THE TRUMP DISASTER AREA

One of Donald Trump’s top spiritual advisers has claimed the President is a “king” who was put in power by God.

“Whether people like him or not, [Mr Trump] has been raised up by God, because God says that He raises up and places all people in places of authority,” televangelist Paula White recently told Jim Bakker, a right-wing pastor and vocal Trump supporter.

She added: “It is God that raises up a king, it is God that sets one down and so when you fight against the plan of God, you’re fighting against the hand of God.”

I thought Americans had rather forcefully rejected the notion of the Divine Right of Monarchs?

And if Trump is a Christian, then I'm an astronaut - the only god Trump worships is called Donald J. Trump.

Ms White is a controversial televangelist who preaches prosperity gospel – the idea that God will bless believers with wealth on Earth, as well as happiness in the afterlife. She is also a personal friend of Mr Trump’s, who serves on his spiritual advisory counsel and led a prayer at his inauguration.

Obvious who she, and Trump worship - LL
Mammon:  Riches, avarice, and worldly gain personified as a false god in the New Testament.

Donald Trump must be impeached 'as soon as possible', says former US Labour Secretary.

Robert Reich said Mr Trump represents a "clear and present danger to America" and must be removed from office.

His comments followed the former real estate mogul's divisive campaign rally in Arizona that saw him attack the "fake media" and "truly dishonest " journalists, who he claims misrepresented his comments on Charlottesville.

Surrounded by his core base, he claimed his response to the Virginia protests was "perfect" in a rambling and wide-ranging speech.

Mr Reich branded Mr Trump a "howling manchild" in the wake of the Charlottesville violence, and said the criticism of the US President's response could help to make him "irrelevant".

"It’s unlikely Trump will be impeached or thrown out of office on grounds of mental impairment. At least any time soon," he wrote in an op-ed on his website.

"Yet there’s another way Trump can be effectively removed. He can be made irrelevant.

"It’s already starting to happen. The howling manchild who occupies the Oval Office is being cut off and contained."

He said Mr Trump's widely condemned response to the Charlottesville protests - in which he blamed the violence that killed one counter protester on "both sides" - had allowed Republicans to criticise him more openly than before.

"We’re not out of danger. Trump will continue to rant and fume. He’ll insult. He’ll stoke racial tensions. He could still start a nuclear war," he said.

"But, hopefully, he won’t be able to exercise much presidential power from here on. He’s being ostracised like a obnoxious adolescent who’s been grounded. When the media stop reporting his tweets, his isolation and irrelevance will be complete."
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/donald-trump-must-impeached-apos-092356200.html

Donald Trump escalates feud with Republican leaders blaming them for legislative 'mess'.

Donald Trump on Thursday intensified his attacks on Republican leaders in Congress, this time blaming them for leading the country closer to the economic calamity of a spending crisis and debt default.

Congress has until September 29 to raise limits on government borrowing or face financial turmoil.

This week Mr Trump has turned his fire repeatedly on his own team. Critics say is isolating himself from the officials he needs to pursue his agenda, while supporters insist it is all part of his election promise to shake up Washington.

In a series of tweets, the President singled out Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, who lead Republicans in the Senate and the House respectively, accusing them of being responsible for a “mess”.

He said he offered them a chance to write the necessary legislation into a bill to help military veterans which he has since signed into law.

Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump
I requested that Mitch M & Paul R tie the Debt Ceiling legislation into the popular V.A. Bill (which just passed) for easy approval. They...

Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump
...didn't do it so now we have a big deal with Dems holding them up (as usual) on Debt Ceiling approval. Could have been so easy-now a mess!

The criticism appeared in a pair of misspelled tweets before they were replaced.

The debt ceiling is at the top of a to-do list when Congress returns from summer break.

Without a rise in borrowing, the government would not have enough money to pay almost a quarter of its bills, according to an analysis by the Bipartisan Policy Centre, and the US could lose its AAA credit rating, provoking turmoil on financial markets.

Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump
The only problem I have with Mitch McConnell is that, after hearing Repeal & Replace for 7 years, he failed!That should NEVER have happened!

Only a day earlier Mr McConnell – who has also been criticised by Mr Trump for his role in failed efforts to reform Obamacare - and the White House played down reports of a rift, insisting they were all working on a shared agenda.

Senior Republican strategists have warned that Mr Trump is alienating party figures that he needs to help drive his legislative agenda through Congress.

However, his criticism is in line with election promises, according to Michael Johns, co-founder of the Tea Party movement.

Draining the swamp meant not just confronting the Democratic elite in Washington but overhauling the way the Republican leadership goes about its business, he said.

“For many years they have presented themselves too tentatively and without sufficient commitment to advancing their agenda and executing electoral promises,” he said.

“So the concerns that the president has shared are broadly held and shared by the vast majority of the 60 million plus Americas who voted for him.”
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/donald-trump-escalates-feud-republican-174853760.html

What a complete and utter mess!

Donald Trump just retweeted the world's worst eclipse meme, and this can't be real.

Donald Trump has proven to have absolutely zero restraint or common sense when it comes to his social media posts, but today he took the his Twitter habit to a whole new level.

On Thursday morning, the U.S. president retweeted an eclipse meme of himself, as a white president, "eclipsing" Barack Obama, the nation's first black president.

It's a retweet so dumb that it may just beat the time he retweeted someone calling him a fascist. More at link.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/donald-trump-just-retweeted-world-141127381.html
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Donald Trump Is Backing Away From Jeff Flake Challenger Kelli Ward.

The president has hinted in conversations that he’s open to other candidates who may jump in the race.

Donald Trump Is Backing Away From Jeff Flake Challenger Kelli Ward
The president has hinted in conversations that he’s open to other candidates who may jump in the race. More at link.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-is-backing-away-from-jeff-flake-challenger-kelli-ward

Bill de Blasio may remove statue of Christopher Columbus in New York City as part of effort to remove 'symbols of hate'
NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio weighing decision on whether to remove statue of Italian explorer Christopher Columbus
Review comes shortly after deadly Charlottesville rally
De Blasio is running for re-election this November
The statue, which is over 100 years old, sits atop is a traffic circle in Manhattan
Columbus is credited with discovering the new world in 1492
But his legacy, critics contend, is tarnished due to his participation in the slave trade and his cruel treatment of native inhabitants
Officers belonging to the NYPD Columbia Association oppose the statue's removal


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4822130/NYC-Mayor-considering-removing-statue-Columbus.html#ixzz4qle8P2si
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

It's official - America has lost its marbles, trying to erase its own history and sinking further and further into idiocy.

Trump Staffer Responsible For Finding Positive News Stories Resigns.

President Donald Trump’s administration parted ways with yet another staffer this week.

Politico reported Thursday that Andy Hemming resigned from his position as the White House communications team’s director of rapid response on Monday.

The 31-year-old former Republican National Committee staffer, who was profiled by Politico’s Annie Karni this month, was responsible for finding positive mainstream media news stories about the Trump administration and recirculating those reports to key reporters and talking heads. Hemming’s goal was to ultimately create more mainstream coverage about positive moments for the Trump administration on the very networks the president routinely bashes and refers to as “fake news,” according to Karni’s piece.

Every presidential administration has staffers dedicated to monitoring the press and pushing out stories related to favorable moments. But Trump’s relationship with the press and responses to news coverage is unprecedented. For instance, Vice News reported this month that the president receives a folder filled with positive news about himself twice a day ― a report previous presidents apparently did not receive.

Hemming’s role in the administration was a bizarre one, considering his boss regularly picks publicfeuds with journalists and mainstream news outlets he was required to target with positive stories.

Just this week, Trump spent a considerable amount of time trashing the media during his campaign-style rally in Phoenix, Arizona, a rant that resulted in the crowd chanting “CNN sucks.”

Hemming has not publicly commented on his exit, but a White House source told CNN that the decision to part ways was mutual.

The departure is the latest in a summer filled with staff shake-ups. In July, press secretary Sean Spicer resigned just before communications director Anthony Scaramucci was hired. Then Reince Priebus left his position as White House chief of staff, days before Scaramucci was shown to the door. Last week, Steve Bannon stepped down as White House chief strategist.

Meanwhile, several Trump administration advisers have parted ways with the president over his controversial response to a violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, this month.

Found this, program broadcast on HBO 14 August on the day of the Charlottsville incident. The open racist ranting, anti-semitism and threats of immedite violence made me sick. LL

https://news.vice.com/story/vice-news-tonight-full-episode-charlottesville-race-and-terror

On this subject:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/25/un-warns-us-racism-but-trump-era-bigotry-not-blip-charlottesville

After a UN warning over racism, America’s self-image begins to crack
Nesrine Malik
To be shocked by the warning is to have thought of the US as a superior civilisation in the first place. The Trump-era bigotry is not a blip

Full story at link.

IMO, it was there all along; Trump has simply ripped the fancy covers off. I genuinely think the US is in bad trouble, and is not immune to the kind of ethnic tension that has torn other countries apart.

Something to keep an eye on:

http://news.sky.com/story/donald-trump-signs-disaster-proclamation-as-hurricane-harvey-hits-11005943

Donald Trump signs disaster proclamation as Hurricane Harvey hits Texas
President Trump says he has "unleashed the full force of government help" to fight Hurricane Harvey as it hits Texas.

Billed as the strongest hurricane to hit the US in 12 years, Hurricane Harvey landed on a stretch of coastline near the town of Rockport at around 10pm local time (4am UK time) as a category 4 storm with "life threatening" winds of 130mph.

Power to some homes was knocked out, and signs and pieces of palm tree littered the streets as the wind took hold.

There are also reports of roofs collapsing into houses, trees being uprooted and buildings being destroyed.

The storm is expected to dump more than 3ft (90cm) of rain along the Texas coast and parts of Louisiana over several days.

Harvey has been compared to one of America's deadliest storms - Hurricane Katrina - which killed more than a thousand people in New Orleans in 2005. New Orleans does not lie in Harvey's direct path.

Donald Trump wrote on Twitter: "At the request of the Governor of Texas, I have signed the Disaster Proclamation, which unleashes the full force of government help!"

The President is currently in Camp David "closely watching the path and doings of Hurricane Harvey".

He earlier encouraged everyone in the path of the storm "to heed the advice and orders of their local and state officials".

The National Hurricane Center described the storm as "life-threatening, dangerous and catastrophic".....etc.

Trump's first pardon spares political ally Arpaio.

President Donald Trump spared former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio the prospect of serving jail time in granting the first pardon of his turbulent tenure, wiping away the lawman's recent federal conviction stemming from his immigration patrols that focused on Latinos.

The White House said 85-year-old Arpaio was a "worthy candidate" for the pardon, citing his "life's work of protecting the public from the scourges of crime and illegal immigration." Trump granted the pardon less than a month after a judge found Arpaio guilty of a misdemeanor contempt-of-court charge in a trial that was prosecuted by the president's own Justice Department.

"I appreciate what the president did," Arpaio told The Associated Press as he celebrated the news over an Italian restaurant meal and someone in his party ordered champagne. "I have to put it out there: Pardon, no pardon — I'll be with him as long as he's president." More at link
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trumps-first-pardon-spares-political-ally-arpaio-060746621.html
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Trump directs Pentagon to implement ban on transgender service members, bans sex-reassignment surgery.

President Donald Trump on Friday directed the Pentagon to ban the recruitment of openly transgender people, but is leaving it to military leaders to determine whether individuals already in the armed forces should be allowed to continue to serve.

The presidential memorandum signed by Trump will also prevent the military from providing medical treatment for sex reassignment treatments.

Trump is reversing an Obama administration policy that was the latest step in the advancement of rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the U.S. military in recent years. But the White House said Trump believes his predecessor failed to provide sufficient basis to determine whether terminating the Department of Defense's long-standing policy on transgender individuals would "hinder military effectiveness and lethality, disrupt unit cohesion, or tax military resources."

The memorandum signed by the president states that "further study" is necessary to ensure that the policy change would not have negative effects on military readiness. More at link.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-pentagon-transgender-ban-20170825-story,amp.html

Pardoning Arpaio is foolish, IMO, and not something an astute politician would have done.

Meanwhile.....

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-fired-sebastian-gorka-ousted-white-house-latest-steve-bannon-adviser-a7913756.html

Donald Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka ousted from White House
'Sebastian Gorka did not resign, but I can confirm he no longer works at the White House,' says a White House official

White House adviser Sebastian Gorka, who was closely aligned with a nationalist faction led by ousted senior strategist Steve Bannon, no longer works for President Donald Trump, the White House has said.

"Sebastian Gorka did not resign, but I can confirm he no longer works at the White House," a White House official said in a statement.

The official did not elaborate, but the statement suggested that Mr Gorka had been fired.

Mr Gorka had reportedly feuded with national security adviser General HR McMaster and was unhappy with the decision Mr Trump announced this week - backed by General McMaster and the US military - to reorient US policy in Afghanistan.

Mr Gorka, who frequently appeared on cable news shows to tout Mr Trump'€™s policies, was a divisive figure within the administration, seen by veteran intelligence professionals and diplomats as an ideologue with little real-world experience.

He is the latest in a string of hawkish or nationalist advisers to leave the National Security Council and other parts of the White House in recent weeks, suggesting that in the battle among Mr Trump's foreign policy advisers, internationalist voices such as those of General McMaster, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson are prevailing.

Earlier, the conservative Federalist news outlet, citing multiple sources familiar with the situation, said Mr Gorka, hired as a counter-terrorism expert, had quit. In a letter of resignation, Mr Gorka expressed dissatisfaction with the current state of the Trump administration, the Federalist said.

"As a result, the best and most effective way I can support you, Mr. President, is from outside the People's House," Mr Gorka was quoted as saying in the letter.

Mr Trump fired Mr Bannon a week ago in the latest White House shake-up, removing a far-right architect of his 2016 election victory and a driving force behind his nationalist and anti-globalisation agenda....etc.


Whatever anyone's views are on Gorka and co, this, IMO, is a total betrayal of all those people who voted for Trump because he was going to end US military adventures in other countries. Instead, he's carrying on and even increasing the overseas aggression, and wasting huge sums of money - mostly in the form of debt - and more importantly, American lives.

Trump's low approval ratings set an unwanted record.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump started as the most unpopular new president in the history of modern polling. After seven months, things have only gotten worse. Plunging into undesirably uncharted territory, Trump is setting records with his dismally low approval ratings, including the lowest mark ever for a president in his first year. In fact, with four months left in the year, Trump has already spent more time under 40 percent than any other first-year president.

At 34 percent, his current approval rating is worse than President Barack Obama's ever was. Trump's early descent in the polls defies some longstanding patterns about how Americans view their president. Such plunges are often tied to external forces that the president only partially controls, such as a sluggish economy or an all-consuming international crisis. In Trump's case, the economy is humming and the foreign crises have been kept to a minimum.

Americans also tend to be optimistic about their new leaders, typically cutting them some slack during their early days in office. Not with Trump. "Most presidents begin with a honeymoon period and then go down from that, and Trump had no honeymoon," said Gallup editor-in-chief Frank Newport.

It's a jarring juxtaposition for the reality TV star-turned-president who spent months on the campaign trail obsessing about his poll numbers and reading them to massive rally crowds while vowing that he'd win so much as president that Americans would get sick of it. Since he took office, the poll number recitations have stopped.

Trump is now viewed positively by only 37 percent of Americans, according to Gallup's most recent weekly estimate. (Obama's lowest weekly average never fell below 40 percent.) It's even lower — just 34 percent — in Gallup's shorter, three-day average, which includes more recent interviews but can also involve more random variation.

To be sure, approval ratings can fluctuate — sometimes dramatically. Some presidents have seen their positive reviews dip below 40 percent, only to recover strongly. Bill Clinton, whose rating fell to 37 percent in early June 1993 after policy stumbles, quickly gained ground. Later that same month, he climbed to 46 percent, and ended his eight years enjoying approval from 66 percent of the nation.

Trump has defied the trends before. But if history is a guide, his numbers don't bode well. Low approval ratings hamper a president's ability to push an agenda through Congress and make it more likely the president's party will lose seats in Congress in the midterm elections.

Scott de Marchi, who teaches political science at Duke University, says his research suggests approval ratings tend to affect whether a president can persuade Congress to do his or her bidding. That's primarily true with complex issues like tax reform, where Americans care about the outcome but may not have strongly formed opinions. In those cases, Americans are more likely to support whatever plan the president proposes if they broadly approve of the president himself.

"The problem with Trump is that on any area like the budget or tax policy or even health care, people need to be led to a position to support," de Marchi said. Since Gallup began tracking presidential approval, four presidents — Harry Truman, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush — spent significant time below 40 percent during their first four years. Clinton's and Ronald Reagan's forays below the 40 percent mark also came during their first terms. But neither stayed there long.

Of those who spent at least a few months below 40 percent approval in a first term, only one — Truman — recovered enough to win re-election. Still, several others reached lows at some point in their presidency that are worse than Trump's, including several who dropped below 30 percent.

Truman hit 22 percent in February 1952, during a drawn-out Korean War stalemate and accusations of corruption in his administration. Richard Nixon hit 24 percent at the height of the Watergate scandal just before his resignation in 1974. Carter bottomed out at 28 percent in the summer of 1979, amid that year's oil crisis.

Trump's average approval rating so far: Just 40 percent. That's even lower than the previous average low for a first-term president, 46 percent, set by Carter. Newport, the Gallup chief, said Trump's struggles are unusual in that such abysmal numbers can usually be tied to a single, specific issue bedeviling the country. With Trump, Newport said, "it's a more general kind of issue with the man himself and a more general dissatisfaction with the way things are going in the country."

In July, Gallup posed another question to Trump's disapprovers: Why? Nearly two-thirds cited his personality or character, while less than a third cited issues, policies or job performance. By contrast, when Gallup asked the same question about Obama in 2009 and George W. Bush in 2001, less than 2 in 10 disapprovers cited similar concerns about personal characteristics.

The vast majority of Republicans support Trump while the vast majority of Democrats oppose him. Such political polarization might be both a blessing and a curse for Trump, preventing him from achieving higher ratings but also keeping him from falling even further.

"When Trump has done things that have generated an enormous amount of attention and people have anticipated his rating could go down, it has not," Newport said. "And that's because he's being propped up by Republicans."

It's unclear whether Trump's most recent bout with controversy — his response to racially tinged clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia — further harmed his approval ratings. It could be he's close enough to bottoming out that the latest dust-up will have little effect.

In a Washington Post-ABC News poll conducted Aug. 16-20, just 28 percent said they approve of Trump's response to Charlottesville. But 37 percent said they approved of the job Trump is doing overall — almost the exact same percentage that approved in the same poll a month earlier.

Yet if the famously image-conscious Trump aspires to undo some of the damage, there's reason to hope. "The history of presidential job approval ratings shows an enormous amount of fluctuation," Newport said. "There's no historical reason why his ratings couldn't go up."

Trump directive sparks criticism among transgender troops.

Active-duty transgender troops say a policy change that puts them at risk of being removed and indefinitely bars transgender people from enlisting in the military is a step backward for civil rights that will promote inequality in the armed forces.

President Donald Trump on Friday directed the Pentagon to extend a ban on transgender individuals joining the military but gave the Pentagon the authority to decide the future of openly transgender people already serving. Trump appeared to leave open the possibility of allowing some transgender people who already are in uniform.

The guidance from the White House contradicts Trump's words, Army Capt. Jennifer Sims said, pointing out that he just praised the military for its tolerance when he told veterans in Nevada on Wednesday that those in uniform come from all walks of life and are united by shared values and a shared sense of duty.

Days earlier, Trump, speaking to thousands of soldiers at the Army's Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, in Arlington, Virginia, denounced prejudice, bigotry and hate in the wake of violence that erupted at a rally organized by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia. More at link.
https://www.mail.com/int/scitech/health/5469172-trump-directive-sparks-criticism-transgender-troop.html#.1258-stage-hero1-9

Trump Accused of Using Hurricane Harvey as Cover for Arpaio Pardon, Transgender Ban.

Democrat Chuck Schumer has accused Donald Trump of using the approach of Hurricane Harvey as a screen to avoid criticism for controversial acts such as the pardon of Joe Arpaio and a memo that barred transgender individuals from serving in the U.S. military.

Schumer's comments come after Trump announced Friday that he would push ahead with his transgender ban and just hours later pardoned the controversial former sheriff, Arpaio, who had been convicted of contempt of a court for ignoring a ban on racial profiling.     More at link.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/trump-accused-using-hurricane-harvey-151755999.html
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Twitter Users Blast Donald Trump For Using Hurricane Harvey 'As Political Cover'.

Twitter users are calling out President Donald Trump for announcing a raft of controversial measures on Friday night, just before Hurricane Harvey struck Texas.

Hundreds of tweeters have accused Trump of using the life-threatening weather event, which has seen tens of thousands of people fleeing the Gulf Coast, as a “political cover” to deflect attention away from his actions.

Late Friday, Trump signed a memo which bans transgender individuals from newly enlisting in the military and pardoned Joe Arpaio, the former sheriff of Maricopa County in Arizona who was convicted after illegally targeting Latinos and has a history of racist actions, via Twitter.    More at link.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/twitter-users-blast-donald-trump-102306031.html

I confess to being lost for words in this ongoing shambles, which seems to be spiralling out of control.

bb1 wrote:I confess to being lost for words in this ongoing shambles, which seems to be spiralling out of control.

And I forecast it's gonna get worse before it gets better. The USA is fast becoming the laughing stock of the world. Racism, shootings, nazis, white supremacists, rising poverty - what next? LL

I genuinely shudder to think what's coming next, LL, and am beginning to think it might be a good idea for the rest of the world to build walls round the US and keep all the lunatics inside.

Donald Trump: the discriminator in chief.

To Donald Trump, former sheriff Joe Arpaio is a "patriot" deserving of a pardon while transgender Americans who courageously risk their lives in the military to defend our nation are a "burden" and should be banned from our armed services. Both of these decisions share one thing: Trump is legitimizing discrimination against minorities.

Arpaio, who was pardoned by Trump Friday night, is the controversial former Maricopa County, Arizona, sheriff who had a permanent injunction issued against him by a federal judge in 2013 for continuing to racially profile Latino drivers even after being ordered to stop years earlier. The court's order could not be more clear, instructing Arpaio to stop "detaining, holding, or arresting Latino occupants of vehicles in Maricopa County based on a reasonable belief, without more, that such persons were in country without authorization."

But the former sheriff, a man Trump praised in 2012 for joining him in peddling the racist birther campaign against President Barack Obama, intentionally ignored the court's order despite admitting that his officers had "violated the constitutional rights of Latinos during saturation patrols" -- a procedure in which officers flood a targeted geographic area.

In fact, after the 2013 court ruling, Arpaio proclaimed to a crowd of cheering supporters, "After [the Justice Department] went after me, we arrested 500 more just for spite." Consequently, after a trial last month, Arpaio was found to be in criminal contempt of court for "willfully disobeying the law after a court ordered him to stop singling out drivers based on ethnicity and detaining them without charges."

Despite this, President Trump declared on Friday that Arpaio was a "worthy candidate" for this pardon. He couldn't be more wrong. Arpaio is a despicable man who has for years harassed, detained and imprisoned countless Latinos simply because of their ethnicity. Arpaio is neither a "patriot" nor "worthy" of special treatment; he's a criminal and a bigot.

Let's be clear, Trump's pardon of Arpaio sends a message to the nation -- including law enforcement -- that profiling people based on their ethnicity and race is okay in Trump's America. And it's also a strong message to the "fine people," as Trump called them, in the white supremacist demonstrations, that people who aren't white deserve less constitutional protections.

But Trump wasn't done legitimizing discrimination on Friday -- he did more. He took a big step to legally sanctioning discrimination against the LGBT community by announcing a ban on transgender Americans who want to serve in our military. Transgender men and women currently serving can remain for the time being, but Trump's order would allow them to be discharged at any moment depending on the decision of military leaders. (Trump avoided military service during the Vietnam War because of "temporary" heel spurs that astoundingly were worse in his 20s than today when he's 71 years old.)

It was an unsurprising move. Trump first signaled, in a series of tweets, in late July his intention to ban transgender Americans from joining our military and even hinted at the immediate discharge of those now serving. He callously described these brave men and women as a burden, "Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail."

In announcing this policy, Trump reiterated his view that transgender Americans in the military would be a burden. In reality, however, a 2016 RAND Corporation study commissioned by the Pentagon found the opposite, noting that 18 countries already allow transgender personnel to openly serve in their military and in "no case did the RAND team find evidence of an effect on operational effectiveness, operational readiness or cohesion."

But as we all know, facts don't matter to Trump -- especially when demonizing minorities, be they Muslims, the disabled, Mexicans, etc. This ban by Trump will -- like Arpaio's pardon -- send a clear message that discrimination against a minority group is acceptable in Trump's America.

Trump's latest actions prove that the lasting impact of his presidency will likely be less about legislative accomplishments and more about his emboldening of intolerance, discrimination and even hate.

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/26/opinions/trump-is-discriminator-in-chief-opinion-obeidallah/index.html

Pardoning Arpaio is, IMO, political madness, and a clear insult to the rule of law.

Donald Trump 'might refuse to leave the White House when his term ends', historian warns.

Tim Rogers said the US leader no respect for the "sanctity of the presidency".

The expert on Nicaragua’s Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN) and the country's former President Daniel Ortega, Mr Rogers said it was common for Latin American leaders to stay in power for long periods.

He added that he sees similarities between Mr Trump and the likes of Mr Ortega.

Describing Mr Trump as a “tribal leader", he said he was “dividing" the US as opposed to uniting it.

“This is a dangerous moment for the country," he wrote on the Fusion website. "Trump has shown no interest in preserving the sanctity of the presidency or the traditions of U.S. democracy. He might not even be familiar with them.

“Trump is only interested in Trump. He’s willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of self-preservation. This is how dictatorships are born."

He added: “Shortly after Daniel Ortega was elected president of Nicaragua in 2006, renowned author and intellectual Sergio Ramírez told me, 'anyone who thinks Ortega is going to leave office at the end of his term is being naive.' I was naive. I didn’t see it coming, even after I was warned what to look out for.

“I might be naive again by thinking that Trump will try something similar by refusing to go away when his time is up. But Nicaragua taught me it’s best to err on the side of caution when dealing with authoritarians.”
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/donald-trump-apos-might-refuse-114407296.html

Trump Still Insists Mexico Will Pay For The Wall -- Eventually.

President Donald Trump on Sunday returned to rallying his base by continuing to insist that Mexico will pay for his proposed border wall, after last week threatening a government shutdown if funding for the barrier isn’t provided in the U.S. budget.

“Mexico will pay for it through reimbursement/other,” he said on Twitter, reiterating a claim he made earlier this year when he all but admitted that U.S. taxpayers would have to fund the wall if it were to move forward.

Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump
With Mexico being one of the highest crime Nations in the world, we must have THE WALL. Mexico will pay for it through reimbursement/other.
3:44 PM - Aug 27, 2017

Mexico has repeatedly insisted it will not pay for the wall ― a signature Trump campaign promise and a rallying call for his base ― forcing the president into a corner.

During an unhinged campaign rally in Arizona last Tuesday, Trump threatened the government shutdown if Congress did not allocate taxpayer funding for the wall, seeming to concede that Mexico would not pay for it.

“If we have to close down our government, we’re building that wall,” he said, without mentioning his prior insistence that Mexico would pay for it. “We’re going to have our wall.”

Yet White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Thursday claimed it was not a concession, after dodging reporters’ questions about the wall’s funding.

Asked whether Trump’s shutdown threat was an admission that Mexico was not going to pay for the wall’s construction, Sanders said it was not.

“He hasn’t said they’re not, either,” she said.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-still-insists-mexico-pay-143542196.html

Refuse to leave? Trump will be lucky not to be frogmarched out the White House door before Christmas....

To Kill the President by Sam Bourne review – does fact Trump fiction?

He’s not named, but the leader of the free world looks uncannily familiar in this engaging and morally serious thriller that wrestles with contemporary American politics.

Since the second world war, numerous professors of ethics or theology and several science fiction writers have fretted over the question of whether a seer or time-traveller, knowing what Adolf Hitler would go on to do, could be justified in killing him as a preventative measure. Stephen King fictionalised this dilemma in his 1979 novel The Dead Zone, in which a man sees that a rising populist politician will become an American Hitler, and agonises about whether assassination would be a patriotic act.    

Now Guardian journalist Jonathan Freedland, after publishing 2015’s The Third Woman under his own name, has re-Bourne the pseudonym under which he previously produced five conspiracy thrillers. In To Kill the President, a White House legal aide spots a plot to murder a recently elected controversialist president who, though never named, seems familiar.    

Unexpectedly winning an election against a female Democrat who attracted criticism for being unwise with her email service, this “cheat and bigot” has dismayed the political and media establishments with “the tweets, the lies, the grotesque misconduct, the acts of unwarranted aggression”. He also does things of which Donald Trump has not yet been accused, including grabbing a female aide by her genitals in the Situation Room, where staff have been summoned in the middle of the night because the President wishes to nuke North Korea and China.

Although Armageddon is averted in the opening chapter, the fear that the leader intends to use cruise missiles as a sort of super-Twitter leads more moderate American patriots to seek out a Lee Harvey Oswald of our days. The conspiracy is spotted by Maggie Costello, an Irish-born diplomat who featured in Bourne’s The Last Testament (2007) and The Chosen One (2010).

Maggie is a liberal leftover from the previous presidency (by implication, the Obama administration) who has remained in post in the hope of moderating the new guy and also because she considers herself responsible – through a secret concealed until the final pages – for the election of the demagogic incompetent. Now hating herself for serving a man she believes should not be in power, she could solve private and public crises by failing to thwart the gunman.

Although President Trump is now viewed as an extreme test-case for this dilemma, the previous Republican president received similar fictional treatment: in Nicholson Baker’s 2004 novel Checkpoint, two men discuss whether there might be justifications for assassinating the then commander-in-chief. Fantasies about the possible shooting of real politicians are a recognised sub-genre of suspense fiction: Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal (1971) dramatised a plot against President Charles de Gaulle of France, while Jeffrey Archer’s Shall We Tell the President? (1977), in its first editions, allowed Edward Kennedy to reach the Oval Office, as he never did in life, but put him at risk of sharing the fate of JFK.

The fact that Archer, after objections led by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, rewrote the novel with a fictional politician in the rifle-sights shows that what-if assassination plots, as well as debating ethical dilemmas, also raise them. A fascinating aspect of gunman narratives is that the reader is tempted to become complicit. Because failure of the assassination attempt would be an anticlimax of the sort deadly to a suspense story, readers of The Day of the Jackal found themselves guiltily wanting De Gaulle to be shot. At least in that case the French leader was already dead of natural causes; the target in Bourne’s novel is a living politician whom very many would prefer not to be in office.

Even committed Trump-haters may suffer struggles of conscience over what would count as a satisfactory resolution of the plot. The writer surely intends to induce such unease, and the clever denouement adds at least two more alarming paths to the moral maze the book has mapped. To Kill the President is a techno-thriller, with particular attention to remote inter-activity that allows the owner of devices and vehicles to control them from afar, but opens up the possibility of hackers intervening, Set-pieces include a terrific car-chase involving only one driver, and a plotline that may leave readers paranoid about the central-heating thermostat. The story also incorporates flashbacks to Iceland, India, Namibia and Norfolk that imaginatively fatten the narrative.

Unusually, it is explicitly a feminist thriller. Not only the off-stage President but also two of the major male characters are revoltingly misogynistic, while Maggie’s quandary about whether to stop her boss being shot is complicated by her knowledge of young women who have suffered from his tolerance of sexual harassment and intolerance of abortion.

As President Trump’s worldview also includes the declared belief that novels are pointless, he seems unlikely to read the book, although might perhaps tweet his outrage that it is premised on his potential violent death. If he opened it – and showed more mature reflection than he has on other topics – he would find a pacy, engaging and morally serious thriller that offers no easy answers on the limits of loyalty and dissent within a democracy.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jul/06/kill-president-sam-bourne-review

This I gotta read!!!!     LL