Mourn Competency!

So, the landscape becomes clearer and clearer as we watch the debacle that is our government sliding into bi-cameral fibrillation.  This truly is a reality TV horror show and the action scenes reveal more and more about each of the player’s motives and capabilities.

Donald Trump is really a terrible negotiator after all!  No surprise,  actually, but the demonstrative evidence of his incapacity to understand issues, much less lead parties to the negotiating table for compromise and forward motion is stunning.  Schumer said it best—“negotiating with Jello”—what an image!  His concept of negotiation is make an agreement, then renege…demoralize your adversary by lying to them and wearing them down.  Do it repeatedly and confuse them.  This is not leadership, it is chaos.

On the Congressional side, the Republicans have demonstrated that they are unable to govern.  With all the government shutdowns we have endured over the last 40 years, this is the only time it has occurred when one party had control of all branches of government.  Their prime message is that all of this is the fault of Democrats.  Forget that we are five months into the new fiscal year without a budget, suffering through fits and starts of ‘continuing resolutions’.  Important issues like immigration, defense,  tropical storm relief funding, infrastructure, filling important government posts, children’s health insurance program, DACA issues were ignored.  Instead, Republicans spent the last year dragging us through the meat grinder of unsuccessfully trying to repeal Obamacare and throw 25 million people off health insurance.  After that failure they spent the rest of the year pushing through a ‘tax reform’ bill that was a giant gift to the ‘swamp dwellers’ (wealthy contributors and lobbyists). 

Trump provided the spark for our current government shutdown firestorm by unnecessarily revoking Obama’s executive order protecting the DACA children and throwing 800,000 people’s lives into turmoil.  Then when the ‘President’ washed his hands of that issue by turning the issue over to the Congress to resolve in 6 months, we have seen no less than 4 attempts at bi-partisan solutions by a handful of men of good character.  Each time, the Trump supplicants have twisted their puppet President around to crush the initiative with the heels of their racist boots of intolerance.  Is it any wonder the Democrats have finally taken a stand in support of the DACA youth?  Who else is looking out for them?

And now it is all about the Democrats unwillingness to compromise.  Give me a break!  Trump just released an ad that will poison the well of negotiation by trying to hang future murders by immigrants on the Democrats.  What kind of negotiation tactic is that??

I can feel the momentum rising.  The news reports about all the marches this weekend nationwide have described a change in the energy of the demonstrators.  One year ago when millions of women marched in protest of Trump’s inauguration the attitude and feeling was one of fear and anxiety.  The energy this year is different—it is now anger, resoluteness and resistance.  The election this year is going to be a tidal wave.  Frankly, that is the only way to remedy this situation.  The next three election cycles offer us the chance to change the equation.  New people need to be elected to Congress.  We need to refresh our legislator selection with people with integrity, humanity, competency, compassion, and most of all, motivation to revere the Constitution and do the business of the country!

Isn’t it ironic that the whining, squabbling lawmakers are getting paid during the shutdown while government employees, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck will go without pay?  Just symptomatic of how our system has been corrupted.

P.S.  (As the investigation into Trump’s business history is revealed piece by piece, as Mueller follows the money, we are discovering that he actually has had a long and tortuous history with finding financing and losing money.  It is curious most of his business partners have been organized crime characters who thrived on money laundering and theft.  Most of his financing has come from Russians over the years….from Russians who were criminally moving vast amounts of stolen assets out of Russia and other countries and finding a willing transfer/laundering agent in Trump and his construction and real estate deals.  No wonder he has a soft spot for Russia.  These sleazy characters appear in almost all the deals that Trump has done over the decades.  People like Felix Sater, Oleg Deripaska, many other oligarchical friends of Putin.  These are cronies that run the big banks and other shady conglomerates in Russia.  I can’t wait to see a complete list of all the ‘deals’ he was involved in over the years with Russians.  It is clearly possible for Putin and his associates to have all kinds of influence and power over Trump.  They have been financing all his activities and ‘grooming’ him for exactly what has happened.)

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