Very useful when a certain someone is not familiar with hurricane categories:

Trump was Trump today, attending a FEMA briefing on Hurricane Dorian which was upgraded to Category 5 today.  The President was confused by the term “Category 5” saying,

“I’m not sure that I’ve ever even heard of a Category Five.  I’ve seen some Category Fours, you don’t even see them that much.  But a Category Five is something that, I don’t know that I’ve ever even heard the term, other than I know it’s there. That’s the ultimate and that’s what we have, unfortunately.”

So, the “very stable genius”, who knows more than any expert about the Middle East, the military, warfare, technology, trade, real estate, and finance has never heard of a Category 5 hurricane.  For context, the US has been hit by THREE Category 4 hurricanes since Trump was inaugurated, Irma and Maria in 2017, and Michael in 2018.

Trump is truly just an ignoramus.  He doesn’t read; he has no knowledge of science or history; he couldn’t care less about society and contributing to that society.  He is totally self absorbed, consumed and needy of adulation.  Everything else is peripheral and irrelevant.

Unbelievable.

Yesterday, Trump tweeted out a photograph of an Iranian launchpad after an explosion of a rocket occurred there.  Civilian satellites had taken photos after the incident but they were fuzzy, difficult to make out detail.  Trump’s photo was highly detailed with notes on it showing buildings and vehicles and was clearly taken by one of unknown US intelligence satellites orbiting earth.  A US intelligence official confirmed late yesterday that indeed the photo is from US intelligence.  Here’s the tweet:

So, let’s be clear about what just happened – the President of the United States, who had just received an intelligence briefing using photos from a classified US spy satellite took a photograph of that classified photo and tweeted it out to 62 million followers for the sole purpose of trolling Iran.

Can you imagine the fire storm over at Fox Noise had Obama done anything nearly as stupid?  At what point does the CIA and NSA stop giving Trump classified briefings?  At what point do they take away the nuclear codes? At what point does Mitch McConnell grow a spine and stop this guy?  When is enough enough?

Never?

Randy Rainbow does it again, even better.  Trust me.

UPDATED BELOW:

We all heard Trump’s inane ranting this week from calling himself the “chosen one” to him saying he’s going to cut payroll taxes (never mind) to escalating his trade war with China that was doomed from the start.  The outrage of the week, though, after China retaliated by slapping a 5% tariff on crude oil (crushing US oil prices), Trump appointed himself “Emperor of All Commerce” and tweeted out:

“Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing your companies HOME and making your products in the USA.”

The response on Twitter was EXACTLY what you’d expect:  Republicans ran for the exits and were virtually radio silent, and Democrats as well as Trump critics pounced, and #iherebyorder started trending.  Adam Schiff tweeted:

“As long as we are claiming constitutional powers we don’t have, I hereby order the President to stop tweeting.”

George Conway got into the act, hilariously tweeting:

“I hereby order everyone on Twitter to hereby order something. #Iherebyorder” and “I hereby order Republicans to get real about Trump’s mental state.”

The hashtag is extremely entertaining, but let’s be clear – President of the United States is president, not king, emperor, or dictator.  It’s the most powerful position in the world (I shuddered as I typed that), but it’s limited.  He can’t order private business to do ANYTHING. That’s why they call it the private sector.  What he could do, though, is lead by example, and get his own goddam businesses out of China.  Both he and Ivanka’s cheesy crap is made in China as well as his 2020 campaign banners.

Trump is completely off the rails, driving the global economy in the ditch with his idiotic trade war.  His latest tantrum is only an attempt to control what he has no authority over, and I expect this to get worse and worse.  Think about it – when he was campaigning, he said over and over that only HE could fix what was “wrong” with America (even though the economy was fine, thank you very much). He also repeated that he knew more about the economy, warfare, ISIS, technology, and trade than ANYONE when, in fact, he didn’t know shit about any of those things.  All Trump knows about is reality television and that’s how he’s running the government, with his daily episodes of out of control tweeting and stupefying chaos.

We’re in this pickle because a huge portion of the electorate is stupid.  That’s a given.  However, we remain in this pickle because the Congress is broken.  Over the years it has ceded its Constitutional authority over to the Executive branch.  Trade policy is the Congress’s, not the president’s.  Trump is using national security as his reason for driving his personal vendetta against allies and trading partners, and Mitch McConnell is sitting on his fat ass letting it happen. McConnell has blocked every effort to stop the wrecking of the US and global economies and for this reason, is actually worse than Trump, since he actually DOES know better.

Enough of this is enough.  Get off your ass, Mitch, and do your goddam job.  Either do that, or get out of the way and let someone else do it.

UPDATE:  Trump asserted on Twitter early this am that he indeed CAN order companies to leave China.  He quoted the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 as his authority, but, of course, he’s wrong.  This law was passed to provide a framework for dealing with criminal regimes and terrorists organizations and was enacted to LIMIT a president’s authority to unilaterally act without proper declarations of emergencies that affect immediate national security.  It has NEVER been used for commercial trade disputes.  My feeling is that, per usual, Trump shot off his Twitter and some law library rat has been scurrying around trying to find some legal thread to tie it to, just like the Muslim ban and his “zero tolerance” policy that has created one of the largest human rights crisis in US history at the southern border.

This one, like all the others, won’t end well for either Trump or the US’ standing in the international community.

Matt Ford hit the nail on the head this week in a piece published by New Republic.  Titled “Trump’s Tax on the National Psyche“, Ford talks about how Trump not only is an incredible time waster himself, he’s also wasting the time of all Americans with his outrageous behavior, Tweetstorms, and pernicious lying.  Rather than taking care of the People’s business, Trump wastes much of his day in “executive time” watching Fox News, tweeting, and talking to his pals.  He runs the government like his cheesy reality television shows intentionally keeping the public and the media in knots by issuing a continuous stream of idiotic declarations-by-tweet rambling everywhere from buying Greenland to attacking members of Congress who happen to have the wrong skin color in his opinion.  The press has been reduced to trying to get some semblance of policy during his Chopper Talk sessions where he stands before a forest of microphones screaming bullshit over the screaming of his helicopter’s engines.  It’s ridiculous.

It’s exhausting and draining.  Even the people who support him are surely exhausted having to defend their hero’s criminality and corruption, and I believe it will take years to recover from this infestation of the WH, if we ever can.  Ford does a good job with his analysis and his piece is worth a read.