Trump is so in love with big government policies to protect labor unions that he’s willing to put that goal ahead of reducing the suffering in Puerto Rico:
The Trump administration on Tuesday denied a request to waive shipping restrictions to help get fuel and supplies to storm-ravaged Puerto Rico, saying it would do nothing to address the island’s main impediment to shipping, damaged ports.
The Jones Act limits shipping between coasts to U.S. flagged vessels. However, in the wake of brutal storms, the government has occasionally issued temporary waivers to allow the use of cheaper, tax free or more readily available foreign-flagged ships.
The Department of Homeland Security, which waived the act after hurricanes Harvey and Irma, did not agree an exemption would help this time.
Gee, I wonder why Trump was willing top help Texas and Florida, but not Puerto Rico?
Update: Alex Tabarrok has a much better post.
Meanwhile Trump fulfills another campaign promise, have presidents focus on their job:
Say what you will about Bush and Katrina, at least he wasn’t spending all his time tweeting about sports.
But wait, Trump’s officials insist that these tweets are not about baiting blacks to whip up support among white voters, rather they are trying to “promote patriotism”.
So I guess this comment was about patriotism?
“Because you know, today if you hit too hard — 15 yards! Throw him out of the game. They had that last week, I watched for a coupled of minutes. Two guys, just really, beautiful tackle. Boom! 15 yards. The referee goes on television, his wife’s so proud of him. They’re ruining the game! They’re ruining the game,” he said.
[As an aside, just as the absolutely worst way of trying to be happy is trying to be happy, the absolutely worst way of trying to promote patriotism is trying to promote patriotism.]
It looks like the voters of Alabama are about to pick another neanderthal in the tradition of George Wallace (this time standing in the courthouse door instead of the schoolhouse door.) The alt-right at Breitbart is celebrating Judge Moore’s strong opposition to DACA:
JACKSON: “Would you support an end to the Dreamer program that President Trump has still continued to push?
MOORE: “Pardon? The Dreamer program?”
JACKSON: “Yes sir. The DACA/DAPA. You’re not aware of what dreamers are?”
MOORE: “No.”
JACKSON: “Dreamers are — this is a big issue in the immigration debate. Dreamers are . . . ”
MOORE: “Why don’t you tell me what it is Dale, and quit beating around, and tell me what it is?”
JACKSON: “I’m in the process of doing that, Judge Moore.”
Oops, sorry, that wasn’t the Breitbart quote, it was a National Review quote showing that the Judge doesn’t know what DACA is.
BTW, did some sort of cultural change happen without anyone informing me? Is it suddenly fashionable among GOP voters to support assholes and bullies and jerks who know nothing about public policy?
Welcome to the new Republican Party. Here’s the guy they are rallying around to support in the November election:
The Vietnam veteran and lifelong Christian holds the view that the U.S. Constitution is a kind of extension of the Bible, and that the Founding Fathers intended their America to be a Christian nation.
In 2014, he went so far as to suggest that the First Amendment applies only to Christians. Speaking at an anti-abortion luncheon, Moore said: “Everybody, to include the U.S. Supreme Court, has been deceived as to one little word in the First Amendment called ‘religion.’” . . .
“Sodomy is against the laws of nature,” he told The Washington Post in a recent interview. “Let’s say the court decides to get rid of the law of gravity and says you can jump off the Empire State Building. Can they do that? No, they certainly can’t do that.”
In a 2002 child custody case during his first term as Alabama chief justice, Moore called being gay “an inherent evil” and “abhorrent, immoral, detestable, a crime against nature and a violation of the laws of nature and of nature’s God.”
Moore has said he believes “homosexual conduct should be illegal” and that same-sex relations are akin to bestiality. After the U.S. Supreme Court declared same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states, Moore, who’d been reelected as chief justice of Alabama, instructed state judges to flout the order. In September 2016, he was once again removed from court for the remainder of his term.
But he wasn’t deterred. Moore announced his run for U.S. Senate several months later and continues to share his extreme views on the campaign trail.
“There is no such thing as evolution,” he recently told a Washington Post reporter. “That we came from a snake? No, I don’t believe that.”
Equally ludicrous to Moore is the idea that non-Christian faiths have the same religious legitimacy as his own. During a campaign stop this summer the candidate called Islam a “false religion” that’s “completely opposite with what our First Amendment stands for.”
But hey, Trump put Gorsuch on the Supreme Court, so there is nothing to worry about here. All is well.
PS. Trump was supposed to announce his big tax cut plan today, but instead we got basically nothing. I could come up with a more detailed plan in one week. This White House is amazingly incompetent—which shows what happens when you aren’t able to recruit good people to work in your administration.
PPS. During the campaign, Trumpistas told me that Trump was a master “dealmaker”. So I guess that’s why he chose to ridicule a Vietnam War hero for being captured, and then never apologize. He figured that insulting soldiers who have spent years being tortured while you are out grabbing other men’s wives by the pussy is a good way to make people like you more, so that, you know, they’ll provide the crucial vote in the Senate when you try to fulfill your campaign promise to repeal Obamacare.
PPPS. Of all the defenses for Trump’s failures that I’ve seen in the comment section, perhaps the silliest is the claim that the failure to repeal Obamacare is Congress’s fault, not Trump’s. First, because Trump ran as a SUPERMAN who would force Congress to do his bidding. Second, because Trump never even came up with a health care proposal. Third, because Trump often trashed the repeal proposals that Congress did consider. Imagine if Obama had just left health care up to Congress, providing no leadership. Especially when they could not lose a single vote in the Senate. Trump could afford to lose two votes, and still seems to be falling short. But to the Trumpistas, nothing is Trump’s fault.