President Donald Trump taken on by unlikely foe: Badass park rangers In an extraordinary and seemingly unlikely battle, US President Donald Trump and his transition teams have had their authority challenged by none other than park rangers. On Twitter. Following a number of efforts by the incoming administration to flex its muscles by ordering federal agencies to go silent, several National Park …
In 2017, a crack forestry unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government they survive as rangers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them....maybe you can hire The NPS.
And maybe a running joke about Hannibal's cigars starting forest fires?
Or Murdoch moonlighting as a fire fighting pilot who dumps water on BA as the episode ends with "I'll got you fool!"
Or BA wrestling bears?
And when they do kill Trump, it turns out that it's actually his hair that is the evil genius and it runs off and finds a new host?
This series has a LOT of potential...
"Hey America! You got a Russian or Turkish president! You voted for him!"
Well, I didn't, but I do take your meaning. :) To be clear, our new Presidon't and Conspiracy Monger in Chief is a Russian puppet with an Eastern Bloc shemale living companion. FYI
He's from an immigrant family from Scotland, and she/he is an illegal alien green card whore from who knows where, we're really going to need to see its' papers! I think their Muslim too. ;)
It seems to me that less than a week into his administration the minor acts of resistance have begun already.
If it's the National Parks Service it's probably a minor nuisance, but if it's the FBI or a major Police Department (those might be poor examples, but you get the idea), then Trump will have real problems.
He has no experience of having people say no, and meaning it.
If you're catching flak, it means you're over the target. If there are not "minor acts of resistance" from the establishment bureaucrats and others, he's not doing what he was elected to do.
Flawed reasoning, and needlessly violent to use a war metaphor. It's even more out-of-place when he wasn't really voted to do anything. He ran on a vague platform and lost, if not for three states where his margin of victory was 80,000 out of nearly 14 million cast. Of course that's the system and therefore he won, but to call it a mandate is a joke (he couldn't even win with a majority in those three states; 48% was the best he could do)
Of course, he was only able to do this against a candidate that had another nation actively working against her and a politically inept FBI Chief who thought it was important to tell Congress a few weeks before the election that they might have a few more emails to review. And then less than two weeks before the end, he meekly sends out a press release saying that nothing new was found, putting the whole thing back in the news again. At the same time, FISA warrants were sought by the very same FBI to investigate member's of Trump's campaign for communications with Russia, but the FBI Chief felt no need to tell Congress or anyone else that. I don't think it was a conspiracy, just a man seeing that it was likely to be a 2017 where he would have both a hostile Congress and hostile White House, and he would lose his job. Instead, Trump "shocked the world" and was elected... in no small part due to the Comey letter that everyone except him knew would be leaked within seconds of it landing on the desk of a Republican.
We're stuck with Trump until he's no longer is useful to Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, or he goes so off the deep end that they have no choice but to start impeachment proceedings. They have an ace-in-the-hole in Pence, who's a groomed, established conservative that hits all the right notes without the alt-right connections. Trump is scary right now because Republicans have been trying for eight years to defeat President Obama and failed; Trump won their nomination (though given the other candidates, many would probably have beaten Clinton even more given the revelations) and is the nominal leader of the party. He's trying to make it populist, but much of the party money comes from businesses that thrive on open borders, free trade, and the movement of labor across geopolitical lines. Something will have to give...
Eric Olson, if one discounts California, Trump won the popular vote by approximately 1.7 million votes. Some simple math and a look at historical voter turnouts in the Los Angeles area hint strongly at a large illegal alien voter turnout. I'm wouldn't be surprised if a couple of large cemeteries and mental institutions also had a strong voter participation.
While the US will send "monitors" to other countries to oversee elections, it doesn't do any investigations of US elections. Are they worried over what they will find? The same reason there hasn't been an audit of the country's gold reserves for decades? Three little monkeys!
... if one discounts California, Trump won the popular vote by approximately 1.7 million votes.
And if one discounts the states in which Clinton lost by a similar margin (Trump at 61% or more), it swings back to a +300,000 margin for Clinton. What's your point?
The Electoral College doesn't give bonus points for winning a state by more than a single vote. So the notion that illegal voting would be best served in states that a candidate would already win handily is idiotic. If you want to cast around for phantom anomalous voting, look in the states with razor thin margins where the polling prior to the election indicated a different result... which are the states that Trump won.
But the reality is that there wasn't a conspiracy, there wasn't illegal voting that swung an election, there was none of it. It's a canard clung to by a segment of the population that can't accept that someone might disagree with them. Is it hard to understand that a city with a large number of non-whites, naturalized citizens, and Hollywood types might lean away from Trump or the Republican party? Is there a reason you don't point out that in DC, only 4% of the voters chose Trump?
Let me ask you this question: Do you believe that every citizen that is legally allowed to vote should be able to? Do you believe that every citizen that is legally allowed to vote who wants to vote should be able to? Do you believe that every citizen that is legally allowed to vote who wants to vote should be provided every opportunity to vote?
If so, then you should stop bitching about dead people who aren't cleared from voter rolls (not the same as voting) and start bitching about how states are working hard to ensure that citizens who are legally allowed to vote are being turned away due to the government losing documentation (e.g. birth certificates), making it hard to register to vote, disenfranchising people for life well after they served the rest of their sentence for a crime, and overall trying to make voting more time consuming and expensive to cast a vote. It's the 21st century... why do we insist that each voter only has a single location in which they cast a ballot? This isn't a fucking stone being dropped in a clay jar.
And if you don't think the government has a place ensuring that all citizens legally allowed to vote are able to vote when they can vote, you don't actually give a fuck about vote integrity and fair elections; you only want to wield it as a weapon in an attempt to cling to power. And that behavior is why the US has tried to monitor elections overseas on not locally... it wasn't a problem in the US until someone thought voter restrictions could be used to win elections.
..."If you're catching flak, it means you're over the target."...
Historically you're incorrect; flack started to be aimed at aircraft way before they'd got anywhere near their targets. The idea is to knock down the enemy aircraft *before* the reach their target.
"We may have to start accepting ex-federal employees fleeing prosecution for expressing their political views. Ironic for a country so proud of its constitution."
I'd be worried if ex-federal employees were prosecuted for expressing their personal views, but those currently employed should keep their views to themselves in public and in public forums. It's the same if you make derogatory public comments about your employer; you should expect to be out on your ass. Companies, and especially very large companies, work hard to develop good reputations and use trained PR people to maintain that image. If employees run their mouths about things without going through channels, it could impact thousands of people in the company.
Re: Less than a week in the position...
You do understand that these 'minor acts of resistance' will be as nothing once the secessions begin. When mid-America has had enough of the deep state fvcking them around and the PITA whining from the election's losing side on both metrosexual coastal city zones - they WILL act. When it finally erupts there will be floods of pinko-illiberal blood. Civil war is where this points and Trump's Americans will be victorious.
Just checking, but wasn't the last Civil War between what are now "red necks" and the industrial North (think California although that doesn't work geographically)?
Last time technology beat passion.
O.K. some have been itching for a rematch ever since, but history suggests they may not like the result.
"O.K. some have been itching for a rematch ever since, but history suggests they may not like the result."
History shows that neither side would like the result. US military deaths in their civil war: 592,680 (334,680 Union, 258,000 Confederate) . US military deaths in World War II: 407,300. Also consider that the US population in 1860 was 31.4 million as compared to 132.1 million in 1940.
Is that "flirty" or "dirty"?
I'm not sure which is more salacious.
But I agree whenever you see this sort of driven SEL you know there's something either very bad or very sad in their past.
He didn't go to some kind of boarding school by any chance?
" or he goes so off the deep end that they have no choice but to start impeachment proceedings. "
In which case there is a quicker way to remove him without impeachment - the 25th Amendment.
"Section 4.
Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President."
https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxxv
In which case there is a quicker way to remove him without impeachment - the 25th Amendment
Sounds nice and easy, but even in the 60s (or because it was the 60s) it was assumed a power struggle could ensue. So naturally, Section 4 has a bit more to it:
Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.
Essentially, if the VP and the Cabinet all decide that Trump is unfit and rat him out to the President pro tempore of the Senate (currently Orrin Hatch of Utah), Trump can fire off a quick note (maybe a tweet?) that he is very fit, maybe more than fit, to continue as President, and he will immediately resume office. If the VP persists, it goes before Congress for a two-thirds vote in both chambers. That would actually be harder than impeachment and a subsequent finding of guilty on one or more charges; the House only needs a majority vote on one charge to forward it on to the Senate for trial, which would still need 2/3rds majority.
The House, being much more unruly and with a wing of Republicans who like to stick it to the party leadership any chance they can, would be unlikely to support removal of Trump. Plus House Democrats might calculate that a President Trump would be more damaging to the Republicans if he remained in office, and that Republicans in disarray would be unable or unwilling to support President Trump's more... unorthodox... policy decisions.
We are stuck with Trump until he's no longer useful for advancing the Republican agenda, or that even in helping with that, his other activities, EO's, public comments, etc., start to erode the public's confidence in the Republican party and their ability to do anything for the public... or Trump starts some kind of war (military, economic, etc.) with his idiotic rants. The danger here is that Republicans still believe they can co-opt office to pass their legislation and policy prescriptions, when the reality is that Trump already did that to them.
The best hosts are the ones who think they are benefiting from the parasite's continued presence.
If Trump were impeached, I assume his bible-banging VP, Pence, would take over.
I have a theory:
Given: After Trump is Pence. After Pence is Paul Ryan, and then Some Republican Senator(TBD), then comes the Cabinet appointees.
Given: To the "Enemies of Trump", each node in the line of succession is scarier than the previous.
Hypothesis: The line of succession is being used as a poison-pill to ensure that Trump is not assassinated or Impeached.
Sadly, remember these are Republicans. The first commandment of being a Republican is "Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican." These are also most of the same yahoos that tolerated Bush / Cheney for eight years. I'm not holding out much hope for any measure of actual patriotism.from the Republicans, and the Democrats don't have the votes.
So while impeachment or the 25th Amendment is a possibility, it's not a very likely one.
Just a historical note but 4 Presidents have had their terms terminated with extreme prejudice.
Only JFK was a Democrat. All the others were Republicans.
Although, unlike other world leaders the Prez has never had to worry about any of his own security popping a couple in his dome (spoiler alert. Except in "Airforce One" of course).
He'd have to really screw up for that to change.
Which I'm sure people find really reassuring.
These are also most of the same yahoos that tolerated Bush / Cheney for eight years.
They tolerated him because he was them. His policies would be meek and mild compared to the median Republican Representative today (that's actually quantifiable, assuming you trust that public statements and voting record are viable inputs into the model). Bush was a conservative in a time when conservatives were trying to overcome the "hypocritical adulterer" label that stuck so well to their leadership after the debacle that was the impeachment trial for Clinton and the subsequent outing of skeletons. Bush was also a reliable Republican and hewed to the party platform while communicating in a bumbling style that made it seem like the other end of those planks weren't dangling off a ship in the shark-infested waters near the Cape of Good Hope.
Trump is... not reliable. He's not conservative. He doesn't have a track record. And his public statements range from white nationalist to far-left socialist... just in the last 5 days. Statements from Ryan and McConnell indicate they are policy focused and assuming that Trump will just scrawl a signature on whatever bill comes his way. There is already public dissent in the ranks for Trump's use of Executive Orders in the first 5 days, especially knowing that there is a pliable Congress just itching to tear down anything that might have been constructed during President Obama's term... for reasons that range from legitimate policy disagreements to... well... less kind things.
That Trump is backstopped by a VP that is closer to the median Republican official and has a track record of doing so means that Trump is expendable... assuming that a year of Trump signing those bills doesn't make the GOP think they have control over him.
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