Congratulations: as of today, it's almost official; Jeff Sessions is to be reunited with his competent, even more amoral buddy, Chuck Cooper, newly elevated to the position of U.S. Solicitor General. Up to now President S.Trumpet has been dismissing qualified attorneys for telling him their honest legal opinions, planning to replace them with a battalion of the "walking dead." Amazingly, the other night, I watched President Bannon, no, Cheney, no, sorry, S.Trumpet's choice for bungling DOJ attorney almost totally destroy a can't-miss national-security case, "The Ban." However the potentially legal but incompetently designed plan had been crafted, it was still the president's own guy who single-handedly managed to turn the security issue into a "Muslim Ban." S.Trumpet, being Ivy League-educated and smarter than Einstein and even able to read one or two sentences before losing interest (although he does watch videos and twitter feed), of course, blamed the poor performance on biased questions by the crooked judges. If he loses the case, it will be their fault. If he wins, it's because they're such good judges. To S.Trumpet the actual law is totally unimportant.
Everything this Schmendrick does is like "hit me, go ahead, hit me," and when some poor soul hits him, he goes crying to Mommy Kellyanne Conway like the little baby that he seems to be under all the bluster. How long will it take for the rest of the world to see him as he really is? S.Trumpet pretends to be a narcissist, but for some reason, with all of his education, business success and, yes, native intelligence, he seems to have the worst inferiority complex I have ever seen in a seemingly successful human being.
I believe that his inability to construe any criticism, even purely constructive, as anything but an affront, together with his microscopic attention span regarding anything not related to himself, will be his undoing. Thus far, his administration has been the most incompetent that I have seen in my lifetime. From his appointments, few of whom can pass even the simplest ethics tests, to the incompetent roll-out of his amateur seven-country ban to his dinner meeting where he casually okayed the incompletely vetted and failed foray into Yemen, with his callous attitude toward the lives of U.S. soldiers as well as women and children civilian casualties, S.Trumpet has shown an inability to properly delegate authority that is truly alarming.
It's scary when our president, with five military deferments, "knows more than the generals" and the intelligence agencies combined. It's even more scary when he dismisses qualified military and intelligence personnel from his National Security meeting at the behest of his admittedly schizophrenic Leninist/Fascist advisor, Steve Bannon, and substitutes the fellow sociopath in their stead, leading directly to the fiasco in Yemen. Let's keep track of how many people are killed and how many millions of lives are ruined in the next four years. Only tonight S.Trumpet's best friend Sheriff Joe "Moishe Pipick" Opayo's "men" began purposely separating heretofore registered "illegal" mothers from their children, sending the mothers back to Mexico.
Postscript: As much as I may believe that Jeff Sessions may be operating at times on the wrong side of federal prison bars, I don't believe that we Democrats know how to fight the way the Republicans do. I think. Senator Warren, that you have every right to say what you did, quoting Coretta King and Bobby Kennedy; however, where were you when Hillary was coronated before she ever won the nomination as queen of the Democratic Party? Why didn't you run? Why the heck were you not drafted as V.P. at least? What does the Democratic Party have against winners?
What no one seems to understand is that we cannot complain about a Jeff Sessions or even a moral slacker like Chuck Cooper (check his record and you won't complain about Sessions!) after Mr. Obama committed the crime of nepotism, hiring his "Uncle Tom" Holder. Remember Holder, the double-dipping traitor responsible for the illegal election of W in 2000 as well as ensuring that it is perfectly legal for police and prosecutors to frame American citizens for bogus crimes and that in order to advance in the DOJ, illicit political prosecutions such as that of Don Siegelman must be "judiciously" ignored? Don't forget, Republicans are not the only ones who live in glass houses.
The upshot of the matter is that Hillary lost because she was beaten by a better panderer. If one pays attention to the real problems and one is consistent on the "bully pulpit," sooner or later the message resonates with the public whether Democrat, Republican, or Independent. Pandering is not necessary. Understand that John McCain and especially Mitt Romney, a really talented candidate, did not lose to Barack Obama; both lost to George W. Bush! Similarly, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, or Chaim Yankel are all Democrats who could have beaten S.Trumpet, but the Democratic deck was purposely and foolishly stacked against them.
Part of the problem was President Obama being forced by Democratic colleagues to treat gay marriage and abortion as even more important than the economy, but just as important was the party not taking the long view on healthcare, infrastructure, and jobs and not hammering away at these issues from the bully pulpit. Instead of presenting the Affordable Care Act as a "temporary solution," it was soon heralded as "the solution." Instead of promoting jobs programs and infrastructure programs as the answers to urban redevelopment and crime, relentlessly challenging the Republican obstruction of these movements, Democrats reverted to the more comfortable visceral social issues and sulked, much as President S.Trumpet does whenever he doesn't receive immediate gratification or when his wet nurse is late getting him his binky.
Al Finkelstein 2/8/17