Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced this morning that the company would be officially cancelling Donald Trump’s account by the end of the week. Although a full termination of an account of a celebrity is rare, Dorsey says that he feels it is his ‘patriotic duty’ to get Trump off of Twitter.
“This is not a statement of my political party, nor is it a bash against the current Presidency in any way,” said Dorsey. “Basically, this move is being made to help the entire country. Donald Trump spends far too much time tweeting, and not nearly enough time focusing on issues that actually matter in this country.”
Trump went on a Twitter tirade a few days ago, bashing networks CNN and MSNBC as “fake news,” and finishing off by saying that “Fox and Friends was okay.”
“Those tweets are the kind of thing I’m talking about,” commented Dorsey. “The country is more divided now than it has ever been, and Trump is at the epicenter of it all. But instead of bringing things together, he’s just stoking the fire. That is why we have decided to ban him from Twitter all together.”
Dorsey says that they will be backing up Trump’s tweets since the creation of his account, and then removing the entire profile. Any Donald Trump accounts that open after will also be deleted.
Donald Trump may consider himself one of the wealthiest people in the world, even if he can’t prove it by revealing his tax returns, but his very deep pockets didn’t come into play at all when he went shopping for the perfect Valentine’s Day present for his wife Melania.
According to reports, Trump spent a whopping $65 million dollars on Melania’s V-Day gift – a wardrobe made entirely of rare animal furs and skins such as lions, tigers, and bears – and every cent of it came from the paychecks of tax payers.
“It’s an outrage that he would spend that kind of money period, let alone on a Valentine’s Day gift,” said Mario Jones, a steelworker in Iowa who is a registered Democrat. “I mean, I got my wife some roses and a box of candy like a normal person. Where the hell does he get off spending that kind of money…MY money…on his wife when all I can spend is $12 at a supermarket?”
“Frankly, I don’t care much one way or the other what he does with my money. We are building walls, buying clothes, whatever. It’s all perfect if Trump is the one doing it,” said supporter Carl Grove. “I voted Trump for all the decisions he’ll make to help this country, good or bad, he’s doing the right thing.”
After three weeks, President Trump finally had his phone call with Chinese President Xi. The report is that Trump will uphold the United States’ long-standing “One China” policy, in which China proper and the island of Taiwan are one country and that country’s government seat is in Beijing. The effect is that the United States does not have an “embassy” with Taiwan, but the US has an “institute” and Taiwan an “economic and cultural” office; both are still considered envoys and consulates, offering passport and visa services. While self-important voices in news and politics view the phone call as a phone call, much more is happening beneath the surface, and Beijing may only be partially aware of what all is going on.
Being a Socialist State, China’s government is itself in business, both cooperative and competitive. China’s Communist Party can directly compete with social companies like Facebook, news networks like CNN, web service companies like Google, almost any manufacturer, and, of course not in the least, construction. China’s former business associate and new “boss”, as it were, of America calls all the “important” countries in the world, except China. The delay itself is a message to China like a father telling the disobedient son to wait his turn while everyone else at the dinner table has first choice. To China’s “indirect-implication” culture, it was no less than a smack in the face, no matter how friendly and reportedly positive the phone call was. No doubt China feels this somewhat, though President Xi probably doesn’t take the snub as seriously as he should.
Even allowing State-controlled newspapers, such as Xinhua news, to let three weeks of silence be known merely by reporting the phone call shows that Trump knows how to cut through promulgated gate keeping. Knowing how his old trading partner thinks, Trump knew that Beijing would jump to report the phone call to give President Xi notoriety, forgetting the deeper implication that the phone call didn’t happen for three weeks into Trump’s term. Now, the Chinese people know that Trump didn’t talk to their president until three weeks after taking office, yet he received a phone call from Taipei only days after he was elected—Beijing made sure the people knew that. When trying to control information in one’s own country, that was an oversight. If Beijing were wise to the three-week snub, no newspaper in China would be allowed to report the phone call until two months later, with the comment, “Oh, they are presidents. They talk when it suits them.”
In social battles of implication and indirection, the Chinese have endurance and mastery, but the West has a less frequent and even more subtle way of implication that often eludes the East. It is difficult to recognize deep implication when implication is used on a daily basis for routine communication. Americans trust Trump with China more, now, knowing that he can snub them for three weeks and State-run Xinhua news will consider it a “good first step”.
There are other problems—not being able to quit while so far ahead and declare victory after 70 years of war on the books, the US selling weapons to Taiwan—but the three week snub “trumps” them all. American people have often asked themselves who China thinks they are fooling. After this three-week snub thoroughly reported under the title of a “phone call”, the American people, Democrats and Republicans alike, certainly know who is successfully fooling China.
Upheaval continues to take from in both protests and weather. Houston immigrants are in near panic and, now, the Oroville Dam in California is in trouble and 188k people are evacuating.
Trump’s executive actions have a long history of basis, including Congress having given the president indefinite power concerning national security, Presidents Lincoln and Jackson having arrested dissident judges—more extreme than anything Trump has done so far. Trump is complying with the rulings of the courts, even though he presses on.
The Senate has the “Constitutional Option”, often called the “Nuclear Option”, where the president of the Senate, the Vice President, can call the Senate to vote without the Senate’s consent where “matters of the Constitution” are concerned. This means that the standing majority of Senators will be able to approve judges. Problems of Senate rules have come up, seemingly that the Senate has made rules that tie its own hands. That itself is a Constitutional question: Can the Senate write its own rules making itself unable to function?
In the end, all objection and opposition to Trump will make the Republican case stronger, including the protests from dissident constituents in Republican Congressional districts. Even if Trump did not have the majority support of the country, the Republicans in the House and Senate do. It seems clear that the minority is loud and the silent majority is busy at work, having finished their project in November. Still, dissidents have the evidence they need to encourage themselves to carry on. Difficult times remain ahead. continue reading
President Donald Trump signed his latest executive order this morning, making murder legal in all 50 states, but there’s one catch – it’s only legal if the murderer is a white, male and the person they kill is a minority.
“This new order is designed to clean out the riff-raff in this country, and as well all know, our biggest problem are the browns, the reds, the yellows, and the blacks…especially the blacks – they’re the ones causing most of the problems in this country,” said Trump. “My new order is designed to keep the streets safer, one murder at a time.”
Trump went on to say that any white male is able to kill any minority at any time, for any reason, and it would be considered “universal defense,” which is what Trump says self-defense of the country should be referred to as.
“Universal defense is what we do, as Americans. We universally defend ourselves, our families, and our freedoms,” said Trump. “Now, I want to take that a step further, and universally defend ourselves from the nasty, the deplorables, basically, that lie within.”
The ACLU immediately filed an injunction in the NYC Federal Courts with hopes of overturning Trump’s order.
Zuckerberg, king of messages and speaker of Mandarin, fails to get China’s main message. China doesn’t want Facebook’s mission. Facebook helps people talk to each other and know what’s going on. With all that’s already going on, China sees information as a serious threat to its goals.
JP Morgan manged to get a deeper foot in China, with a license to loan more money. Perhaps they think there is a market for that. It is unclear whether the reason this made headlines was because JP Morgan got a deal in China, because an American company thought it was safe to get a deal in China, or because there wasn’t much else in the news about China.
With Trump dominating the news, China didn’t help sell too many newspapers. China’s primary headlines this week came after the “Rocket Force” tested its relatively new medium-range DF-16 ballistic missile, which replaces older, shorter range DF-11. It carries up to three warheads, weighs up to one ton, and can deliver a nuclear bomb. It can adjust to strike slow-moving targets and to supposedly evade anti-missile systems like the US Patriot system, though the best kept secret about China’s military is that it is inexperienced in combat, let alone has any history in a conflict with the US.
Trump’s administration made it clearer this week: Head to head, China loses. The US isn’t joking. Trump’s staff understand Chinese culture well, specifically how important “face” is. But, it seems that China still doesn’t understand how determined Irish redheads can be, whether they make loud claims in Beijing’s style or not. Experts pipe in that the US and China can both have a win-win, but they also fail to understand that there is no such thing as win-win in old school Far East.
Trump is going head on against judges. So far, the judges are keeping their power, which is a good precedent. It’s too bad that Senator Feinstein didn’t object to overuse of executive power a few years ago, but her reversal is both welcome and typical of a politician. The resistance will give more power to Trump’s base and he will gain sympathy for his cause. The “see I told you so” speeches and headlines are coming.
Californians are getting serious about seceding from the Union. If California left it would not be abandoning the US, but its sister State, New York. Without Los Angeles and Manhattan, Trump would have had the popular vote as well, even with Hillary keeping her estimated 800k illegal voters. Keeping some things separate has always been a goal of the United States since its founding. Californians should, however, be thankful that they are asking to leave the United States rather than asking to leave Mexico.
Senate Republicans have claimed that they can’t repeal Obamacare because the employee they can fire at any time, the Parliamentarian, says that Obamacare can’t be repealed the same way it was passed. VP Mike Pence can overrule the Parliamentarian without firing him. These are the same Republicans who said that they couldn’t change Obamacare without the presidency and that their fellow Republican, Trump, would never win the presidency. Now that they have what they said they needed that they said they couldn’t get, they say they can’t do what they said they would do if they got it. Whenever Republicans whine about what they can’t do, they always get more power. The best interpretation is that Republicans are hoping to inch toward a 60 vote Supermajority in 2019. Again, the trend is for slowness to stir sympathy to the cause. May Heaven help the United States if any political party ever gets a Supermajority in the Senate while having control of the White House.
The term “unemployment” has as honest of a definition as the lawyer-defined word “natural” on a box of cookies. The media has finally discovered that there are six ways to track “unemployment”, specifically U1-U6. U3 has been used recently and most famously during the Obama years when the claim was that “unemployment was low”, without emphasizing the qualification “U3”. The U3 figure only considers people who were looking for jobs while U6 considers all Americans without a job—a definition more likely associated with “national unemployment”. Congratulations to those in the media who have finally discovered the six degrees of unemployment figures.
President Donald Trump was stunned recently when he reportedly went to shake hands with a new White House intern, and realized that his hands were, in fact, very small.
“I always thought my hands were yuge,” said Trump. “Everything I have is yuge. Yuge houses. Yuge cars. Yuge wang. I was in a state of pure shock when I realized that my hands were completely enveloped in this man’s massive mitts.”
According to the intern, he didn’t notice any real, disparaging size.
“He seemed to have pretty normal hands, possibly a bit smaller than normal. Nothing that couldn’t hold onto a double Whopper with cheese with any issue, you know?” said the intern.
Trump reportedly spent the remainder of the day locked in the oval office, alone.
“I can’t be sure, but I’m pretty certain that I heard a lot of weeping coming from in there,” said an unnamed secret service agent. “I haven’t heard that much moaning coming from the oval office since Bill was in charge.”
The conflict in the Pacific is turning into a brick wall at the speed of sound. Trump vowed to deny China access to islands that don’t exist on household globes and maps. China is run by a party that has never lost—or won—a battle in its 70 years of existence. Beijing wants Washington to recognize “one China”, but that “China”, regardless of which claimant defines it, is engaged in a publicly-funded military war between two political parties. There are two versions of “China”, officially, and no one knows which version to believe since neither waring party has declared victory in their 70 year war. Given the outstanding ambivalence, Trump may have just declared his own definition of victory for them.
When London meets a spontaneous cloud of smog, the comparison is to China. We all know who Londoners are thinking about and what they are thinking about them. So, while Trump makes headlines in China, China made headlines in London. Just as “election recount” is linked to US Democrats and “unfair press” is linked to US Republicans, four topics link to China in the Western mind: pollution, economics, military, and territory claims.
To compound China’s precarious position, the EU is making demands about a lawyer’s human rights. The lawyer was reportedly tortured. In rare form, the EU is demanding that he be released and the situation investigated. The “tortured lawyer” report comes in the midst of a Chinese crackdown the VPNs Chinese people use to connect to social media banned by Beijing. China can’t maintain battles on so many fronts, not with a new Sheriff in the White House who isn’t afraid to make orders of his own. That deal where the Chinese were going to pour money into Hollywood—it’s had a few wrenches thrown into its gears. It’s funny how the Chinese block media in their own country, then their investment in American media also gets blocked, in a more round-about way, of course.
Obama supporters have finally decided that overuse of executive orders is a bad thing. Too bad for them that many of Trump’s executive orders merely undo Obama’s executive orders. Trump finally adopted Obama’s policy of Federal intervention where local police fail, though, Obama probably never thought of it happening where it is most needed, such as his own backyard in Chicago.
Trump was elected in response to Obama. Obama’s policies, mostly by mere executive order, not only couldn’t last, they backfired. Anti-Trumpists still have not learned the important lesson of life: good or bad, right or left, whatever you build needs to last. If Trump harms America, Obama supporters have no one to thank but their own president who rolled out the red carpet for Trump as much as Bush rolled out the red carpet for Obama. The cycle only seems to continue with very few people getting wise to what’s going on.
All that “Russia interfered” jazz morphed into Democrats calling for investigations of voter fraud, which is likely to indite both parties. But, we can’t know how much voter fraud there truly was since asking for photo ID at an election isn’t legal, thanks to the same Democrats who are asking for an investigation. That makes no sense, except in Washington.
The elephant in the living room is the golden brick highway paved to today’s crisis. A Hawaiian Congresswoman told CNN that Obama was funding ISIS in Syria? Trump’s “ban” only affects people coming from seven countries that Obama’s DHS and US Congress decided sponsor terrorism—Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Yemen—these countries were not chosen by Trump, but under Obama. Trump’s order only names Syria, based on what Syrian refugees have done in other places they have gone to.
A federal judge made a very small exception to Trump’s sweeping executive oder: people with pre-approved papers who arrived on airplanes won’t be sent back immediately. This action affects very few people and confronts none of Trump’s campaign principles. Affected green card holders will be allowed to leave the US and return, but need to visit a US consular first. Protests against Trump’s orders are mounting. Some saw the judge’s order as victory against Trump’s goals.
A Sheriff in Travis County, Texas has refused to cooperate with the State’s requests, which are mainly aimed at not releasing people who entered the country illegally and are sought by US Immigration after they are arrested and in custody for a local crime. Travis County receives just shy of $2M from the State in law-enforcement grants, but the Sheriff says that she has neither the priority nor the authority to comply with the requests from Federal and State governments to hand over sought-after illegals already in her custody.
As fast as Trump wants to build his wall, he will have difficulty breaking Russia’s record in Berlin. Mexico’s president canceled his meeting with Trump once Trump Tweeted that paying for the wall was a requirement. President Neito told his people that “Mexico must protect its interests”, which, apparently, includes being able to cross into the US at non-border crossings. Building the wall would not change the number of entry points and, if anything, could create more entry points since patrolling the border would be easier. Canceling the meeting won’t change anything. A presidential candidate can skip out on one of an excessive number of televised presidential debates and still win the nomination and the election, but a sitting president can’t skip out on a meeting when his presence has been requested by a nation whom his own citizens are persistently entering illegally when that nation is about to rip up a trade agreement. The meeting with Trump was not going to negotiate whether Mexico will pay for the wall to contain its own people, but how Mexico will pay for the wall to contain its own people. By not attending, Mexico’s president is leaving that decision to President Donald J. Trump—which might have been exactly what Trump wanted in the first place. Now, Mexican Billionaire Carlos Slim wants to step in.
Mexico is currently our 3rd largest goods trading partner with $531 billion in total (two way) goods trade during 2015. Goods exports totaled $236 billion; goods imports totaled $295 billion. The U.S. goods trade deficit with Mexico was $58 billion in 2015.
The story compares to the rich, old uncle who told his nephew, “No, you’re gonna pay for the repairs to my barn you burned down or you might as well not even ask me to buy you another car.” The kid ran home to his daddy who said, “No, you are gonna’ talk with your uncle about his barn. I’m calling my brother and you’d better be here when I do.” By asking to step in to negotiate between the US and Mexico, Billionaire Carlos Slim has proven in Mexico what Trump proved in the US—people with actual business experience know more about getting things done than politicians. Maybe he wants to run for president in Mexico. Or, maybe he doesn’t want his own business empire to be at the mercy of a much younger president who can’t hold two candles to the adults in the room.
It seems that America isn’t the only country dealing with brats who complain all the time, repeat perfectly what they hear on TV, but can’t put a roof over their own heads. There’s nothing wrong with not having money, as long as you don’t lecture the people who do.
President Trump has just signed Executive Order E1334-L, which will effectively allow for minorities in the United States to have one child per married couple. Trump signed the order in hopes that less gang-bangers and rapists or drug dealers would be born within the country’s borders.
“The crime rate in this country is out of control, and we are working tirelessly to make sure that everyone is safe and happy,” said Trump. “We’ve stopped criminals and terrorists from entering the country, now we need to stop them from being born here.”
The order, which is effective immediately, is already on appeal by the ACLU on the grounds that people cannot be told in our democratic society how many children they may have, but if not overturned by a judge, will stop anyone who is not white from having more than one child. If a couple who is black, hispanic, Asian, etc, already has more than one child, they are allowed to keep the ones they have, but may not be allowed to have more.
“There are a lot of things involved in controlling this, but I have my best people on it,” said Trump. “We’re looking at the numbers, we’re looking at the people, and this will definitely help to curb the crime rate in the United States. If some black couple somewhere can’t have more than one child, they have a much lower chance of giving birth to gang-banger, a rapist, or a drug dealer. Or a filthy skank, if they had a girl.”
Donald Trump announced this morning that he plans to “open the vault” on government secrets that have, until now, only been available to presidents and high-ranking officials.
“As a thank you to the American people, who have worked so hard to get me into this position, I will be releasing some of the world’s greatest secrets, in full detail. Information that was all a part of the President’s Secret Book, as it were. Things that even I, as a billionaire, didn’t know about our country. The stories are amazing.”
Trump says that he will start with some of the biggest “conspiracy theories,” such as who really shot John F. Kennedy, as well as the secrets to the faked moon landing.
“That one is incredible, truly incredible. There are a lot of theories out there, and a lot of people who truly believe we landed on the moon,” laughed Trump. “Everyone will find out soon enough the truth, and they will have their minds completely blown.”
Recently leaked FBI documents show that the organization were able to stop an attempted assassination of President Donald Trump only hours before he was sworn in.
According to Anonymous, who posted the various briefings on websites 4chan and Reddit, the documents were taken and leaked to show how Americans already have a “severe hatred” for Donald Trump.
“The man hadn’t even been sworn in yet, and already there was a plot to take him out,” said one commenter. “It’s crazy, and it’s truly going to be a disgusting 4 years.”
The documents show that FBI agents had been tipped to a possible shooting assassination of Donald Trump a week before his inauguration and, although the information was initially deemed to be false, an investigation was required regardless. FBI coordinator Miles Richards said that it was only with “extreme luck” that the attempted assassination was thwarted.
“We received information about a man named Booth who planned to shoot Donald Trump during his swearing in ceremony. Booth is a military-trained sniper who served in Afghanistan, and with the equipment and training that this man has, he would have been more than capable of pulling off the assassination.”
Richards says that they expected to find nothing during the investigation, but that Booth made one fatal error.
“He posted on his Facebook that he planned to kill Trump. I mean, he ended the post with a winky-laughing face, but when we checked him out, we realized that it was true nonetheless.”
No one supports the Trump protests as strongly and loudly as China. They object, threaten, parade, demonstrate, opine, taunt, drill, march, and they do so despite response from America’s “riot police”, in the case of the Pacific, the US Navy. China is also getting closer to Hollywood, to the tune of $1B USD in a Paramount deal. China is reportedly dumping money into its stock market. China has a lot in common with just under half of America. Taiwan, siding with just over half, officially congratulated Trump. As of Friday, Trump had 56% popularity when he took oath, not counting China or Taiwan.
Taiwan is making upgrades. Just after Trump was inaugurated, and about the same time Taiwan officially congratulated him and Pence, Taiwan finalized the purchase of a high-tech military communication system that would, among many things, allow Taiwan’s Navy to communicate directly with the US Navy 7th Fleet’s command center.
Taiwan is also making a deal with Uber, to allow Uber-summoned taxis, just after Taiwan hiked it’s “unlicensed” driver fine to almost $800K USD. Taiwan has fined Uber over $2.3M USD and its drivers over $700K USD. With Taiwan’s new “unlicensed” taxi fine, Taiwan could earn all it has earned on Uber drivers in the past with just a single Uber driver offense. Yes, while Uber gave up on butting-heads with China and China doesn’t give up butting heads with Trump, Taiwan is one of those head-butting Uber. All four of them are still butting heads. It’s definitely been a week of the butt-head convention in “the Chinas”. continue reading
