So, contrary to the worst of the doomsayers, Trump was not assassinated before taking office, Obama did not call a state of emergency and void the election, the college didn’t overturn the vote. And Trump is president.

What next?

Will he really change the world order as both his detractors and admirers claim? Will he try but be prevented by threats or persuasion, or even a “color revolution”? Or was this never his intention at all?

Is the unprecedented and hysterical hate from the liberal media and Establishment, and the bizarre warnings from the security services just an elaborate piece of theatre to make us believe Trump is an outsider? Or does he really represent a perceived threat to their interests and aims?

If so, how exactly did he come to power? Why was he “allowed” to win an almost certainly manipulated election? Who backs him and who does he really represent? The “people”? Sane and compassionate capitalism? Or simply another group of oligarchs/neocons with slightly different aims and ambitions?

And do we necessarily want the changes he promises? “America First” is a slogan that worries a lot of people. And populists taking power in times of stress and deprivation don’t have great track records for peace, prosperity or human rights.

Tell us what you think.

https://off-guardian.org/2017/01/22/now-tump-is-president-open-discussion/

We, on this site, have explained how Trump got first past the post. Nothing to do with "hacking". All to do with "strategy". In the beginning of Trump's willy-nilly campaign, Trump was making broad statements and Uncle Rupe tweeted something like "he liked the guy's strategy"... This is your clue on how Trump got there. In regard to what Trump is going to do, he will never do anything right for the liberal small-minded press and the female folks. Obama was their guy and Hillary was the natural successor to dishing out more of the same crap with a hypocritial feminine laddle, including more war.

We know Trump is a sexist, racist, misogynist, scoundrel and a liar about the size of crowds for his innauguration, but he is not a hypocrite. And this pisses a lot of people off. He is what he claims to be! Bugger! And some people saw a raw form of liberation from the oppression of liberal hypocrisy, which to say the least did a few doozies during Obama's reign. So Donald wants a better relation with Russia. What is wrong with this? For years the liberal and conservaive media have painted the Ruskies are the USA's nemesis. All they're trying to do is live under their own terms, not that of "American Exceptionalism" of which Barak was a figurehead for. Welcome to the reverse image. American can be exceptional, warts and all...

 This is chirality on a political scale... The right hand glove does not fit the left hand....

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In recent weeks, Trump's critics have used a profoundly weak US intelligence report on Russian hacking to delegitimise the new President. Putin, the argument goes, was responsible for Hillary Clinton's loss on November 8. That's why about 70 Democrat lawmakers boycotted Trump's inauguration at the weekend.

Other critics have even used a dodgy dossier to sabotage his plans to reach an accommodation with Russia. It makes unverifiable claims that the Kremlin has compromising information about the new President.

But the effort to delegitimise Trump and his overtures to Russia has been outrageous. It's only going to further poison American politics and hurt the US national interest. The Democrats, especially on the left, have been completely unhinged by Trump's victory. And by suggesting he is in cahoots with the Kremlin without any supporting evidence, they neglect the legitimate issues he raises.

There is another issue at play here: a lot of people are so worked up over the former reality television star and property magnate that if you don't disagree with him fully on every issue, they say you're an unashamed supporter of The Donald. But this is absurd logic. One can be a critic of Trump, and Putin for that matter, and still support detente with Moscow.

My approach to this subject, for instance, has nothing to do with any love for the US and Russian leaders and everything to do avoiding a Cuban missile crisis-style nuclear confrontation in the 21st century.

Trump's critics should answer the following questions:

Why did Moscow seize Crimea, the home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet and part of Russia from Catherine the Great to Khrushchev? Was it after the western-backed coup to bring down the democratically elected, pro-Russian regime in Kiev in February 2014?

Why interfere in the near abroad of a great power with a vast arsenal of nuclear weapons? Have years of NATO and EU expansion to the former Soviet Union's frontiers upset Russian sensibilities? Why do NATO military exercises from the Baltics to Black Sea unnerve Moscow?

Why make threats and commitments to Russia and the Baltics respectively when Western governments are unable or unwilling to honour them? Will a war-weary America really commit blood and treasure to a region where no US army has ever fought and where Russia commands greater military superiority?

Why can't America and Russia work together to fight Islamic State jihadists, help create a political settlement in Syria, keep Iran's nuclear ambitions in check and reduce each other's nuclear weapons?

Some perspective is required. Matthew Dal Santo, an Australian academic at the University of Copenhagen, reminds me that before 2014 Russia was widely viewed as being so weak relative to the US-EU-NATO alliance that its interests could be safely ignored, even when Washington and Brussels sought to peel Ukraine away from Moscow's strategic orbit.

read more:

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/in-defence-of-trumps-russia-policy-2017012...

See also: this is a conspiracy...

The Trump presidency is only days old and already there are serious moves to have him forced out of office, and the man leading the charge is from the President's own political party.

Richard Painter is a lawyer who advised former president George W Bush on ethics. He could not bring himself to vote for Donald Trump, admitting he supported instead Mr Trump's Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.

He has many concerns about the new President — his attitude to the media, his pledge to ban Muslim immigration, and deporting Mexicans — but he is really zeroing in on the billionaire businessman's connections to international companies and countries.

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-23/trump-will-conform-or-be-removed-f...

It is my silly view that the people who voted for Donald have been patient, though somewhat edgy. They expect him to govern in his full rights, no matter what — and it's highly likely that Donald will flog his businesses to whomever to stay president or he will say bye bye and leave his vice-president in charge. All will be "good" Ultra-Conservative ways that will piss off the liberal and Democrat some more — except this time the stick will be a bit more "legitimate" and no-one could say boo.

And the revolution won't come from the women in cat-hats and pseudo-men who have been protesting against Trump (not my president). The revolution will come from the bible-belt and city crazies armed to their teeth with guns and more guns. Ugly? Folks, you've never seen ugly. Please tone down. Take a deep breath and bear the Donald who's barely been in the job for 24 hours. 

Aclash of two insurgencies is now shaping the west. Progressives on both sides of the Atlantic are on the sidelines, unable to comprehend what they are observing. Donald Trump’s inauguration marks its pinnacle.

One of the two insurgencies shaping our world today has been analysed ad nauseum. Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, Marine Le Pen and the broad Nationalist International that they are loosely connected to have received much attention, as has their success at impressing upon the multitudes that nation-states, borders, citizens and communities matter. 

However, the other insurgency that caused the rise of this Nationalist International has remained in the shadows: an insurrection by the global establishment’s technocracy whose purpose is to retain control at all cost. Project Fear in the UK, the troika in continental Europe and the unholy alliance of Wall Street, Silicon Valley and the surveillance apparatus in the United States are its manifestations.

The era of neoliberalism ended in the autumn of 2008 with the bonfire of financialisation’s illusions. The fetishisation of unfettered markets that Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan brought to the fore in the late 1970s had been the necessary ideological cover for the unleashing of financiers to enable the capital flows essential to a new phase of globalisation in which the United States deficits provided the aggregate demand for the world’s factories (whose profits flowed back to Wall Street closing the loop nicely). 

Meanwhile, billions of people in the “third” world were pulled out of poverty while hundreds of millions of western workers were slowly sidelined, pushed into more precarious jobs, and forced to financialise themselves either through their pension funds or their homes. And when the bottom fell out of this increasingly unstable feedback loop, neoliberalism’s illusions burned down and the west’s working class ended up too expensive and too indebted to be of interest to a panicking global establishment.

read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/22/trumps-nationalism...

US President Donald Trump has signed executive orders withdrawing America from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal and stopping the federal government from hiring any more workers.

• Trump made election promise to withdraw USA from TPP
• TPP was main economic pillar of Obama administration's 'pivot' to the Asia-Pacific region
• Australia willing to work with other countries to keep deal alive

In an Oval Office ceremony, Mr Trump delivered on his campaign promise to formally withdraw from the TPP, which was negotiated by Barack Obama between 12 countries, including Australia.

Mr Trump, who has previously argued the agreement would harm the US economy, said the order was a "great thing for the American worker".

But the move was basically a formality, since the agreement was unlikely to receive approval from the US Congress.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Mr Trump, who also met with top business leaders, would move away from multilateral trade policies toward bilateral trade that puts the United States first.

The accord had been the main economic pillar of the Obama administration's "pivot" to the Asia-Pacific region to counter China.

read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-24/trump-withdraws-from-tpp/8206356

Trump will be deemed to be a China pleaser... OhYaboom...

...

Outside the Minnesota event in April there were two sets of Americans squaring off on either side of the road. One group, some 100 or so Trump fans, urged passing drivers to honk in ­support of the President. The other, dozens of Democrats, dubbed him a racist.

Randal, a 59-year-old dog breeder sporting a Trump T-shirt and a vast American flag, is a ­presidential superfan. He has been to 47 Trump rallies and events. “The number one thing was he spoke like me,” he said of his early conversion. “He spoke my language. I love the fact that he wasn’t beholden to what we call the swamp.”

Maury, 69, was on the other side of the road holding a piece of paper with a message scrawled in pen: “Trump = Hitler”. A Democrat, he saw Trump’s migrant detention camps as being like something from Nazi Germany. Neither man agreed on the President, nor his policies, nor the state of the US today. Both had driven miles to protest against what the other stood for. But they did agree on one thing. Would Trump win again in 2020? Both men said yes.

Read more:

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/weekend-australian-magazine/inside-trumps-2020-reelection-campaign/news-story/

Read from top.

BLOOMBERG

BERLIN - No need for tears and hand-wringing, U.S. friends. What happened on Tuesday was not a collapse of your democracy — just a powerful blow to American exceptionalism and the misplaced arrogance of the U.S. elite.

Donald Trump won by using a mix that has been effective in Eastern Europe since the turn of the century: a combination of strong nationalism and an anti-corruption agenda.

At a hotel in an Orlando, Florida, suburb at 7 p.m. Tuesday night, a dozen Osceola County Republicans gathered around a TV tuned to Fox News. They were early comers to an event billed as a victory party — the Osceola Republican Party was going to celebrate some modest down-ballot wins — but these people were more interested in the presidential race.

Many will say Trump’s victory was fueled by racism and xenophobia. It’s more complicated than that. The pro-Trump crowd gathered at an Orlando hotel on Tuesday night to watch the election results wasn’t an all-white, all-male audience. The day before, when Orlando government relations consultant Bertica Cabrera Morris told me the Republicans hadn’t really botched Hispanic outreach and would deliver plenty of votes to their candidate, it was all I could do not to show disbelief. Yet she was right: Spanish was heard in that hotel ballroom. Women, too, were well-represented. Clearly, enough Latinos and enough women didn’t believe Trump’s words about them had been particularly offensive.

This is just anecdotal evidence, of course, and so is the fact that, in my travels around the U.S. this year, I met far more people who were enthusiastic about Trump than about Clinton. But then, do we have anything but anecdotal evidence to go on anymore?

Read more:

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2016/11/10/commentary/world-commentary/a-blow-to-u-s-exceptionalism/#.XQb2za2B2B4

Read from top. Back then, in 2016, many people misunderstood Trump the trapeze artist and the circus clown. They though he was an American introvert, with a "make America great again" slogan meaning that local hard work and acumen would win the day. Far from it: US exceptionalism is alive and well... The way to make "America great again" has been to destroy countries that tend to compete with the USA. Simple.

This is exceptionalism at its best: nipple twists, blows below the belt, kicks on the shins, blaming opponents unfairly, lead weights in the boxing gloves, six-shooters instead of negotiations... what else do you want to reinvigorate "exceptionalism" with?

Not that we did not warn you...