Congressional switchboards jammed, representatives hiding from constituents, what a couple of weeks.
Betsy DeVos, the most unqualified candidate for a cabinet position that anyone can ever recall might get voted in. Why? Money. It turns out she has contributed to most, if not all, of the Republican Senators’ campaigns. Two ‘Go Fund Me’ campaigns have started to try and raise as much money as Betsy has given two senators in an effort to “buy back” their votes. It has come to this. By the way – Tom Cotton, you sold out at way too low a price. Eight grand? Surely you can do better! Tell Betsy fifty grand minimum. Don’t be a cheap whore. Show some class. Not that you ever had in your rants, but come on, give it a try.
One former national security team person was asked the other day about the relationship between Donald Trump and the intelligence community. The response, with tongue firmly inserted in cheek, was “It’s perfectly normal for the intelligence community to consider the President of the United States a national security risk.”
Oh, and all those protesting at the airports and the questions about why are they making it such a big deal? You know only 109 people out of 325,000 were held for questioning. Just a few questions, what’s the big deal? Isn’t that worth the price to keep America safe? And besides, Green Card holders weren’t detained by this Executive Order, or at least they weren’t supposed to be. If they were that was a mistake on the people carrying out the order but not the intent. Remember that? Can you imagine when the lawyers pressing their case to have this order stopped learned in court that their had been another order? And that other order had not been made public? It was that secret order that stopped 60,000 people according to the Department of State from entering this country. In court the Judiciary Department said no that wasn’t correct, the number was more like 100,000, actually, over 100,000 people were detained, or turned away. One hundred thousand legal vetted citizens – green card holders. Did the administration lie? Well, maybe not, maybe they just forgot to mention it? Maybe, they are correct that the Muslim ban order didn’t, or wasn’t supposed to, stop green card holders, but the one they didn’t mention sure was supposed to do that!
Moving on…
One former administration official said, when asked about this and the claims of its effectiveness, “It’s easy to fix a crisis when there isn’t one.” (not verbatim, sorry, don’t have the source here.) I think that’s the point. Trump started his campaign by stating there was a problem where there wasn’t one. It played to people’s fears that had been stoked by false narratives from sources like Fox and Breitbart, and it is a well known fact among advertisers and propagandists that if you tell someone a lie often enough they will begin to believe it because that’s the way our brains are wired. Now, the administration is claiming that they are doing a great job in regard to a non-existent problem. However, their “efforts” may actually be creating the problem they sought to stop, and as many strongmen or their henchmen have pointed out (and are now being quoted on social media) this gives them the opportunity to squash opponents. So is this Bannon’s end game? To create chaos, destroy our institutions, and suppress the people?
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