitioning from female to male. He wants to wrestle boys, but UIL policies say he must compete against girls.

In a meet Saturday, he won the girls 110-pound Class 6A Region II championship after Coppell wrestler Madeline Rocha forfeited the final. Dallas Morning News reporter Michael Florek described an emotional scene, with Beggs pulling the tearful runner-up onto the victory stand.

How horrible for these kids, to wrestle with the politics of adults when they just want to compete. (more)

--Dallas Morning News
 
A very well-presented history lesson. And very pertinent.

10 Reasons The German People Elected Adolf Hitler

The Nazis didn’t just seize power—they were voted in. It’s hard to imagine, but there was a time when Adolf Hitler was a name on a ballot in a democratic election. He was openly fascist and anti-Semitic, but the people chose to make him their leader. They supported him while he dissolved democracy.It’s easy to write off the rise of Nazism as a momentary lapse of reason, but the truth isn’t that simple. The people who voted for Hitler really thought they were making the best choice.
 
Have you read "The Plot Against America" by Phhilp Roth?

He could understand this happening in a democracy. Hitler was a great orator and opportunist. He knew how to incite people who were, aleady, very discontented.

Germany had it much worse, of course, in those days.
 
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