What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[Valmy]

Yeah not close at all. Well I cannot blame the White House for all their paranoia over the past 20 years.

[mongers]

OK, I'm gonna call it now, I think he has a good chance, though not better than evens, of getting a second term. :gasp:

[garbon]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/02/24/united-and-delta-cut-ties-to-nra-as-boycott-movement-spreads-to-global-corporations/?utm_term=.34d6181fb2a9

NRA lashes out at boycott movement as United, Delta and other corporations cut ties

The National Rifle Association lashed out at corporations rushing to abandon it, as companies from United Airlines to Best Western have cut ties with the gun lobby group under pressure from a boycott movement following a Feb. 14 high school shooting.

Without context, twin announcements from Delta and United airlines on Saturday morning might look trivial: The end of flight discounts to the NRA's annual convention, which few outside the gun rights organization likely knew existed before they became boycott targets.

But in abandoning the NRA, the airlines followed car rental giants Avis, Hertz and Enterprise, the Best Western hotel chain, the global insurance company MetLife, and more than a dozen other corporations that have severed affiliations with the gun group in the last two days.

In a statement released Saturday afternoon, the NRA accused companies of "a shameful display of political and civic cowardice."

"Let it be absolutely clear," the NRA's statement said. "The loss of a discount will neither scare nor distract one single NRA member from our mission to stand and defend the individual freedoms that have always made America the greatest nation in the world."

Ryan Knight #BoycottNRA
@ProudResister
15 brands have now ended their relationship with the @NRA:

1. @MetLife
2. @symantec
3. @BestWestern
4. @Wyndham
5. @Alamo
6. @NationalPro
7. @Enterprise
8. @FNBOmaha
9. @Hertz
10. @Budget
11. @Avis
12. @NortonOnline
13. @northAmericanVL
14. @SimpliSafe
15. @ChubbNA#BoycottNRA

10:08 PM - Feb 23, 2018

[Eddie Teach]

OK, I'm gonna call it now, I think he has a good chance, though not better than evens, of getting a second term. :gasp:

Holy shit, it's Nostradamus. I bet the lotto numbers will be under 40, too?

[mongers]

OK, I'm gonna call it now, I think he has a good chance, though not better than evens, of getting a second term. :gasp:

Holy shit, it's Nostradamus. I bet the lotto numbers will be under 40, too?

No, next weeks are 41,42,43,44,45,46. 

[garbon]

I know our poster who loves her arms is pumped.

https://www.axios.com/michelle-obamas-memoir-becoming-to-hit-shelves-november-2018-8d034d93-8448-41f8-8688-05949761ad27.html

Michelle Obama's memoir, BECOMING, to hit shelves November 2018

Michelle Obama's highly anticipated memoir, titled BECOMING, will be released on November 13, 2018, CEO of Penguin Random House Markus Dohle announced Sunday.

Details: In the book, Obama dives into everything from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago, to her years juggling her work as an executive with the responsibilities of being a new mom, to her eight years as First Lady.

"Writing BECOMING has been a deeply personal experience. It has allowed me, for the very first time, the space to honestly reflect on the unexpected trajectory of my life ... I hope my journey inspires readers to find the courage to become whoever they aspire to be. I can't wait to share my story."

[mongers]

t to share my story."
......

So how small is the chance that Trump won't make a snide, catty or negative tweet about this?

[mongers]

Donald J. Trump 
@realDonaldTrump
    
Crooked Hillary said that I want guns brought into the school classroom. Wrong!

4:55 am - 22 May 2016

https://mobile.twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/734231223002894337

[Eddie Teach]

t to share my story."
......

So how small is the chance that Trump won't make a snide, catty or negative tweet about this?

If he doesn't, you can always write one for him.

[mongers]

t to share my story."
......

So how small is the chance that Trump won't make a snide, catty or negative tweet about this?

If he doesn't, you can always write one for him.

OMG, ET's on my case :sweats:

[Eddie Teach]

Nobody said anything about you getting PAID for said tweet.

[jimmy olsen]

I don't know if Trump is self aware enough to identify with the snake, even subconsciously.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/02/24/the-snake-how-trump-appropriated-a-radical-black-singers-lyrics-for-refugee-fearmongering/?utm_term=.c5af88da0240

'The Snake': How Trump appropriated a radical black singer's lyrics for immigration fearmongering

by Eli Rosenberg 
February 24

One of President Trump's earliest documented uses of "The Snake" came in January 2016, on the eve of the primary season that he would go on to storm.

Speaking to a crowd in Cedar Falls, Iowa, with the state's all-important caucus just days away, the candidate put on reading glasses and read the story from a piece of paper: A talking snake fatally bites a woman after she takes it in to give it care.

"I read this the other day, and I said, 'Wow, that's really amazing,' " Trump told the crowd.

Trump used the poem repeatedly on the campaign trail to illustrate the threats posed by refugees from Syria and other countries. The United States is the woman who naively gives others refuge; immigrants are the snakes who deliver the fatal strike.

"The Snake" was back this week after a hiatus, when Trump did another rendition during a freewheeling speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday.

For someone who is not known as a man of letters, this is one of Trump's only literary touchstones. It is a crowd-pleaser, part xenophobic fearmongering, part tale told by Grandpa — "story time with Trump," as one college supporter said that day in Iowa.

But the lyrics have a far more complex origin than Trump's use might imply. The poem originated in the 1960s from a soul singer and social activist in Chicago, Oscar Brown Jr. Its appropriation as a tool to drum up fear about immigrants has turned heads; some of Brown's family are asking Trump to stop using it. And now, people are reading deeper into the president's fixation with the parable.

This is the story of the president and "The Snake."

Trump's take: An anti-immigrant tale

Trump's performances of "The Snake" take on a relatively common routine. After listing the dangers of refugees, terrorism and "the wrong people" coming into our country, Trump will take out a piece of paper and display some of his showmanship, which is part carnival barker, part parent hoping to scare a child straight and part Fox News host.

"You ready?" He asked an adoring crowd in Ohio.

"Who likes 'The Snake'?" he asked another group in Pennsylvania. "Has anybody heard 'The Snake'? Not that many! Should I do it again?"




The poem describes the story of a snake, freezing outside in the cold, who convinces a woman to take him into her house. After the woman lets the snake in and revives it with "honey and some milk," the snake delivers a fatal bite to her.

Trump likes to emphasize the last line, taking gusto as he repeats the snake's words:

" 'Oh, shut up, silly woman!' said the reptile with a grin. 'You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in,' " Trump will say, his voice often rising to a growl.

Usually, the crowd cheers. Other times, it breaks into a spontaneous chant of "U-S-A!" At CPAC, the audience gave Trump a standing ovation.

During the speech Friday, Trump tore into the gang MS-13 ("animals"), immigrants ("We pick out people. Then they turn out to be horrendous.") and Democrats ("They're always fighting for the criminal."), among others.

And "The Snake" was given its usual sendup.

"Did anyone ever hear me do 'The Snake' during the campaign?" Trump inquired. "Because I had five people outside say, 'Could you do "The Snake?" ' I said, 'Well, people have heard it. Who hasn't heard "The Snake?" ' 'You should read it anyway.' Let's do it anyway."

A song written by a black former communist

It is not entirely clear how the song found its way into Trump's hands.

Corey Lewandowski, who served as Trump's campaign manager for much of the primary season, told The Washington Post in 2016 that "somebody probably sent it in."

"We get a lot of mail," Lewandowski said, "but it does go to the larger narrative of what used to be the way, conceptually, our country was to where it is today."

Trump might be surprised to learn the origin of the song. Long before he used it as an anti-immigrant poem, "The Snake" was just a simple tune, a parable open to interpretation.

The lyrics were written in the 1960s by Brown, an outspoken singer, songwriter, social activist and former Communist Party member from Chicago.


His work has been described as a celebration of black culture and a repudiation of racism. He wrote the lyrics for drummer Max Roach's 1960 album "We Insist! Freedom Now Suite," one of the first jazz records to deal heavily with the growing civil rights movement. Brown directed stage shows that cast gang members and other teens from poor neighborhoods in Chicago. And he created the musical adaptation of a play about a black militant leader that made it to Broadway with Muhammad Ali as the lead.




Brown, who died at 78 in 2005, wrote "The Snake" during a time in which he was performing regularly in nightclubs and writing songs that used biblical references and animal allegories for simple stories that held deeper meanings, two of his daughters, Maggie Brown, 55, and Africa Brown, 48, said in an interview.

"In African tradition, you would say a proverb and pass that down," Africa Brown said. "That's the way you teach people to live."

Brown's family has been harshly critical of the president's appropriation of the song, and Maggie and Africa said they wished he would stop using it. In particular, they are upset by the fact that it has been repurposed to serve prejudice, saying that flies in the face of their father's work.

"Of course it had nothing to do with prejudice or racist thoughts that he's twisting it into," Maggie said. "We always took it like, if you lay down with dogs, don't expect not to wake up with fleas."

Trump has also failed to credit Brown for the song, which the family takes as another slight. During one rally in Florida, Trump said it was written by the R&B singer, Al Wilson, who popularized the song in the "1990s."

"It would have been nice if you credited him for his work," Sidakarav Dasa, Brown's grandson, wrote in a social media message to Trump in 2016, according to the Chicago Tribune, "but I can see how telling your crowd that you were quoting a man who resigned from the Communist Party in 1956, declaring himself 'just too black to be red,' might be problematic."

Whereas Trump's take is paranoid and dark, Wilson's 1969 rendition, perhaps the song's most famous version before Trump's, is a bluesy soul number set over a punchy horn section.

The two Brown sisters said they found it ironic that their father — "a revolutionary, outspoken black man" who they believe was blacklisted by record labels and clubs for his political work in the '60s — was enjoying a glancing sort of recognition through the song's rebirth.

"They wanted to pull him down," Maggie said. "Now they want to pull from his stuff."

The question of when the soul song was first repurposed as an anti-immigrant wake-up call is murky. Internet searches show that the lyrics popped up a few times in the comment sections of fringe conservative websites in 2015 before Trump popularized it.

"No country has a moral obligation to take the snake that will kill it," a commenter wrote that year on the anti-Muslim site Jihad Watch, along with the lyrics, which the commenter credited to a white singer who had covered the song.

A secondary meaning?

Trump's use of the song shows no signs of stopping, though many, like Brown's family, find his rendition hateful.

"Trumps snake story is vicious, disgraceful, utterly racist and profoundly Un-American," conservative operative Steve Schmidt wrote on Twitter after CPAC on Friday. "That this is how an American President speaks of immigration is a tragedy. This crowd of cheering extremists are the heirs of the Know-Nothing's and nativists that have always plagued us."

And the president's fixation on the poem, which is rarely, if ever, a scripted part of his speeches, has led some to wonder whether there is a deeper meaning beyond its stated purpose about dangerous immigrants.

A theory has emerged among some commentators that Trump's love affair with the poem represents a subconscious confession: The president identifies with the snake.

"Historians will view it as obvious that Trump was describing himself in 'The Snake,' " Dan Lavoie, an aide to Democratic New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, wrote on Friday. "His over-the-top recitation will be the narrative device for the first big post-Trump documentary. And they'll think we're all so dumb for not recognizing it in real-time."

Josh Marshall, the liberal editor in chief of Talking Points Memo, called Trump's use of the poem "some weird psycho-sexual" thing that "must appeal to Trump on like ten levels and also appeal to bible literalists."

Trump has flippantly dismissed the criticism.

"If you say, 'Isn't that terrible,' " Trump told the crowd at CPAC, "who cares?"

Lyrics

On her way to work one morning

Down the path alongside the lake
A tenderhearted woman saw a poor half-frozen snake
His pretty colored skin had been all frosted with the dew
"Oh well," she cried, "I'll take you in and I'll take care of you"

"Take me in oh tender woman
Take me in, for heaven's sake
Take me in oh tender woman," sighed the snake
She wrapped him up all cozy in a curvature of silk
And then laid him by the fireside with some honey and some milk
Now she hurried home from work that night as soon as she arrived
She found that pretty snake she'd taken in had been revived

"Take me in, oh tender woman
Take me in, for heaven's sake
Take me in oh tender woman," sighed the snake
Now she clutched him to her bosom, "You're so beautiful," she cried
"But if I hadn't brought you in by now you might have died"
Now she stroked his pretty skin and then she kissed and held him tight
But instead of saying thanks, that snake gave her a vicious bite

"Take me in, oh tender woman
Take me in, for heaven's sake
Take me in oh tender woman," sighed the snake
"I saved you," cried that woman
"And you've bit me even, why?
You know your bite is poisonous and now I'm going to die"
"Oh shut up, silly woman," said the reptile with a grin
"You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in

"Take me in, oh tender woman
Take me in, for heaven's sake
Take me in oh tender woman," sighed the snake

[Valmy]

I don't know if Trump is self aware enough to identify with the snake, even subconsciously.

Yeah that sounds like a load of nonsense. Some of Trump's opponents see him as a force of malevolence rather than incompetent and out of touch celebrity. I mean yes there is malevolence there but only because he reflects the darker impulses of his audience.

[crazy canuck]

White house contradicts Trump's claim that trade with Canada does not benefit the US.  Who did it - Trump himself.  But in fairness he likely didn't read the document he signed.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/trump-trade-white-house-1.4552362

The president regularly bemoans a trade deficit with the northern neighbour. Once again Monday, he was complaining about Canadian trade, saying: "We lose a lot with Canada. People don't know it. Canada's very smooth. They have you believe that it's wonderful. And it is, for them. Not wonderful for us."

Far less smooth is the consistency of U.S. messaging.

A far more positive story about trade appears in the newly released 2018 White House "Economic Report of the President" — it's an annual document prepared by the president's team, with Trump himself signing the introductory foreword.

The document smashes at a few of the president's favoured themes.

One involves the supposed trade deficit with Canada. While Trump keeps talking about it, and insisting it exists, the document he signed states the opposite — that Canada is among the few countries in the world with whom the U.S. runs a surplus.

The document states this at least three times.

[Grey Fox]

Arguments rarely change Trumps opinion of something. Almost everything is already set in stone & explained by the 1990s playboy article.

Fox & Friends has the ability to alter it for a few moments but it usually reverts back to the original state.