President Donald Trump

[Brandon Rhea]

No no I understand that what I'm trying to get at was your intention for saying it. It seems to me your saying Trump is somehow negating the Judiciary becoming more of dictator.

I would just like to point out that Obama has a record as the president who took the most executive actions while in office. Something that seems a bit bad, as he often times just skipped the checks and balances process.

So ya, there's that.

I'm not arguing against executive action, but when the judiciary says that the executive orders have to be stayed for judicial review (or ultimately finds them illegal) then the executive has to abide by that. If he doesn't, that's a dictatorial move.

 

[FinnSimmons]

I like to view the political spectrum as a pendulum. Now it would eventually settle down in the middle but the fact is that it keeps getting pushed. And if it is pushed it swings back harder than it would have. Just saying. With the Gaussian distribution being pretty much the make up of any countries political population the more you push for extreme ideas the more you are going to end up polarizing the society. Lets be honest, a society can only bear a certain load when it comes to extremes and can only tolerate so much before it snaps. That goes both for left and right. Extremes are never good.

 

[Brandon Rhea]

So, a summation of things that have happened over the last few days:

On Saturday, the executive branch decided that they were going to ignore the stay that the judiciary placed on the president's Muslim ban executive order. That means that the White House is essentially claiming executive supremacy and that they and only they will decide whether the judicial branch will be listened to. Now, there is no mechanism in the Constitution demanding that the executive following judicial orders. It's all based on norms and a common acceptance of how government works. That is now breaking apart.

Today, the president is going to sign an executive order saying that for every new regulation put into place, two other regulations must first be eliminated. People who want deregulation are going to love that because, on its face, it just looks like deregulation. But if the president was serious about deregulation, he would order a review of all regulations, have his agencies submit regulations they believe are outdated, and then he would sign orders eliminating them. Or he could just issue a blanket order saying, for example, that each agency has to eliminate a certain amount of regulations within a certain number of days from the time the order is signed.

Instead, the president is saying that all new regulations require the elimination of two. That does two things:

1) It hamstrings government agencies that want to improve upon their regulations but having an arbitrary rule that other regulations have to be eliminated, regardless of whether those regulations merit elimination. That runs contrary to the president's pledge to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. Government agencies will continue to be outdated. Government agencies will have a harder time enforcing environmental standards, airplane regulations, etc. All the things that keep the country running.

2) Most importantly, the sinister underside to this rule is that congressional legislation is enforced via executive regulation. If new regulations can only be created once two other regulations have been eliminated, then the executive branch is in the position to say that legislation won't be enforced or adhered to until the agencies in charge of enforcing that legislation remove a ton of other regulations. That has a chilling effect on Congressional power. The executive power grab that this White House is making is essentially nullifying two other branches of government.

Keep in mind who's really calling the shots in this White House: Steve Bannon. The same Steve Bannon who had this to say about his admiration of power:

"Darkness is good. Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That's power. It only helps us when they get it wrong. When they're blind to who we are and what we're doing."

The same Steve Bannon who also described himself as a Leninist in this sense:

"Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that's my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment."

As these things keep happening, keep all of this in mind. Don't be blind to who they are and what they're doing. Don't be blind to what the goals are here: an executive coup, as part of a nihilistic quest to destroy the state. They've told us what the goal is. Listen to them!

 

[TWD26]

The fact that Steve Bannon is allowed in National Security affairs is concerning as well. If you've read the book, the 48 laws of power, one of the laws explains about using a puppet that bends to your will, and since they're the face, they will take the knives and outcry from the public, thus the puppet master is never truly attacked. It's a prime example of courtesan politics, that is making another round again.