Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

[Michael Scally MD]

US Congress has lost all sense of danger after two years of Trump. The only legal fight a speech like that should lead to is how quickly a mentally incompetent president can be removed.

Do not believe for an instant that any emergency powers will be used only for a wall. Blocked in court or not, money will be moved, institutions blinded, power grabbed. The damage is mounting.

To coin a phrase, "it's the institutions, stupid". Trump and his GOP enablers are attacking the pillars of the US system: Separation of powers, checks & balances, eliminating conflict of interest.

Thread by @Kasparov63: "US Congress has lost all sense of danger after two years of Trump. The only legal fight a speech like that should lead to is how quickly a m […]"

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

WTFU ...

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

A federal appeals court has largely upheld Philadelphia’s victory in its contentious “sanctuary city” case against the Trump administration.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed on Friday a lower court ruling that the administration could not withhold federal grant money because of a dispute over immigration policy and enforcement, saying the executive branch claimed authority not granted by the Constitution and hence “literally has no power to act.”

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Senorman]

Trumptards: “This has nothing to do with the president.”

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Trumptards: “This has nothing to do with the president.”

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

At worst, President Trump’s claim of emergency powers that would allow him to expand barriers on the southern border is a gross violation of democratic norms. At best, it is a craven ploy to cover his own blundering. Either way, it is a devastating indictment of his capacity to handle his job.

Begin with the worst-case scenario. As a matter of principle, the Constitution establishes a system that requires the House, Senate, and the president to approve new laws. In some cases, expediency requires the president to act unilaterally. Those rare cases are not defined as emergencies because they’re important — lots of policy is important, even life-threatening. The emergencies are cases where the executive needs to act in an especially urgent way, and where congressional involvement may not be practical.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

The President* is A Delusional Maniac With Sawdust Pouring Out Of Both Ears.

My sweet bearded Lord, https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a26361851/trump-national-emergency-press-conference-wall/ (what a performance). I don't know what my favorite part was. It might have been when he admitted to NBC's Peter Alexander that he was only declaring an emergency because he wanted to get his mitts on the money as fast as possible. It might have been the moment when he recalled how Barack Obama told him that he was planning on launching a "very big war" on the Korean Peninsula (And this was after the president* said he wouldn't speak for Obama, and then made up a bullshit story about him.)

Was it is revelation that Shinzo Abe of Japan had nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize? Was it the way he repeatedly hung Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen out to dry, telling the reporters that the statistics on immigrants and crime produced by DHS didn't match up with the secret "stats" he has? It may have been when he shouted out his favorite wingnut celebrities, and then said that not only did he not know Ann Coulter, but that he hadn't talked to her in a year. Oh, OK. If you wanted to produce a commercial to sell the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, this was it.

But the most singularly terrifying moment came https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/02/15/trumps-bewildering-national-emergency-press-conference-annotated/?utm_term=.b20ab8b0d6b7 (when the president* explained) how he likely is going to have to fight his emergency declaration through the courts.

It wasn't what he said, but the way he said it. He lapsed into a sing-song cadence that was half-middle-school-taunt and half-serial-killer. No president in my lifetime ever did voice acting, let alone a voice that made you want to make sure he was kept away from the White House cutlery. https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a26361851/trump-national-emergency-press-conference-wall/ (The man is not all there. Everybody knows it.) If your uncle behaved like the president* behaved on Friday, you'd hide his car-keys, lock up the booze, and drive him to the neurologist.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

The president plans to manage the border crisis from the golf course at Mar-a-Lago this weekend.

“I didn’t need to do this,” President Trump insisted at a Rose Garden appearance on Friday, as he declared a national emergency aimed at shaking loose a few billion dollars in financing for his beloved border wall.

The president’s assertion was both ludicrous and self-defeating. If a declaration was unnecessary and the wall on track (the wall is “very very on its way,” the president said earlier in the week), how could he claim to be addressing an emergency? As Mr. Trump explained it, “But I’d rather do it much faster.” A presidential desire for speed does not constitute a crisis — no matter how eager a president is to camouflage his failures.

In reality, the wall is not a done deal, and Mr. Trump has spent the past few months — the past two years, really — failing to convince either Congress or Mexico to pay for it. This week’s bipartisan spending bill, which contained no more wall money than the one over which Mr. Trump shut down the government in December, was a particularly humiliating defeat.

Desperate to save face, the president and his team cooked up a nonemergency emergency with the aim of seizing funds already appropriated for other purposes. Currently, the plan is to pull $2.5 billion from the military’s drug interdiction program, $3.6 billion from its construction budget and $600 million from the Treasury Department’s drug forfeiture fund. The White House plans to “backfill” the money it is taking from the Pentagon in future budgets.

And so, in a breathtaking display of executive disregard for the separation of powers, the White House is thumbing its nose at Congress, the Constitution and the will of the American people, the majority of whom oppose a border wall.

Even as he spun this as an act of strong leadership, Mr. Trump acknowledged that his declaration resolves nothing and creates a host of legal, legislative and political troubles. ...

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]