Tag: president

Compared To The F-up Presidents That Reagan, Clinton And George W. Bush Were, Donald Trump Will Be A Brilliant President

Posted on by Evert Cilliers

by Evert Cilliers aka Adam Ash

UnknownRonald Reagan cut the top marginal income tax rate from 50% to 28%, made war on labor unions, and saddled us with massive income inequality.

Bill Clinton exported our manufacturing jobs with NAFTA, and signed the two bills that repealed Glass-Steagall and removed derivatives from all oversight — to bequeath us the crash of 2008 and the Great Recession.

George W. Bush lied America into committing a war crime by invading Iraq and causing the deaths of over 4,000 of our young men, and giving countless more soldiers brain damage, loss of limbs, PTSD, and driving many to suicide, and killing and maiming hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi women and children.

There's no way that Donald Trump can be that bad as our president.

He's not that dumb, for a start.

In fact, he's smarter than the entire GOP (not that this says much).

What people forget is that Trump is basically bullshitting his way to the nomination. After Eric Cantor lost to Dave Brat, who played the immigration card hard and accused Cantor of being in favor of “amnesty,” Trump stuck his finger in the wind and realized he could get somewhere as a presidential candidate if he got hard-assed about immigration.

He was right.

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Monday, December 14, 2015

Is Donald Trump a Fascist? Will He Be the Next President? No, and Fuck No

Posted on by Akim Reinhardt

by Akim Reinhardt

TrumpBack in August, here at this very site, I published a piece dismissive of Donald Trump's chances of gaining the White House. I called those who feared he would become our next president “worry warts.”

My basic contention was that Trump is involved in a quadrennial rite: announcing his presidential candidacy as a way of garnering free publicity. Furthermore, pursuing attention isn't just a way to soothe his massive ego. Publicity is very important to him because at this point he's a commercial pitchman much more than he is a real estate developer, and the brand he mostly sells is himself. In this way, he's fundamentally no different than Michael Jordan or Kim Kardashian. It also helps explain why he has previously “run” for president in 1988, 2000, 2004, and 2012, along with short-lived efforts to run for New York state governor in and 2006 and 2014. Free publicity.

In that August essay, I also asserted that most of his supporters, which really aren't that many when you crunch the numbers, don't actually agree with his vague platform. They're just buying his brash brand. He'll start to fade by the end of the year, I said. He'll be done for good in February or March of 2016, I said.

Well, it's mid-December, ie. the end of the year, and Trump's shadowy specter has not faded from our watery eyes. Indeed, his numbers are up. Furthermore, as he remains on the political scene, his political statements get more and more outlandish, leading many to brand him a fascist.

So now Donald Trump's a fascist, and he's going to be our next president.

Golly gee willikers, Batman! That sounds dastardly. I sure hope he doesn't pick The Joker as his V.P.!

But hold on a second. Before we shoot that Bat Signal floodlight into the nighttime sky, as if we're engulfed in some comic book version of the burning of the Reichstag, let's think about it rationally.

Is Donald Trump actually a fascist? No. And anyone who says Yes doesn't know what fascism is.

Can Donald Trump be the next president? Wait, let me stop chuckling. Okay . . . No.

To understand why not, and what's going on, let's break it down. First, I'll address why The Donald isn't the second coming of Il Duce, and then I'll expand on earlier points about why he won't be the next president.

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Monday, November 21, 2011

There’s No There There: Our Hollow President Obama

Posted on by Evert Cilliers

by Evert Cilliers aka Adam Ash

Obama-zuccotti-parkJust what exactly does President Obama whole-heartedly believe in?

It's not Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. He was prepared to whittle away at all three of them in order to make a Grand Bargain with the GOP about our debt.

It's not peace: he's still fighting for no good reason in Afghanistan.

It's not the rule of law or habeas corpus: he's still got the extra-legal prison obscenity at Guantanamo Bay going.

It's not transparency: his administration goes after whistle-blowers like no other.

It's not a humane immigration policy: he deports more immigrants than any administration.

It's not justice: he didn't go after the Bushies who promoted torture, nor did he prosecute the fraudsters of Wall Street who ruined our economy.

It's not gay rights: he still doesn't agree with gay marriage.

It's not the labor movement: he never pushed for Card Check and he ignored the grassroots fight over union negotiating rights in Ohio and other heartland states (what if he had marched with them as he promised in his campaign? just imagine the galvanizing effect on labor, the Dems and himself).

It's not basic progressive principles, like Medicare for all, or at minimum a public option to give folks a real healthcare choice.

It's not even his own progressive base, who worked hard to elect him, and whom he and his acolytes disdain as “the professional left.”

It's not anything. In fact, it's nothing. President Barack Obama has a shell, but not a core. He's not a man of principle. He's a man of expedience. A so-called pragmatist.

In other words, he's our first thoroughly post-modern president. There is no objective truth: everything is relative, plural and contextual. Obama mistrusts ideology from a very unique perspective: he has no ideology of his own.

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