Donald Trump is a hard-working president who follows through on his promoses, Which is a terrible thing,
Missing the Bad Ones
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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Can’t help recalling those claims that Mr Trump didn’t want the job and the prognostications that he would soon tire of it and either be impeached or resign. Myself, I see parallels to the first days of a certain German Reichskanzler back in 1933. Wonder when the US Capitol will go up in flames ?…
Henri
Hey, looky there – a multiple-link email just appeared.
My take is that he definitely wants to be called Mr. President, but he really isn’t interested in doing the job. I sincerely doubt that
Yeah, he’ll tire of it – he’s got the attention span of a dead goldfish.
I sincerely doubt that … he really understood what the daily grind entails.
PS : Ted, you might want to consider correcting the typo in the caption above….
Henri
Are you referring to “promoses”? 🙂
Indeed. Sometimes I get the impression that Ted likes to poke us from time to time…. 😉
Henri
I am not sure that MBT (management by tweet) fits the definition of hard-working or how effectual this is.
Old School:
Meet with actual constituents (rich and influential backers) to get marching orders. Pick low-hanging fruit. Call key senators and negotiate the price of a majority within own party. Get judicial review. Spin it until dizzy. Focus group it with nominal constituents. Water it down further and approach other side to achieve compromise (crickets). Spin even more until even the staunchest supporters throw up. Wait for other side to mount counter-campaign featuring death panels and FEMA camps. Begin media charm offensive calling in favors from the press. Reset everything upon international incident. Rinse & repeat.
New School:
Meet with hack. Send out ill-considered executive order subject to judicial injunction. Have fancy lunch with billionaire who is also cabinet member (win-win-win). Tweet bloody murder about judge who approves injunction. Call press conference but only to insult press. Shout at ally in telephone conversation. Actually read lamestream media coverage and tweet how unfair it is.
Ted, I posted a comment which included a few links, but was devoid of personal abuse, a few hours ago and received a notice to the effect that is was «awaiting moderation». I am still waiting to learn if it has been deemed fit for publication. Since when are comments on your cartoons and essays «moderated», who performs the «moderation», and how long can one expect it to take for such a process to be completed ?…
Henri
Henri – all comments with multiple links are moderated. I’ve had ’em take anywhere from an hour to multiple days. I ‘spect it’s to keep out spammers but I don’t know for certain.
Thanks for the reminder, CrazyH – I hadn’t received one of those «moderation» notices since posting to the «Shiftless Americans» cartoon thread back on 12 July 2015, so I was surprised to see it popping up again, given that some of my posts since then have also contained multiple links (if I remember aright). In any event, that post was eventually published, so perhaps the current one will also get through. My curiosity remains however : who does the «moderating» (pardon the scare quotes, but I’m as suspicious of «moderating» as I am of, e g, the «moderate» rebel forces supplied by the US via Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and (until lately) Turkey in Syria) ?…
Henri
My bet: it’s Ted himself. It’s not like he can afford a staff.
I suspect, CrazyH, that you’re right – perhaps he could appeal to the US president for some federal support for the arts ?…
Henri
The various platforms for web site have different comment policies. Different Discus sites, e.g., are set up differently. Scott Adams says he has no idea how to fix his own Discus to work the way he wants it to work.
Ted’s platform sometimes blocks all links, and sometimes doesn’t. The comment policy could be a plug-in with rules that get changed by the original system programmers, not by Ted.
And it’s not clear if Ted knows (see today’s Foxtrot).
Michael, my posts to these threads often include links and generally speaking they get through without any delay or, as far as I know, «moderation». CrazyH believes that it is posts with multiple links that are subject to that process. It might be helpful if f Ted – or his webmaster – could publish the rules that obtain on this particular site….
I searched for a relevant Foxtrot comic, but the latest I could find on Mr Amend’s site was from 5 February, which didn’t seem apposite. I hesitate to risk the wrath of the «moderation» gods, but perhaps you could provide a link ?… 😉
Henri
@ mhenriday –
A couple of weeks ago I posted a link to Ted’s GoFundMe page, as well as the one I initiated prior to that. I received the “being moderated” comment as well, but eventually the post made it to the board.
I don’t know who does the moderating, but I suspect the webmaster (a son of mine). Who knows who lurks in the shadows?
😀
«Who knows who lurks in the shadows?» Or as I remember it, mein verehrter Lehrer, «Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men ?»…
Speaking of evil, I’m still waiting for the «moderator» to make his or her decision with regard to my post…. 😉
Henri
Well, duh!
On Monday, he promises X; on Tuesday, he promises not-X. No matter which way he jumps on Wednesday he’ll fulfill half his promises. Come to think of it, that’s a better average than most presidents.
😀
First, I make plans. Second, I announce the opposite. Then I issue orders which surprise even myself
Or similar, quoted from memory. The quote is from Saddam Hussein, who in turn was inspired by Stalin ;-).
In the management literature this is referred to “Mad Dog” leadership style. It does keep the underlings on their toes.
Love the quote, I think I’ll keep it.
> It does keep the underlings on their toes.
Yeah, damage control requires it. That makes me wonder whether his posse is doing contingency planning, “If he says this stupid thing we’ll spin it that way. If he says this other stupid thing…”
You know Donnie T. Rump doesn’t think ahead. It’s simply not in his nature. I’ve had the misfortune of being related to car salesmen. I recognize the type. He’ll say anything that he thinks will make the sale, it doesn’t matter whether it’s true or whether it matches what he said yesterday. He lives entirely in the moment.
Case in point: a few days back, people were admiring him for “admitting” that the US kills people. He didn’t “admit” anything – it was simply a negotiating tactic to “win” the conversation. He would have said the exact opposite if he thought that would better suit his purpose.
Andreas, I’m not certain of Stalin’s influence, by way of Mr Hussein, on Mr Trump’s intellectual development, but the Washington Post has recently published a list of five works which, it is claimed, have influenced Mr Bannon….
Sun Zi – a those devious Chinese !…
Henri
The cognitive dissonance of the day.
DanD
My experience from all the years of watching the politics go round and round is that the Left has a large portion of adherents who are in love with complaining. Bernie Sanders comes along, a viable national candidate, and he says, “Hey, I want universal healthcare and free tuition — two things the Left have been asking for for decades. I want to do sane, decent things with all the wealth and power we have in this country.”
And look — I mean really look — at who the Left rallied around. A career hypocrite named Clinton who ran a private bank called the Clinton Foundation that sold influence. A candidate who is a millionaire over and over who told her supporters that they had to be satisfied with incremental improvements that still leave them clawing and scratching to stay alive. (Do you think Hillary Clinton has to worry for a single second about health care? Do you think her granddaughter is going to have to even fill out a FAFSA, let alone carry the albatross of tens of thousands of dollars of student loan debt so that she can get a job that pays $40,000 a year if she’s lucky?)
The Left doesn’t want things to improve. The Left wants to be able to continue to cry about how terrible things are. So the Bernie Bros. got a lecture about how unrealistic we were. (Imagine, wanting ALL of what you think you deserve, how unrealistic. Don’t you understand, that’s not how politics works?)
Like it or not, Trump understands how politics works. You figure out how weak your opposition is, and then you take them for all you can. Just like business, actually. Trump’s seven-nation ban? That was never about the seven-nation ban. That was incidental. The purpose of the ban was to let all the governments in the Middle East know that Trump expects shit to start moving. Remember how Osama bin Laden kept slipping away until the U.S. snuck in and killed him BEFORE telling the Pakistan government about the incursion into their country?” The governments in the Middle East aren’t the friends of the U.S. Was the U.S. the friend of all those southeast Asian governments during the Vietnam war? Suuuuuuuuuuuuure.
«And look — I mean really look — at who the Left rallied around. A career hypocrite named Clinton who ran a private bank called the Clinton Foundation that sold influence.» Can’t but wonder, Alex, if you are not here conflating «the [US] Left» with the institutional Democratic Party and the DNC ?…
Henri
I should clarify. (I should also mention that I might be having a heart attack after all that snow shoveling.)
Visualize one of those number lines from grade school, running from -10, -9, -8 … -1, 0, 1, 2, 3 … 8, 9, 10
The “Left” ought to be anyone from -10 up to the zero, by definition. However, most of the Democratic Party (meaning the rank and file voters) would be around -7 to -4 or so. Why?
The Progressives would occupy -10, -9, -8 but they’ve been marginalized for years now because, you know, it’s ridiculous to think people should get the same kind of care as say, a senator. That’s just unpossible. So the “most extreme” you get is “middling” because there is no place on the Democratic Party platform for progressive outrage. As a result, the Democrats have very few IDEALS, things that they really, really, really will not yield on. So there’s really very little to fire up the party base because, well, you can’t be sure the party will actually not backpedal “for reasons of triangulation” six months later.
The leadership of the Democratic Party (meaning the people who decide what the party pursues, how it pursues it, etc.) is around -3 to about positive 2. These are jaded, cynical political types who are in it for the exposure and the paycheck. They don’t care if you or I have healthcare because THEY have healthcare and know they always will.
The people running the DNC are just like all the charities I see that put “professional beggars” on the streets. Have you seen them? They have these huge phony grins and they are SO happy to see you. Until you look at them and say, “How much does your CEO make a year? And what do you get paid an hour?”
And, extra bonus round. I just saw this on CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/08/world/venezuela-passports-investigation/index.html
Like I said, government “friendliness” is inaccurate. There are simply periods where one gummint doesn’t shaft the other.
Hey Alex – I’ve commented on this before, not only have the definitions like ‘left’ and ‘liberal’ changed over the years, the right has been waging a misinformation campaign for decades. Makes it rather hard to communicate when the words themselves are slippery.
I do like your number line. I’m a -11 on that scale. 😉
From the CNN article : «As for Misael Lopez, he’s living modestly in Spain …» «[M]odestly»’s the word – love to have a look at Señor Lopez’s bank account (that is, if all transactions with US authorities are not being carried out in cash)….
Henri