Among you taking notes
Trump is tantruming because people took notes and the notes make him look bad and it’s all just so unfair.
But the fact that some of those notes became primary source material for Mueller to paint a vivid portrait of Trump’s efforts to derail the investigation angered the president, who was stewing over the media coverage as he decamped to Florida for the holiday weekend, according to people familiar with his thinking.
“Statements are made about me by certain people in the Crazy Mueller Report, in itself written by 18 Angry Democrat Trump Haters, which are fabricated & totally untrue,” the president tweeted Friday morning from his Mar-a-Lago Club. “Watch out for people that take so-called ‘notes,’ when the notes never existed until needed.”
Yeah! What right do people have to take notes!
Meanwhile Trump is an outright criminal, but that’s perfectly all right, because shut up.
Despite Trump’s angry tweets Friday morning about the Mueller report, the president was in a good mood as he dined on the Mar-a-Lago patio after landing in Palm Beach, Fla., on Thursday night. On Friday, he played golf with conservative talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh, who defended the president on the air Thursday.
“My friends, I’m telling you, this report is made to order for the Democrat Party to ignore what is the only important thing about this: No collusion, no obstruction, period,” Limbaugh told his listeners.
Why is that the only important thing? There are many important things. Trump is a bad bad man, and the bad things he does are important, because he is dragging us down into the muck with him, and because he is doing harm to large numbers of people.
There was a fantasy short story I read once where the stupid king thought writing and reading were magic spells. Turned out he was correct.
It ended badly for the king.
Taking notes? That’s almost as bad as wearing a wire.
Will he now ban any further note-taking in his presence?
He will have to ban listening.
“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
Trump thinks that as president, he gets to control the past. Notes and other pesky pieces of evidence interfere with that.
He was elected to be the (elected 18thC) monarch of America. That is what the President really is. But instead of sitting on his throne and issuing decrees, he has to spend his time either justifying himself or dodging the press. And as he has no means of escape, and it is a total governmental farce.
The President was never intended to be a monarch. Throughout the 20th century, with the aid of Congress, the presidents have seized more power, until now they are regarded as the be all and end all. That seems to be the way Americans want it – a powerful single charismatic leader. So the public and media also have conspired to this symbolic monarchy.
Just so, iknklast.
Iknklast:
Not an hereditary one like all the royalty to be found in Europe in the 18th C pre-1776, but an elected one equal to them, able to meet with them on equal terms, and head of the armed forces with the power to declare war and to take the country into it. I suggest the Founding Fathers of the US thought in those terms, because such were the prevailing paradigm of the times.
The loss of Britain’s American colonies set processes going in Britain herself which resulted in the Great Reform Bill of 1831 (?) and popular opinion in Canada, Australia and NZ turning against creation of an hereditary peerage or House of Lords in any of those countries. The real power of the House of Lords in Britain has steadily declined since.
One was proposed in Australia, but became the standing joke of the ‘bunyip aristocracy’.
Omar, the founders intended the president the be at most equal to Congress, not a monarch. In reality, they created a weak presidency without funding, without much power other than oversight (veto power) and being commander-in-chief of the army. Their job was to enforce the rules made by Congress, and to perform a check on Congress. Their writings suggest they intended the presidency to be the weakest branch.
In the 20th century, presidents began to do things that were not traditionally nor constitutionally part of their power. Congress enabled them, in part by not making them stop and in part by giving the president discretionary funds of his own.
The founders were not willing to create a monarch; unfortunately, the people of this country seem to want some sort of royalty, and have elevated the president to that status. Many presidents have been willing to go along and take more for themselves, at the expense of Congress, at the expense of the people, at the expense of the country. Sometimes they use this power for something we want when Congress won’t do it, and we forget to complain. Unfortunately, that helps to entrench the power so when they use it for things that we do not want, it is difficult to stop because the powers have been transferred.