The Trump Administration: A Clusterfuck in the Making

It also brings to mind the BBT episode where Howard’s robot arm wouldn’t let go of his weinie, but I don’t know if that’s what inspired his username.

Most likely not: just look at RA’s join date, which is more than half a decade before BBT aired its first episode.

I know you, I recognize your username when you post, I recall your political leaning, I enjoy your humor, and I appreciate your perception. I’d rank you in…I don’t know…my top thirty favorite posters?

Is it just me, or does everyone seem to just tap dance around Trump’s blatant incompetence? I don’t mean by Board members, lord no. But politicians and editorialists usually just use wishy-washy phrases like “could be perceived as insensitive at best,” that sort of thing. Are there many yet who call him out for being the lying, steaming pile of shit he really is?

He’s been skating by on the “Washington Outsider” and “getting the hang of things” excuse for too long in some circles. But he’s shown a remarkable lack of urgency to learn anything, orient himself on anything, admit his lack of experience anywhere. It’s one thing to be a blowhard; it’s another thing to genuinely believe that you’re doing A-game work when you’re this inept. Truly remarkable.

Good timing - I’d just read this article on FiveThirtyEight.
Unusual for this site to comment editorially on anything but numbers and (sometimes) optics.

The subhead on the 538 article is perfect:

“His outburst on Hurricane Maria and Puerto Rico shows that not everything is a clever ploy to rally his base.”

Trump has deleted or modified all of the tweets in which he attacked the mayor of San Juan. But then, I just had to laugh and shake my head at this one:
In analyzing the Alabama Primary race,FAKE NEWS always fails to mention that the candidate I endorsed went up MANY points after endorsement!

He just can’t let it go when he loses, can he?

I hear you. This morning’s NY TIMES referred to his brags about “A+ ratings!” For Puerto Rico assistance as “exaggerations” when it would have been more apt to say “Bag of Shit’s racist (PRs are lazy) sexist (San Juan mayor is nasty) claims are the latest addition to his series of complete fucked-up lies.”

Well, there’s this:

And this:

I’ve been thinking recently about the similarities between the Trump Phenomenon and the concept of emergent behaviour. My AI knowledge is rusty, but essentially the deal with Emergence is that a large number of incredibly simple units running on just one or two rules can produce surprisingly complex and successful behaviours.

Ants finding food is a good example. Each ant has basically two behaviours - if there’s a scent trail, follow it to find food. If there’s not a scent trail, wander randomly. One ant following these rules doesn’t look very impressive - a thousand of them can generate very efficient paths from the nearest food sources to the ant nest in quite a short amount of time.

Donald Trump has really two speaking behaviours. If what you said last time got a cheer, say it again louder with more emphasis. If not, waffle round randomly until something gets a cheer.

Unlike with ants, of course, there’s only (thank God!) one Donald Trump. But he has access to a lot of resources in terms of money, which enables him to buy minions, and the minions are also running a pretty simple rule: don’t get fired. The minions act like mini-Donald-Trumps, amplifying and boosting the efficiency of his behaviour. With the result that, in their chosen ecosystem (the minds of a particular moderately-homogeneous group of citizens) the whole shebang works remarkably well, considering that - like in the case of the ants - there’s no actual brain or high level thought behind any of it.

Or of course I could be talking completely out of my arse. But it’s 2017 - that’s what we do nowadays…

Excellent observation.

Pure genius.

This explains precisely why NFL protests suddenly became Topic A. Trump was in Alabama, ostensibly to lend support to the campaign of Luther Strange. He’s at a rally, waffling randomly, and landed on “hey, how about those son of a bitch NFL players…” and got a big cheer. And here we are.

I think this is brilliant.

Don Marquis: The Lives and Times of Archy and Mehitabel

Trump is a would-be conquering ant.

Don’t worry about the whole North Korea thing though, because the State Department assures us:

#DPRK will not obtain a nuclear capability. Whether through diplomacy or force is up to the regime”

This is especially encouraging considering the DPRK has had nuclear capability for years now. So, good news is that we apparently have time travel technology.

I, for one, do not welcome our orange formic overlord.

Red State’s Erick Erickson is about as right-wing as it gets, and he had this to say about Trump’s idea of proper and effective Presidential “action” on the Puerto Rican crisis:

http://theresurgent.com/nevermind/

I imagine there are Trumpniks who won’t hear the irony in those words. (Irony is over their heads.)