The suzerain Trump

[cronus]

He'll start a major, big bigly big war, to distract you all from your grumblings soon. What you all arguing about then? Only making it worse for yourselves....I'm talking at the screen because no one is listening to what needs to be done. Only a manned mission to Mars will distract from world war three.

[pErvinalia]

No one is listening to you because everything you say is random gobbledygook.

[L'Emmerdeur]

The US Department of State (read "Foreign Ministry") is twiddling its thumbs while Trump Bannon decides what to do with it and begins to implement the foreign policy of the country.

"The State of Trump's State Department"

This week began with reports that President Donald Trump’s budget proposal will drastically slash the State Department’s funding, and last week ended with White House adviser and former Breitbart head Stephen Bannon telling the attendees of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference that what he and the new president were after was a “deconstruction of the administrative state.” At the State Department, which employs nearly 70,000 people around the world, that deconstruction is already well underway.

In the last week, I’ve spoken with a dozen current and recently departed State Department employees, all of whom asked for anonymity either because they were not authorized to speak to the press and feared retribution by an administration on the prowl for leakers, or did not want to burn their former colleagues. None of these sources were political appointees. Rather, they were career foreign service officers or career civil servants, most of whom have served both Republican and Democratic administrations—and many of whom do not know each other. They painted a picture of a State Department adrift and listless.

[. . .]

With the State Department demonstratively shut out of meetings with foreign leaders, key State posts left unfilled, and the White House not soliciting many department staffers for their policy advice, there is little left to do. “If I left before 10 p.m., that was a good day,” said the State staffer of the old days, which used to start at 6:30 in the morning. “Now, I come in at 9, 9:15, and leave by 5:30.” The seeming hostility from the White House, the decades of American foreign-policy tradition being turned on its head, and the days of listlessness are taking a toll on people who are used to channeling their ambition and idealism into the detail-oriented, highly regimented busywork that greases the infinite wheels of a massive bureaucracy. Without it, anxiety has spiked. People aren’t sleeping well. Over a long impromptu lunch one afternoon—“I can meet tomorrow or today, whenever! Do you want to meet right now?”—the staffer told me she too has trouble sleeping now, kept awake by her worries about her job and America’s fading role in the world.

“I used to love my job,” she said. “Now, it feels like coming to the hospital to take care of a terminally ill family member. You come in every day, you bring flowers, you brush their hair, paint their nails, even though you know there’s no point. But you do it out of love.”

Meanwhile, the new Attorney General Jeff Sessions may be in some hot water for lying to the Senate during his confirmation hearings when he said that he hadn't had any communications with Russians during the time he served as one of Trump's main advisors during the presidential campaign.

"AG Sessions' Talks With Russian Envoy May Conflict With Senate Testimony"

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, while an adviser to then-presidential candidate Donald Trump last year, spoke twice with the Russian ambassador, a source familiar with the matter tells NPR's Carrie Johnson. When asked at the Senate confirmation hearing on his nomination in January, Sessions said he had not "had communications with the Russians."

[pErvinalia]

Thank God there are at least some checks and balances in the Merkan system to weed out some of the more corrupt and/or treasonous members of his administration.

[Brian Peacock]

He'll start a major, big bigly big war, to distract you all from your grumblings soon. What you all arguing about then? Only making it worse for yourselves....I'm talking at the screen because no one is listening to what needs to be done. Only a manned mission to Mars will distract from world war three.

Imagine, if you will, a war between the US + Russia against China that starts on an economic battleground before getting out of hand... that leaves the scientists and engineers on the Moon and Mars as the last representatives of humanity.

This is the plan of our true lizard overlords.

[Brian Peacock]

Nobody talking to the US, and the US talking to nobody?

The State of Trump's State Department

The flags in the lobby of the State Department stood bathed in sunlight and silence on a recent afternoon. “It’s normally so busy here,” marveled a State Department staffer as we stood watching the emptiness. “People are usually coming in for meetings, there’s lots of people, and now it’s so quiet.” The action at Foggy Bottom has instead moved to the State Department cafeteria where, in the absence of work, people linger over countless coffees with colleagues. (“The cafeteria is so crowded all day,” a mid-level State Department officer said, adding that it was a very unusual sight. “No one’s doing anything.”) As the staffer and I walked among the tables and chairs, people with badges chatted over coffee; one was reading his Kindle.

“It just feels empty,” a recently departed senior State official told me.

This week began with reports that President Donald Trump’s budget proposal will drastically slash the State Department’s funding, and last week ended with White House adviser and former Breitbart head Stephen Bannon telling the attendees of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference that what he and the new president were after was a “deconstruction of the administrative state.” At the State Department, which employs nearly 70,000 people around the world, that deconstruction is already well underway...

https://www.theatlantic.com/internation ... mp/517965/

[Brian Peacock]

Oops. Beaten to it by L'Emmy.

[JimC]

The Hidden Kingdom of Amerika...

[Tero]

Immigration softening was BS
http://www.mediaite.com/online/report-w ... tion-play/

[Tero]

Trump speak: repeat every claim to sound convincing:

Obama was terrible. So terrible. He left me a mess. A big mess.

(Speak loudly).

[Svartalf]

Granted, Obama could not clean up properly the mess that dubya left him.

[Feck]

Trump has been caught lying so many times it's incredible. Now he has started a war with the media for reporting his lies . If he get's anymore dishonest He is going to make Nixon look like Mother Teresa

[Svartalf]

Actually, Nixon was a better person than Mother Teresa

[Feck]

I know, that was the point i was making .

[Tero]

I was out to a little town some 10 miles south of our college town and state capitol. The state has a presence here, I went to a lake run as a fishing lake by the state. There are farmers here and then support people. Gas station, utilities etc. But I can't see that these people have much to do with the federal government. I see this going about 100% for Trump in election. A few high school teachers may be Democrats. But even education is state run. The farmers themselves get crop insurance and the farm bill and Monsanto will tell them what to grow. Otherwise, "they don't need no stinking Washigton". I saw two Hillary signs last Sep here. The rest were state offices and senators. One or two Trump signs. They voted Trump holding their nose. The illegals fix roofs and do landscaping here. No jobs lost.