I think it’s important to remember: Executive Orders are not laws. They DO carry some legal weight. They do NOT have the force of laws in this sense: a subsequent President can reverse an EO with the stroke of a pen. The Legislative Branch can overrule an EO by passing an actual law. The Judicial Branch has the power to strike down EOs, just like they do normal laws.

The Executive Branch doesn’t make laws, it’s supposed to enforce them. When The Drumpfster successfully manages to scribble his name on an EO, it’s STILL not a law. EOs were once used to detail how a President intended to execute a law. That is, what steps might be taken, which department might oversee the law, that kind of thing.

They were and are “law adjacent,” if you will. Justice Hugo Black wrote in his opinion in the case of ‘Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co vs Sawyer’ that “The President’s power to see that the laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea that he is to be a lawmaker.”

He’s using EOs because he has to. He can’t get these things passed as legitimate laws so he’s doing an end run on his own Republican-controlled Congress. If Congressional Republicans had any self respect… I guess there’s no point in finishing that sentence…

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Once again, the Felon deceived the market by pretending he is just about to get sane and reconsider his tariffs on China. He stated quite clearly that his anti-American regime was in talks with China and that things were going very well. The market started going up. Unfortunately for the predatory prevaricator, China gets a say in these things, too. And what THEY said was, “Nope. We’re not in talks.” They added, “We don’t see the point.”

Okay, specifically, Guo Jiakun, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, said, “For all I know, China and the U.S. are not having any consultation or negotiation on tariffs, still less reaching a deal.” He wasn’t alone.

Commerce Ministry spokesman He Yadong said, “China’s position is consistent, and we are open to consultations and dialogues, but any form of consultations and negotiations must be conducted on the basis of mutual respect and in an equal manner. Any claims about the progress of China-U.S. trade negotiations are groundless as trying to catch the wind and have no factual basis,” the spokesman said.

Two different Chinese spokesmen said no talks are happening and He Yadong said it would be like trying to catch the wind, which I understand as “What’s the point?” In the long run, I expect the US is going to suffer FAR, FAR more than any other country involved in The Felon’s trumped up trade war. I’m not looking forward to that but it seems right and proper to me.

The Bizarro US started this mess and the Bizarros deserve every bit of the blow-back that results. The rest of us are just “collateral damage,” though WE “deserve” it, too, because we haven’t done enough to stop him. The Drumpfster is the world’s problem, but he’s OUR responsibility.

A lot of people, big people, strong people are saying it to me, they say, “Why doesn’t he just dry up and blow away?” A lot of people are saying it. You’re hearing it a LOT. And, as you know, when “a lot of people are saying it” and “you’re hearing it a lot,” one has no choice but to do what those voices are saying…

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Bill Maher likely doesn’t realize how deeply he’s stepped in it. He became a “useful idiot” to the regime and there was quite a bit of push-back. The entire rational world is trying to get him to realize he was a pawn, used to put a nicer face on a madman. Larry David noticed and wrote an op-ed called ‘My Dinner With Adolf.’

It purported to be a report about a “vocal critic” of Hitler who got invited to dinner with the man himself and found him surprisingly warm and gracious. “Here I was, prepared to meet Hitler, the one I’d seen and heard — the public Hitler. But this private Hitler was a completely different animal. And oddly enough, this one seemed more authentic, like this was the real Hitler. The whole thing had my head spinning,” David wrote.

Replace ‘Hitler’ with ‘Trump’ and you’ve got a nearly perfect transcript of what Maher said of the Don of Destruction after their dinner. I suspect Maher is trying to white-knuckle the whole controversy away, hoping it blows over sooner, rather than later. Initially, he didn’t respond to David’s op-ed at all. Apparently, the two are friends and don’t want to get into a public spat. But eventually, Maher had to respond so he… oh, get this, he played the Jew card.

Maher, a life-long, avowed Atheist who is half-Jewish by birth, said of the op-ed written by full-blooded, practicing Jew Larry David, that it was, “kind of insulting to 6 million dead Jews.” I think Maher needs a new mirror. To my mind, Maher snuggling up to the Fascist madman was “kind of insulting to 6 million dead Jews.”

I fully support talking to MAGA. I absolutely believe we and they receive different information from our various sources. We should ALL compare notes, find out who’s being told what. But that applies to the rank and file. One is not going to get one of the Deceivers to change their ways. One does not fight evil with understanding…

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47 did this with Covid. He kept saying, if we stop testing, we’ll stop finding cases. His twisted, tiny little mind probably thought that made sense, too. If we don’t talk about Covid-19, there IS no Covid-19. He killed a little over a million people with that stupid outlook. He and his regime are trying the same trick with Climate Change. These clowns seem to actually believe that if you don’t talk about it, it goes away. (Pro tip: it doesn’t.) Now he’s doing the same thing with polling.

Fox Not-News MADE him. They built him up on a tower of lie after lie after lie. Ever since their loyalty cost Murdoch nearly a billion dollars, though, the network has been a little, and I mean just a touch, more balanced in their coverage of the dotard. They recently published a poll that showed the Felon’s approval rating is lower than any other President in history at this point in his tenure, with the SECOND worst rating ALSO belonging to the Felonious Failure.

Naturally, 47 went ballistic. He does that whenever anybody tells a truth about him. He doesn’t LIKE it when people tell the truth about him. Now he wants pretty much everybody at Fox Not-News fired. This seems like a hopeful crack in the GOP shield wall that protects 47. If Murdoch and 47 fall out, there’s a risk Fox Not News and/or the Wall Street Journal will start reporting honestly on the Felon’s actions – and that would be very, VERY bad for 47. Fingers crossed…