The Guardian: Trump’s Cabinet Picks So Far

The President-Elect Of The United States, gesturing how wide income inequality will get now. Or the enormity of the speculative fuckedness of our foundation of government, society, humanity and the planet.

Now that the electoral college has done it’s arbitrary duty, it’s the appropriate time to take a layman’s look at Mr. Trump’s administration choices, the finalists of the plutocrat apprentice.

You got Rex Tillerson at Secretary Of State, the last major post that Trump decided to fill. Being the top diplomacy role, it kind of shows where diplomacy is placed in the president-elect’s priorities. This guy is the big oil man CEO of ExxonMobil, and in terms of international reputation, incidentally tight and revered by Russian president and bully dog breeder Vladimir Putin, who once bestowed Rex with a Moscow Order Of Friendship. A dubious dignitary title earned by Rex’s collaboration deal with that nation’s comparably big oil company OAO Rosneft for oil exploration in the arctic, which eventually got the kibosh from sanctions instituted when Putin decided to annex Crimea, but not for what oil exploration is doing to hasten the extreme catastrophic effects of climate change, which surely drives his contrary beliefs and his stubborn denials about it. And who will surely avoid any international summits discussing about stifling the problem and gutting legislation regulating emissions causing it. Rex’s appointment will probably lift those sanctions and will leave public service a much wealthier man as well has his heirs. It’s apparent that Trump’s own extreme vetting for the chosen magnate is his supposed denomination from his overseas buddy. And the catalyzing legend that ExxonMobil is practically a tyrannical nation state of it’s own. Maybe a tad treasonous too.

Exxon’s foreign policy sometimes had more impact on the countries where it operated than did the State Department. Take, for example, Chad, one of the poorest countries in Africa. During the mid-two-thousands, the entirety of U.S. aid and military spending in the country directed through the U.S. Embassy in the capital, N’Djamena, amounted to less than twenty million dollars annually, whereas the royalty payments Exxon made to the government as part of an oil-production agreement were north of five hundred million dollars. Idriss Déby, the authoritarian President of Chad, did not need a calculator to understand that Rex Tillerson was more important to his future than the U.S. Secretary of State.

In Kurdistan, during the Obama Administration, Tillerson defied State Department policy and cut an independent oil deal with the Kurdish Regional Government, undermining the national Iraqi government in Baghdad. ExxonMobil did not ask permission. After the fact, Tillerson arranged a conference call with State Department officials and explained his actions, according to my sources, by saying, “I had to do what was best for my shareholders”

The New Yorker

That last quote makes the most sense for this appointment. As is the now obligatory qualification of having a conflict of interest.

The pick for Treasury is cut from the same dynastic cloth as Trump, Steven Mnuchin. This guy has become a become a blockbuster movie mogul in the past few years, which led me to think that he was picked because our new leader thinks box office totals would translate to nationwide economic improvement. Alas, the guy is predator scumbag and should technically be imprisoned for his running of a corrupt bank, OneWest, that was sadistically foreclosing on middle class homes through bad mortgages, encouraged their employees to fabricate payments through robo-signing to keep up the illusion of financial liquidity, and was blatantly discriminating against potential minority homeowners for applying for loans. The guy is a misery merchant.

Another bed fellow greedy bastard and fiendishly ironic pick for commerce head is Wilbur Ross, who has accrued billions through vulture venture capital and predatory equity via investing in bankrupt businesses including, naturally, the president-elects monument of failure, the pile of mortar, lights and shit in Atlantic City, the Taj Mahal Casino and the rust belt industries of textile, coal and steel that Trump has been pandering for votes the past year. Talk about vertical integration. And one of Wilbur’s mines killed 12 people

The atrocious pick for Labor is the owner of obesity population generator, Andrew F. Pudzer, CEO of Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s. This individual has absolute contempt for workers looking to improve their personal wealth and livelihoods by vocally being against raising the minimum wage and claims such demands will justify leading to replacing human servers with basic rights with dutiful robots. This guy needs to look at how Uber is trying to illegally fast-track this philosophy in San Francisco.

Trump’s labor choice’s ideal worker

The pick is for Attorney General was dug up from the dung heap of appointment rejects past, Jeff Sessions, a career political hack who if confirmed will continue ruining the lives of citizens who prefer pot over cigarettes, homosexuals and poor women and their collective uteri. The latter which will be in more danger because of the beliefs of the pick of Tom Price at Health and Human Services.

The picks for Energy and Housing are defiantly lazy and set up to provoke laughter and induce nausea. Rick Perry did not even remember the dept. he will lead during a primary debate 4 years ago. And Ben Carson, the only African-American picked, was chosen possibly, no cynically because he’s black, which makes up the majority of tenants in public housing, recently commented after refusing the HHS position that he would not accept a position he’s not qualified for even though he thought he was qualified to be president. These two are fucking idiots.

Scott Pruitt is the pick for the EPA, an opponent of climate change regulations, poster boy for the merchants of doubt, and toady stenographer for big energy companies including ExxonMobil (Hi, Rex!). Interior pick Ryan Zinke, allegedly an avid outdoorsman, is looking to revive construction for the justifiably rejected Keystone XL pipeline.

The pick for Education is a doozy floozy, Betsy Devos. Made a billionaire from inheriting wealth from her father’s parasitic pyramid empire AMWAY and her abominable privatized charter education program, which has been confirmed as a ineffective institutional failure and destroyer of schools.

The pick for the CIA, an department that has been terribly utilized, has caused worldwide strife and chaos and should be abolished, Mike Pompeo, apparently thinks the biggest enemies are ourselves, Americans, for his support of the NSA’s idiotic haystack or ball pit data mining of everyone’s personal data and has called, like others including supposed liberals, for the execution of Edward Snowden. He also thinks that our soldiers should continue utilizing war crime methods like torture, which led to all that insurgency in Iraq and the ensuing ISIS caliphate in the first place.

After failing to get a senate seat twice in Connecticut, the inspiring pick for Small Business Administrator went to WWE matriarch Linda McMahon. Which should make future legislation regarding policy very intriguing.

As for the M.I.C. aka the defense department, to head the pentagon there’s General James “Mad Dog” Mattis. He commanded missions in Afghanistan and Iraq in the infinite War On Terror or the war on notions. The war that Trump advocated then was against, which to be fair a lot of people did, a massive majority did, and subsequently has led to millions of deaths, injuries, displacement and blowback, and maybe the rise of heroin production and trafficking. Despite the surges, the random drone attack and the deaths of dictators, iconic ghouls and cult of personality monster types like Saddam Hussein, Bin Laden, and Khaddafy. Reportedly, Trump picked the Mad Dog for his approach on interrogation as offering cigarettes and booze to get what he needs instead of the counterproductive torture methods that were used that led to this current malaise in the Middle East and now parts of Africa. I think he picked him because his nickname is Mad Dog. His Homeland Security pick General John Kelly was running Gitmo when the captives there were engaging in hunger strikes, which were subject to cover ups. But those two are just moderate figureheads to balance the wild man radical loose cannon, retired General Michael Flynn, who will be doing the most action in his role as NSA advisor. This guy was at the forefront of Obama’s pathetic and duplicitous policy towards Syria, which has led to the destruction of major metropolitan cities there and millions dead, disenfranchised of their human rights and displaced of their homeland, leading to a refugee crisis not seen since World War II. This guy is qualified because of his insight into the mess there, but it’s negated by his generalization of the muslim population, which can lead to further tensions and draconian policies. He will be the first to alert Trump if there are any threats to the nation and to move forward with any defensive or offensive actions (only when Trump feels like hearing it). There is a Gen. Jack T. Ripper vibe about this guy that’s a bit unnerving. And he doesn’t need senate confirmation either.

And neither does Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon. Rewarded with counseler and strategist for their manipulative architect work of Donnie’s mutant Elmer Gantry / Greg Stillson campaign.

Let there be no doubt that they are all in for themselves and their portfolios. And they all have conflicts of interests in their lucrative fields. But as the president elect said of his role, the first job he ever applied for, that the president doesn’t have a conflict of interest, which he assumes extends to his cabinet.  Emoluments clause be damned.

This is what running government as a business looks like. Although someone running a real business would have kick these asses out the door for their lack of qualifications and inherent criminal behavior.

This assemblage by Trump confirms in general the most cynical beliefs of bureaucracy and a country in distress. This is the newer normal. And normal. Is. Truly. Fucked.

This is not the cabinet of deplorables, it’s the SNAFU administration

Update: Trump recently courted Slyvester Stallone to head the NEA, which the actor/director respectfully and thankfully declined. Which shows that someone out there actually saw all 294 films chronicling the life of Rocky Balboa. And maybe someone that doesn’t see the glorious demented camp of a movie like Rhinestone and appreciates it for a bedazzled filmwork and an actor branching out into new realms of artistic expression..

The Impunity Mayor and his money gesture

Mayor de Blasio says correspondence with ‘agents of the city’ will be public

Going forward, de Blasio said correspondence between the five “agents” — a designation that his lawyers made up — and him or his staff will be made public, which is standard procedure.

The mayor, who made the announcement in an interview on NY1’s “Inside City Hall,” defended the controversial decision to keep their emails under wraps by saying he followed legal guidelines but admitted, “This has become a distraction.”

But he is still refusing to hand over their old emails because he said they were written under the belief that they would be private.

Most correspondence between members of city government and the public are available under Freedom of Information laws, but de Blasio has argued that the “agents” are exempt because he leans so heavily on them for advice.

His lawyers backed it up, saying that as his close pals they served a role similar to his top City Hall aides, whose correspondence with the mayor is exempt from disclosure because the law allows for private deliberations between staff.

No. Fucking. Way. Mother. Fucker.

The recent decision and 3 year wait for the transparency he promised to the citizenry he manipulated for votes and to everyone who hates his big slow ass that pays his salary is to my knowledge the most galling thing this city has ever seen in over a hundred years. His administration is running a shadow government, honest graft and massively intricate conspiracy in plain sight.

What could be so bad and possibly incriminating on all that correspondence between the mayor and the intruder Johnathon Rosen of Berlin/Rosen and those other scurrilous adviser firms, Hilltop Advisors , Advance Group and Red Horse Strategies, lobbyist wormtongues loitering in the rooms of city hall?

Well, we might not know for a while besides the ones they deigned to release to AT&T/NY1, one of which is a golden list of predatory developers and other rental market rate fabricators. And what is definitely known to anyone that truly cares, meaning people that have lived here all their lives and mostly people that need a real apartment and a semblance of dignity, is that these intruders sage advice they gave out of the kindness of their caring philanthropic fauxgressive hearts, has led to the most inequitable and expensive cost of living in this fucking town and more out of scale and irresponsible development in terms of size being density and height and location being waterfront in the age of catastrophic climate change.

So after years of stalling and obfuscations, the Blaz is still stalling and obfuscating because his high end law firms we pay for with stagnant paychecks say the law is on his side in this now quasi-scandal.

It’s eerie that the weeks before Mayor Impunity honored the FOIA from AT&T/NY1, the network gave him a twice weekly forum to address the public and take questions from one of the popular hosts, Errol Flynn (who also editorializes for the Daily News). In addition that a supposed major news network who were denied access for a year to get these correspondences with those adviser roaches who have massively enrich themselves would give an outlet to an elected official under a massive investigation from the southern district court.

For a dope from park slope, the mayor is quite a grifting idiot savant

I declare sacrilege.

The original Bad Santa is one of the greatest holiday movies of all time. Directed by acclaimed director Terry Zwigoff over a decade ago, it was hilarious and sad in the best ways and featured great performances from the once consistent Billy Bob Thornton as the title character who’s like Charles Bukowski was reincarnated without literary talent and had to resort playing Santa in shopping malls and burglary to feed his vices.Tony Cox in a breakout performance which for unknown reasons hasn’t made him as much a household name as Peter Dinklage. And of the most sad sack sympathetic abused characters in movie lore in the child character with the unfortunate name of Thurman Murman, which when revealed later in the first movie actually came as a shock despite how often he was bullied by the skater boys.

As is want in this era of film production, actually in the last 20 years this has been going on like the decline of the great barrier reef, the belated unnecessary sequel has been released. Since I don’t have money to go see this and rather spend ninety minutes watching paint dry or an actual good movie on the VCR I still own, I prefer to take the liberty to denounce this without actually seeing it. Really why bother when theaters are shutting down and the majority of releases are cynical garbage like this, comic book adaptations and the infinite Star Wars franchise. Because I am secure in the knowledge that this abomination was only made because of the yearly viral, as in virus, outbreak of the wretched millenial drunken vagrant parade that is Santacon. A vile holiday season event where binge drinking, yelling and vomiting douchebags and douchehags dressed up in kringle drag roam the streets of NYC, preferably the East Village and Williamsburg since that’s where the flurry of liquor licenses doled by the city have been sent, and run around roughshod without a hint of repression by our local cops sworn to protect us and this thing called “quality of life” which was referred to incessantly during “Giuliani Time” in the 90’s to justify the failure of “stop and frisk”.

It’s amazing even still that behavior like this continues to terrorize locals when the only time that the NYPD is used for crowd control in comparison is when people assemble to protest and they get the military oppression treatment while these sheilds and clubs that are usually wielded against them would be more useful and justified on a brigade of obnoxious drunks in their 20’s and 30’s.

Oh, well, I guess there are priorities. For the santa-conners frivolously spend money and protesters don’t buy anything at all. Since money is legally declared speech, inebriated screaming and yelling matters more than the speech that is free, even if it contains bile and chunks.

Seven Avenue Chunk of 86th Street To Be Reserved For Tour Buses This Holiday Season

Dyker Heights, Brooklyn, N.Y.

Here’s another slight from caring officials of this brazenly unfair city. Yet another amenity for the tourists, more profits for the travel industry and the parasitic mission of turning the 5 boroughs into an uninhabitable and overpriced theme park. I find it amazing this part of Brooklyn finally got attention, which is so far off from the nauseating niche and trendy areas of the borough a few miles north, which itself is amazing because those same areas still have poverty. This is could only be possible because of dreadful social media attention.

But I am confused, don’t these stupid tourists have similar sights where they live? Don’t their towns have similar seasonal traditions? Maybe not as grand or opulent as the creative folks living in Dyker, but come on, they are just decorations. I guess this might sound provincial and I don’t have much of a say in what goes on because I don’t live there, but in my opinion, these are meant for the people who live there. It’s not a stop in Universal Studios or Disney World. These are homes owned by citizens who worked hard to live in such a nice place. And they have rights too, which are being disenfranchised for this draconian tone deaf bullshit.

Our current mayor is taking “fun size” Mayor Bloomberg’s luxury city brand lunacy and tourist dependent budgeting to a new level of crassness. I hate to be the cops that had to tape those hideous pink signs all over the place, which I assumed must have been in the middle of the night or during work hours.

I been to that area a few times and it is something out of a movie scene. But it’s not much of a necessity or interest to trek all the way there  because there are other parts in our boroughs that go nuts with the displays. And I am certain it’s the same wherever these bored frivolous spending tourists are from. Enough is enough. We got to bring a semblance of normalcy back. We can start by getting viable candidates for mayor.