What wouldn’t I give to trade Trump for Justin Trudeau …And not just for looks, civility and intellect!
This text was posted to Facebook, under a photograph of the Canadian Cabinet:
O Canada…..What a cabinet:
Minister of Health is a doctor.
Minister of Transport is an astronaut.
Minister of National Defense is a Sikh Veteran.
Minister of Youth is under the age of 45.
Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food is a former farmer.
Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness was a Scout.
Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development was a financial analyst.
Minister of Finance is a successful businessman.
Minister of Justice was a crown prosecutor and is a First Nations leader.
Minister of Sport, and Persons with Disabilities is a visually impaired Paralympian.
Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, and Canadian Coastguard is Inuit.
Minister of Science is a medical geographer with a PhD.
New titles include
Minister of Immigration, Citizenship and Refugees was an Immigration critic.
There are scientists in the cabinet, and it is made up of 50% women.
And then, of course, there’s the Trump Cabinet….
Betsy DeVos (one of only 3 women) is a religious zealot; she had never set foot in a public school classroom, nor sent her own children to a public school. The effects of that lack of familiarity were in abundant display at her confirmation hearing, where she proved embarrassingly ignorant of Department responsibilities and policies.
It wasn’t that long ago that Jeff Sessions was deemed too racist to be a federal judge by his Republican colleagues. He has reinstituted policies that decades of research have demonstrated are counterproductive.
Scott Pruitt (aka Mr. Fossil Fuels) has done his best to destroy the environment and roll back regulations meant to safeguard clean air and water.
Ben Carson doesn’t seem to know what time it is, let alone what housing policy is. Ditto Rick Perry over at the Department of Energy–the name of which he forgot during the GOP primary debates.
Rex Tillerson may have run an oil company, but management experience hasn’t kept the seasoned veterans who have fled the State Department in droves, or kept the President from ignoring him. (In typical Trump fashion, the President says his is the only voice that matters anyway.)
Tom Price is already gone–too extravagant even for Mr. Gold Toilet.
Ryan Zinke wants to sell off National Monuments and remake Interior into a paramilitary something or other….
I could go on. And on. Even the less horrifying nominees have mostly come to their positions with absolutely no background in public service and no obvious aptitude for it.
Not only do we not have a cabinet that looks like America, we don’t have a cabinet that gives a rat’s patootie about America, or Americans, or the common good.
We’ve all seen better cabinets at IKEA.
This is a depressing start to the week.
Alas, poor logic, we knew it well!
Nancy; and we still have the State Of The Union fiasco scheduled for day two:-(
You didn’t even mention Trump’ s judicial lifetime appointments, and their wholesale approval by congress .
“OH…CANNABIS… How green and tall thy fields..! ”
(a song a friend made to the Canadian National anthem… ) ~8)
Grass is always greener on the other side of the fence – We need a new ‘lawn mower’ – called the Will of the People and maybe that scenario over that side will be back to trying to meet our ‘yard’!… ya know? We just have to figure out where our Senators and Reps went – and WHO are these people telling us what to do?! Because I feel a real need to make someone’s nose BLEED about now!
I’d just like to add, not only did Rick Perry not remember the Name of the DoE, it was one of the departments he was pledging to eliminate. According to 45 these are the “best” people. I’ve never seen such an appalling lack of standards.
What you address, Sheila, is a head of state whose cabinet is out of alignment with his own mantra MAGA and yearns to build a $25 B wall to protect the most heavily armed civilian population in the entire world. Alignment. You rightfully raise the example of our neighbor to the north who appoints a magnificent cabinet aligned with the aspirations of its people and no inclination to protect its border from a nation with a much higher per capita homicide rate. I live half of every year in Canada. We would do well to listen and learn.
Is this what the Orange Ogre called “Draining the Swamp”?
C’mon Robert Mueller, get His Fat Ass out of the Oval Office and onto a golden toilet seat where he can join his coterie. What a blot on American history! Betcha this comment will be taken down.
Ah, Sheila, how often you say exactly what I was thinking or would have thought had I had a little more time to think it.
Had a conversation this weekend with a Trump voter. He was very defensive about it, very aware that others thought him stupid for it. I tried to create common ground and point out areas that were not directly insulting to his points of view, one of which was this mess of a cabinet, but none of those details mattered to him. Three main points kept coming up:
1) Immigration. We just had to do something about it before we lost our country.
2) Hillary. She was so evil that Trump was our only choice.
3) Abortion. Nothing else matters when our tax dollars are going to murder full-term infants.
Needless to say, this person was under the spell of right wing media (no surprise there) to have such uninformed points of view. But he also was relatively young and seemingly intelligent, which was surprising. But one factor seemingly overwhelmed his potential facility for critical thinking: his religion. He literally started quoting bible verses to me and ultimately fell back on (when I pointed out his were not logical arguments), “See, this attack on my religion is why we need protection against religious discrimination.”
No. Not on a gold toilet seat. How about a steel toilet seat in a 6×6 room at Club Fed?
We’d still need to clean out the roaches. Vote the Grifters, Oligarchs, and Plutocrats into oblivion. All the way down the ballot, every chance you get.
Patrick – Ditto! We are well-acquainted with the colossal harm being done this country and its people and Sheila wisely contrasts our situation with that of our northern neighbor to point out stark differences in personnel and governing. Patrick rightly tells us what to do about it – either get off the couch from now to and including November, 2018, or literally risk losing your country to a democracy-crushing admixture of wealth and authoritarianism en route to failed state status. It doesn’t have to be that way, but it’s our call. To arms!
“Not only do we not have a cabinet that looks like America, we don’t have a cabinet that gives a rat’s patootie about America, or Americans, or the common good.”
Of course, to them the common good is the enemy of the individual, especially those special individuals whose special quality is the beautiful combination of bully and wealth.
I see where the STATE OF THE UNION SPEECH is going to dwell on illegal immigration. I have a proposal that could quite nicely solve the immigration problem and have immense, almost religious, appeal to the Trumpster gangs. Perhaps Trump should read it before he commits to something stupid in his speech: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10215541611682683&set=a.10202974151904043.1073741832.1511367488&type=3&theater
“Chain Migration” is an epithet. It was invented. The term is “family immigration” and it’s the way America has literally always worked. This is how my spouse came with me to live in the states. After supplying all the fees, his history, papers, interviews and several vaccinations, he became a citizen. That’s the way it works. He is a proud American.
I will be watching HGTV and NOT the SOTU address. I cannot watch that guy. I cannot stand his voice, his antics, his lies or his s*hole face.
I also will not watch the State of the Union speech. I feel that I will be better informed if I don’t.
In 2015, stabbings continued to be the most common method of committing homicide in Canada (37%), followed by shootings (30%) and beatings (23%). These proportions are similar to those reported over the past 10 years. Police reported 604 homicide victims in Canada in 2015.
In 2015, there were 178 firearm-related homicides, 23 more than the previous year in Canada. http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-002-x/2016001/article/14668-eng.htm
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Indianapolis, Indiana, Number of reported murders (2015): 148
The Chicago Police Department released statistics that show the number of homicides fell from 771 in 2016 to 650 last year. Let it sink in – Police reported 604 homicide victims in all of Canada in 2015.
There is no legal right to possess arms in Canada. It takes sixty days to buy a gun there, and there is mandatory licensing for gun owners. Gun owners pursuing a license must have third-party references, take a safety training course and pass a background check with a focus on mental, criminal and addiction histories.
Licensing agents are required to advise an applicant’s spouse or next-of-kin prior to granting a license, and licenses are denied to applicants with any past history of domestic violence. Buyers in private sales of weapons must pass official background checks.
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Monotonous; I THINK it was in 2015 that President Obama addressed the murder issue in Chicago. At that time he reported that Chicago authorities had traced more than half of those murder weapons to Indiana due to our lax gun laws. Already this year; Indianapolis is ahead of last year’s record number of murders, almost a daily – or nightly – occurrence now. Will this issue be addressed by the Indiana legislature at any level…hell no! NRA and Indiana legislators go hand-in-hand as long as there is money to be made.
My Uncle Don, of Don’s Guns, lobbied for years to get the same background checks on all long guns this state had on handguns. Instead, Indiana lowered requirements of background checks on handgun purchases, left long gun purchases with no requirements. Uncle Don returned to selling all guns and made a few more million…as did all other gun dealers and sales at gun shows soared.
Only in reference to Trump’s appointees would it be necessary to point out that some countries stick to the ago-old practice of naming cabinet members with expertise in the fields that they oversee. Trump, however, has the most loyal cabinet ever. It is filled with people of no self-esteem who will smilingly suffer whatever humiliation their boss is currently dishing up. All are diabolical, but like their dear leader, they are too ignorant to do the damage they might otherwise perpetrate if they ever discovered what a “plan” is. In a government controlled by the 35% who are America’s most imbecilic citizens, this is probably the most appropriate cabinet Trump could patch together. By the way, did I mention that “DeVos” is my new favorite obscenity?
O.K. We know that Ben Carson’s apparent idiocy is a product of him being brainwashed that all white people are superior. He keeps trying to prove that it is so. We know Rick Perry inhaled too much Jimson weed in west Texas. We know that the Cracker General was born with a red neck. Betsy Prince DeVos knows only wealth and white privilege and nothing else. And Stephen Miller is polishing his jack boots for the next parade.
So, while we’re examining the field of the absurd, let’s not forget that when Trump asked the museum for a van Gogh, they thought he meant he had to GO. So, speaking of flushing away the refuse of bad government….
How would it be if the Democrats swept the House and Senate in November. On the day after the new Congress is sworn in, impeachment begins, with conviction occurring on maybe the third day. Let’s also say that Mike Pence is also caught up in the obstruction/laundering/perjury/etc., charges and we’re left with the new Speaker of the House, a Democrat! Voila! The road to recovery has been swept clean of leaves and losers.
The only glitch is, can we wait that long?
Vernon; your last sentence is what scares me the most. Even if we “clean House” and the Senate in November; they still have more than 11 months to continue their daily destruction…can Kim Jong Un wait that long before retaliating?
JoAnn,
My wife and I often speculate on who will save the world by tackling Trump before his “mind” turns completely to mush, or Stephen Miller becomes chief-of-staff. It looks like the South Koreans are doing their best to keep Kim quiet. That issue will re-emerge after the Olympics.
We don’t know which Republicans in government are true patriots, but are “talking the talk” just to keep the base happy. By passing a tax bill that 75% of the people disapprove of tells me that there aren’t many. We on the left of center MUST do everything in our power to overcome the feeble leadership at the DNC and put forth viable candidates to defeat Republicans everywhere. Tom Perez is proving to be worthless as a chairman.
Keep working and keep believing we can succeed. Our democracy depends on it.
I think the theme of Trump’s speech tomorrow night should be “Threatened, Divided, and Ashamed” rather than Safe, Strong, and Proud.
Becky; I believe he gave his State Of The Union address at the Davos meeting last week, he may scramble the sentences around a big but last week was a practice session for tomorrow night and a repeat of all other speeches he has used as photo-ops.
Oy, America…
You can and must do SO MUCH better with a new administration! This isn’t it!
A little bit of trivia:
You may have seen that a gold toilet art installation was actually offered to the White House by the Guggenheim in lieu of the loan of a requested Van Gogh. Its title is “America.” Someone over there has a great sense of humor.