https://www.c-span.org/video/?421029-5/authors-writing-history

http://www.rollingstone.com/tv/recaps/kristen-stewart-on-snl-3-sketches-you-have...

<  ----------- Some Guy    ..... ?!   .... !!!!!   :




https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumpian-shock-and-awe-1485994603




" Trumpian Shock and Awe   "


" Too many political forces are coming to life against the Trump presidency.  "




By DANIEL HENNINGER




“Shock and awe,” a term of art from U.S. war doctrine, has been deployed by advocates of Donald Trump to describe the pace of executive actions the past two weeks.

The military originators of this concept, which is famously associated with the Iraq invasion in 2003, said shock and awe was a “doctrine of rapid dominance” whose goal was to affect the will of an adversary “to fight or respond to our strategic policy.”

That is the theory, and it fits the Trump strategic model: Put political actions in motion and force the world to adjust.

The Trump White House believed it was important for the president to fulfill his campaign commitments immediately, whether the border wall or the immigrant ban. Problems or objections could be dealt with later as the details got worked out.

So far, the White House’s shock and awe of executive orders mainly has effected a popular uprising, and not just in the streets.

To be sure, the political system, especially the bureaucracies, needed to be challenged and shaken up. Almost certainly one reason Team Trump didn’t pass the travel order through normal interagency vetting review is they believed—and experience bears them out—that agency lawyers might have tried to dilute or kill it. Instead, the Trump template will dominate their post-order implementation.

But the aftershocks from Mexico and now the executive order on travelers from seven mostly Muslim countries reveal the liabilities in transferring war-fighting doctrine to politics.

A well-understood law of political motion holds that every political act by a U.S. president puts other significant political forces in motion.


Mr. Trump’s partisan opposition, notably the organized squads of street people, was already on hair trigger. But the fallout from the Trump order on immigrant and refugee restrictions may be bringing to life too many disparate forces against him and his young presidency.

The Trump team, which is all about action, seems determined to push the envelope at every turn. That’s fine, so long as they don’t tear through the envelope, which is what happened when several federal judges poked holes in the executive order’s unfinished legal foundation.

To be clear: The point here has nothing to do with whether Mr. Trump is right on the merits of immigration vetting; Barack Obama imposed visa restrictions on Arab countries twice as antiterror policy. The question is bloodless politics: Is the poor execution of this order and its aftermath putting more negative political forces in motion than the White House or Republicans will be able to control in this presidency’s first 100 days—and beyond?

All political battles are won or lost at the margin, including the 2016 presidential election. Just now, the Republicans’ margin of success for future initiatives looks tighter than it did two weeks ago. If this backlash siphons political capital from the administration’s ability to achieve pro-growth tax cuts, for instance, Mr. Trump’s presidency will be in trouble by fall.


It may be true that the forces arrayed against Mr. Trump now are predictable—Democrats, career progressives and the media. But the half-done visa order has politicized people the administration didn’t need among the disaffected.

That includes the management and employees of the entire tech industry and of many other American companies. It includes some Republicans and important staff in Congress, numerous U.S. universities and research scientists, ambivalent pro-Trump voters, and foreign leaders such as Theresa May,Angela Merkel and Enrique Peña Nieto. Not to mention the men and women now rethinking offers to take subcabinet positions after watching the public humiliation of an unprepared federal attorney in a Brooklyn courtroom Saturday.

One can minimize the importance of any of these alone. But allowing networks of disaffection to form and spread could start tipping the political scales away from the Trump government’s goals.

The Democrats, dead in the water before Inauguration Day, have been given new energy. The fundraising and organizing spigots, always dependent on free publicity, are opening for 2018. On Monday the Democratic campaign committee published a target list of 33 GOP House seats in districts Hillary Clinton won or lost narrowly.

It is early days for Mr. Trump. This storm may pass. But Lyndon Johnson, the most deft of politicians, was never able to get control of similar forces, which undid his presidency when the antiwar movement of the 1960s took on a life of its own. This White House should not want an anti-Trump psychology, inflamed by the limitless gasoline of social media, to compete with and weaken the president’s support.


The White House could argue that clarifying battle lines in the public mind is important, and doing what’s right will win. But you had better be sure the correlation of forces stays in your favor. The graveyards are filled with generals who thought they had the right idea, before they were overrun.  "

Another week of Trumpty Dumpty is complete.....

Good One! LOL

     " There was a sharp  , cracking sound .
     It  ' startled '  him  , Lyndon Johnson was to say ; it sounded like a '  report  or explosion ,  ' and he did not know what it was . Others in the motorcade thought it was a backfire from one of the police motorcycles , or a firecracker someone in the crowd had set off ,  but John Connolly , who had hunted all his life , knew in the instant he heard it that it was a shot from a high - powered rifle .
     Rufus Youngblood did not know what it was , but he saw  ' not normal movements ' in the presidential car ahead down the incline  -- President Kennedy seemed to be tilting toward his left  -- and in the Queen Mary immediately ahead of him , one of the agents was suddenly rising to his feet , with an automatic rifle in his hands .  Whirling in his seat , Youngblood shouted  --  in a  '  voice I had never heard him ever use ,  ' Lady Bird says   ---  '  Get Down !  GET DOWN !    ' and , grabbing Johnson's right shoulder , yanked him roughly down toward the floor in the center of the car , as he almost leapt over the back of the front seat , and threw his body over the Vice President's body , shouting again  ,  '  GET DOWN !  GET DOWN !  '  By the time , a matter of only eight seconds later , that the next two sharp reports had cracked out  -- everyone knew what they were now  -- Lyndon Johnson was down on the floor in the back seat of the car , curled over on his right side . The sudden  , loud , sharp sound  ,  the hand suddenly grabbing his shoulder and pulling him down  --  now he was on the floor , his face on the floor , with the weight of a big man lying on top of him , pressing him down  ; Lyndon Johnson would never forget  '  his knees in my back and his elbows in my back .  "

Voodoo Chile in Wonderland wrote on Feb 11^th, 2017 at 1:01pm:



Voodoo, you are far too kind. Nixon looks like the second coming comparatively.

Rick

"Share the pain and laughter in a world beset with fools." Jagger/Richards

sweetcharmedlife wrote on Feb 12^th, 2017 at 7:11am:

     " The tone was to get meaner . ' I am just like a fox , ' Lyndon Johnson once boasted  . ' I can see the jugular in any man and go for it  , but I always keep myself in rein . I keep myself on a leash , just like you would an animal . ' The first phrase in that boast was accurate . Lyndon Johnson had always had a gift for finding a person's  ' jugular , ' his most vulnerable spot , the one in which he could most deeply be hurt . The rest of the boast , however , was not  . If he kept himself in rein ,  on a leash  ,  it was a leash that  , all through his life , had been frequently unfastened . His ability to hurt had always been combined with a willingness  -- an eagerness , in fact  -- to put the ability to use  ; with a cruelty , a viciousness , a desire to hurt for the sake of hurting . Now his unerring eye had located  , beneath the pale mask of Robert Kennedy's grief , the place in which  , because of his brother's assassination  , Robert Kennedy was most vulnerable  . And the leash came off . Johnson told Pierre Salinger  , in a remark he obviously intended to get back to Kennedy  , that Jack Kennedy's death might have been  '  divine retribution  '  for his  '  participation  '  in assassination plots against other heads of state .  '  Lyndon Johnson said to Pierre Salinger that he was not sure but that the assassination of President Kennedy did not take place in retribution for his participation in the assassinations of Trujillo and President Diem ,  '  Robert Kennedy said during an oral history interview in April , 1964 . ' Divine Retribution . He said that . Then he went on and said that when he was growing up  , somebody he knew  -- who had misbehaved  --  ... ran into a tree  , hit his head , and became cross - eyed . He said that was God's retribution for people who were bad  ... God put his mark on them . And that this [ President Kennedy's assassination ] might very well be God's retribution to President Kennedy for his participation in the assassination of these two people . " 

Edith Grove wrote on Feb 12^th, 2017 at 8:54pm:


I understand there is way too much whining about the Admin. But as long as Trump uses Twitter as his bully pulpit he looks far from Presidential. Both sides need to grow up and get working.

Edith Grove wrote on Feb 13^th, 2017 at 9:07am:




Damn Straight My Stonesian Brother .


In the 1980's President Ronald Reagan used to begin his Press Conferences by reading off of 3 X 5 Index Cards  . It was The President's way of getting out HIS side of the story and it worked wonders for him as the Press spent the next fifteen minutes asking questions and discussing what he had just stated . Brilliant . 

Twitter is today's Index Cards .

And as for Putin , President Trump is exactly right . Vladimir is a saint compared to Stalin and many of the things the United States has done over the decades  . We went into Iraq because Saddam tried to assassinate our then President's Daddy and the U.S.A. assassinated South Vietnamese President Diem which threw all of Southeast Asia into a Gigantic Crisis  ( Six Million Vietnamese Deaths   --- on par with Hitler and the Holocaust ) . Even Ho Chi Minh admitted that ' Diem was not so bad  ' .  In fact , it was not until early 1964 that Ho and Giap finally decided to ' take whatever beating the U.S.A. was going to inflict  '  and unite their country  . Ho was a Nationalist .


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_in_the_Vietnam_War


" Hit Me Ronnie !!!!  "


Joey Trump ! ®

Edith Grove wrote on Feb 13^th, 2017 at 9:07am:


couldn't find Trump colored glasses but this will do...


Edith?