JFK60

JFK60's Journal

July 25, 2019

The salient question is: "How can sane Americans get rid of this insane administration?"

That’s number one, getting 45 OUT. Another four years of his incompetence, intolerance and lawlessness will utterly stamp out our democracy.

Running a hard-left Democratic candidate— as much as that would be welcomed— could be difficult in a time when not just the U.S., but numerous democracies worldwide have embraced right-wing nationalism.

As good as many of the current crop of Democratic candidates are, no one has yet emerged as “the one” to tackle Trump, especially with the goddamned Electoral College choking down general elections where the decision ultimately rests with a mere handful of “swing states.”

It really boils down to this: a Democratic candidate who can connect and do well in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin; or 4 more years of fatal Trumpism.

July 15, 2019

The insane cabinet picks are the deliberate work of Steve Bannon.

It was Bannon’s nihilistic “joke” to fill posts with the least qualified people, or “funnier” yet, with people who had a hostile track record regarding the very posts to which they were appointed. Bannon wants to destroy democracies, which allows rule-by-chaos, and eventual far-right fascist rule. (The U.S. is currently teetering somewhere between chaos and fascism.)

When (if?) this all plays out, I believe that Steve Bannon will be known as one of the world’s worst enemies of democracy. He’s been in contact with every country that currently has a reactionary right-wing nationalist government or presence: Russia (obviously), Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and more recently, Brazil.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/fortune.com/2017/02/25/bannon-trump-cabinet-cpac/amp/
Steve Bannon Says Trump’s Cabinet Picks Are Intended to ‘Deconstruct’ Regulation and Agencies
David Z. Morris
Fortune Magazine
February 25, 2017

Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Thursday, White House chief strategist Steve Bannon said that President Trump’s cabinet picks are aimed at “deconstruction of the administrative state,” meaning weakening regulatory agencies and other bureaucratic entities.

“The way the progressive left runs, is if they can’t get it passed, they’re just going to put in some sort of regulation in an agency,” Bannon continued. “That’s all going to be deconstructed and I think that’s why this regulatory thing is so important.”

President Trump’s critics have noted that at least some of his Cabinet picks seem uniquely unsuited to their roles. Scott Pruitt, recently confirmed as head of the EPA, had previously challenged its regulations in more than a dozen suits. Trump’s initial pick for labor secretary, Andrew Puzder, operated a company that depended on low wages and faced allegations of labor abuse. Puzder’s nomination was scuttledby the discovery that he had employed at least one undocumented immigrant.

Trump’s FCC chairman and energy secretary have also been critics of the very agencies they’re now tasked with managing. Rick Perry, Trump’s pick for energy secretary, famously called to eliminate the department while running for President in 2011.

Putting anti-regulation chairs at the top of regulatory bodies is nothing new for conservative administrations—George W. Bush’s EPA administrator Stephen Johnson, for instance, pushed back against staff recommendations and slackened enforcement. As the saying goes, elections have consequences, and lightening the regulatory load on businesses is a pillar of modern Republican doctrine.

What’s remarkable here, though, is Bannon’s framing of these moves as more anti-state than pro-business. The CPAC comments about ‘deconstruction’ are a toned-down version of startling statements made last August to the Daily Beast. Bannon impishly declared himself a “Leninist,” saying that the Soviet leader “wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”

It’s not a stretch to see Bannon’s comments reflected not only in Trump’s cabinet picks, but in his slow progress in filling hundreds of lower-level cabinet positions. Until they’re filled, those positions are staffed by temporary administrators with reduced power, leaving enforcement and other matters in limbo.

Unpredictability has been baked into Trump’s campaign since the beginning. Almost a year ago Trump spoke with the Washington Post on foreign policy, stating “I always say we have to be unpredictable….predictable is bad.” While some now see destructive chaos in the White House, Trump recently boasted that “the White House is running so smoothly” at his rally in Melbourne, Florida. Bannon’s comments suggest that chaos may, in fact, be part of the Trump administration’s agenda.

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