I Once Thought What We Needed In The White House Was A Businessman Too, But Not This One

"I'll Surround Myself By The Best And Smartest People Ever" He Said - But He's Already Proved He's Not Capable Of Doing That Either

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John A. Smith, Founder/Editor, Sunday, November 20, 2016 

(UPDATED: 7:57PM November 20, 2016)

 I Too Thought The Best Thing To Straighten Out Government Would Be To Put A Businessman In The White House, But Never This One

     During the Reagan years I was in the top 5% of income in the country. I thought Ronald Reagan was the best thing since sliced bread, voted for him twice. Then I got smart, and informed. Over the years many, many things, came to light and I started to see, and understand, how much damage he did to the country. Not the least of which was his "Trickle- Down-Economics" aka "Reaganomics" which didn't work and has been proven not to work numerous times since his days in office. Republicans still call themselves "Job Creators" and say trickle-down-economics is what the country needs but that is just what Republicans do, ignore facts and keep lying over and over, no matter how many times it's been disproved. Unfortunately what Republicans think, is true all to often, that is, if you say something enough times in the media people will believe it no matter how false it is. Ask Republicans, especially Myron Ebell, who President-Elect Donald Trump appointed as head of the EPA Transition Team. "Ebell, who is not a scientist, has long questioned the overwhelming scientific consensus that human activity is fueling unprecedented global warming." See: Trump taps climate-change skeptic to oversee EPA transition below 

     The details of how "good" a businessman the President-Elect has been, as portrayed in the media over the last eighteen months, are far from businessman of the year and more like a scam artist cheating everyone he enters into a deal with. Although he has had 3,500 legal actions including 4 bankruptcies that he brags about where he "got hundreds of millions out of those casinos" but left all the contractors, lenders, investors, and employees to sustain the loses. Republicans call him "a genius" for not paying taxes for 18 years and hiring small contracting companies to do work on his properties and simply deciding not to pay them and use his giant staff of lawyers to delay court proceedings knowing the small companies will not be able to continue paying the legal fees and therefore have to drop the lawsuits they bring to get paid for the work they did.

When Trump Was Challenged By An Interviewer About Having Zero Experience In Government, Policy Making, Domestic and Foreign Policy, I Thought He Gave A Great Businessman Answer: "I'll Surround Myself By The Best And Smartest People" - But He's Already Proved He's Not Capable Of Doing That Either

Myron Ebell Appointed to Head Transition of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

     In a Washington Post article on November 11, 2016 Trump taps climate-change skeptic to oversee EPA transition  the Post reported "The man planning how a Trump administration can obliterate Obama’s environmental legacy is Myron Ebell, a Washington fixture who has long been a cheerful warrior against what he sees as an alarmist, overzealous environmental movement that has used global warming as a pretext for expanding government." 

"President-elect Donald Trump has made no secret of his disdain for the Environmental Protection Agency, saying the regulations it has put out under President Obama are “a disgrace.” He has vowed to roll back Obama’s signature effort to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, known as the Clean Power Plan, and to scrap a litany of other “unnecessary” rules, especially those imposed on the oil, gas and coal sectors."

     In a November 17, 2016 post Media Matters for America: CNN’s Jake Tapper Exposes Trump Adviser Myron Ebell As Industry-Funded Climate Change Denier they show a video from the November 16 edition of CNN's The Lead with Jake Tapper. The video is of President-Elect Donald Trump saying he will end the EPA, as well as comments from Myron Ebell and others.

     November 16, 2016 CNN's Gregory Krieg reports in an article: Climate change worries escalate as Trump elevates top deniers  that Trump's ascendance is threatening not to simply undo a series of already tenuous international agreements, but give a boost to interests opposed to fossil fuel regulation, while amplifying voices who express doubt -- or outright deny -- that climate change is real, . The many worries about Myron Ebell as well as numerous concerns including how Donald Trump doesn't understand what a "blind trust" is and says he is going to have his children run his business.

Stephen K. Bannon, the former Breitbart News chief executive who will serve as Trump's chief strategist and counsel

     Here are some Stephen Bannon quotes:

ON RACISM / ANTI-SEMITISM:

-- In an interview with Mother Jones in August, Bannon acknowledged that white nationalists and anti-Semites are drawn to the so-called “alt-Right” movement.
“Look, are there some people that are white nationalists that are attracted to some of the philosophies of the alt-right? Maybe,” he said. “Are there some people that are anti-Semitic that are attracted? Maybe. Right? Maybe some people are attracted to the alt-right that are homophobes, right? But that’s just like, there are certain elements of the progressive left and the hard left that attract certain elements.” (Mother Jones, August 2016)

ON WOMEN:

-- In a 2011 radio interview, Bannon had a hypothesis about why progressive women vilify prominent conservative women like Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin.
“That’s why there are some unintended consequences of the women’s liberation movement,” he said, according to BuzzFeed. “That, in fact, the women that would lead this country would be pro-family, they would have husbands, they would love their children. They wouldn’t be a bunch of dykes that came from the Seven Sisters schools up in New England. That drives the left insane and that’s why they hate these women.” (Political Vindication Radio, 2011)

READ MORE from CBS NEWS: Quotes from Steve Bannon, Trump's new White House chief strategist

     The American Prospect article A Government Of, By, and For the Deplorables by Adele M. Stan

November 18, 2016 calls Trump's picks "A frightening array of Islamophobes, xenophobes, homophobes, racists, and misogynists is assembling around President-elect Trump, normalizing the language and actions of hatred." They say of Stephen Bannon being picked "Most notable among them is Stephen K. Bannon, the former Breitbart News chief executive who will serve as Trump’s chief strategist. As Breitbart’s head honcho, Bannon told journalist Sarah Posner that he fashioned the website as “the platform for the alt-right,” the once-fringy movement that encompasses white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and hate-mongering conspiracy theorists." 

The American Prospect article also had these accounts of picks by President-Elect Donald Trump:

Senator Jeff Sessions (R- AL) for Attorney General

     "Sessions [Senator Jeff Sessions (R- AL) picked for Attorney General ] was denied Senate confirmation for a federal judgeship in 1986 because of allegations that he addressed a black attorney as “boy,” and said he was OK with the Ku Klux Klan except for the fact that its members smoked marijuana."

 Retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn for National Security Advisor

      "The night before the Sessions [Senator Jeff Sessions (R- AL)] appointment was announced, Trump appointed retired [Lt.] General Michael Flynn to be his national security adviser, a post that does not require confirmation by the U.S. Senate. Flynn, according to The New York Times, has advanced the false narrative that Sharia law—a religious code adhered to by Muslims—is being written into U.S. law. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) describes Flynn as an adviser to ACT for America, an anti-Islam group that SPLC describes as convening and annual “racist gathering.”"

"In February, Flynn tweeted, “Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL.” The new national security adviser is said to be considering a plan that would require all Muslims in the United States to register with the government—an idea also pushed by Trump adviser Kris Kobach, who currently serves as the Kansas secretary of state. (On Thursday, Carl Higbie, who runs a pro-Trump super PAC, told Megyn Kelly of Fox News that the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II provided legal precedent for such a registry.) It was Kobach who fashioned the language used by Trump during the campaign for building a wall on the southern border, and making Mexico pay for it. Kobach was also the mastermind of Arizona’s S.B. 1070, the law that empowers police to demand proof of citizenship from anyone, anytime." 

Read much more on Flynn, the KKK, and "The FBI just released its annual compendium of hate-crime incidents for the year 2015, finding a marked uptick—a 67 percent increase—in hate crimes against Muslims." in The American Prospect article A Government Of, By, and For the Deplorables by Adele M. Stan from November 18, 2016.

Here are the people whose names have been floated for Trump’s Cabinet (from The Washington Post):

     The Washington Post has put together a comprehensive graphic showing who is being considered for many of the important posts that the Trump transition team needs to fill in this post that was updated November 18, 2016 at 8:38PM EDT Here are the people whose names have been floated for Trump’s Cabinet. This very informative graphic was found in another post by the Washington Post Trump chooses Sen. Jeff Sessions for attorney general, Rep. Mike Pompeo for CIA director "President-elect Donald Trump announced Friday that he plans to nominate Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) as attorney general and Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) as CIA director, a pair of hard-line conservatives who offer early signs of the shape of Trump’s Cabinet."   

     "South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R), appearing at a Federalist Society convention in Washington, did not mention Trump’s nominees in her remarks. But Haley, whose parents immigrated from India, urged the Republican Party to remind the public that it is the party who will offer opportunities “to all citizens, regardless of their race, gender or where they are born and raised.”"

      "Pompeo, 52, was elected to the House in 2010 as part of the first wave of so-called tea party lawmakers. A U.S. Military Academy and Harvard Law School graduate, he has a varied background. He served as a U.S. Army cavalry officer before founding an aerospace company, serving as president of an oil-field equipment manufacturing firm and — in a brief, little-known chapter of his early career — was an attorney with the Washington, D.C. mega-law firm Williams and Connolly."

     "Pompeo is a vocal critic of President Obama’s nuclear accord with Iran. “I look forward to rolling back this disastrous deal with the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism,” he tweeted Thursday, before his offer to become CIA director was public."

For a Laugh Check Out Samantha Bee Digging through Trump's Picks

     The Week posted "Samantha Bee Digs Through Donald Trumps "nightmare" Cabinet List, Looking For Less Bad News"  where they take a look at what Samantha Bee did on her last "Full Frontal with Samantha Bee" show. She looked at Donald Trump's real and prospective picks for top advisers and cabinet positions.You can see her performance in two parts on Youtube: 

New Cabinet Installation: Part 1 | Full Frontal with Samantha Bee | TBS

and 

 New Cabinet Installation: Part 2 | Full Frontal with Samantha Bee | TBS 

 

     Well the transition goes on with more and more proof that the Donald Trump that campaigned IS going to build a cabinet and attempt to institute much of the shocking, racist, misogynistic, hate mongering, and divisiveness in his presidency. I was asked to "give him a chance" and I did. I planned to give him more time but with the picks he has made the message is clear and won't be changing anytime soon. So, brace for impact, volunteer with established organizations, donate to those organizations that have a proven track record of fighting for all our rights. Don't get silent! CONTACT YOUR REPRESENTATIVES on EACH issue that is important to you! Flooding their e-mails and phone lines have more of an effect than you might think. Use the links below to FIND, CONTACT and TRACK YOUR Representatives:

 

How to Find and Contact your Representatives

To FIND, and CONTACT, your State Senators, Assemblyperson, and other Local Legislators enter your ​Address and ​Zip Code at:

OpenStates.org
(You can also search for “Bills” and “Legislation” that are in the State Legislature and across all states at this site.)

To FIND, and CONTACT, your U.S. Congressperson enter your Zip Code at:

​House.gov

(You can also search for “Bills” and “Legislation” that are, or were, in the House of Representatives (Congress,) see which Congressional district you are in, and much more about the United States House of Representatives (Congress,) the at this site.)

To FIND, and CONTACT, your U.S. Senators enter your Zip Code at:

​Senate.gov

(You can also search for “Bills” and “Legislation” that are in the U.S. Senate, and much more about the U. S, Senate at this site.)

To TRACK your Congressperson, Senators, Legislative Bills, Voting Records of your Representatives, go to:

GovTrack.us     

Other very useful sites are:

POPVOX   VoteSmart   and PolitiFact (to check Facts about things you hear and see from Politicians.)